Love Quote by Roger Kahn

Triumph is clean. It asks only that you show up for the parade and wear the right colors. Defeat is messy, intimate, and revealing, and Roger Kahn knew that’s where fandom stops being consumer preference and turns into identity. The line draws a sharp distinction between “glory” and “love”: glory is borrowed status, a quick hit of reflected accomplishment; love is what you earn by staying when the team gives you nothing back.

Kahn came of age in a mid-century America where baseball wasn’t just entertainment but civic weather, a daily referendum on hope. As a writer associated with the Brooklyn Dodgers and the mythology of their long frustrations before 1955, he understood that losing seasons create a different kind of narrative capital. When you’ve suffered with a team, you own part of the story. You didn’t just witness history; you paid into it. That’s why the subtext isn’t purely sentimental. It’s almost transactional: defeat purchases authenticity.

The quote also quietly mocks bandwagon virtue. Anyone can “glory” in a champion; it costs nothing and proves less. Falling in love with losers, though, is a kind of stubborn romance with imperfection. You learn the players’ flaws, the manager’s maddening habits, the bad-luck bounces that feel personal. In that shared disappointment, strangers become a community and a franchise becomes a family: exasperating, occasionally embarrassing, but yours.