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 Playboy
and 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.)
