King Kaufman's Sports Daily

Deadspin editor Will Leitch's new book gives a foam middle finger to ESPN and other sporting powers that be.

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Jan. 25, 2008 | Will Leitch doesn't seem to think much of ESPN. The Worldwide Leader comes in for constant criticism on Deadspin, the popular Gawker Media sports blog he edits, and one of the brief chapters in his new book, "God Save the Fan," is "Ten Examples of How ESPN Is Ruining Sports."

Among them: "Around the Horn," Stephen A. Smith and the Steve Phillips fake press conferences.

"The thing I always try to get across about ESPN is that I don't think they're some evil force or they're out to screw over everybody," he says. "But I call it the MTV principle. Naturally you get large enough that 'Hey, remember when MTV used to be for people who liked music?' I love sports, so of course I watch it. But they've got me. For them to continue to grow, there's a certain dumbing down that has to happen, because you have to attract new people."

Leitch, 32, a small-town boy from Illinois who now lives in Brooklyn and talks really fast, has written a cri de coeur for the people whom ESPN and the other powers that be in sports have got.

The book, subtitled "How Preening Sportscasters, Athletes Who Speak in the Third Person, and the Occasional Convicted Quarterback Have Taken the Fun Out of Sports (and How We Can Get It Back)," aims to speak for the hardcore fan, the foam finger type. There's a foam finger on the cover. A middle finger. Also on the cover: "Blackballed by ESPN!"

Leitch takes on players, owners and the media, skewering them all in Deadspin's funny, cynical, self-deprecating style, although the book is not a Deadspin collection. Nothing is a reprint except Leitch's strange, drunken interview with John Rocker, which comes newly annotated.

We spoke by phone Thursday about steroids, the power of blogs and how the best way to be a fan of your favorite athletes is to avoid thinking of them as human beings.

The thesis of the book is that we have to remember that sports just don't matter. Did I get that right?

Essentially that it's entertainment and diversion, yes.

But here's a whole book about it, and you're devoting your life to it.

Oh, certainly, I think diversion and entertainment matter. But there's a certain self-seriousness involved in a lot of people that cover sports and the way sports is presented.

The steroids thing is a great example of that. I don't think that the average fan sees the whole steroid drama as this big morality play that a lot of reporters think it is. Frankly, fans have done better at kind of coming to terms and dealing with the steroid thing, to the point that people aren't looking forward to [Roger] Clemens testifying before Congress because "Oh, we're finally going to get to the bottom of this steroids stuff." It's because "We're going to get to see Clemens suffer. I hate that guy!"

Honestly, I think that's a much more healthy reaction. Fans, at a certain level, you hope that your favorite player isn't on steroids. But if he is, you hope that he hits a lot of home runs too.

Next page: "If you really think about what it means to be a sports fan, it's completely illogical"