bestof Page 2 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
An NFL Safety's Zen Quest For The Perfect Hit
Excerpted from The Library of America's unflinching anthology, Football: Great Writing About the National Sport, edited by our old pal John Schulian . Reprinted here with permission of the author's son, Mark Kram Jr. ...
The Fall Of Kevin Mackey, The NCAA Tournament's Junkie Cinderella
Originally published in the December 1992 edition of GQ. Reprinted with the author's permission. Annotations from the author (as told to Alex Belth) appear throughout the story....
The Unnatural Shooting Of A Baseball Player By A Silly Teenage Honey
Excerpted from Eddie and the Gun Girl, a Kindle Single about the shooting of Eddie Waitkus, the real-life event that's best known as the fictional pivot of Bernard Malamud's The Natural. Annotations by the author appear throughout....
Magic Act: The Making Of Earvin Johnson, AIDS Saint
Originally published in the February 1993 issue of GQ. Annotations by the author appear throughout. For more, check out E. Jean Carroll's story about NBA groupies, published in 1992 as "Love in the Time of Magic."...
Why We Get Stupid And Shitfaced On New Year's Eve: A Cultural History
This article originally appeared in The New York Observer in 1993 and is anthologized in Luc's wonderful collection of essays, Kill All Your Darlings. ...
Swee'pea And The Shark: The Struggle For The Soul Of A Playground Hero
Originally published in the November 1992 issue of Esquire. Reprinted here with permission. An afterword from the author follows....
Cracking Up With Charlie Barnett, The Legendary Street Comic
Originally published in the Village Voice (date unknown). Anthologized in the author's collection of reportage, No Success Like Failure. For a sort of companion to this, check out Solotaroff's dispatch from an Andrew Dice Clay show in 1989. The author's afterword is here....
Little Big Mouth: The Unfunny Comedy Of Andrew Dice Clay
Originally published in 1990 in the Village Voice. Anthologized in the author's collection of reportage, No Success Like Failure. Solotaroff's apologetic afterword is here: ...
Audio: Waite Hoyt Telling Cool Old Babe Ruth Stories During Rain Delays
Here's an old record I picked up along the way. Thought you guys might dig it....
The Champ And The Chump: The Meaning Of Liston-Clay I
Originally published on March 7, 1964, in The New Republic. Reprinted here with the permission of the author's family....
From Louisville To The Nation Of Islam: My Ups And Downs With Ali
This story was originally published in a 1971 issue of Sport magazine. It is reprinted here with permission....
The Challenger And The Muslims
In this story, Dick Schaap writes about the newspaper article that first revealed the connection between Ali and the Black Muslim movement. Schaap's "scoop"—which ran on the front page of the Herald Tribune of January 23, 1964, three weeks after I became city editor of the paper—follows....
Risk And Romance Among NBA Groupies: An Embed's Report
Originally published in the April 1992 issue of Esquire. Reprinted here with the author's permission....
What's So Special About Chicago Sportswriting?
Over on The Stacks, we've been running excerpts all week from a fun new anthology of Chicago sportswriting, edited by Ron Rapoport, whose interview with Alex Belth is below. The book is worth a look. There's Lardner and Lincicome and Royko, and if dyspeptic smartasses aren't your thing, there's you...
Summer's End Recalls Memory Of A Faded Dream
Excerpted from From Black Sox to Three-Peats: A Century of Chicago's Best Sports Writing (University of Chicago Press), edited by Ron Rapoport and featuring stories from the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Chicago Daily News, and the Chicago Defender, among other papers. It's an excellen...
Why The Young Harry Caray Was The Best Broadcaster In Baseball
Excerpted from From Black Sox to Three-Peats: A Century of Chicago's Best Sports Writing (University of Chicago Press), edited by Ron Rapoport and featuring stories from the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Chicago Daily News, and the Chicago Defender, among other papers. It's an excellen...
Eric Nesterenko And The Examined Life: A Hockey Intellectual Reflects
Excerpted from From Black Sox to Three-Peats: A Century of Chicago's Best Sports Writing (University of Chicago Press), edited by Ron Rapoport and featuring stories from the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Chicago Daily News, and the Chicago Defender, among other papers. It's an excellen...
How A White Couple Stuck Up For Black Ballplayers In Jim Crow Florida
Excerpted from From Black Sox to Three-Peats: A Century of Chicago's Best Sports Writing (University of Chicago Press), edited by Ron Rapoport and featuring stories from the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Chicago Daily News, and the Chicago Defender, among other papers. It's an excellen...
A Conversation With Ron Rapoport
Best of Chicago: Westbrook Pegler on Babe Ruth's called shot | Wendell Smith on the White Sox in Jim Crow Florida | Bob Greene on a hockey "intellectual" | Skip Bayless on Harry Caray | John Schulian on the end of summer...
The Called Shot Heard Round The World
Excerpted from From Black Sox to Three-Peats: A Century of Chicago's Best Sports Writing (University of Chicago Press), edited by Ron Rapoport and featuring stories from the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Chicago Daily News, and the Chicago Defender, among other papers. It's an excellen...