Book review: Victor Cruz' Out of the Blue

It's not like you guys come here looking to read book reviews. But in this case, I know many of you are eager to know what a fellow BBVer thinks of the new book, Out the Blue, by our emerging superstar wide receiver Victor Cruz (along with FoxSports.com's Peter Schrager).

This is a great book for several reasons. First of all, Cruz is a New York Giant, one that played a huge role in helping our team win another Super Bowl last season. So we are always interested in learning more about these players personally, and finding out how they made their long and winding journey to play football for the G-men. Call it human interest, if you will. Also, it's interesting to see how history played out and how it may have played out if Cruz had signed with, say, the Redskins, as he almost did. And it's always fun to relive a season like the Giants' 2011 campaign, through the eyes of one of its main characters.

Of course, Cruz didn't sit down at his computer and type out 300-odd pages by himself. It was ghost-written by Schrager, who did an excellent job of putting it together, especially in putting it together so quickly. I mean, the Super Bowl was only five and a half months before the book was released (July 17/Celebra Hardcover).

The memorable parts of the book were, in no particular order--Cruz talking about his high school basketball career, and how his dad coaxed him into giving football a try; how he watched the 2010 NFL draft unfold, ultimately getting a call from his agent immediately following the draft in which he wasn't selected, and that the Giants were offering him a free agent deal; Cruz' childhood growing up in Paterson and how it was easy to get into trouble, and how hard he had to work to stay away from it; his relationship with his dad, whom he didn't meet until he was 7 years old, and his relationship with his girlfriend Elaina; how he sold jeans to Michael Strahan in the Paramus mall in 2007; and of course, Cruz' perspective for games like his electrifying 2010 preseason debut against the Jets, his amazing 99 yard touchdown play against those same Jets last Christmas Eve, and his gutty performance in the NFC title game in San Francisco.

But here is the one thing I'll take away from Cruz' book and his story, and something I'm sure he hoped to convey to readers--that you should always keep working hard to achieve your goals, and never give up hope. You also never know when you will have an opportunity and that when you do, you should take advantage the way Cruz did. Surely Cruz' career seems like it came "out of the blue," but once you read this (highly recommended) book of the same name, you'll find out that a whole lot of blood, sweat and tears literally shaped the career of this young man -- who, by the way, is only entering his third NFL season.