sportswriting Page 2 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
A Christmas Tradition
Terry Lyons gives us a little Shelby Strother:...
Trying To Be The Best
"Bill Heinz is a walking contradiction of the stereotype of the phlegmatic Teuton. He is emotional and demonstrative. He can sink into depressions so deep they would give a sandhog the bends. His highs are several stories high. As cityside reporter, war correspondent, sports columnist, freelance jou...
Angell Gets the J.G. Taylor Spink Award
David Remnick approves. ...
All Together Now
Is sports writing dead? Sure, just like rock n roll and rap and every other thing worth caring about. Check out this collection of sports writing is dead articles through the years. ...
Dr. Z
There's a really nice video on Paul Zimmerman by NFL Films. Worth your time. ...
All The Right Moves--And A Few Wrong Ones--With Pat Jordan
In 1996, Pat Jordan wrote a story on Joe Torre for the New York Times magazine. It wasn't a long profile or a particularly memorable one. By Pat's own admission, it is a minor piece. The story did not make the cut for a collection of Pat's sports writing that I edited; in fact, it didn't make the B-...
At His Peak Jimmy Cannon Was Great
Okay, maybe his stuff hasn't aged well, maybe he's been imitated too often, maybe he became a parody of himself, his later work overshadowing the former excellence. Whatever the case, Jimmy Cannon's reputation has faded. We rightly praise Red Smith and W.C. Heinz and John Lardner but not Cannon. Th...
How <em>The Best American Sportswriting</em> Happens
A lot of people want to buy me a drink....
J.R. Moehringer Talks About The Best American Sportswriting 2013
The guest editor for The Best American Sports Writing 2013 is the acclaimed journalist J.R. Moehringer. He's written a wonderful memoir, was co-author of a classic sports biography, and this year he published his first novel. I recently caught up with J.R. who was kind enough to spend a few moments ...
Zinsser Remembers The New York Herald Tribune
Dig this most excellent essay on the old New York Herald Tribune by William Zinsser (who wrote a helpful book about writing):...
Jeff Pearlman Interviews Tyler Kepner
Tyler Kepner, the talented lead baseball columnist at the New York Times is interviewed by Jeff Pearlman....
Bud Shrake In The Land Of The Permanent Wave
Bryan Curtis wrote a nice story about Dan Jenkins, Edwin "Bud" Shrake, and their alma mater for Texas Monthly in 2008:...
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...
Yeah, But How Does it Read?
Few years ago, Franz Lidz wrote a piece on former SI managing editor Gil Rogin for the New York Observer. ...
Legends Of The Fall
Fight fans as well as movie fans will enjoy this—George Kimball’s wonderful piece about Budd Schulberg’s memorial service back in the fall of 2009....
You Don't See A Fella Sliding Into Second Base And Breaking His Cigar
Before he became famous a broadcaster, Myron Cope was a terrific writer. Do yourself a favor and track down his compilation Broken Cigars. The title was taken from a conversation Cope once had over beers with Alex Hawkins, a journeyman football player who complained that baseball was losing its popu...
Heaven Ain't What It Used to Be: Dick Young Goes To Hell
New York sportswriting legend Dick Young was a lot of different things. Among them, for reasons laid out in this classic Ross Wetzsteon profile, he was a man one could easily imagine having a great time filing his column from the depths of Hell. Warren Leight and Charlie Rubin ran with the conceit i...
Dick Young's America ... The Reactionary Who Changed Sportswriting ...
Originally published in the Aug. 1, 1985, issue of Sport magazine. Reprinted here with permission of the author's widow, Laura Ross....
A Gentle Giant
Jack McCallum is a terrific reporter and writer. He was with SI for many years and still does the occasional piece for them. He is also an author and runs a blog. The blog has lots of fun posts. This one, a tribute to the late Robert Creamer, is tender:...
Bet a Million
I once had dinner with Vic Ziegel and asked him to name the most literate sports writer. And he laughed at me, laughed at the idea that someone working on deadline would stop to consider what they were doing literate. ...