Why We Love Football: A History in 100 Moments - Hardcover

Posnanski, Joe

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0593475526 ISBN 13: 9780593475522

Verlag: Dutton, 2024

Inhaltsangabe

INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER

A Kirkus Reviews Most Anticipated Book of the Fall

A moving celebration of the history of American football from the New York Times bestselling author of Why We Love Baseball

After his bestselling home run books Why We Love Baseball and The Baseball 100, Joe Posnanski turns from the national pastime to the number one sport in America. Why We Love Football is Posnanski’s newest must-have deep dive into the archives and legends of the sport, and the result is a rousing tale of the 100 greatest moments in football lore.

This is the best kind of sports writing. Entertaining, enlightening, heartbreaking, hilarious, and always fascinating, these stories of the sport offer a panoramic look across its history. From hidden gems and classic tales to famous moments told from previously unheard perspectives, this book is the football book for even its most ardent fans.

From Patrick Mahomes's magic to the Ice Bowl, from Doug Flutie's Hail Mary pass to a plethora of football "miracles," Why We Love Football is an unforgettable, conversational masterpiece you won’t ever want to end, and a can't-miss take on football from one of the greatest sportswriters of our time.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Joe Posnanski is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of seven books, including Why We Love Baseball, The Baseball 100, Paterno, and The Secret of Golf, and has been named National Sportswriter of the Year by five different organizations. He writes at JoePosnanski.com and currently lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, with his family.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

I think now of a football story.

In 1976, the fierce linebacker Dick Butkus — to the surprise of almost everybody — started to make a small name for himself as an actor. He played an ambulance driver in the black comedy, Mother, Jugs and Speed. At the same time, he had a critically acclaimed role in the movie Gus, about a Yugoslavian mule who kicked 100-yard field goals.

His decision to become an actor after years of being the single most violent and terrifying force in football left sportswriters and players fairly astonished and uncertain.

“The Dick Butkus who graduated magna cum grouch from Illinois is an actor now?” asked Chicago columnist Bob Verdi.

He was. How tough a player was Dick Butkus? His name, Los Angeles Times columnist Jim Murray wrote, constituted “syllables of doom.” Butkus played middle linebacker nine years for the Chicago Bears, during which time, in the memorable phrase of football’s bawdy poet Dan Jenkins, he “mashed runners into curious shapes.”

“He went after you like he hated you from the old neighborhood,” running back Paul Hornung said.

“Dick Butkus hated everybody,” Deacon Jones added. “I think he even hated himself.”

“I never set out to hurt anyone deliberately,” Butkus protested. “Unless it was, you know, important, like a league game or something.”

How tough? One event can stand for many: Once, during a game against the Broncos, Butkus hit running back Floyd Little so hard that after the game, Little said, “my body almost liquified.” After the play, the normally merciless Butkus went over to Little after the play to see if he was OK.

“Of course,” Little said, surprised that Butkus cared.

“Then why are you in our huddle?” Butkus asked.

No player in the history of professional football took meanness and fury quite to the level Butkus did. But that was the football player Dick Butkus. The thespian Dick Butkus was entirely different. His co-star in Mother, Jugs and Speed, Raquel Welch, just adored him. She was baffled why anyone would have anything bad to say about him.

“I love everything about Butkus,” she said. “He’s funny. He’s charming. Why do people say such mean things about him?”

At which point a member of the crew said: “Yeah. Don’t pick up a football.”


Introduction

“Baseball begins in the spring, the season of new life. Football begins in the fall, when everything’s dying.” George Carlin

I live a double life. On the outside, in public, I am a full-blooded baseball fan — mild-mannered, somewhat cultured, fascinated by poetry, swayed by romance, a student of history.

“Stan Musial, you say?” I might remark at a party while wearing a tweed jacket with patches on the elbows. “Why, did you know that Stan Musial had exactly 1,815 hits both at home and on the road? Doesn’t that just speak directly to the mathematical rhythms of baseball and life?”

“Did I hear you arguing about the designated hitter?” I might interject as I pass a conversation at the cheese board. “Funny thing: Did you know that there were efforts to add the designated hitter to baseball going as far back as 1891? Ha! I believe it was Harry Truman who said, ‘There is nothing new in the world except the history you do not know.’ And, oh, did you know that Truman was the first president to throw a ceremonial first pitch left-handed?"

Wow, it’s hitting me now: I’m actually quite annoying as a baseball fan.

But this is only the face I show the world.

I have another face, another side, a part of me that, as Jack Nicholson says in A Few Good Men, I don’t talk about at parties. This is a part of me that prefers gray days, that feels most alive as the days grow short, that feels like barking at a television set or gnawing on barbecue in a stadium parking lot or screaming about John Elway or falling into an angry sleep by counting the number of starting quarterbacks my hometown Cleveland Browns have had since the turn of the century.

Yes, I am a football fan. I am …

… no, wait, now I can’t get it out of my head, all those tragic Browns quarterbacks. The Browns left Cleveland after the 1995 season to go play in Baltimore. I was at that last home game. What was it like? It was like watching your own open-heart surgery without anesthesia.

They came back, though, in 1999 — well, a new team called the Browns came to town (the freshly named “Ravens” stayed in Baltimore) and since 1999, the Browns have been such a wreck that they have had at starting quarterback, deep breath now, Tim Couch (who was the first pick in the draft) and Ty Detmer and Doug Pederson (who would later coach the Philadelphia Eagles to a Super Bowl victory) and Kelly Holcomb and Luke McCown and also his brother Josh McCown (though Josh was actually the good McCown, he should be listed first) and Jeff Garcia and Trent Dilfer and Charlie Frye and Derek Anderson and Ken Dorsey and Brady Quinn and Bruce Gradkowski. Whew. That’s a mouthful.

But we’re only getting started. They also had Colt McCoy and Jake Delhomme and Seneca Wallace and fellow philosopher Thaddeus Lewis and Brandon Weeden and Jason Campbell and Brian Hoyer and Spergon Wynn (probably the best Spergon ever to play in the NFL) and Connor Shaw and Johnny Football himself Johnny Manziel (who they drafted on advice of a homeless person) and Robert Griffin III and Cody Kessler. That’s absurd right?

Oh, sorry, also DeShone Kiser and Kevin Hogan and Tyrod Taylor and Baker Mayfield (who did lots of fun television commercials) and Case Keenum and Nick Mullens and Jacoby Brissett and Deshaun Watson (don’t get me started on him) and Jeff Driskel and Dorian Thompson-Robinson and P.J. Walker and Joe Flacco.

I think that’s all of them. I’ll save you the trouble of counting, that’s thirty-seven different quarterbacks … wait, no, it’s actually thirty-eight, I forgot about Austin Davis. How could I have forgotten Austin Davis? Made two starts in 2015. Lost them both.

By the time you read this, the Browns will probably add a couple more.

Yes, I’m a bit more fatalistic as a football fan. All football fans, I think, are at least a little bit fatalistic. Carlin was right. Baseball is about new life; Opening Day is about fresh beginnings. Football … not so much. In baseball, there’s always hope, as best described in the poem “Casey at the Bat” when things looked bleak for the Mudville nine.

A straggling few got up to go in deep despair. The rest
Clung to the hope which springs eternal in the human breast. . .

That’s a very different poem if it had been ‘Casey Drops Back to Throw.”

A straggling few got up to boo, their faces red with dread.
The rest, depressed, blamed the refs and called for the coach’s head.

Carlin got so much right in his famous “Baseball and Football” routine. Baseball has a seventh-inning stretch, football a two-minute warning. Football is about downs (what down is it?) and baseball is about ups (Who’s up?)

And then there’s this marvelous comparison:

·        In baseball, during the game in the stands, there’s kind of a picnic feeling. Emotions may run high or low, but there’s not too much unpleasantness.
·        In football, during the game...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Dutton
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2024
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593475526
• ISBN 13: 9780593475522
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 416
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Dutton; https://www.penguin.com/dutton-childrens-overview/; ; Im Mittelfeld 25; K?ln; Deutschland; 51105; Deutschland