Bull In The Ring
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About the Book
Bull in the Ring is a unique amalgam…part medicine, part military…part football. The story centers on a very small fraction of a busy surgeon’s career. Dr. Mike McCarthy is coerced into coaching the Camp Pendleton Naval Hospital football team, while also running a large department, treating countless patients and trying to raise five small children. There’s plenty of conflict, a few tears and lots of laughs.
The reader is drawn into the operating room, into the huddle and into the fray. “Coach Mac”, a former collegiate linebacker, is driven to turn his band of medical misfits into winners…no easy task since the hapless Navy team hasn’t won a game in three years and is widely considered to be a bunch of bona fide losers.
The arch enemies, the rest of the Marine teams in the base league, aren’t McCarthy’s only problems. There’s an endless stream of real patients demanding his attention. As a practicing urologist, he sees some “beauties”. There are sexpots, perverts, war heroes and scared little kids. There is even one young Marine who manages to do his own circumcision, with his trusty straight razor! These patients and their stories, provide the framework upon which Bull in the Ring is hung.
Dr. McCarthy confronts it all: infection, death, bureaucracy and of course his biggest nemesis, the invincible Marines. Along the way, the human spirit is exposed with surgical precision that’s the allure of this compelling true story.
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.
About the Author
Dr. Michael Patrick McCarthy was born in Aspinwall, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Pittsburgh. He went to grade school at St. Scholastica’s in Aspinwall. He attended North Catholic High School and won a football scholarship to St. Vincent College in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. He was co-captain of his varsity football team and graduated with a degree in biology in 1961. He graduated from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in 1965 and was drafted into the Navy. He interned at Philadelphia Naval Hospital and then spent two years with the submarine service, before beginning a residency of urology at San Diego Naval Hospital, completing his training in 1972. 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. He 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. Dr. McCarhty has five grown children and four grandchildren.