A refreshing and thought-provoking look at athletes whose legacies have
been reduced to one defining moment of defeat--those on the flip side of
an epic triumph--and what their experiences can teach us about
competition, life, and the human spirit.
Every sports fan recalls with amazing accuracy a pivotal winning moment
involving a favorite team or player--Henry Aaron hitting his 715th home
run to pass Babe Ruth; Christian Laettner's famous buzzer beating shot
in the NCAA tournament for Duke. Yet lost are the stories on the other
side of these history-making moments, the athletes who experienced not
transcendent glory but crushing disappointment: the cornerback who
missed the tackle on the big touchdown; the relief pitcher who lost the
series; the world-record holding Olympian who fell on the ice.
In Losing Isn't Everything, famed sportscaster Curt Menefee, joined by
bestselling writer Michael Arkush, examines a range of signature
"disappointments" from the wide world of sports, interviewing the
subject at the heart of each loss and uncovering what it means--months,
years, or decades later--to be associated with failure. While history is
written by the victorious, Menefee argues that these moments when an
athlete has fallen short are equally valuable to sports history,
offering deep insights into the individuals who suffered them and about
humanity itself.
Telling the losing stories behind such famous moments as the Patriots'
Rodney Harrison guarding the Giants' David Tyree during the "Helmet
Catch" in Super Bowl XLII, Mary Decker's fall in the 1984 Olympic 1500m,
and Craig Ehlo who gave up "The Shot" to Michael Jordan in the 1989 NBA
playoffs, Menefee examines the legacy of the hardest loses, revealing
the unique path that athletes have to walk after they lose on their
sport's biggest stage. Shedding new light some of the most accepted
scapegoat stories in the sports cannon, he also revisits both the
Baltimore Colts' loss to the Jets in Super Bowl III, as well as the Red
Sox loss in the 1986 World Series, showing why, despite years of
humiliation, it might not be all Bill Buckner's fault.
Illustrated with sixteen pages of color photos, this considered and
compassionate study offers invaluable lessons about pain, resilience,
disappointment, remorse, and acceptance that can help us look at our
lives and ourselves in a profound new way.
