Sunday, April 01, 2007

The Non-Sequitur of the Week Award

By Nicholas Stix


Check out the following blurb from the book For Mets Fans Only, by Rich Wolfe.

Book Description
We are all in love with our favorite sports team. Some of us more than others. We buy the hats, paint our faces, and brave the weather to root for our team. Baseball has long been a sport that brings up memories. From listening on the radio as a child to attending the games in person, we all have stories and events related to our favorite sports team. Author Rich Wolfe brings these stories to life with an all-star cast of players. Mets fan or not, you'll enjoy this book!

The title of this collection of tales told by Mets fans about their favorite club already makes clear that if you’re not a Mets fan, this book is not for you! And 91.1 percent of the blurb hammers home that message. But in the last eight words, the blurb writer does a logically impossible about-face. No wonder the book, which came out only ten months ago yesterday, is mired in 334,776th place in Amazon sales.

Maybe the folks at Lifepress should have given more thought to the title. How about, Fans Talk about Their Favorite Team? Mets Stories from Open-Minded, Tolerant Fans? Or For Mets Fans … and Other Living Things?

Alternatively, Lifepress could simply have dropped the last sentence from the blurb, which managed to insult the intelligence of non-Met and Mets fans alike. That way, at least Met fans might have bought the book, as opposed to the market the book ultimately reached, which appears to be limited to the author and his immediate family.

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