Naming Rites

This ain't no book of fast sports facts. In Naming Rites, Glenn Pierce works from the history on out, using team names as interactive characters that reveal the facts and debunk the creation myths behind nearly three-thousand major league, college, and semi-pro teams. Readers will travel a map of interlocking narratives to reveal one rich tale after another, each infused with more why-didn't-I-know-that-ness than the last.

Of team-naming backstories, Bill Littlefield (NPR's Only a Game) says, Naming Rites has "got a million of 'em ... or 460 pages of 'em, anyway." Ex-NFL player and best-selling author Tim Green says, "If you like sports or history ... you won't be able to put it down." This is a world of battle flags and goblins and word origins and mountain tops and Indians and gothic towers and revolutionaries and blues men and giants and pirates and people who speak languages that are just crazy (French and Spanish) and religious zealots and metallurgists and women in polo shirts ... and a whole bunch of beasts with nasty, big, pointy teeth!You'll never again be the only dork in the bleachers who doesn't know what a Tar Heel or a Hoya or a Lord Jeff is. And you'll impress your friends with your knowledge of Paladins, Panhandles, and Dead Trees.