Once more, with feeling
In a new book on the Ravens’ championship season by Brew sportswriter Dean Bartoli Smith – the ties that bind a city to its team.
Above: Baltimore Brew sports writer Dean Bartoli Smith with his new book on the Baltimore Ravens’ championship season.
Could the heart-stopping ups and downs of the months leading up to the Baltimore Ravens’ XLVII Superbowl win – viewed through the eyes of one fan – possibly convey all that the team and the game of football mean to fans and to the city?
The answer, knowing Baltimore Brew sportswriter Dean Bartoli Smith as we do, is “yes.”
The emails from Dean with his game stories attached typically came with a few sentences suggesting he was still gasping for air after pounding the furniture and pacing the house, unable to sleep after one of the games Baltimore played on the way to the Lombardi Trophy.
“The Denver game – that’s got to be one of the greatest comeback games of all time – I think I’m still recovering from that,” Smith said recently in an interview about his new book “Never Easy, Never Pretty: A Fan, a City and a Championship Season,” published by Temple University Press.
Smith, who will be reading from his book tonight (beginning at 7 p.m. at the Johns Hopkins University Barnes & Noble bookstore at 3330 St. Paul St.) calls on more than emotion for this labor of love – he brings a sportswriter’s eye, a Colts fan’s sense of history and a poet’s sensibility.
“There’s something about the Ravens that so much reflects the inner psyche of Baltimore,” Dean said, sitting in his office at Johns Hopkins Press, where he directs Project MUSE.
“The players talked throughout the season about ‘winning ugly,’ or ‘it wasn’t pretty but it was a win.’ [Coach John] Harbaugh said ‘it’s never perfect but it is us.’ I wanted to capture that.”
Slugfests and Tender Memories
The structure of the book reflects Smith’s trademark approach to sportswriting. He weaves together game-by-game analysis, team history and memoir. There are descriptions of brutal slugfests, such as the Browns, Chiefs and Cowboys games, and of the championship game in New Orleans itself, which Smith attended.
There’s plenty of strategy and analysis here. Smith combed over game footage, post-game interview footage, and attended public appearances of key players and coaches. He also interviewed everyone from the late Colts Hall of Fame defensive tackle Art Donovan to rabid Ravens Roost members, who channeled the old Colts Corral fan clubs.
But perhaps my favorite parts of the book are the ones where Smith lets us feel how much the game – and sharing it with people he loves – lights up his heart. He writes, for instance, about the game with the Houston Texans that he watched with his Aunt Carol.
A former Baltimore City Circuit Court judge (and more importantly, a longtime Colts fan who like Dean, switched allegiance to the Ravens), Carol was “the woman who bought me my first pair of shoulder pads,” Smith writes.
“We shivered together in the back row against the fence. My father’s sister and a former Sister of Mercy who defected around the time of my parents’ divorce, Carol taught me how to run a post pattern, a square out, and a buttonhook.
“We talked about those days and laughed with the other characters in our section, people like Butch the pipefitter and Dave the facilities manager, good family men who knocked back a few beers and let loose a little in the stands on Sunday.”
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Dean Bartoli Smith will also be signing copies of Never Easy, Never Pretty this Saturday (Sept. 21) from 1-3 p.m. at the Barnes & Noble store at the Power Plant.
Here are some Q&A’s with the author about the book: