Books: Man on the Sidelines

A FAN'S NOTES by Frederick Exley. 385 pages. Harper & Row. $6.95.

Long ago, on Sunday afternoons, before TV antennas took root on America's rooftops, before Y. A. Tittle or Bart Starr or Jimmy Brown could create their instant mythology for the eyes of millions, a man often communed with his family or made a pilgrimage to nature to find solace for his workaday existence. Sometimes he went to a saloon or a ballpark. But now, each autumn Sunday, he turns to the TV set, and enjoys the drunken exhilaration of victories by Chargers, or Giants, or Packers. It is there, says...

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