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    True Believers: The Tragic Inner Life of Sports Fans
    True Believers: The Tragic Inner Life of Sports Fans
    True Believers: The Tragic Inner Life of Sports Fans
    Ebook209 pages3 hours

    True Believers: The Tragic Inner Life of Sports Fans

    By Joe Queenan

    3/5

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    About this ebook

    Bestselling author Joe Queenan's True Believers explores the world of sports fans in an attempt to understand the inexplicable: What does anyone get out of it?

    For Yankee, Cowboy, and Laker fans the answer is fairly clear: the return on investment is relatively high. But why do people root so passionately for formerly inept teams like the Boston Red Sox, the Chicago Cubs, and the Philadelphia Phillies? Why do people organize their emotional lives around lackluster franchises such as the Cleveland Cavaliers, the San Diego Padres, and the Phoenix Suns, of whom decades passed with only winning a single championship in their entire history? Is it pure tribalism? An attempt to maintain contact with one's vanished childhood?

    In True Believers, humorist and lifelong Philly fan Joe Queenan answers these and many other questions, shedding light on—and reveling in—the culture and psychology of his countless fellow fans. Making pilgrimages to such cradles of competition as Notre Dame Stadium, Fenway, and Wrigley Field, Queenan delves into every aspect of fandom in such illuminating chapters as Fans Who Love Too Much (men, like the author, who actually resort to psychotherapy to deal with their unhealthy addiction), Fans Who Run in Front (which meticulously delineates the differences between Retroactive, Municipal, and Vicarious Frontrunners), and Fans Who Misbehave (those who spill beer on women, moon other fans, or throw half-eaten sandwiches at innocent bystanders simply because they look like the current coach of the New York Jets).

    True Believers     is a hilarious but also heartfelt look into the world of those fans who realize that it is, in fact, more than just a game.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateApr 1, 2004
    ISBN9781429932738
    Author

    Joe Queenan

    The bestselling author of America and Queenan Country, Joe Queenan is a contributing writer at Men's Health and writes regularly for the New York Times, Forbes and Smart Money. His movie criticism appears every month in the Guardian Weekend section; he has appeared on Nightly Review, Newsnight and Front Row; he has written and starred in three short satirical programs on Channel 4; and can regularly be heard on BBC Radio 4. Mr Queenan lives in Tarrytown, New York.

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    • 3/5
      This short book is not up to Queenan's usual standards of hilarity and biting humor. I listened to the audiobook, which was read by the author, which might have made it a bit more interesting. If you have read or listened to Queenan's Closing Time, you'll already know of his long suffering as a fan of Philadelphia's sports teams, so not a lot here is new. In the book, he travels to Chicago, Scotland, England, South Bend and a few other places to examine the obsessions (or lack of obsessions) of various sets of sports fans. Most of the book focuses on professional sports, except for a chapter on Notre Dame. Queenan never ventured to Tuscaloosa, Auburn, or any of the other hotbeds of true college sports obsession in the South, so this is hardly a comprehensive thesis. It is just one man's somewhat amusing, somewhat perceptive, ramblings. But, this is a short book (less than 3 hours in the audiobook version), so it does make for a pleasant distraction if you're taking a drive.

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    True Believers - Joe Queenan

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