Media Kit: Why Is Everyone Cheering?

With this fun and practical guide, readers will easily pick up skills for being an informed observer of baseball, basketball and football without having to learn any mind-numbing details about rules or strategy. Readers will have fun watching sports with sports-fan friends and family without pretending to understand what they’re watching! No other books condense info about three sports into one fun book. More than160 color photos clearly explain exactly what fans will see when they watch sports on TV or in person. The book also describes quirky sports traditions that increase fans’ enjoyment of the game, and readers can practice what they learn with quizzes included in the book.

Even after several decades of studying, questioning, watching and listening, Lauri is not a sports expert. She is, however, an expert at being a super-fan. There are plenty of books about sports written by true experts but not by someone like Lauri: someone who wants readers to understand sports enough to love sports, but who doesn’t give a hoot if they learn the name of every position on a football team, or if they can spot an NBA player committing a foul, or if they grasp the complexity of the infield fly rule. 

Experts can explain more about sports than Lauri can, but they can’t explain how to start at the beginning and learn to see and hear more on the playing field. They can’t un-learn what they know. They can’t go back to a beginner’s level and remember what it’s like to watch baseball and see nothing but a guy swinging a bat. But Lauri can. 

If you ask a sports expert to explain sports, they get way too intense way too fast. If you ask Google about any sports rule, you’ll get paragraphs that quickly descend into maddening technicalities. 

Instead, this book meets you where you are: Watching a game that you wish you understood, wanting to learn without having to become an expert.

Lauri places equal emphasis on things like why fans hold up forward-facing “Ks” and backwards “Ks” during baseball games, why quarterbacks sometimes cover their helmet earholes with their hands, or why fans might hear a gong when a football team is facing a 3rd down, as she does on things like what it means when an NBA team in the bonus, why the perimeter of an NBA backboard sometimes lights up red, or why a pitcher might look over his shoulder at the runner on first base before his windup. 

1. Why do you think the world needs this book?

2. Who do you think will most enjoy and benefit from this book?

3. Tell me about your favorite sports moment.

4. I hear you know something about making appearances on the jumbotron. Tell me about that.

5. Is your dining room really a mecca for sports paraphernalia? How did that come about and what are some of your prized items displayed there?

6. How did you create the photos in your book?