Brooklyn Dodgers
Last night I started reading "The Last Good Season: Brooklyn, The Dodgers and Their Final Pennant Race Together," by Michael Shapiro (a tome that made it on my Christmas list after getting rave reviews from Henry Copeland.) I figure it was a good time to dig in since my current borough may soon be getting its own pro team. The book is starting strong and reminds me why I used to love sports writing. When sport is good, it tells us something about life, usually our own life. Here's a passage I liked from the prologue:

A losing team has fewer admirers, but their allegiance endures, year after year. It is a relationship built upon hope and disappointment. And then, in the spring, that most romantic season, longing again. Losing teams are like potboiler novels, predictable but addictive in their capacity to sustain the dream that one day the clouds will part. The relationship between a losing team and its admirers is more complex and compelling than the simple delight in conquest enjoyed by the winners' fans. Winning teams are grand and heroic, qualities that lack a human dimension. But losing teams are all too human. They are cursed by chance, by their own limitations, by failures of will and desire. But when they win, their victories speak to fans who, having witnessed so much misery, can draw lessons from those triumphs.

- posted by Amy @ 1/23/2004 10:39:00 AM