Today, a conversation about sports, kinda sorta. Not the World Cup. Certainly not the Orioles, God help us. Not the Ravens, who start training camp a week from Thursday, but instead, we’re going to talk about a simple question, that when applied to certain moments and historical realities in sports can lead to some delicious fantasizing. That question is “What if?”
What if Billie Jean King had LOST to Bobby Riggs? What if Richard Nixon had been Good at Football? What if the Olympics had never dropped Tug of War? What if Muhammad Ali had GOTTEN his draft deferment?
Mike Pesca has assembled a group of essayists to pose those and other questions in a great and engaging and funny and sometimes profound book called Upon Further Review: The Greatest What-Ifs in Sports History.
Mike Pesca is the host of The Gist, a podcast on Slate.com. He’s a former sports reporter at NPR
