Losing Isn't Everything

The Untold Stories and Hidden Lessons Behind the Toughest Losses in Sports History

De: Curt Menefee, Michael Arkush

Narrado por: Curt Menefee

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 best-selling 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 losses, revealing the unique path that athletes have to walk after they lose on their sports' biggest stages. Shedding new light on some of the most accepted scapegoat stories in the sports canon, he also revisits both the Baltimore Colts' loss to the Jets in Super Bowl III and the Red Sox loss in the 1986 World Series, showing why, despite years of humiliation, it might not be all Bill Buckner's fault.

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.

©2016 Curt Menefee (P)2016 HarperCollins Publishers

Interesting stories from those on the wrong side of historical sports moments

Whenever a memorable moment happens in sports in which there is a winner and a loser, the winner is usually remembered over the years. But not always - sometimes the losing team, player or in individual sports, a performance where the athlete failed to perform as expected, is remembered just as much. This book by Curt Menefee, who also narrates the audio book, tells their story.


Each one follows a pretty standard format - the setting is set, the athlete featured is highlighted. Then the moment happens and how he or she handled that ignominy is the bulk of the material. This would include not only in the immediate aftermath of the event, but how that person has carried on in the following months and years. Many of the stories also started to feel the same as most of them were able to do fine, but almost to a person, it did upset them at least a little that that particular play was all that was remembered.


The best example of that last statement would be Everton Walls, who was the safety pictured on the famous photo of “The Catch” by the San Francisco 49ers receiver Dwight Clark. The other extreme example of this - where the athlete is perfectly fine with what happened - is Jean van de Velde, whose infamous 72nd hole at the 1999 British Open cost him a major title. Van de Velde has always maintained that yes, he lost, but he lost by attempting the shots he wanted to do.


This book is interesting in not only the content of all of these stories, but for the wide variety of sports that is covered. Snowboarding (Lindsey Jacobellis, whose extra move cost her a gold medal in the 2006 Winter Olympics), speed skating (Dan Jansen, who fell at two Olympics before finally winning in 1994) and track (Mary Decker and her fall in the 1984 Summer Olympics) and covered as well as football, baseball and basketball.


From Craig Ehlo to the 1992 Kentucky "Unforgettables" and from Rodney Harrison to Calvin Schiraldi, many memorable moments are covered and this book covers the other part of them

I really enjoyed this book

I really enjoyed this book Kama some may not fully get it but I believe that this book is really really good. Curt allowed the stories to be the story