How did you get started at The Black Table, and when did you realize, between that site and Deadspin, that you had built a career in online journalism?

We got started at The Black Table — me and three very good friends of mine — when we were all working as journalists and were all very frustrated because we were working at trade publications in the financial industry, which were the only real jobs for journalists at the time. We were frustrated because it’s very hard to climb those chains, and we weren’t really excited about what we were doing. We wondered if it was ever going to work for us with our, “Hey, let’s go to New York and be writers’” thing; so we said, “Screw it, let’s do it on our own terms.” We started The Black Table, and originally it was supposed to be a site for stories that were killed from magazines, because that had happened to us, but it quickly developed its own voice. It also developed a readership, which was kind of surprising to us. Certainly after a while we were putting more effort into The Black Table than we were into our jobs. We were very serious about it. We met every week and planned out the stories for the next couple weeks, and who would write them. We never ran any ads, we didn’t pay our writers, but it became good exposure for a lot of people. Because of that, we kind of developed a reputation as having a unique voice. It’s funny now that of the four of us, one is at Philadelphia magazine, one is at New York magazine, one’s at Esquire… and I’m a blogger. Three out of four ain’t bad, I suppose. I write for some print publications too, now, and I’ve been writing the same thing pretty much non-stop for the last 20 years, and I was kind of waiting for everyone to come around to me. I never wanted to change the way I did things because so-and-so newspaper or so-and-so magazine wasn’t ready for it. I just did my thing, and I think the reading patterns of people who consume news and writing have changed enough to where they’ve come around to me and the way I’m doing things. It’s fun, and I can’t believe I get away with it. I’m really just doing the same thing I was doing six or seven years ago, and now people are actually reading. I was willing to wait people out. If no one had come around, I would be 55 years old and still doing this and saying, “Any minute my break is going to happen!”

You state rather emphatically in your book that “sports don’t matter.” Do you really believe that as an absolute statement, and why?

In a general way, that’s the enjoyment of sports. They don’t matter to our everyday lives. They’re entertainment. The great thing about sports is you can pop in, enjoy it, and go back into the world, because the world of sports has nothing to do with your own life. I think that’s where you see a disconnect with people who work in sports professionally, whether they’re a coach, a player, media member or league executive — I sometimes think they don’t understand that the average person doesn’t consider sports this big morality play. It’s really just something they do to get away from their lives, and not have to worry about paying bills, taking care of their family, paying the mortgage, and so on. That’s what I mean by “sports don’t matter”: sports matter in our own lives, in our own context, but they don’t really matter. One of my favorite teams was the 2005 University of Illinois basketball team that almost went undefeated and lost to North Carolina in the National Championship game. I was absolutely devastated that they lost that game… until the next day, when I went to a cool movie. I’ll always be sad that they didn’t win the title, but I was able to let go of it, because fans are better at keeping things in perspective than they’re given credit for. Obviously sports matter to us in the context of us watching them, but we’re able to step away and move along with our lives. When you work in sports, they seem more important than they actually are.

Your proudest burden as a sports fan is as an Arizona Cardinals fan. Yet of the New England Patriots — my New England Patriots, in the interest of full disclosure — you write, “Proof that, no matter how beleaguered and inept your franchise, if you start winning on a consistent basis, you will turn into an insufferable asshole.” Do you think, to some degree, all sports fans are the same?

Yeah, I do. I think all devoted sports fans are the same. Certainly the people who all of a sudden started rooting for the Patriots who didn’t care about them before don’t fall into that category. It will be amusing to me to see if the Arizona Cardinals do ever become some sort of juggernaut — and that’s kind of a hilarious thought — it will be fun to see a bunch of Arizona Cardinals fans pop up. There is an element of truth to that, and I think it’s a metaphor for life, a little bit. If you struggle for a very long time, and all of a sudden you have a lot of success, you have to check yourself and remember that you used to lose all the time. Obviously, there are geographical differences. I think your average Dodgers fan is more relaxed than your average Phillies fan. I’ve found a few people who sort of had sympathy for Patriots fans after the loss, because this amazing ride they just had may have come to an end. It’s helped them actually appreciate it a little bit more, rather than feeling like, “Wow, we’re so much better than everyone else.” Sports isn’t about winning all the time. That’s why people hate Yankees fans, even though they don’t win anymore. How ironic! [Laughs] It’s all a matter of remembering that in sports, most of the time you don’t win everything, and most of the time it is humbling. Sometimes when your team or your city wins too often, that can get lost a little bit. It’s a leveling effect.

Deadspin’s motto is “Sports Without Access, Favor or Discretion,” but you went to the Super Bowl for the Times and you wrote about some of it for Deadspin. Do you see Deadspin’s role changing as it grows in stature?

I don’t think so. I’m pretty much doing the site the exact same way I was doing it when I started: I’ll wake up, type on the computer, make a few phone calls. It’s just that the world outside my apartment has changed. The nice thing about writing for the Times, New York and other places is that they actually want me to do what I do. There’s never been a time where they’re like, “Hey, Will, Deadspin’s a little bit too loose — try to straighten it up a bit.” They know what they’re getting when they ask me to write for them. I went to the Super Bowl, but I did not go to the game, and I used my press pass only once, to go to Media Day. I was there for 45 minutes and have no desire to do that for the rest of my life. Being at the Super Bowl was a completely miserable experience until the actual game. You’re at the center of this corporate sports-industrial complex, where the Super Bowl is really just an accountants’ conference, only everyone works in sports. Everyone’s making deals, everyone’s slapping each other on the back, like, “Let’s go to a strip club and talk about business.” It’s the exact opposite of how I think people should interact with sports and how I personally love sports. I don’t know whether Deadspin will ever be “mainstream” or not, and I don’t worry about that too much. I just try and make an enjoyable site and keep those checks on myself. If it ever gets to the point where that’s become a danger, I’ll be a lot more upset about it that anyone else will.

Did Jeff Weaver (a notoriously bad pitcher who has been bombed off many teams, including the Yankees—Ed.) really win the last game of the 2006 World Series for your beloved St. Louis Cardinals?

Yeah! And he was awesome. He struck out 10 guys in that game. It wasn’t like he got a double play here or there and caught a break: he was dominant. My favorite part is watching the video of the World Series championship from that year, they have interviews with everyone: there’s Chris Carpenter, who looks very stoic and adult; Jim Edmunds, who’s having fun; Scott Rolen, his lockjawed Midwestern self. They go to Weaver, who looks like the guy who hangs out at the bar in the casino all night. He’s got a cigar, he’s looking all shifty, and he looks right into the camera and says, “Cardinals ruled this year.” He’s a total dirtbag. It’s awesome. It’s absolutely awesome.

Will Leitch wraps up his book tour for God Save the Fan with a reading at 7 p.m. in Brooklyn at BookCourt, 163 Court Street.