Taro Lives!: Confessions of the Sabres Hoaxer

Paul Wieland is the court jester of the Golden Age of Buffalo sports. His new book, Taro Lives: Confessions of the Sabres Hoaxter, is a time machine of a ride in which he takes readers back to an era when his pranks lifted the national profile of the Sabres while breaking a federal law or two. Paul provides an insider’s tour of how the team came to draft a fictional player from a fictional team plus a string of other flimflams — including an April Fools news release that fooled a local sportscaster into reporting the Sabres would soon play on plastic ice. Taro Lives puts the jock into jocularity. It’s all here, even that time the players pranked him.Eric Brady, USA Today sports columnist
“The late radio personality Paul Harvey surely had Paul Wieland in mind when he produced ‘now you know the rest of the story’, all those years ago.  Paul took amazing and amusing liberties with the staid old NHL’s approach to public relations and press releases - the best of them here, make for a great read and trip down memory lane!”Jiggs McDonald, long-time voice the New York Islanders, and member of the Hockey Hall of Fame.

A fun and quick read that’s part autobiography, part Sabres history, and part general shenanigans. Weiland has plenty of good stories to tell, but the book itself could have used a few more proofreads before printing (there are plenty of grammatical, punctuation, and formatting issues throughout). Overall, the book is a great complementary piece to Weiland’s earlier book, “Then Perreault Said To Rico...” and I’d recommend it to any Sabres fans.

This book details the early days of the Buffalo Sabres when it's PR (and later TV) Director pulled off yearly April fools Day pranks that fooled fans, management and even sometimes NHL and US Government Officials! It's also a great inside look at life behind the scenes of a pro sports team. A fun read for all fans of hockey and sports (and elaborately conceived hoaxes).