Posted on 04/12/2008 9:28:09 PM PDT by skuddo
Book Review: God Save the Fan: How Preening Sportscasters, Athletes Who Speak in the Third Person, and the Occasional Convicted Quarterback Have Taken the Fun Out of Sports (and How We Can Get It Back) Written by Will Leitch. Published by HarperCollins, 2008.
If you would like a truly fresh and hilarious perspective on the protests surrounding the passing of the Olympic torch, pick up a copy of Will Leitch's book, God Save the Fan, and read his essay concerning the Olympics that starts on page 97. Leitch wrote the book long before the Chinese oppression of Tibet became the main focus of the upcoming Olympic games, but after you read his essay and after you finally suppress the resulting laughter, you may find yourself wondering why there is so much fuss over the passing of this silly torch.
Please don't misunderstand me. I am virulently opposed to Communist China and their oppression of Tibet. The boots that I am wearing right now were made in Texas, not in Communist China, and I doubt that many of my readers can make the same claim regarding their current footwear. My buying decisions for years have been, when at all possible, anti-China. But as Leitch points out in his book, a great number of us just do not care much about the Olympic games anymore, and we would not at all be unhappy if the United States just walked away from the games. It is quite possible that our apathy for the Olympic games would be mistakenly understood by the world as a bold move for Tibetan democracy. For once in world history, boredom and apathy would make an unwavering stand against oppression.
But this article is not written to discuss Olympic politics, but to discuss the very enjoyable book, God Save the Fan. Leitch is able to combine insightful commentary with irreverent hilarity in a way that would make Dave Barry jealous. And the great thing about his commentary is that it is all about sports and it is all from the perspective of a true sports fan.
Leitch is the founder and editor of the popular Internet site, Deadspin.com, and God Save the Fan is written in a manner that would be expected of an Internet blogger, with short essays upon specific sports topics that are much like daily posts to a web site. Leitch's topics range from the sublime discussion of Zach Johnson's Christianity to the gutter-dwelling discussion of Michael Vick's herpes. One objective of the book is to demonstrate that in the whole team-owner-sportscaster-fan relationship, the fan is the one who has the power to decide what is important, and Leitch accomplishes this superbly in his exposure of the ESPN personalities as the empty suits that they are.
I admit that I may have more of an affinity for what Leitch writes because I, like Leitch, am a displaced St. Louis Cardinals fan who has been known to pester bartenders in sports bars all across America to put the Cardinal game on a TV. Additionally, I share Leitch's opinion of the disgusting taste of Red Bull and his almost unhealthy admiration of Rick Ankiel. But I think that any sports fan will enjoy Leitch's superior writing style, for which I have only one criticism. While I will agree that there is a case to be made for a writer using locker room expressions in a book about sports, I think that Leitch's prolific use of vulgar expressions is indicative of a laziness that I found to be a bit disappointing. As to the content of the book, I whole-heartedly agreed with the majority of the points made in God Save the Fan, but I did disagree with two points that I must discuss here.
In God Save the Fan, Leitch writes the obligatory essay on the use of steroids in sports and it is one of the most moronic articles that I have ever read on the subject. His steroids discussion starts with the faulty premise that very soon science is going to develop a performance-enhancing steroid that will have absolutely no adverse side effects. He names this mythical performance-enhancing substance “Jack Sauce,” and then goes on to state that we fans will have to decide whether we should permit perfomance-enhancing steroids that have absolutely no negative side effects to be used by the athletes who entertain us. Leitch goes so far as to naively state that “some day steroids will have no side effects.”
So let me see if I understand this: Trillions upon trillions of dollars have been spent searching for a cure to very real and serious problems like cancer and diabetes with no resulting cure. We do not have a cure for the common cold, and even though there are large amounts of time and money put into the prediction of flu strains and the production of flu vaccines each year, doctors still can not reliably prevent people from dying from influenza every flu season. But science is very close to developing a performance-enhancing steroid with absolutely no side effects. Apparently none of the smart scientists are working on curing HIV because performance-enhancing steroids take precedence. We sports fans have so much control over science that we demand drug-enhanced super-athletes and those women with breast cancer can go to hell. I will accept Leitch's childish premise that science is very soon going to be able to produce “Jack Sauce” only when science is able to produce an erectile dysfunction pill that does not have that nasty habit of causing blindness in it's consumers.
Leitch's writing becomes even more infantile when he tries to argue that a shot of cortisone to the shoulder is the same as a shot of Deca to the butt. His argument centers on the cortisone injection that Scott Rolen received in his shoulder during the 2006 playoffs. One minor point that I feel obligated to make is that Leitch demonstrates an irritating ignorance of cortisone shots when he has Scott Rolen miraculously free of pain just a few hours after his treatment. My basketball-damaged and surgically-repaired knees have experienced several cortisone shots and I can assure Leitch that a few hours after a cortisone shot I felt like I would be much better served with an amputation. The initial result of a cortisone shot is pain that is twice as severe as the pain that dictated the treatment and it is twenty-four hours before one feels as though the shot was actually beneficial and not just some sadistic doctor's idea of a joke.
But beyond that minor point, Leitch becomes the poster-child for those who say that a University of Illinois education is worthless when he demonstrates an amazing confusion about the definition of the word “enhance.” Leitch says that “a cortisone shot, by definition, is a performance-enhancer.” Maybe Leitch just ditched his freshman English comp classes.
When my son was six months old, I put hydrocortisone, a steroid, on his face to treat a severe case of eczema. I was not trying to enhance his looks. I just wanted his face to look normal and I wanted him to have relief from the severe itching. Many people with irritable bowel syndrome regularly take prednisone, a steroid. They are not seeking to somehow enhance the performance of their bowels so that they can brag about being able to digest a steak faster than anybody else. They just want their bowels to stop bleeding and perform in the same way that normal bowels perform. When I take two Excedrin pills, a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory, prior to working a shift in which I will be standing on a concrete floor for twelve hours, the Excedrin is not a means by which I can produce bus doors faster than all of the other bus-door producers, but is rather a means for working the shift in a normal way without severe lower back pain. Similarly, Scott Rolen's cortisone shot was not a way of enhancing his performance, but was rather a way of reducing inflammation to a point where he could perform in a normal way. Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Jose Canseco, and Shawne Merriman enhanced their performance through the use of steroids. To place the use of inflammation-reducing cortisone shots on the same level as the cheating of those individuals is just brainless.
Perhaps the most insulting part of Leitch's essay on steroids is his statement that “we fans love steroids.” I am a fan, and I do not love steroids. I was a fan of Mark McGwire prior to his lame testimony to Congress, but now I am not. If Mark McGwire is ever voted into the Hall of Fame, I will immediately walk away from Major League Baseball and I will never look back. I do not want or need cheaters in my personal life or in my sports heroes. Leitch needs to get his head screwed on straight regarding this issue.
The other point on which I disagree with Leitch is minor for me, but Leitch's position on the issue seems to indicate that he is co-dependent, and so any girls that are dating him may want to take note. Leitch wants us to agree with the idea that, as fans, we are not allowed to leave the team of which we are a fan even if they leave us. His justification of his position is his own illogical obsession with the Arizona Cardinals. Bill Bidwell is a worthless bum, and yet Leitch continues to support the joke of a team that he perennially fields. I have one question for Leitch: Did you attend the psych courses at the University of Illinois and did they teach you the meaning of the word “enabling?”
God Save the Fan is a great book and, with the caveats I have noted, I recommend it. If you are even a semi-regular watcher of SportsCenter, you will be very happy that you have purchased a book that provides the other side to the equation, namely, the fan's side. I anticipate being able to pick this book up ten years from now and still requiring a tissue to wipe the tears that were caused by the hilarious genius that is Leitch.
Is the book as idiotic as the title?
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