media consumption

Fever Pitch

by Nick Hornby

I recently spent a long weekend visiting in-laws and needed some reading material for the plane trip there and back. Rather than choose one from among my pile of unread books, I decided to reread Nick Hornby's memoir Fever Pitch.

If you ever want to gain insight to the mind of the typical obsessive sports fan, you could do no better than to read this hilarious and brutally honest account of fandom from the insider's perspective.

Now we're not talking about your garden-variety fair-weather fandom here. We're talking hard-core fanaticism. You know the type. This is the season ticket holder. The neighbor with the lighted yard signs and flags proclaiming their allegiance. The person whose owning a wardrobe that contains at least 50% officially licensed team apparrel.

But those are just the outer trappings. The true fan has a deep connection to his chosen team, a feeling that Hornby can only begin to do justice to in his 250+ page book. The book is about obsession, unconditional loyalty, and those fleeting moments of transcendence that every fan longs for and only the true fan achieves.

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