I loved the organizing concept behind the book "Losers," edited by Mary Pilon and Louisa Thomas: Compile stories of sports figures, teams, and even fans who found themselves on the wrong side of a game outcome and consider the impact that loss had on them. Because of the anthology format, there's a lot of variety here--from bullfighting to gymnastics--and truly something for everyone, whether you like your sports writing to be of the play-by-play game recap variety (as with "Requiem for the Ivory Coast: An Anatomy of Greece's Last-Minute Penalty" or "That Loser LeBron"); profiles of sports figures present and past ("The Kyrgios Enigma" or "The Loser," a profile of Floyd Patterson by Gay Talese); or even if you prefer something more sports adjacent, as in "If You Can't Beat 'Em," the story of a dysfunctional family and their collective (and conflicting) memories of parents who happened to be involved in horse racing, and "Tomato Can Blues," a true crime profile of a one-time cage fighter. These last two were particular standouts for me, but I found the collection as a whole (with a few exceptions) well curated, interesting and worth the read.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Books for providing me with an ARC of this title in exchange for my honest review.

They say that history is written by the victors. But so too are the victors most often the ones written into history.

That fact is even truer in the sporting realm than it is elsewhere. By its very nature, sport is concerned with winners and losers. And while those who win are celebrated and lauded in the years that follow, their victory burnished by the sheer volume of memory – what of those who fall short? What of those who reach the pinnacle, only to be stopped just short.

“Losers: Dispatches from the Other Side of the Scorecard” is a collection of pieces devoted to looking at those who never quite reached the top of the mountain. Edited by Mary Pilon and Louisa Thomas – both of whom also have work included within – this assemblage of essays spans more than a century of athletic near-misses.

All told, there are 22 pieces here, 14 of which are previously unpublished. Every one of them is devoted to exploring what it means to lose, to be beaten. The reasons behind their shortfalls vary – some are faced with legendary opposition, while others simply deal with a bad day or bad luck – but all of them find ways to reflect the impact of almost. Some of these stories are funny, while others are sad and still others inspire, but all of them together paint a portrait of the truth behind loss. It’s a compelling journey through the competitive landscape, with all manner of sport and athlete represented.

Considering the wide range of subjects covered, different readers will find different stories more engaging. That being said, here are a few of the pieces I personally found to be highlights, though as always, your mileage may vary.

We’ll start right at the top. The collection’s very first essay is Charles Bock’s “The Sporting House.” It’s a story about the troubled basketball star Lloyd Daniels and his checkered efforts to take the court for UNLV back in that program’s outlaw heyday in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. Bock deconstructs his own relationship with the Daniels mythos and digs into Daniels’ immense and unlikely talent, as well as the personal difficulties that brought it all crashing down.

Immediately following is “Yankees Strike” by Bob Sullivan, wherein the author discusses his time on the fringes of organized baseball through the lens of not just his own experience, but that of a former semi-pro teammate who was poised to take the mound for the fabled New York Yankees … until the players’ strike of 1994-95 came to an end. It’s a love letter to the game, written by someone who clung to it with every fiber of his being.

Ryan Bailey’s “The Great Wimbledon FC Heist” is a phenomenal story about what happened when his hometown football club was purchased by outsiders and moved. That fandom disaster led to an explosive community effort that brought the game back to those who loved it. That includes the author and his father; it’s an illustration of the connection that sports can forge between fathers and sons.

Perhaps my low-key favorite of the bunch is the abundantly-titled “Chasing Ashton Eaton: An Unintended Pursuit of the World’s Greatest Athlete That No One Has Heard Of.” It’s the story of decathlete Jeremy Taiwo, told to writer Stefanie Loh. Taiwo spent the last decade as an elite competitor in the decathlon, one of America’s best and brightest. He just had the misfortune of coming along at the same time as the titular Eaton, who would turn out to be in the conversation for greatest of all time. Despite putting up elite performances for years, he always fell short of the sheer greatness of Eaton. In sports, as in life, sometimes it’s all in the timing.

And on and on. Brian Platzer’s “Two White Kids from New York Kicking Ass” looks at a pair of former table tennis phenoms that never quite made it to the mountaintop. Abby Ellin’s “Larry and the Ball” unpacks the writer’s feelings regarding an overdue athletic redemption from an unlikely source. There’s even an old dispatch from the 1908 Olympic Marathon written by the creator of Sherlock Holmes himself, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

“Losers” is packed with insight; each essay brings a new and different perspective to the idea of losing. These stories aren’t the sort of triumphant tales that are inspired by victory, but the truth is that most stories of winning are markedly similar. There are relatively few ways to win, but a nigh-infinite number of ways to lose. The stories of these so-called “losers” are ripe with nuance, allowing for an exploration of the challenges that come not just on the field of play, but off it as well.

“Losers” is a sports book, but it is also more than that. These essays offer a way to engage with the human condition; there’s a real empathy inspired by these pieces, whether we’re talking about Olympic gymnasts or heavyweight boxers or aging bullfighters. It’s about acknowledging that there’s a flip side to every victory and that there is value to those stories as well.

This time, history is written by the losers.

I'm a big fan of sports culture writing and Louisa Thomas at the New Yorker. I was a bit disappointed this collection featured essays I've mostly read, but it's solid insight into losing as an athlete.

Read if you: Enjoy essay collections, and want something offbeat.

Librarians/booksellers: With some readers having trouble concentrating on longer stories/books during COVD-19, essay/short story collections are becoming popular with those readers. Purchase if you need to update your essay or sports collection.

Many thanks to Penguin and NetGalley for a digital review copy in exchange for an honest review.

A compendium of sports essays that are loosely around the theme of losing. Although none examined the heartache of losing, they were all well written and enjoyable. I particularly liked Mike Pesca's and Louisa Hall's contributions.

The title of this book – "Losers" – makes it sound like this will be a very depressing, somber type of book. However, the excellent collection of stories gathered and edited by Mary Pilon and Louisa Thomas (who also contributed one of the stories) doesn't have that sense of dread. There are also contributions by two very famous authors, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Gay Talese. The latter's story is his well known writing about boxer Floyd Patterson after his losses to Sonny Liston.

Yes, this is a collection of stories about athletes or fans whose teams or accomplishments didn't land them in the winner's circle and yes, some of them can be quite sad. Thomas' story about her grandmother who suffered through abuse by her husband, but she also had a mostly successful business raising championship horses, is probably the most depressing piece in the book. There are other tales of woe of varying degrees, but not all of them are of this nature. Another one that comes to mind is the story of a cage fighter who never won a fight (before the days of MMA/UFC) who faked his own death to avoid paying debts but eventually was caught. This one was written by Pilon.

Indeed, some can be uplifting and cheerful in their tone, despite the fact that the subject of the story did not end up as the winner. The best example of this type of story is on marathon runner Dick Beardsley, who is one of the most famous second place finishers when he was runner-up to Alberto Salazar in the Boston Marathon.

One aspect of the book that is especially pleasing is that a wide variety of sports and playing levels are featured in the book. One of the more unusual stories is one about a matador who was nearing the end of his bullfighting career. There are stories about famous losses, such as a Boston fan's recollection of Bill Buckner's famous error in game six of the 1986 World Series. That particular story is interesting in that the author sounds like they are longing for the bad old days when Boston teams were mediocre instead of the champions they now are. Of course, a book on losers wouldn't be complete without a story on the most famous losers, the Washington Generals. For those who are not familiar with them, they are the team that faces the Harlem Globetrotters in their shows. Despite what one may believe, the story illustrates the Generals as good basketball players and talks about a game in which the Generals actually walked off the court victorious.

As is the case with any collection of essays or stories, not every one of them will appeal to every reader. That was the case with this reviewer for a few of the selections. But there were far many enjoyable ones than duds and they were fun to read. One doesn't have to be a big sports fan to enjoy this collection as many of the stories touch at the heart and soul of the "losers" in various sports.

I wish to thank Penguin Books for providing a copy of the book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I am not a sports fan but I loved this collection of stories of major losers. It was a great collection of writers and even though not every essay hit it out of the park, the majority were well-written and compelling.

There are plenty of sports anthologies out there if you go looking for them. There are books about the best writing of a particular year, the best stories of a particular author, articles about particular teams, and so on.

"Losers" is ... different. It's a collection of articles, more or less, about a more abstract subject - losing.

Editors Mary Pilon and Louisa Thomas have put together a collection of stories about one of the darker sides of sports. As a subject, it's generally been unexplored.

Take it from a veteran of postgame interviews - you always feel like you are intruding when you talk to someone after a loss - the more dramatic the loss, the worse those feelings are. It's all part of the journalistic game between players, coaches and reporters, of course. Hockey player Craig Ramsay was one of the few who enjoyed the debriefing process under any circumstances. He once told me, "I knew it was time to retire when reporters only came to talk to me after losses."

Still, it's never fun for most and can be the subject of gallows humor. One time last season, the media was lined up to enter a losing locker room after a bad loss by the home team. I quipped sarcastically, "Well, this should be a lot of fun." Heads nodded in agreement. I still remember the game between the Buffalo Bills and Houston Oilers in which the Oilers blew a 31-3 lead to lose a playoff game. You don't know how happy I was not to be assigned to the Houston locker room.

The catch, though, is that sometimes you get good stories. The often hidden emotions bubble to the surface, and that adds insight to the subject and the game itself.

There is all sorts of ways to lose in a sense, and Pilon and Thomas went in a number of different directions here. There are careers that get off track one way or another, fans that lose their favorite teams, athletes who chase but never catch a better athlete, teams that unravel like a cheap sweater, and situations where it's advantageous for a team if its players fail. There's even a brief essay on the greatest losers in all of sports - the Washington Generals, the name of the team who has the job of losing to the Harlem Globetrotters night after night. Not all of the stories worked for me and a couple weren't a perfect fit for the subject, but the winning percentage was quite good.

The two biggest names among the contributors are Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Gay Talese. Sir Arthur gained a bit of fame by writing about the fictional exploits of a detective named Sherlock Holmes, although he apparently could have covered running pretty well too. Talese's article on Floyd Patterson is justifiably famous. The author caught the boxer soon after Patterson had lost two championship fights to Sonny Liston in devastating fashion. Still, Patterson was amazingly articulate about expressing his feelings later on.

"Losers" isn't a long book, and some of the stories are newspaper-column length. Therefore, it goes down rather easily. There might be a worry that a typical fan might not want to explore this dark side of the sports business. But if that person does by reading there, there will be some unexpected rewards.

So many sports books are similar in scope, reflecting the views, anodyne or original of the winners, telling their tales of their triumphs and how they overcame adversity to achieve success.

But what about the losers? So often left to slink away to the dressing room with disappointment etched all over their faces. How do they feel? Can they recover their resolve to have another crack at achieving that elusive success?

Finally we are given the opportunity to read accounts from their perspective and long overdue it has been.

Mary Pilon and Louisa Thomas have compiled an anthology of tales from the losers' perspective. What happened, how could it have happened, how did it make me feel, could I recover, are all some of the questions answered in this timely and totally original book.

They have put together contributions from twenty-two major writers, new and old, sports reporters athletes and authors alike, who provide their observations both personal and observed on the losers in sport. Some are well known, others never previously published - gems all of them.

Their contributions range from the humorous to the sad but all are insightful and the combination is spellbinding and not to be missed.

For a book on losers Mary Pilon and Louisa Thomas have certainly come up trumps and are both winners in their own right.

Highly recommended and thoroughly enjoyed.