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) by Will Leitch, Jim Cooke (Illustrator), Jim Cooke (Illustrator)

The Barnes & Noble Review

In my experience, most casual sports fans are unaware of Deadspin.com, the irreverent David to ESPN's Goliath. But Will Leitch's increasingly popular blog, which delivers "sports news without access, favor, or discretion," has become a destination for diehard sports fans eager to propose and discuss issues (say, Michael Vick's herpes?) that mainstream media won't touch. Leitch, who launched Deadspin in September 2005, describes the genesis of this fan movement away from traditional sports journalism in 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). If the title sounds long-winded, so are portions of the book, a sometimes witty manifesto infused with personal essays and social commentary. Its 295 pages make it clear that Leitch, who plays in 11 (!) fantasy sports leagues, doesn't have much respect for professional athletes. "Outside of the production of stats, athletes are pointless," he writes. That's certainly questionable. What's unquestionable, however, is that sports devotees are flocking to Deadspin (844,000 unique visitors per month) and that even casual fans may soon be turning to renegade reporters like Will Leitch for their daily fix. --Cameron Martin

From the Publisher

ESPN thinks its viewers are stupid. The Olympics claw at your inner sap. Barbaro, after all, was just a horse. So says Will Leitch, founding editor of Deadspin.com, whose God Save the Fan is your new manifesto.

Arch and unrepentant, Leitch is the mouthpiece for all the frustrated fans who just want their games back from big money, bloated egos, and blathering sportscasters. Always a fan first and a journalist second, Leitch considers the perfection of fantasy leagues, the meaninglessness of the steroids debate, and the aching permanence of loyalty to just one team. He'll tell you why, long before that dogfighting mess, Michael Vick's undercover STD clinic name was Ron Mexico; why athletes persist in publicly praising God; and what the beer companies really think about you. Share Leitch's dread as he spends twenty—four hours watching ESPN. Sit and have a beer with John Rocker and his surprising girlfriend. Be inspired by Rick Ankiel's phoenixlike rise, and fall.

With a voice strengthened by the success of Deadspin and its chorus of commenters, Leitch has written all—new material for God Save the Fan. If you or a fan you love is suffering from the sense of listless dissatisfaction brought on by the leagues and networks, this is your restorative tonic. Packed with lists, glossaries, confessions, and rages, Leitch's manifesto sings a rallying cry for fan empowerment. The games, after all, belong to us.

The Washington Post - Allen Barra

Leitch…doesn't presume to speak for the fans, but as one. He's the best there is at saying things that other sports commentators can't or just plain won't…If you can't find something to laugh at and be offended by on the same page of this book, you aren't reading carefully enough.

Publishers Weekly

In his third book, Leitch, the founding editor of the sports blog Deadspin.com, offers a collection of passionate, original essays about the good (fantasy football; the saga of the once promising pitcher Rick Ankiel) and the bad (ESPN, which he compares to the Imperial Forces from Star Wars; sports reporters' misguided attempts to become patriotic after 9/11) of sports, and how fans can navigate through the mess to enjoy the games and themselves. "If we all realized that, hey, we don't need to listen to these idiots on television screaming at us... they'd be out of a job," Leitch writes in the introduction. The book sometimes strays off course from its stated purpose-memories of Leitch's popular blog subjects (Barbaro, Ohio TV reporter Carl Monday) and a host of cheeky sports glossaries are unnecessary and only disrupt the book's fervor. However, Leitch (who has also written for Playboyand New York) nicely balances potent humor with sharp and sometimes vicious insight without lapsing into clichés. He manages to be an astute sports critic while maintaining his enthusiasm as a fan, making his book an entertaining and enlightening read for anyone who roots for the home team a little too hard. (Jan.)

Product Details

• Read an Excerpt

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

Please, God, No, Not Another Essay About Steroids

Let's just say, hypothetically speaking, that you are not an accountant, a systems analyst, or one who lays pipe for a living in a nonsexual way. Let's say, instead of whatever it is that you do, you are an inventor—a chemist, even.

Let's say that during your rigorous studies in the field of chemistry (with a little biology thrown in, you know, for the ladies), you come across an amazing compound. This compound, accidentally discovered while searching for an even more effective way to give your grandfather an erection, has regenerative powers beyond the realm of human comprehension. When you test this compound on lab rats, they not only recover from strenuous activity quicker—whatever strenuous activity lab rats might need to recover from—they actually grow muscle mass without any physical activity at all. That is to say this compound makes the rats stronger, faster, and smarter . . . it turns them into superrats.

You are amazed by this discovery but are concerned about the rats. Would they become overly aggressive? Would they suffer from reduced genital size—a serious problem, though, hey, it happens to lots of rats!—or perhaps some sort of heart ailment? You run them through every test you can find, and nothing appears to be wrong with them. All the compound did was turn them into muscle-bound, physicallyand mentally superior rats, with no side effects whatsoever. Full of fevered dreams of a Nobel Prize (and all the cascading fountains of poon that come with it), you decide not to worry about a test group of human subjects; you skip that step and just distill it into liquid form—you call it, oh, Jesus Juice or something—and drink it down yourself.

You notice the effect within seconds. You are instantly bench-pressing twice your body weight, running a mile in six minutes, and able to solve sudoku puzzles in a matter of seconds. You're perhaps most dumbfounded by your hand-eye coordination; when you accidentally knock over a bottle of your magic beverage, you are stunned that you instinctively grab it before it hits the floor. After about six hours, the effects wear off, so you drink some more, and it all comes back. You immediately submit the juice to the Food and Drug Administration, and after years of testing, they officially announce that the juice (since dubbed "Jack Sauce," after your four-year-old son who can now juggle cars) has nothing but positive effects on human beings. No long-term negative effects, no added stress on the body, no problems whatsoever. It's all good. Nothing is wrong with Jack Sauce at all.

A statue of you is erected in your hometown, and you spend the rest of your life wearing suits of thousand-dollar bills and having a series of initially thrilling threesomes that provide diminishing returns but are still worth the trouble. You sail into your golden years as the most beloved and famous human being on the planet. Congratulations!

Okay. Now, legitimate question: If this Jack Sauce existed, and it truly had no side effects and only brought joy and health to humans, would it be okay for athletes to use it before games? Could they drink down a good batch before taking the field? If they were feeling worn down in the seventh inning, could they do a few shots between innings?

Or would that be cheating? Immoral?

How you feel about that question can be instructive to consider when weighing in on the issue of steroids. For all the column inches and broadcast minutes devoted to the concept, it's difficult to find a single side to the "debate" that makes much sense. And it's something we better figure out pretty soon, because if you think performance enhancers are bad now, just wait. Science is a crazy thing; Jack Sauce will be here before you know it.

Heading into the 2006 National League Championship Series, the St. Louis Cardinals were extremely concerned about third baseman Scott Rolen. Rolen had struggled with injuries throughout his career, but by Game 3 of the NLCS he was as banged up as he had ever been. His shoulder hurt, his knee hurt, he even had a sticky film on him that just wouldn't rinse away. He was an absolute mess, but his shoulder was the biggest sore spot; he couldn't generate any bat speed and was slumping when the Cardinals needed him most.

Rolen—a tough midwestern guy whose face looks like he's more suited for riding a combine and complaining about how the Dixie Chicks are gettin' too goddamned liberal—had been feuding with manager Tony LaRussa about the extent of his injury. In a last-ditch effort to bump Rolen up somewhere near 100 percent, LaRussa went to Cardinals trainer Barry Weinberg (See? There are Jews in sports! They're the trainers!) and requested a cortisone shot. The cortisone shot is a staple in sports, used to provide temporary relief for lingering pain in trouble spots.

The cortisone shot is also a—gasp!—steroid. Cortisone is produced naturally by the body, released automatically when a person is under stress. Injectable cortisone is produced in a lab but is rather close to what the body produces on its own. It is, by definition, a performance enhancer, and it's even an injection. If something hurts, you can inject it with cortisone, and the pain will go away. It is a far more effective and immediate performance enhancer than human growth hormone or Decadrol or whatever else players are always trying to sneak past the censors (that is, if said censors happen to exist).

The thing about cortisone is that it has no side effects. It doesn't do anything but make a person feel better.

So, Rolen took his shot and, lo and behold, within a matter of hours he started hitting the ball again. His reinvigorated bat, along with the Bugs Bunny curveball of closer Adam Wainwright and the power that Jeff Suppan derived from his hatred of stem cells, led the Cardinals to a series victory and, ultimately, a World Series title. (Woo!) Suddenly, Rolen and Tony LaRussa weren't fighting anymore, and no one remembered his earlier slump. He was a hero.