Your Brain on Cubs: Inside the Heads of Players and Fans
Edited by Dan Gordon. Dana Press, 2008
You have to feel for Cubs fans. More so than Red Sox fans, who even before two championships in three years seemed to have a sense of entitlement, despite the team’s misfortunes and poor performances. Cubs rooters, at least to New Yorkers, were less fatalistic, more quietly resigned to their fate. Don’t mind me, I’ll just sit in the corner and not bother anybody.
The contributors to this slim collection of essays are mostly professionals and academicians concerned with what actually goes through the brain the participant (“Why Did Casey Strike Out: The Neuroscience of Hitting” by John Milton, Ana Solodkin, and Steven J. Small, and “Risks and Asterisks: Neurological Enhancements in Baseball,” by Bennet Foddy) and the observer (“The Depths of Loyalty: Exploring the Brian of a Die-Hard Fan” by Jordan Grafman).
The common theme is that sport, in one way or another, serves as a drug. It releases chemicals that can have a positive or negative affect and, in many cases, is addictive. How else to explain sticking with a team that does nothing but disappoint year after year (after year after year)?
One of the more interesting articles considers “Curses!,” by Tom Valeo and Lindsay Beyerstein on the (il)legitimacy of superstitions. If someone believes their luck is enhanced by not stepping on a foul line, who’s to argue? (See the episode of Lost at the end of Season Two where the decision is made not to punch in the computer code after the 108-minute period runs out. If you don’t know what I’m referring to, you’re reading too many baseball books).
Another highlight is “It Isn’t Whether You Win or Lose: It’s Whether You Win: Agony and Ecstasy in the Brain,” by Kelli Whitlock Burton and Hillary R. Rodman — if just for the title alone. It reminded me of a documentary about the Cubs which follows several fan/commentators in the Bartman season. Their hopes and excitement were cruelly dashed by that fateful game. The viewer can see them practically deflate before their very eyes.
The nature of this book, with its tendency to rely overly much on jargon and theory, puts it just out of reach of the hard-core but less academically-inclined fan/reader. But diligence has its reward with some provocative themes that might lead the curious to further research.
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Good to see your post mentioning Steve Goodman. He often doesn’t get his due. You might be interested in my new 800-page biography, “Steve Goodman: Facing the Music.” The book delves deeply into the genesis of his “A Dying Cub Fan’s Last Request” and “Go, Cubs, Go.”
You can find out more at my website, http://www.clayeals.com. The book’s first printing just sold out, all 5,000 copies, and a second edition of 5,000 is available now. The second edition includes hundreds of little updates and additions, including 30 more photos.
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