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Joe Queenan

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True Believers: The Tragic Inner Life of Sports Fans Audio CD – CD, June 3, 2003

by Joe Queenan (Author, Reader)

4.0 36 ratings

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Bestselling author Queenan explores the world of sports fans in an attempt to understand the inexplicable: What does anyone get out of it?

For Yankee, Cowboy, and Laker fans the answer is fairly clear: the return on investment is relatively high. But why do people root so passionately for tragically inept squads like the Boston Red Sox, the Chicago Cubs, and the Philadelphia Phillies? Why do people organize their emotional lives around lackluster franchises such as the Cleveland Cavaliers, the San Diego Padres, and the Phoenix Suns, none of whom have ever won a single championship in their entire history? Is it pure tribalism? An attempt to maintain contact with one’s vanished childhood?

In True Believers, humorist and lifelong Philly fan Joe Queenan answers these and many other questions, shedding light on--and reveling in--the culture and psychology of his countless fellow fans. Making pilgrimages to such cradles of competition as Notre Dame Stadium, Fenway, and Wrigley Field, Queenan delves into every aspect of fandom in such illuminating chapters as Fans Who Love Too Much (men, like the author, who actually resort to psychotherapy to deal with their unhealthy addiction), Fans Who Run in Front (the dreaded front runners), and Fans Who Misbehave (of the beer-spilling, mooning, and food-throwing varieties).

True Believers is a hilarious but also heartfelt look into the world of those fans who realize that it is, in fact, more than just a game.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Macmillan Audio; Abridged edition (June 3, 2003)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1559278951
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1559278959
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 5.6 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.66 x 0.97 x 5 inches

Customer Reviews:
4.0 36 ratings

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4 out of 5

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J. DAlessio

Laugh Out Loud - Great Read

Reviewed in the United States on April 29, 2018

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How often do you read a book that makes you laugh out loud several times? I purchased this book for my husband but decided to read it myself -having read other books from Joe I figured i would like it. I loved it. His wit and cynicism is a treasure. I love the cover with his picture so I could visualize him in the situations described in the book. Honestly, this is a must read for anyone who is a sports fan - especially if they are lucky enough to be from Philadelphia.

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Stephen M. Kerwick

Actually a Fairly Mild Critique

Reviewed in the United States on April 14, 2009

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Several years ago I listened to the CD abridgment of this book and generally thought it was worth-while, if not necessarily one of Queenan's best efforts. On further reflection I wonder if this wasn't the result of an overly aggressive producer cutting the original effort down to fit two CD's or casettes and omitting some of the best local flair. Like the author, I grew up a mightily frustrated Philadelphia sports fan and I was a bit puzzled to find his treatment of some of the local team management and personnel decisions to be decidedly mild, particularly for a man with Queenan's demonstrated sharp and potent pen. In short, I was looking for serious criticism to push the defamation envelope aimed at people and teams who caused me pain in years past, but the author provided a more mature and thoughtful product, no doubt to his credit.

One point on which Queenan hits the bulls eye is the contrast of true believers with the loathesome nature of "front running" fans who gravitate to the regularly successful plutocratic sports teams in distant cities who engage in the perpetual effort to destroy their respective sports (Lakers and MFY's). Of course that point shouldn't require much more argument than does criticism of priests misbehaving with altar boys, but it does bear constant repetition to emphasize to these self-unaware types just how repellant their attitudes are to the remainder of the world.

In any event, I've reached this page in anticipation of Queenan's impending autobiographical book and decided to pick up an inexpensive remainder copy of True Believers to see if I missed anything critical by not reading the full version originally. In doing so, I realize that I'm engaging in just the sort of masochistic behavior that prompted the book in the first place but, like its subject sports fans, the attraction of an open flame to a moth is irresistable. If I'm correct in my guess, I'll be back here in a few weeks to update 4 stars to 5.

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Gerald R. Johnson

Well done.

Reviewed in the United States on April 22, 2014

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Better than I expected. Packed with the perceptions that we have come to expect of Queenan. As a Cubs fan, I understand the feelings of frustration year in and year out. At the same time, he gives me hope!

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JDM

Great book! Would love an update to hear Queenan's ...

Reviewed in the United States on December 10, 2015

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Great book! Would love an update to hear Queenan's thoughts on things since the Red Sox won a couple of series, but for the most part the themes of the books hold up even 10+ years later. Would recommend for any sports fan, or the family member of a sports fan who you think is nuts. This book will help you understand why we are the way we are with a lot of humor!

Reviewed in the United States on March 27, 2017

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It was a good read/listen. I did not like the skipping through the text (sometimes pages at a time )

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Amazon Customer

Funny and insightful at the same time - great combination

Reviewed in the United States on January 24, 2015

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I bought this book, even though I read a library copy first, so I could have it and loan it to my sports obsessed step son. It wasn't quite what I had expected from the subtitle, which I thought promised more of a scholarly insight. Well written, funny and his observations are mostly dead on except of course when he is rooting for those yucky Philadelphia teams.

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Jack Maybrick

Queenan�s heart in the right place

Reviewed in the United States on December 22, 2003

"True Believers" is a fairly short book, but it took me a few weeks to get through it. This is not a reflection on the quality of author Joe Queenan's writing but on the subject matter.
Sports itself, as Queenan insistently and correctly reminds us, is more than "just a game", contrary to what some anti-sports bluenoses think. "How could you possibly compare the fate of the rain forest to the fate of the Philadelphia 76ers?" Queenan demands of his therapist. "You need to get your priorities straight." And he means it too, and rightly so.
But while a proper treatment of the games themselves often requires volumes of material, sports FANDOM is a fairly lightweight topic scarcely worth the 200-plus pages of space that Queenan devotes to it. I got through the book by treating it as a series of disjointed articles, rather than as a number of points comprising an overall theme.
And yet Queenan scores so many bulls-eyes through his observations about the art and practice of sports fandom that it's impossible for me to withhold praise for his effort.
Foremost among his welcome observations is that it's OK to hate. You can't love a team or a specific athlete without being able to hate the object of your adoration. It's OK to hate the team that you root for, and the players on that team, if you feel that they've betrayed you. In fact, this hatred can be of the most extreme and virulent quality as long as it's never actualized.
Queenan deplores fan violence and in the same breath goes on to state, "But to deny that one has ever seriously contemplated killing the place kicker is to deny one's own humanity. A fan who hasn't at least thought about killing the place kicker is really no fan at all."
YES! Thank you, Joe Queenan, for giving me the freedom to fantasize about committing mayhem on pig-headed and fastball-stubborn Felix Rodriguez and namby-pamby lisping doughboy Tim Worrell, the two San Francisco Giant relief pitchers who smugly and treacherously snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in the 2002 World Series, ROBBING the Giants and their fans of the first world championship in the team's West Coast history.
In fact, Rodriguez and Worrell would both repeat this perfidy in the 2003 Division Championship against the Florida Marlins. Is there an entrance to hell gaping widely enough to admit them?
For that matter, one may properly allow one's passion for sports to interfere with his relationship with God, as well. Queenan is frank in acknowledging that he has never forgiven God for allowing the Philadelphia Phillies to choke away the 1964 pennant. Why should I forgive God for the 2002 World Series? I watched it with my 77 year-old father, who will probably never have another chance to see the Giants win a world championship.
Queenan's point is that it is the very uniqueness of the skills possessed by the world's best athletes - far more distinctive than those possessed by other professionals - that give the games an epic quality that overshadows that which we call "real life". He estimates that there about 5,000 athletes in the world that are the subject of intense scrutiny - think of how small this number is in comparison to the numbers of doctors, lawyers, teachers, and social workers who are doing the so-called important work.
After paying respect to family, money and career, Queenan ruefully observes, "But it's hard to relate to them viscerally. No matter how hard you try, you're never going to find 65,000 complete strangers willing to stand in subzero temperatures cheering for your bank statement."
Small wonder that we venerate the athletes as gods and that they look down upon us as subjects. In turn, it's equally small wonder that we curse them when they fail us.
Queenan also gives us an interesting chapter on the intensity of the British football fan. And by the time I finished reading his piece on the Notre Dame mystique, a chapter entitled "Fans Who See Green", I wished that I had been born Irish and Catholic.
My main criticism of the book, other than its length, is that too much of it reads like an instructional manual. Queenan devotes too much time to explaining how-to and how-NOT-to follow sports. But he's too dogmatic. Both the sports fan's paradise and the sports fan's purgatory have many mansions, and each fan must follow his own path. It's rank Pharisaism for Queenan to insist that his is the only way.
But the release of a book on "True Believers", on fans who love too much regardless of how they are rewarded, was timed perfectly, in light of the recent failures of both the Boston Red Sox and the Chicago Cubs, baseball's perennial also-rans with ever-loyal fan bases, to make it to the World Series. Both teams found a way to blow late-inning leads in the deciding games.
How many Red Sox fans; how many Cub fans, Viking fans, Saints fans, Falcons fans, Vancouver Canuck fans etc. will die of old age waiting for the prize that never comes? How many have died already? Queenan pays proper homage both to the fans who stick around for more punishment and to those who break the cycle of hope and letdown, as one would break a drug habit, by giving up on their team. Chapter 9 of this book is entitled "Fans Who Walk Away".
And as I finish the book, I am still left wondering which direction I am going to take with the San Francisco Giants.

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Evan P. Williams

Funny!

Reviewed in the United States on June 25, 2014

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Mr. Queenan's vignettes of the heartbreak of being a Philly sports fan are captivating, and, unfortunately, too true! If the book is a glass in which one sees the inner parts of oneself, one must have the temper to be amused!

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