The Blind Side (book) Summary

Chapter One opens with the second-by-second replay of a football play known as the “throw back special.”In this play, Washington Redskin Joe Theismann is playing quarterback and New York Giant Lawrence Taylor is playing defensive tackle. This explains why the Right offensive Tackle is the second most valuable player on a team, because Lawrence Taylor made it so Joe Theismann would never walk again. In Chapter Two It only talks about Tom Lennings and how he was stunned by Micheal Oher's Recruitment video and when Lemming was 23-years-old, he had the novel idea that he’d visit every high school in America to see every high school football player, and then publish a book about who he thought should be playing college ball. Chapter Three starts the real story of Micheal Oher. Its starts off with "Big" Tony going to Briarcrest Christian School with Micheal and Tony's son Steven. Tony is There to enroll Steven ,due to a deal with his mother on her death bed to get Steven a education. The only way Tony was able to get there boys in was through Coach Hugh Freeze. Freeze convinced a board to enroll Micheal into the school. Most of the new teachers find out at the public schools, the teachers just passed Micheal along and never taught him any thing. They only found out that Micheal could only take tests orally. Sean Tuohy first met Michael Oher in the Briarcrest gym. Sean had grown up as a poor white kid in a rich school, so he understood the struggles of the poor students at Briarcrest. When he realized that Michael rarely had food to eat, he funded Michael’s school account. He thought it would end there, with just lunch. However, one day in the winter, the Tuohy family saw Michael walking from school at night, through the snow, still wearing the same cut-off jeans and t-shirt he wore everyday. And that's when they let him in for the first time. In Chapter Four, we start to hear of the coaches thirst for Micheal'a athletic Abilities. The first team Michael played for was track and field, throwing discus. When Coach Burgess brought Michael out to the field, it was obvious that Michael was seeing a track and field meet for the first time. But by the end of the track and field season, Michael would make the new Tennessee state record for discus. The next football season, Michael was finally allowed to play, but the coaches were surprised to see that he had absolutely no aggression on the field. It was as if he was afraid to make a tackle. One practice, Michael’s hand split open and he curled up in the fetal position screaming. The school had to send him to the hospital for stitches but they had no idea how to reach his parents. They called the Tuohys instead. Leigh Ann decides to pay for is bills, even though he still didn't live with them yet.For a few weeks, Michael moved around staying with various families from Briarcrest who volunteered a bed for Michael one night at a time. Finally, Leigh Anne Tuohy insisted that Michael move in with them fulltime. And thats' When Micheal met Sean Jr. Chapter Five Talks about the December 1975, Cincinnati Bengals game and how they lost to The Oakland raiders ue to the lack of effort by the linemen.  quarterback accuracy rose from 50 – 60% during those same years (The only reason I'm keeping some chapters short is because it spends alot of time on the dynamics of football.) In Chapter Six Michael was still missing was a real sense of aggression on the field. Coach Freeze had taught him many techniques, but aggression needed to come from a natural place; Michael Oher needed a fighting spirit. When he was finally allowed to play during his sohomore year at Briarcrest School, Coach Freeze noted that Michael looked like he was just wandering around the field lost. Since Micheal Had been living with thee Tuohys for a while he asked for their assistance in getting a drivers license. Since Michael had no birth certificate, no criminal record, or no state issued ID. Leigh Anne made it her personal mission to find Michael’s document and in this discovery she found out , through his birth mother, his name was actually Michael Jerome Williams, and that his birth date was wrong. He eventually got his rivers license. In Chapter Seven after winning a State Chapionship game, Micheal is getting  more interested in colleges.  Michael would choose to attend college grew as Coach Hugh Freeze vied for Michael to attend University of Tennessee and the Tuohys hoped Michael would attend Ole Miss. The author goes on to describing the chaos of the recruitment calls on Wednesday nights. But one evening, Leigh Anne received a frantic call from Collins that there had been an accident. Michael had been driving a car, with Sean Jr. riding in the passenger seat that skidded on the ice and slammed into a van. Michael and the other driver were fine, but SJ’s face was a swollen mess. The hospital doctors were amazed that the airbag hadn’t broken SJ’s nose or knocked out his teeth. She then checked on Micheal and saw he protected SJ from the crash with his arm. Eventually after more effortless recruitment call Micheal chooses Ole Miss. Chapter 9 focuses on the history of 49er’s left tackle, Steve Wallace.In a game against the Minnesota Vikings, Wallace was set to guard the Viking player Chris Doleman who often pancaked the quarterback.  Wallace calmly and efficiently blocked Doleman, allowing his quarterback, Joe Montana, to throw 3 perfect touchdown passes.   This created a uproar in sports media and helped bump the pay of left and right Offensive Tackles. In Chapteer Seven, ends his high school career and begins his College, his plays in the Egg Bowl, and his NFL Career. After The Egg Bowl, many of his team mates gave him a harsh time. They were insulting Michael for being raised in a “cracker” family and stating that he intended to “have sex with Michael’s white sister, but only after he’d had sex with Michael’s white mother.” Michael snapped and beat this player, Antonio Turner, badly. During the fight, he failed to notice that somehow, a professor’s 3-year-old son had gotten caught up in the raucous and now lay in a pool of his own blood. Panicked, Michael fled the scene. He ran because ever since his childhood, it was the only thing he knew how to do for protection. Chapter eleven and Ten are closely related from him child hood. Michael’s mother, Dee Dee Oher, had grown up knowing that her father had been murdered. She never found out by whom. Her mother had been an alcoholic completely incapable of taking care of Dee Dee or her brother, Robert.  Dee Dee bounced around in foster homes and institutions before getting hooked on drugs and giving birth to her first son at the age of twenty. The father of her first four children, Odelle Watkins, soon ended up in prison for murder. When a friend of his, Michael Jerome Williams, was released from prison, Watkins asked if he would pay Dee Dee a visit, just to tell her that he was doing alright.By the time Michael was 5-years-old, Dee Dee had given birth to 4 more children. Now she was raising 13 children all under the age of 15 but she wasn’t really caring for any of them because she was too addicted to crack cocaine. Ironically, from the time Michael was very young, his greatest fear was that he would be separated from his mother. That fear was realized when Michael was 8-years-old and child protective services came to place him in a foster home. This is were Micheal learned how to run. He ran from almost every foster home he was placed in.  Michael aged maturing Hurt Village. When Michael was 15-years-old, he met Big Tony, a man who promised he could help Michael reach that dream. This was right around the time that Big Tony’s mother Betty Boo died, and he took Steven and Michael to Briarcrest Christian School.  In Chapter 12, Michael continued running from the scene of his fight with Antonio Tuner. He ran long after the little white kid was taken away in an ambulance and the police arrived to press charges. Michael ran like he had run when he was a boy, running from authority. After a while, Micheal had enough. Michael picked up his cell phone and called Sean Tuohy, the man he referred to as his father. Sean handled the phone call calmly, then promised to take care of everything. And he did. Through some well-placed donations, Tuohy managed to convince the entire community to brush the incident under the rug. After this unfortunate incident, Michael focused his energy on success, doing what he could to stay out of trouble and ensure his NFL career. Meanwhile, Sean Tuohy had turned his interest in other inner city black athletes who didn’t have access to the system that could further their own careers. After that they go into further depth of another child the Touhys took care of and raised to play professional Football.That was the end of the Blind Side. This was way different from the movie than I imagined.