As the son of a longtime major college and National Football League coach, Frei has a unique perspective of an observer of sports from several angles. Here, he opens with a blunt and unsparing assessment of the state of contemporary sports journalism that might cause some in his business to wince, but many to nod in emphatic agreement.

After establishing the context, Frei discusses his experiences and the diverse characters he has encountered since he was a green sportswriter during that initial Broncos season of glory in 1977. From football, those figures include 2010 Hall of Fame inductees Jerry Rice and Emmitt Smith; the father-son combination of Jack and John Elway; and renowned college coaches Lou Holtz and Nick Saban. In a section that follows up on his Third Down and a War to Go, Frei tells the story of two additional World War II-era college football teams whose players met on the field, then went off to serve -- many of them in combat, many of them heroically, and one of them as a trailblazing member of the Tuskegee Airmen. 

Frei's remembrance of being caught in the 1989 World Series Earthquake, and especially the characters he encountered in San Francisco in the ensuing days of chaos, will touch readers. His visits to minor-league baseball outposts -- one, a hardscrabble mining town, the other the childhood home of one of American's renowned novelists -- also echo with a love for the sport. He also is the rare writer who has extensively covered both the NBA and NHL, and he includes his reflections and experiences while chronicling the superstars and even the controversial incidents in those leagues.

A frequent visitor to world title fights, Frei takes readers into the ring with such boxing legends as Muhammad Ali, Larry Holmes, Mike Tyson, Ray Leonard, Marvin Hagler, and Thomas Hearns. And he goes behind the scenes of several Olympic Games, where he encountered gold medallists, recreational-caliber skiers just hoping to stay on the course, and even a Catalonian woman who tended to her beloved stray cats in a famous park as the marathon passed her by.

Ultimately, Playing Piano in a Brothel is an ode to sports -- and what they still can be.