BRIGHTON AND HOVE, England — Just before Thanksgiving in 2013, Mike Petri and his wife, Lauren, were browsing in a bookstore in Bethlehem, Pa. Lauren was due to give birth to the couple’s first child in a few weeks, and so the couple were looking to fill out their collection of children’s books. They grabbed plenty of standards — “The Very Hungry Caterpillar,” some Dr. Seuss titles — but Petri was looking for something specific.
“They had kids’ alphabet books about baseball, football, basketball,” he said. “But nothing about rugby.”
Petri said this did not surprise him (“I’m not an idiot”), but as a soon-to-be dad, a high school math and science teacher in New York and a key cog of the United States team that begins play in the Rugby World Cup on Sunday here against Samoa, Petri felt a need to fill this hole in the canon.