Women enjoy professional sports. They really, really do.
This is a generalization, I know, but it’s a cold, hard fact if you believe what’s written in a new book called Gameface: The Kick-Ass Guide for Women Who Love Pro Sports.
Women “may not fill our brains with as many numbers as some male fans do,” Gameface says, “but we appreciate the intricacies of the game, understand its complexity and appreciate the larger implications of sports. We get it. Most of us just aren’t quite as obsessive about it as some of our male counterparts.”
So there you have it, gentlemen. Women share our passion and co-authors Erica Boeke and Chris De Benedetti do their utmost to prove it in Gameface. Clearly, they did their due diligence and dug up what they believe females need and want to know to augment their apparent affection for sports. And their New York-based publisher, Virgin Books (please, let that go) provided them with 348 pages in which to get their mission accomplished.
The writers are life-long sports fans who obviously live and breathe this stuff and are determined to share their knowledge with fellow females. They smother readers with mostly riveting information in quick-hitting, easy-to-read fashion.
“Sure,” the book says, “women sports fans don’t mind that there are some fine looking men in sports, and we loved posting the ‘Would you rather shag Tom (Brady) or Eli (Manning)?’ question to our friends during the weeks leading up to the 2008 Super Bowl. . .but women also love players for their hearts, minds, characters and gravity-defying skills.”
Gameface is laden with details about sex scandals, including a couple of old pitchers (Fritz Peterson and Mike Kekich) swapping wives, and a one-night stand involving Madonna and ex-slugger Jose Canseco.
There are stories about lousy national-anthem performances and athletes who tried to cross over into music, often embarrassing themselves.
The authors also discuss fashion in sports – raving, incidentally, about the old Montreal Expos’ chapeaus, which they called “very cool”, and ripping the threads of the Denver Broncos, tennis player Rafael Nadal and sportscaster Craig Sager.
There’s a nifty chapter on superstitions in sports, which describes not only the Curse of the Bambino (Babe Ruth) but also the Curse of Jessica Simpson.
The authors recount famous feuds, pranks and couples (NHLer Mike Comrie and singer Hilary Duff made the book). There also are stories about crime and drugs and cheating and. . .
Yep, they cover all every woman (and man, for that matter) needs to know about the sports they love, and then some. The book doesn’t hit shelves until October, but in the meantime, check out www.gogameface.com.
Marty York is Metro's national sports columnist as well as an
instructor at the College of Sports Media in Toronto.
He can be heard regularly on Vancouver radio station CKNW with Sportstalk host Dan Russell.
Contact Marty at marty.york@metronews.ca
