Why We Root (Vol. 1): Mad Obsessions of a Chicago Sports Fan

Why We Root: Mad Obsessions of a Chicago Sports Fan is a collection of Jack M Silverstein's sportswriting, including pieces from 1999 to 2023 that reveal the sports-fan mindset and show readers why we root for our teams. This collection of eighty-one articles is organized based on a fan's emotional journey—from learning the game, to knowing the game, to emotional heartbreak, and eventually to celebrating championships.

Included in the book are Silverstein's real-time articles on many of the best known Chicago sports events of the early 21st century, including: the White Sox, Blackhawks, and Cubs breaking winning their first championships after massive droughts; the Bears reaching, and losing, the Super Bowl; the rise and fall of saviors-to-be Derrick Rose and Jay Cutler; the Chicago Sky winning the 2021 WNBA championship; the Blackhawks' famed "17 seconds" championship; the Bears' agonizing "double doink"; and the Cubs' horrific Bartman game, retold from multiple perspectives in multiple years, including ten years later by pitcher Mark Prior and catcher Paul Bako. Also included are Silverstein's look back at the Bulls-Pistons rivalry of the 1990s, the 1995 Northwestern Wildcats Rose Bowl team, and Michael Jordan's flu game.

Jack M Silverstein is Chicago's sports historian. He is the Chicago Bears historian for Windy City Gridiron, and a regular guest historian around Chicago, including 670 The Score, WGN-TV, and ESPN 1000. His sportswriting has appeared in numerous publications, including Chicago Magazine, Chicago Reader, NBC Sports Chicago, RedEye Chicago, Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Tribune, his beloved ChicagoNow and the Barber's Chair Network. He was a featured historian on the 2022 Audible-History Channel podcast series "American Football," hosted by Michael Strahan.Sportswriters have cited his work and interviewed him for stories in Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Tribune, The Athletic, NBC Sports Chicago, SB Nation, Bleacher Report, Forbes, Fast Company, and for radio and television segments for ESPN Radio (national), Sports Illustrated, Fox Sports 1, BBC Radio, "Keep Hope Alive" with Jesse Jackson, The Santita Jackson Show, 670 The Score, ESPN 1000, NBC Sports Chicago, CHGO and The Ringer. His 2019 Windy City Gridiron story, "Throwback: The truth about George Halas and the NFL's ban on black players," caused Chicago Bears chairman and George Halas's grandson George McCaskey to release a video in which he, along with five players, admitted the role that the Chicago Bears had played in banning Black players from the NFL in the 1930s and 1940s.Silverstein is the author of Our President and How the GOAT Was Built: 6 Life Lessons From the 1996 Chicago Bulls. His next book, 6 Rings: The Bulls, The City, and the Dynasty that Changed the Game, will be published by Keylog Media. To follow his work on that book, subscribe to his newsletter at readjack.substack.com.