Chris Rawle
My name is Chris Rawle and I have been a sports fan all my life. My earliest memories are tied to footballs rising through cold October skies, the frantic squeak of basketball sneakers inside churchouse gymnasiums, and the crystalline sound a hockey puck makes when it strikes iron. Over the course of 30+ years, many have asked why I care about these things, categorized as games, and my answer is always the same: because they make me feel.
This website is an ode to all that sports have to offer. I’m enthralled by the frenzied pulse of emotion as the clock ticks down in a tie game, or the complicated wheel of electric love, ecstasy, and devastation that spins inside the heart of every fan. I record a bi-weekly podcast (released Tuesdays and Fridays) and write a weekly newsletter (released Wednesdays) not as forums to debate the latest hot takes, but to explore the complexities of fandom and the ebbs and flows of investing yourself in something you love.
The great poet Lisel Mueller wrote:
You don’t trust the heart
though you define death
as the absence of heartbeat
Those words resonate because I—a man whose life is, in many areas, governed by simple logic—have found (and continue to find) great fulfillment by listening to my heart and plunging over the cliff’s edge, into the foggy realm of games that can somehow be so much more.
Fandom is not logical but to be fair—few things in life are. And when it’s good, nothing is better.