CARLSBAD, Calif., Dec. 21, 2004 (PRIMEZONE) -- A new book that successfully combines medicine, military, and football to heartwarming effect, Dr. Mike McCarthy's Bull in the Ring is a literary masterpiece. Based on a fraction of McCarthy's busy career as a surgeon, the narrative unravels when he is coerced into coaching the Camp Pendleton Naval Hospital football team while -- hold your breath -- running a large department, treating countless patients, and trying to raise five small children. Given this incredible scenario, expect a few tears, a truckload of conflict, and lots of laughs.
Throughout the book, the reader is drawn into the operating room, into the huddle, and into the fray. Mike "Coach Mac" McCarthy, a former collegiate linebacker, is driven to turn his band of medical misfits into winners. It is definitely not an easy task since the hapless Navy team has not won a game in three years and is widely considered to be a bunch of bona fide losers. The archenemies, the rest of the Marine teams in the base league, are not McCarthy's only problems. There is an endless stream of real patients demanding his attention. So will the Navy ever win a game? Does winning even matter? The reader is challenged to answer these questions and others posed by the real life characters who animate the pages of Bull in the Ring.
In Bull in the Ring, McCarthy confronts it all: infection, death, bureaucracy, and his biggest nemesis -- the invincible Marines. Along the way, the human spirit is exposed with surgical precision that is the allure of this compelling true story.
About the Author
Dr. Michael Patrick McCarthy was born in Aspinwall, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Pittsburgh. He attended St. Vincent College in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, where he majored in biology and was co-captain of his varsity football team. In 1965 he graduated from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and was drafted into the Navy. Upon completion of his residency, he was ordered to Camp Pendleton Naval Hospital. In 1977 he became a chairman of the urology department at San Diego Naval Hospital. Upon his retirement in 1988 he joined the urology facility at the University of California at San Diego and retired as a professor emeritus of surgery in 1994.
Dr. McCarthy is a board certified urologist and a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons. He is an avid golfer and belongs to the El Camino Country Club in Oceanside, California, and is a member of the club's senior team. He lives in Carlsbad, California, with his wife Alice. He has five grown children and four grandchildren.
Bull in the Ring -- By Dr. Michael P. McCarthy
Trade Paperback; $22.99; 331 pages; 1-4134-6739-3 --
Cloth Hardback; $32.99; 331 pages; 1-4134-6740-7
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