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: ...
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....
The Better Man: How Sugar Ray Leonard Handled Fear And Marvin Hagler
Originally published in the May 17, 1987, edition of The Washington Post Magazine. Republished here with the author's permission. His postscript follows. For more on Hagler-Leonard, check out Grantland's oral history....
Great Men Die Twice: Muhammad Ali In Decline
Originally published in the June 1989 issue of Esquire. Republished here with the permission of the late author's son, Mark Kram Jr., a wonderful storyteller in his own right. His postscript follows. For a contemporary, but very different, glimpse of Ali, check out Davis Miller's story about his day...
<em>Playboy</em>'s Candid Conversation With The Superswinger QB, Joe Namath
This interview, from 1969, is part of The Playboy Interview: Sports Gods, an ebook anthology that also includes conversations with Michael Jordan, Muhammad Ali, Bill Jean King, Barry Bonds, and more. Buy it today at Amazon....
Butkus: One Season And One Injury With The Meanest Man Alive
This article originally appeared in the October 1971 issue of Playboy. To read every article the magazine has ever published—from 1953 until today—visit the complete archive at iplayboy.com. For more Playboy, check out PlayboySFW.kinja.com....
The Best Recipes And Tips You've Sent In So Far, Scum
This Labor Day weekend, as you well know and have indicated on all of your calendars, both paper and e-, marks the first anniversary of Foodspin—and, while this is not the precise reason why many of you will receive an extra day off from work tomorrow, it is the reason why you have clung to life lon...
Frank Sinatra Jr. Is Worth Six Buddy Grecos
Originally published in the January 1994 issue of GQ. Reprinted here with the author's permission. His postscript follows....
The Most Hated Winner In Football: Al Davis In 1969
Originally published in the Nov. 18, 1969, issue of Look magazine. Image by Sam Woolley....
The Hit King: Pete Rose In Purgatory
Originally published in the July 1997 issue of GQ. Reprinted here with permission of the author, whose annotations (as told to Alex Belth) appear throughout the story. Illustration by Sam Woolley....