The Best American Sports Writing 2014: An Acclaimed Anthology Curated by Born to Run Author Christopher McDougall

by Christopher McDougall

From more than 350 national, regional, and specialty publications and, increasingly, the top sports blogs, Christopher McDougall, best-selling author of Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen, hand-selected the very best sports journalism of the past year.

Genres: Sports, Nonfiction, Anthologies, Essays, Collections

416 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2014

About the author

Christopher McDougall is an American author and journalist best known for his 2009 best-selling book Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen. He has also written for Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, Outside, Men's Journal, and New York, and was a contributing editor for Men's Health.

McDougall is a 1985 graduate of Harvard University. He spent three years as a foreign correspondent for the Associated Press, covering civil wars in Rwanda and Angola.

Reviews

[Cuzzin Todd · Rating 3 out of 5]

Though I'm not what you'd call a "sports guy" (I'll watch the Bears, pay attention to March Madness when my alma mater makes the brackets and catch a bit of the Olympics every couple years) I thought I'd give The Best American Sports Writing 2014 a read. Largely because it showed up on Amazon as a Kindle Daily Deal. And I'm glad it did.

The book is a collection of a couple dozen articles culled from various magazines and blogs. While I was originally expecting that most articles would be about the "big three" sports (the NFL, NBA and MLB) there was actually a very eclectic mix of sports topics represented, including pieces on an amateur cage fighter fighter that faked his own death, what happens when surfers face off against bull sharks (hint: not good for the surfers) and competitive backgammon (yes... competitive backgammon is a thing).

I enjoyed most of the pieces and only skipped passed a couple of them. Turns out I like reading about baseball as much as I enjoy watching baseball, ie: not at all. In particular I liked some of the profiles of various sports figures included in the collection, from tennis players like Serena Williams and Li Na to less well knowns such as race car driver Dick Trickle, fishing guide "Stealhead" Joe and the best backgammon player int he world known as Felafel (Seriously. Competitive backgammon. It's real!). One piece, The Case Against High School Sports, presented an argument I hadn't considered before about whether or not sports belong in our public schools.

Overall I enjoyed The Best American Sports Writing 2014, and it was good to read about topics I normally wouldn't have, but one slight complaint I had was when taken as a whole the collection seems rather dark. There's quite a body count by the end. A couple different stories on suspected NFL players turned murderers, several suicides, mountain runners that go missing, the shooting of a gun store owner and the aforementioned surfers vs sharks among others. Not to mention the now well-covered issue of NFL players' long term brai damages caused by playing.

[Biblio Files (takingadayoff) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This year's collection of sports writing is a whopper at almost 400 pages. If you like long form writing, this one's for you. Guest editor Christopher McDougall has assembled a nice range of sports and writing styles. All the sports covered here are fairly mainstream, and only one seemed slightly out of place (a profile of a backgammon champion). It's become almost mandatory to include a few articles about the perils of football to both youth and adult players. I'm glad they're there because it would be too easy for people to try to forget about the problem. Articles about how real people are affected by concussions or dementia or other brain damage make it hard to look away.

I especially liked Amanda Ripley's piece on how one cash-strapped school district in Texas eliminated sports from the curriculum and achieved not entirely unexpected results. A few articles went on a little too long, such as an exhaustive report on college football player Manti Te'o's fake girlfriend. It was fun to revisit the Bobby Riggs/Billie Jean King match after all these years. And Nick Paumgarten's article about what happened to mountain climbers when they got on the wrong side of their sherpas in the Himalayas was completely unexpected and riveting.

Great writing in a fine collection.

[Brent Watson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Highly Recommend

Of the twenty articles in the anthology, I really liked eighteen. One of the best articles was about backgammon, if all things.

[Josh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Judging by the cover, this looks like a joyless Reader's Digest compilation. Despite my love of good sports writing I would never have read this book if my dad had not given it to me for Christmas. Now...I can't believe they have been publishing this series since 1991 and I was willfully unaware. This book was tremendous. For me there is no better genre than sportswriting that transcends sports to touch on something deeper. This book does that 23 times. Outstanding, highly skilled writing on myriad subjects that introduced me to new things (underground backgammon?) and changed my perspective on things familiar. Challenging, hilarious, heart-breaking and inspiring, this book was incredible. I can't wait for the 2015 edition.

[Holly Cline · Rating 4 out of 5]

A few 3 stars. A few 5 stars. And a lot of 4 stars.

[Dale Kulas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like past editions of Best American Sports Writing this is yet another excellently curated selection of (mostly) long form sports writing. I always like the variety featured from traditional outlets like ESPN and Sports Illustrated to feature pieces from GQ and the New Yorker. Standout selections from 2014's book to me were profile pieces on NASCAR veteran Dick Trickle and renowned fisher-guide Joseph Randolph detailing their careers and lives after their sudden suicides. Also memorable pieces were covering the last days of Don King's gamble on a prospect boxer of the once legendary promoter and a piece covering one of the most grueling foot races up a treacherous Alaskan mountain that lead to the disappearance of a runner. You can never go wrong with any edition of Best American Sports Writing, just do not fall several years behind like I am.

[Linda Edwards · Rating 4 out of 5]

Highlights incl The case against high school sports/Amanda Ripley, The Choice/Hruby, You Can Only Hope to Contain them/Amanda Hess, Last days of Stealhead Joe/Frazier, Whn 772 Pitches Isn’t Enough/Jones; also quite good: Matchmakr/Van Natta, Elegy of a race car driver/Markovich, Li Na=China's tennis rebel/Larmer, The End & Don King/Jay Kang, Manti Te’o’s dead girlfriend/Burke & Dickey, Art of Speed/McGrath, Manic Mtn/Paumgarten, Raider=QB Crusher=Mrdrer?/Dobie, Serena the Great/Rodrick, The Gangster>Huddle/Solotaroff & Borges

[Katlyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

i definitely enjoyed the 2020 collection more. i’ve been tracking stats, and i’ll have more to say about that later. for now, only one (1) of these authors is not white, and 80% (20/25) are by men. also i have many things to say about the awful aaron hernandez profile when i have time.

[Brad Hodges · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's a certain style of writing particular to sports writing, a kind of press box journalism that stems from its origins in newspaper writing. Of course, newspapers are dying, but that tradition seems to have been carried out to other venues. Who else but a sportswriter could write a sentence like: "Don King no longer sits on boxing's throne, but he has nostalgia by the balls."

That's Jay Caspian King, in his piece on the declining years of boxing promoter Don King, "The End and Don King," one of the stronger pieces in The Best American Sports Writing 2014, edited by Christopher McDougall. There are a lot of great articles here, but as with last year's volume, these are all features--there's no pieces on actual on-the-field activities. I think that's a shame, but probably inevitable. It used to be you had to wait to until the morning paper to find out what happened in a game, now you can get it almost instantly on your phone.

There are also more than a few pieces that are about sports only in a tangential way. For example, Timothy Burke and Jack Dickey's piece on Manti Te'o's fake dead girlfriend, which is a great article but only about sports in that Te'o was a linebacker, when he just as well may have been a singer or a comedian. Also, there's a piece on a college football coach's false arrest on child pornography, or former Oakland Raider Anthony Jones' criminal endeavors--again, connected to sports only coincidentally.

The volume also challenges us on on what constitutes a sport. There's a fascinating article by Raffi Khatchadourian, "The Chaos of the Dice," about a backgammon champion. I think some of us would be hard-pressed to consider chess a sport, but backgammon? It's a fun article, though, as the number-one ranked player is a Runyonesque character called Falafel. "To the nongambler, the interior of an Atlantic City casino is in no way a place of obvious joy. For Falafel, who wanted to dabble in a few quick hands while he waited for The Bone, the atmosphere was energizing."

The only article about baseball is by Chris Jones, "When 772 Pitches Isn't Enough," which deals with the fundamental difference between the treatment of young arms in Japan and the U.S. In Japan, high school kids can throw their arms off, throwing close to a thousand pitches in a week-long tournament. It ties into the relative non-success of Japanese pitchers in the U.S., and if I were a GM, I wouldn't take the bait after reading this. It's especially poignant after Jon Smoltz's Hall of Fame speech, when he warned against the over-use of a young arm.

The pieces are arranged thematically, so we get two surfing stories in a row--Bucky McMahon's "Heart of Sharkness," about a nasty spree of shark attacks on surfers off of Reunion Island, and Alice Gregory's "Mavericks," about a spot south of San Francisco that can produce sixty-foot waves, and has killed more than a few of the best surfers in the world.

There are also some elegies on suicide victims--Jeremey Markovich's "Elegy of a Race Car Driver," about Dick Trickle, and Ian Frazier's "The Last Days of Stealhead Joe." Anything Frazier writes is worth reading, but this article about a fishing guide who took his own life is especially great. "Casting for steelhead is like calling God on the telephone and it rings and rings and rings hundreds of rings, a thousand rings, and you listen to each ring as if an answer might come at any moment, but no answer comes, and then on 1,001st ring, or the 1,047th ring, God loses his patience and picks up the phone and yells, 'WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU CALLING ME FOR?' in a voice the size of a canyon. You would fall to your knees if you weren't chest-deep in water and afraid that the rocketing leaping creature you have somehow tied into will get away."

There are three stories about tennis. Don Van Natta Jr.'s "The Match Maker" is about the legendary "Battle of the Sexes" in 1973, when Billie Jean King beat Bobby Riggs. I'm old enough to have saw that match, and the accompanying spectacle, live. I didn't know then, but a lot of people wondered, whether Riggs through the match. The article is inconclusive but intriguing. There are also two profiles of great women tennis players. One is on Li Na, from China, and another on Serena Williams, by Stephen Rodrick. "Who is most dominant figure in sports today? LeBron James? Michael Phelps? Please. Get that weak sauce of here. It is Serena Williams. She runs women's tennis like Kim-Jong Un runs North Korea: ruthlessly, with spare moments of comedy, indolence, and the occasional appearance of a split personality." William's recent string of victories in majors, since this article was published, only confirms Rodrick's argument.

Finally, I have to mention an amusing but factual article by Amanda Hess, "You Can Only Hope to Contain Them." What are "them?" Why, women's breasts, of course. She writes about whether large breasts may be an encumbrance on women's athletic endeavors--certainly they are for gymnasts, who starve themselves as teens to delay their growth. I'll let fighter Ronda Rousey have the last word: "You don't see big titties in the Olympics, and there's a reason."

[Jordan Byrd · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. I generally love all BASW, but this one was exceptional. Both the individual writing and the perfectly ordered curation by McDougall, were impeccable. Probably my second favorite one after 93'.

[June Hiza]

Dr. Siri in Laos

[Dachokie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Little Something for Everyone …

This book was reviewed as part of Amazon's Vine program which included a free advance copy of the book.

For those looking for more than sports headlines or over-analysis of the latest sports’ scandal, THE BEST AMERICAN SPORTS WRITING 2014 should fit the bill. A selective conglomeration of eclectic stories from writers contributing to the likes of ESPN: The Magazine, Deadspin, New Yorker, Rolling Stone and GQ that should be of interest to those seeking more than the standard media-driven sports fodder being recycled day-in and day-out.

The book offers 24 stories (presented as chapters) that cover a myriad of diverse sports-related topics. I found most of the entries enjoyable to read, mostly because they were relatively short, concise and covered more obscure topics. Following the first entry (an in-depth look at accused murderer and former New England Patriot, Aaron Hernandez), I was expecting more of the same: a book centering on the “Big 3” (NFL, MLB and NBA). But, aside from a few storylines focusing on familiar topics/individuals, the majority of the book taps on issues, people and sports I never really thought much about. The wide variety of topics is what makes this book a worthwhile read: the handicapped NCAA wrestling champion, the bum MMA fighter who faked his own death and a look the dangers of bull sharks, etc.

I would have enjoyed the book even more had there been photographs to support some of the stories (I found myself Googling after reading most articles to put faces to names). But, overall, a nice collection of fascinating, quick-paced and diverse sports reads … I’m hooked. Will definitely seek future annual releases of this book.

[Christi · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a terrific anthology. I love reading the long form feature pieces at the back of Sports Illustrated and this book is like having a year's worth of such articles in one place.

Even when the story is about something I don't have much interest in or knowledge about such as race car driving, backgammon or surfing.

It did take me all year to read this book. I just read an essay here or there when I was between books. It was one of the first books I bought for my Kindle! I will definitely pick up the 2015 version.

This counts as a book you started by never finished for the 2015 PopSugar Reading Challenge.
49/52

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

A much stronger volume than the John Jeremiah Sullivan-edited Essays. Suggests a greater variety in fine sports writing this year than in the literary version of the essay. There's Amanda Ripley's excellent proposal to ban high school sports, profiles from Rolling Stone and Deadspin of our criminal sports culture, Nick Paumgarten's superb treatment of the tension between commercial and professional climbing on Everest, Eli Saslow's hortatory on the University's cowardice at Mankato State -- etc. What Tom Wolfe wrought turns out to be something everyone can learn from, which makes sport a fertile space in which to write about culture.

[Jesus Hills · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best and most inspirational gifts I have ever received. Pretty good motivation to start writing again. This collection of stories was quite interesting. I was interested in sports that I had never before had much interest in. I enjoyed every story, every bit of human-interest, humanizing story in this book. A must read for people who like sports, like writing, or like sports-writing. Then again, you can always look at the table of contents then find all these stories individually online.

[Silea · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stories range from dull to very good, though i remain confused how stories about Formula 1 and Swiss mountaineers made it into this book while there was nary a mention of the World Cup. Further, nearly every story was about an athlete or coach dealing with an off-the-field crisis, rather than sports.

[Anica Wong · Rating 5 out of 5]

Always a solid choice if you want to read really compelling long-form sports pieces. I like the variety of the stories but would like to see more variety in the outlets that they are originally produced at.

[Debbie Smyth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good selection, very entertaining with coverage of a variety of sports with a little crime mixed in. That list of notable selections was very intriguing - maybe this should be a two volume collection.

[Jennie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first book I've read in this series. Every imaginable sport is covered, and all the articles, even the ones on sports I don't follow, were fun and informative to read. I'll be reading future books in the series.

[Blair · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed most of the stories

The best stories came at the end of the book, particularly the mountaineering stories. Helped to expand my grasp of modern sports writing, and I think I will buy next year's edition.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although I generally don't follow or read about sports, I always enjoy the articles compiled in this annual series. I appreciate all the work that goes into it to point out the best reads to me. After every piece I'm left fascinated, educated, and/or entertained.

[Jarrett · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.80

[Jeffry · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this collection a lot...the editor did a great job selecting a wide variety of topics and I was not bored by any of the essays.

[Bill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Every bit as good as previous years' editions. Highlights include Charles Pierce on the marathon bombing, and Deadspin on Aaron Hernandez

[Ralph · Rating 3 out of 5]

Murderers and other criminals, suicides, bull sharks. The editor of these essays by and large didn't pick uplifting or encouraging subjects. On the whole, a pretty unlikable lot.

[Kelly O'Mara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good sports writing is so good. And fun.

[Anne Connor · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great read if you like sports -- this collection covers everything from backgammon to the evolution of the sports bra to the Boston Marathon, with lots of interesting stops in between.

[Allen Gilbert · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great anthology

You may have read some of these pieces before, but they are worth a second read. You will come across something about sports that your is not know before.

[Gregory Wilkin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wrote a review for The New York Journal of Books. www.nyjournalofbooks.com/book-review/best-american-sports-writing-2014

[Linda Chavers · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is less a review and more of a personal statement. I'm officially a sports journalism junkie.