Brian Flota is a professor of English (specializing in
American literature) at a university in the state of
Oklahoma. He was born in Southern Illinois during the
Gerald Ford administration, but grew up in Southern
California's Inland Empire. His favorite athletes are
the venerable contact hitter Wade Boggs and the
slugging running back John Riggins. He spent all of
his allowance money on baseball cards in the late
1980s and early 1990s that are now worth nothing. In
his early thirties, he was a standout utility player
on Arlington, Virginia's powerhouse co-ed softball
squad The Pubfish, providing him with all the insight
he would ever need to know about the panacea of
professional athletics. He often holds
less-than-popular opinions about sports' greatest
controversies, but never takes them too seriously.
