From Publishers Weekly
St. John's account of following the University of Alabama's football team as a part of the team's fanatical legion of tailgaters is just as much fun as the book's title (words to a school chant). As St. John, an Alabama native who writes for the New York Times, tries to join Bama RV nation, he spends five months obsessing about every tiny detail associated with Alabama football and, in the process, comes into contact with a slew of good ol' boys, well-to-do entrepreneurs and the most hated man in Alabama. Despite his own passion for Bama football, St. John is an outsider and must go to the extreme, like buying his own dilapidated RV (astutely nicknamed "The Hawg"), to be completely accepted by the hardcore RV-owning regulars. Driving the country roads from Gainesville to Nashville, St. John uncovers the ugly, quirky and splendid qualities of both football fans and the states below the Mason-Dixon line. But this book is more than a beer and barbecue–fueled travelogue. St. John also explores the sociological and physical effects of being a rabid sports fan. These journalistic asides contrast nicely with St. John's superstitious, obsessed sports-fan persona, which rules much of this amusing and insightful book. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From School Library Journal
Adult/High School - With the intent of investigating hard-core "fandom" in all its extreme manifestations, St. John, an Alabama native and lifelong fan of the Crimson Tide, spent a season commingling with those who trail this college football team from stadium to stadium. He purchased a motor home and joined the dedicated crowd that often arrived for the Saturday game on Wednesday, jamming the roadways of the host town and jockeying for prime parking in lots where they quickly deployed all of the amenities of ongoing tailgate parties. The narrative is lively and entertaining, punctuated by rich regional speech patterns and sports-related profanity. A modest amount of space is devoted to analyzing fan moods/behaviors from a sociological standpoint (why fandom "is as much about opposing as advocating"), but the greater portion of the book consists of memorably drawn portraits of the regulars in the crowd, including a couple who skipped their daughter's wedding because it conflicted with a game. The coach, the team, their stats, and headline-generating plays are certainly on scene, but it is the fan action that St. John captures with empathy and wit. - Lynn Nutwell, Fairfax City Regional Library, VA Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From AudioFile
"Why do I care?" asks Warren St. John at the beginning of this entertaining recording. The journalist and lifelong fan of the Alabama Crimson Tide wants to explore why he and millions of Americans become so irrationally attached to their sports teams. So he buys a rickety RV and follows Alabama's college football team for a season, hanging out with fans so devoted that one couple actually missed their daughter's wedding to attend a game. ("We made it to the RECEPTION.") St. John is a good choice to read his own work. Despite having attended Columbia and having settled in New York, he can still pull out the drawl when the story calls for it. When he does so, he's genuinely funny, without letting the humor spill over into farce. D.B. © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Booklist
*Starred Review* Wearing a very thin veneer of journalistic detachment, veteran reporter St. John decided to follow his beloved Alabama Crimson Tide football team during the 1999 season, intrigued by one couple who chose an Alabama game over their daughter's wedding (they made the reception). The team slogan, "Roll Tide," is coin of the realm here, and the author uses it liberally to insinuate himself into a large, highly individuated group of RVers who follow their team each week from stadium lot to stadium lot throughout the Deep South. With perfect balance and deadpan humor--think Ball Four--St. John brings a journalist's clarified sense of detail and narration to his story, both the unfolding of the Alabama season and his slow-developing but enduring friendships within the RV community. The portraits of his fellow Bama fans are sharp, sneaky-funny, but not unlovingly drawn. But he just can't help himself: he is forever a fan, subject to every quicksilver high and low, every triumph and indignity and cosmic mystery that befall the rest of us. He never professes to completely understand the nature of being a fan, though he reveals here and there, as if by accident, some simple truths. "I chose Alabama the way a baby bird chooses its mother," he offers at one point. "It was the first thing I saw." Alan Moores
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Gay Talese
A remarkable and funny book about obsession in America by a really fine writer.


Review
"An unreconstructed fan of Alabama football, exiled in New York, Warren St. John goes home to join the Crimson Tide's most rabid supporters as they roll across the South. His four-mile-a-gallon odyssey through the sun, suds, and stink of tailgate culture is a fresh and funny take on the American road trip--and an affectionate yet unsentimental look at Southern life, from belles who chug beer and bray from the stands, to fundamentalists who forgive any sin except a losing season. Like his hero, Bear Bryant, St. John has crafted a winner." --Tony Horwitz, author of Confederates in the Attic

"What does it really mean to be a sports fan? For the millions of us who are, Warren St. John captures our passion with hilarity, absurdity and poignancy. He just gets our religion. And Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer is a marvelous journey into the soul of sports in America. A great ride in the tradition of Hunter Thompson and an even better read." --H.G. "Buzz" Bissinger, author of Friday Night Lights

"A remarkable and funny book about obsession in America by a really fine writer." — Gay Talese

"Sports fandom is a phenomenon that has so far baffled the field of psychology.  The professionals haven't a clue.  They should read this book.  Warren St. John takes us to where the rubber meets the road." -- Tom Wolfe


Tom Wolfe
Warren St. John takes us to where the rubber meets the road.


From the Inside Flap
"Fresh and funny… St. John has crafter a winner.” —Tony Horwitz, author of Confederates in the Attic

In the life of every sports fan, there comes a moment of reckoning. It may happen when your team wins on a last-second field goal and you suddenly find yourself clenched in a loving embrace with a large hairy man you’ve never met. . . . Or in the long, hormonally depleted days after a loss, when you’re felled by a sensation similar to the one you first experienced following the death of a pet. At such moments the fan is forced to confront the question others—spouses, friends, children, and colleagues—have asked for years:

Why do I care?

What is it about sports that turns otherwise sane, rational people into raving lunatics? Why does winning compel people to tear down goalposts, and losing, to drown themselves in bad keg beer? In short, why do fans care?

In search of the answers to these questions, Warren St. John seeks out the roving community of RVers who follow the Alabama Crimson Tide from game to game across the South. A movable feast of Weber grills, Igloo coolers, and die-hard superstition, these are characters who arrive on Wednesday for Saturday’s game: Freeman and Betty Reese, who skipped their own daughter’s wedding because it coincided with a Bama game; Ray Pradat, the Episcopalian minister who watches the games on a television set beside his altar while performing weddings; John Ed (pronounced as three syllables, John Ay-ud), the wheeling and dealing ticket scalper whose access to good seats gives him power on par with the governor; and Paul Finebaum, the Anti-Fan, a wisecracking sports columnist and talk-radio host who makes his living mocking Alabama fans—and who has to live in a gated community for all the threats he receives in response.

In no time at all, St. John himself is drawn into the world of full-immersion fandom: he buys an RV (a $5,500 beater called The Hawg) and joins the caravan for a football season, chronicling the world of the extreme fan and learning that
in the shadow of the stadium, it can all begin to seem strangely normal.

Along the way, St. John takes readers on illuminating forays into the deep roots of humanity’s sports mania (did you know that tailgaters could be found in eighth-century Greece?), the psychology of crowds, and the surprising neuroscience behind the thrill of victory.

Reminiscent of Confederates in the Attic and the works of Bill Bryson, Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer is not only a travel story, but a cultural anthropology of fans that goes a long way toward demystifying the universal urge to take sides and to win.


About the Author
Born in Birmingham, Alabama, WARREN ST. JOHN is currently a reporter for the New York Times. He has also written extensively for the New York Observer, The New Yorker, and Wired. He went to Columbia University and lives in New York. Visit him at www.rammerjammeryellowhammer.com.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

In the life of every sports fan, there comes a moment of reckoning. It may happen when your team wins on a last-second field goal and you suddenly find yourself clenched in a loving embrace with a large hairy man you've never met. . . . Or in the long, hormonally depleted days after a loss, when you're felled by a sensation similar to the one you first experienced following the death of a pet. At such moments the fan is forced to confront the question others--spouses, friends, children, and colleagues--have asked for years:

Why do I care?

What is it about sports that turns otherwise sane, rational people into raving lunatics? Why does winning compel people to tear down goalposts, and losing, to drown themselves in bad keg beer? In short, why do fans care?

In search of the answers to these questions, Warren St. John seeks out the roving community of RVers who follow the Alabama Crimson Tide from game to game across the South. A movable feast of Weber grills, Igloo coolers, and die-hard superstition, these are characters who arrive on Wednesday for Saturday's game: Freeman and Betty Reese, who skipped their own daughter's wedding because it coincided with a Bama game; Ray Pradat, the Episcopalian minister who watches the games on a television set beside his altar while performing weddings; John Ed (pronounced as three syllables, John Ay-ud), the wheeling and dealing ticket scalper whose access to good seats gives him power on par with the governor; and Paul Finebaum, the Anti-Fan, a wisecracking sports columnist and talk-radio host who makes his living mocking Alabama fans--and who has to live in a gated community for all the threats he receives in response.

In no time atall, St. John himself is drawn into the world of full-immersion fandom: he buys an RV (a $5,500 beater called The Hawg) and joins the caravan for a football season, chronicling the world of the extreme fan and learning that

in the shadow of the stadium, it can all begin to seem strangely normal.

Along the way, St. John takes readers on illuminating forays into the deep roots of humanity's sports mania (did you know that tailgaters could be found in eighth-century Greece?), the psychology of crowds, and the surprising neuroscience behind the thrill of victory.

Reminiscent of Confederates in the Attic and the works of Bill Bryson, Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer is not only a travel story, but a cultural anthropology of fans that goes a long way toward demystifying the universal urge to take sides and to win.

FROM THE CRITICS

Charles Salzberg - The New York Times

In the delightfully witty Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer: A Journey Into the Heart of Fan Mania, Warren St. John, a Times reporter, joins the nomad community of University of Alabama fans who follow the Crimson Tide from game to game in their colorfully decorated R.V.'s, arriving at stadium parking lots to party sometimes a full two or three days before the game

Franklin Foer

The success of these portraits owes much to Mr. St. John's ear for dialogue - a gift well suited to Alabama, where the citizens he encounters speak in a Southern fried slang that somehow never grows tiresome. They bust out exclamatory lines like "oh, horse hockey!"; deride enemies as "mullet heads"; and describe beautiful belles who "really crank my tractor."

Publishers Weekly

St. John, a New York Times reporter and native Alabaman, explores the nature of extreme sports fandom in this compelling and funny audiobook. Over the course of five months, St. John follows the University of Alabama's football team in his own RV and connects with the "RV culture," fans for whom game day is simply the focal point of a celebration that can last for days. Some of the fans he encounters are indeed extreme-like the couple that skipped their daughter's wedding because it took place on game day, or the man who risks having his name taken off a heart transplant list, declaring "If I can't go to Alabama football games, what's the point in living?" But St. John's focus is less on these eccentric characters than on the general culture, in which football fetishism has been completely integrated into everyday life. St. John has a pronounced lisp, which is jarring at first, but it quickly becomes endearing. And while his character voices all sound like variations on the loud-dumb-Southern-guy theme, he approaches his narration with the gusto and enthusiasm of a fervent fan, which succeeds in getting listeners into the spirit of this fun, insightful tale. Simultaneous release with the Crown hardcover (Forecasts, June 14). (Aug.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

In these books, authors St. John and Glennon follow two football teams-the University of Alabama and the New England Patriots, respectively-through a dramatic season, hoping along the way to do a pop cultural, anthropological study of the American fan. As a result of their reporting among the faithful, we learn that fans can often be truly fanatical, but anyone hoping for deep insights into their psychology will be disappointed. Both books are essentially entertaining romps, with New York Times reporter St. John hanging with the RV tailgater crowd following the Crimson Tide and Boston-area journalist Glennon watching Patriots games with groups of women fans, at gay bars, and in a Sears electronics department. (St. John, who bought an RV for the book, does speak briefly about the history and social psychology of fans and crowds.) Despite all the fun the authors seem to have in their travels, they note some disturbing tendencies among many fans: large-scale drunkenness, racism, and homophobia, and a strong "us/them" mentality, causing St. John to note that "being a sports fan is as much about opposing as advocating." Still, both authors portray a football game as a pretty perfect place to be on an autumn weekend, and both books are recommended for medium to large public libraries, especially those in Alabama and New England.-Jim Burns, Jacksonville P.L., FL Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

School Library Journal