Love Quote by Roger Kahn

Glory is the glitter of victory; love grows in the ash of loss. Roger Kahn understood that sports bind people not merely through triumphs but through the long, aching apprenticeship of disappointment. Writing about the Brooklyn Dodgers in The Boys of Summer, he watched a borough knit itself together on stoops and in barrooms, under radios crackling with static, rehearsing the credo Wait til next year. The Dodgers lost to the Yankees again and again, suffered the Shot Heard Round the World in 1951, and carried the weight of a citys longing before finally winning it all in 1955. The devotion did not come from the parade; it was forged in all the seasons that ended in sorrow.

Winning attracts admirers. Defeat reveals character, both in teams and in the people who follow them. In loss, a player is no longer a distant hero but a fallible person, shoulders slumped, eyes down, still showing up the next day. Fans, too, meet themselves: will they turn away, or will they keep faith, learning the stubborn patience that love requires? The rituals of defeat identify a community. Strangers exchange looks on the subway after a gutting error; a city holds its breath and then exhales together; parents pass down not only stories of champions but lessons in resilience.

Kahn points to why sports matter beyond their scorelines. The stadium becomes a safe theater for mourning and hope, a place to practice fidelity when there is nothing immediate to gain. Love born in defeat is thicker than the confetti of victory because it carries memory, scars, and the knowledge that joy, when it arrives, is not owed but earned.

When the Dodgers finally beat the Yankees in 1955, the celebration was incandescent precisely because of the years that preceded it. And when the team left Brooklyn, many still loved them, and loved what the team had taught them. Triumph can dazzle. Defeat teaches you how to care.