Your Brain on Cubs: Inside the Heads of Players and Fans (Hardcover)

~ Dan Gordon (Editor)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

With their frustrating ups and downs, and nearly 100 years without a World Series win, the Chicago Cubs have been messing with the minds of their loyal fans for a long time, making that club the perfect topic for a book about the relationship between baseball and the human brain. Each of the essays in this off-beat collection explores a different aspect of baseball through the prism of neurology, and each piece relates, at least tangentially, back to the Cubs. There's a chapter on the use of "neurotropic substances" as performance enhancers, and another on how to become an All Star ballplayer the traditional way: "All expertise comes from practice, and lots of it." The book also routes out the answers to some quirky questions. Why are the majority of baseball's best hitters lefties? Because left-handed people are more ambidextrous than righties, argues one contributor, making them adept at skills that require both hands. How can a diehard Cubs fan stay loyal despite years of heartbreak? He becomes "an expert in delaying gratification." Although necessarily technical (this must be the only baseball book to reference the brain's "limbic structures"), the essays are straightforward, entertaining and likely to provoke many barroom debates.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

�It is not nice to joke about a neurological affliction. Fortunately, we can now comprehend the condition, thanks to a new book, �Your Brain on Cubs: Inside the Heads of Players and Fans,� a collection of essays by doctors and others knowledgeable about neuroscience and brain disorders associated with rooting for a team that last won the World Series a century ago.��George Will, Newsweek (George Will Newsweek 20080215)

"With their frustrating ups and downs, and nearly 100 years without a World Series win, the Chicago Cubs have been messing with the minds of their loyal fans for a long time, making that club the perfect topic for a book about the relationship between baseball and the human brain. Each of the essays in this off-beat collection explores a different aspect of baseball through the prism of neurology, and each piece relates, at least tangentially, back to the Cubs. . . . The essays are straightforward, entertaining and likely to provoke many barroom debates."�Publishers Weekly (Publishers Weekly 20071219)

"The title, implying a focus on the Cubs, may limit interest in a book that really embraces much more. It does look at devoted Cubs fans�and all baseball fans�and their ''brainy'' obsession with the game, including their brains'' ways of reckoning with loss. The essays are by neuroscientists and two or three informed journalists, and they are accessible to all interested readers. . . . This is for all curious readers intrigued by the intersection of baseball and the sciences and in exploring old topics in new ways."�Library Journal (Library Journal 20071219)

�This book inspires me to imagine some kind of boutique neurosurgery to heal my brain, fatigued as it is by my team�s struggles. Who knows what other ideas it might spawn? Your Brain on Cubs is a great read.��Aryeh Routtenberg, Departments of Psychology and Neurobiology, Northwestern University, and Department of Physiology, Feinberg School of Medicine (Aryeh Routtenberg 20071130)

�You do not need to be a Cubs fan to like this book. It has a delightful mix of baseball lore and information about the brain.�These insights are interesting for all of us who try to acquire new skills, and many apply to experts in other skill domains, such as musical performance.��Ann M. Graybiel, Walter A. Rosenblith Professor of Neuroscience and Investigator, McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Ann M. Graybiel 20071219)

�Your Brain on Cubs is a home run to deep center field! It illuminates the game from the perspectives of both fans and players.��Bruce C. Ladd, Jr., founder, Emil Verban Memorial Society (Chicago Cubs Fan Club of Washington, D.C.) (Bruce C. Ladd, Jr. 20071130)

"It�s about time the Cubs and their fans had their heads examined. This volume explores how baseball looks through the lens of brain science and vice versa. It makes for fun and provocative reading for fans of brains and baseball alike."�Carl F. Craver, Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology Program,Washington University in St. Louis (Carl F. Craver )

�Dan Gordon and the many contributors to Your Brain on Cubs have truly accomplished something rare in our society today. That is, combining solid science and intellectual pursuits with fun and games. The two certainly do not have to be mutually exclusive, and in our sports-crazed society, it is desirable, commendable, and entertaining to link intellectual achievement and fun together. Readers of this book will learn much and be entertained.�--Ben Carson, Sr., MD, Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery, Professor of Neurological Surgery, Oncology, Plastic Surgery, and Pediatrics, Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions (Ben Carson, Sr., MD )

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 150 pages
• Publisher: Dana Press (March 14, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1932594280
• ISBN-13: 978-1932594287
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #374,963 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Perfect for both sports and health libraries., May 6, 2008

By	Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

YOUR BRAIN ON CUBS: INSIDE THE HEADS OF PLAYERS AND FANS blends medical science with insights on how the Chicago Cubs offers a method for understanding brain functions and ballpark attractions. From issues of loyalty and illusion to how viewers become experts, sports here is used as a foundation for considering brain functioning, game controversies from drugs to perception, and more: perfect for both sports and health libraries.

5.0 out of 5 stars Your Brain on Cubs explains all of those brain questions and actions you always wanted to know about when it came to baseball, September 27, 2009

By	Jonathan H. Clark - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I enjoyed reading this book and I think it explained actions in the brain in a scientific way that would still be interesting to neuroscientists and hard-core baseball fans alike. I found this book, which was put together by a life-long cub fan, to be extremely interesting and informative. It did an excellent job of describing a basic event in baseball like a batter preparing to hit a pitch and explaining how this event happens in the brain through the use of things like the mirror system.

The sections of the book and my summary/opinion of them are listed below. For the most part, the chapters open up with a Cub's game that is a good example of what is going to be discussed about. After the example, such as a fan's emotion or a baseball player's slump, is mentioned, the explanation for the neurological mechanism responsible for this event is followed by other research done by others, possibly psychologists or anthropologists, who back up the neurological mechanism.

Chapter 1: The Depths of Loyalty: Exploring the Brain of a Die-hard fan
Begins with the author talking about his experience growing up as a Cubs fan and how a brain for a fan of a perennial losing team works differently than the brain of fan whose team is doing well in the way that the "losing brain" is trained to delay gratification because winning is rare. Furthermore, this chapter mentions common behavioral framework that is relevant for a Cubs fan such as structured event knowledge stored in the frontal lobes and emotional states represented in the brain-stem and limbic regions. Overall, pretty basic brain information meant to just ease the reader in to both the fandom of the Cubs and the working of the brain.

Chapter 2: Developing Talent: Expertise and the Brain
About how the key to doing something well is not genes but actually practice, somewhere in the realm of 10,000 hours of practice to master something like hitting a curveball. Comparisons between expert and novice violinsts showed that experts required less brain volume to complete a task. Using a fMRI, it was shown that practice also strengthens the connections between different areas in the brain. I found this part to be one of the more interesting areas of the book because they wrote about how focus and practice can make one good at almost anything through the brain rewiring itself.

Chapter 3: Why Did Casey Strike Out? The Neuroscience of Hitting
About how hitters use their brain and things like the mirror system, which is something in the brain that recognizes a movement when preformed by others, in this case a pitch, to hit better. I thought this was extremely interesting because I had never heard of the mirror system before but it does make some sense because the possible greatest hitter of all time was also a pitcher.

Chapter 4: Curses!
Mentions how the believe in superstition, which is abundant in baseball, is due to the brain being "stubborn" and demanding to fill in missing information in a cause-effect pattern leading some to believe that certain things led to a good game. Again, it was really interesting to see all of the research that showed how any species can become superstitious and how people can feel like they are in more control of a situation because of something they did.

Chapter 5: Risks and Asterisks: Neurological Enhancements in Baseball
All about the use of drugs like steroids and amphetamines and how they may both hurt and help the game. Didn't seem to mention too much neurological science (more biochemistry) in this chapter, so I wasn't a fan.

Chapter 6: Baseball and Handedness
This chapter was really interesting because it talked about the asymmetries in brain hemispheres and how that affects people, mainly ball players, causing left handed players, normally considered the best hitters, to be more dexterous and have a better muscle memory. I found this part extremely interesting because I am ambidextrous and it made me wonder if my brain had any asymmetries or how mine would compare to other single hand dominant people.

Chapter 7: It Isn't Whether You Win or Lose, It's Whether You Win: Agony and Ecstasy in the Brain
Talks about the 5 stages of depression and the reward circuit and how these act in the brains of fans experience the ups and lows of the baseball season followed up with research. Also mentions that even with the strong levels of despair experienced as a Cubs fan, hope springs eternal.

Interesting Quotes:
"The play in baseball is not solely determined by physics, chance, size, strength, and speed. It is also influenced by the effects of novel game situations on the ability of the player's nervous system to make good decisions, plans, and executions."

"Emotions have immediate, visceral components-such as the heart rate and adrenaline surge baseball fans might experience while watching their team's shot at a World Series slip away. But emotions also have a more thought-based or cognitive component that comes into play. In general, emotion can be thought of as a collaboration between a set of structures deep in the brain called the limbic system and the most forward part of the outer covering of the brain in the frontal lobes, the prefrontal cortex."

In my opinion, this book does an excellent job of informing the reader of the workings of the brain while relating the function to a situation with which the readers are already familiar. While it talks about a wide range of baseball topics like hitting and superstition, it always includes scientific research and other examples found in the world to explain why these things are going on inside of the brain in a very simple but intellectual way.

I would recommend this book to any sports fan, any neuroscience fan, or anyone interested in the infrastructure of the brain but doesn't want to read something that might be too dense.