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The Best American Sports Writing 2016: The Annual Anthology United by Effort―The Year's Finest Sports Journalism
For more than twenty-five years, The Best American Sports Writing has curated the year’s finest sports journalism. Continuing the tradition in a long line of notable guest editors is Rick Telander, acclaimed journalist, author, and champion of the written word . His choices are defined by one shared effort, on the part of athletes and writers alike. The physical strength it takes to play professional hockey and football, or for a forty-two-year-old writer to learn how to dunk in six months. The mental and emotional toughness needed to turn around a losing team, or to speak out about a coach. The careful striving to make everything seem effortless. This edition encompasses it all.
The Best American Sports Writing 2016 includes Don Van Natta Jr. and Seth Wickersham, L. Jon Wertheim and Ken Rodriguez, Mark Fainaru-Wada and Steve Fainaru, Brett Popplewell, Alexandra Starr, Wright Thompson and others
RICK TELANDER is a Chicago Sun-Times senior sports columnist and the Basketball Evangelist for Slam magazine. He has also written for Sports Illustrated and The Magazine, and has been featured seven times in The Best American Sports Writing. He is the author of eight books, including Heaven Is a Playground and From Red Ink to Roses.
GLENN STOUT, series editor of The Best American Sports Writing since its inception, is the author of Young Woman and the Sea and Fenway 1912 .
The Best American Sports Writing 2016 includes Don Van Natta Jr. and Seth Wickersham, L. Jon Wertheim and Ken Rodriguez, Mark Fainaru-Wada and Steve Fainaru, Brett Popplewell, Alexandra Starr, Wright Thompson and others
RICK TELANDER is a Chicago Sun-Times senior sports columnist and the Basketball Evangelist for Slam magazine. He has also written for Sports Illustrated and The Magazine, and has been featured seven times in The Best American Sports Writing. He is the author of eight books, including Heaven Is a Playground and From Red Ink to Roses.
GLENN STOUT, series editor of The Best American Sports Writing since its inception, is the author of Young Woman and the Sea and Fenway 1912 .
- GenresSportsNonfictionEssays
416 pages, Paperback
Published October 4, 2016
25 people are currently reading
69 people want to read
About the author
Rick Telander
27 books18 followers Happy to be an author. Happier to have readers! Let me know if you'd like me to talk about anything from my books. I think I remember most of them. (joke)
I went to Richwoods High School in Peoria, got a football scholarship to Northwestern University, and started writing for money (mere pittance) after graduation in 1971.
If you need to know more, let me know. I can go on and on. PS-- I once scored 108 points in a men's league game in Bridgeport, Chicago. Six-foot and under league (I'm, a little over 6-1), four-on-four, gym (McGuane Park) so tiny you had to put your foot against the wall to take the ball out. Henry's Bait Shop (us) vs. Seemo's Schnozzles (all short and mostly drunk). Scorer ran out of room in book. FYI.
I went to Richwoods High School in Peoria, got a football scholarship to Northwestern University, and started writing for money (mere pittance) after graduation in 1971.
If you need to know more, let me know. I can go on and on. PS-- I once scored 108 points in a men's league game in Bridgeport, Chicago. Six-foot and under league (I'm, a little over 6-1), four-on-four, gym (McGuane Park) so tiny you had to put your foot against the wall to take the ball out. Henry's Bait Shop (us) vs. Seemo's Schnozzles (all short and mostly drunk). Scorer ran out of room in book. FYI.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
October 28, 2017
In terms of the number of strong articles this years collection of stories is pretty weak. It is almost as if the editors decided to cover as many eclectic sports and stories as they could. In doing so they naturally have more articles that miss with more readers than if they played it down the middle. That said, the articles that worked did so in such a superior way that I still give this collection three stars.
Still, there are some well worth reading and a couple that were simply dumbfounding in the information presented.
Matt Calkins wrote from The Seattle Times about how a small phrase uttered by Marshawn Lynch " I'm all about that action, boss " inspired him to change his life and lose well over one hundred pounds. The article titled " Its Only a Few Words But It's Motivation From Lynch " is interesting with another Lynch quote at the end to reward the writer.
In SI Chris Ballard writes " Revenge of the Nerds " about the Caltech basketball program. Very strong article about a nerd school that makes NO accommodations on test scores for potential athletes. Try that Harvard.
From ESPN magazine Eli Saslow writes " Why Him, Why Me " a very moving article about a young man who executes a simple normal hit on a punt return and has his life change. The boy he blocked in his high school football game ends up dying. A freak accident. Something that occurs numerous times each year. We know how terrible this is for the loved ones of those who die. It's unimaginable. This article shows how it will change the life of the person who was not injured on the play. In this story we meet a high school player as well as a man who has been living for a long time with his own hit delivered years ago.
If Eric Moskovitz of The Boston Globe did not win an award for his story " Her Decision, Their Life " about a victim of the Boston bombing named Jessica Kensky then, simply put, the system did not work. Dealing with the aftermath, she has lost one leg and is valiantly trying to save the other, the decision to be made, the emotional and physical pain. It is moving and makes one long for an update.
" Learn to Dunk " from an SI article by Michael McKnight is a great article. At six foot one, in his early forties, he loves basketball. He decides that he wants to understand the feeling of dunking a basketball. The story follows him on a six month journey, a grueling training schedule that took him ( guiltily) away from other things and people that he KNEW were more important. Still, for any of us, who have wondered what it would be like to lift that much, run that fast, or, yes, dunk that ball, this article is grand.
William Browning from SB Nation Longform writes " A Long Walks End ", another article that was fantastic. What would you do if you embezzled millions of dollars. White sand beaches, warm waters? Or would you start spending eight months a year walking The Appalachian Trail. The story of " Bismarck " and how, improbably, he lived just such a life and was, just as improbably caught.
More on the subject of football and the dangers of playing it was ESPN magazine's " The Most Dangerous Man in Football. " Who is it ? Why it's Chris Borland, who having just completed a very successful rookie season for the 49ers announced his retirement from football. Was he injured ? Not really. He retired out of fear of the obvious long term impact of playing football. Worse yet for the NFL, he is not going quietly. He is an extremely intelligent, erudite, young man who has strong reservations about a game he loves that he fears cannot be saved.
From The New York Times Dan Barry writes a heartbreaking, absolutely, brutal article titled " Meet Mago, Former Heavyweight." Mago is Magomed Abdusalemov, once known as the Russian Mike Tyson. When we meet him he is bedridden in a small Greenwich apartment being cared for by his diminutive, constantly optimistic wife. A small woman she must turn her still large husband three times a day to prevent the large, gaping, bedsore, an open wound above his tailbone from getting worse and infected again. This story, the result, of a boxing match gone wrong, should give pause to anyone before they pay for their next pay per view. I say should, but probably won't. For a person such as myself whose memory goes back to Ray Mancini and Du Ku Kim (SIC?) this was a reminder of how dangerous boxing is and will remain.
More violence in sport. Brett Popplewell writes " Stopping the Fight " from Sportsnet about Kevin Westgarth. Westgarth, is one of the last enforcers in the NHL. Well, was is the better word. In this article the author follows him as he plays hockey in Ireland a s decides on his future. A Princeton graduate, who had planned to be a surgeon, the story of he became a fighter, an enforcer in the NHL is very interesting. As he decides what he will do next in his life he realizes he has options most of the now discarded enforcers might not have. He also does not apologize for his former role. He considers it an honorable job, a part of the game that was necessary if little understood. No matter how you come down on that opinion Westgarth is a very interesting person
From SI Michael Rosenberg writes " A Woman Fell From the Stadium. " what do you think about when you hear these stories. Drunk, Foolish, crazy, yes that might be the case. Do you consider the personal tragedy. In this excellent story we meet a man that tried to catch a falling woman in just such a situation, and watch how this interaction affects both his life and the young woman whose life he saves.
In an absolutely standout article ESPN 's Wright Thompson gives us " The Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived On. " Remember when Ted Williams died? Those crazy kids of his put his head on ice so he could be reborn one hundred years from now. Remember the jokes, the ridicule? I sure do, I thought it was terrible how such a great player and American hero fighter pilot could be made into an object of ridicule after his death. Well, now comes Mr. Thompson to introduce us to Ted's daughter Claudia Williams, his last living child, she who convinced Ted to allow the freezing. When you finish this article you will likely have a different opinion of both her and her often ridiculed, now dead of leukemia John Henry Williams. You might also have a better understanding of the terrible demons that lived inside the " greatest hitter who ever lived."
Without a doubt, however, the keeper is Don Van Natta and Seth Wickersham's " The Patriot Way " from ESPN magazine. Beginning as an article exploring Tom Brady's deflategate the article becomes an indictment of the complete tenure of Bill Belicheck, Roger Kraft, and to some extent Roger Goodell. I live in Patriot fandom. I am not a fan of the Patriots. For a long time I have found it impossible to cheer for The coach and his tactics. Watch any game. Some play will occur, if for no other reason, to make sure everybody knows old Bill is the smartest person in the room. Brady is petulant and Robert Kraft is a great friend of Donald Trump. Ugh!! But, while that is all true, this article takes us back to Spygate, the Patriots illegal taping of other teams. Their false answers under questioning, their stories which made no sense, and Roger Goodell's inexplicable handling of that case. Then, when Deflategate happens, we see Kraft somehow think he will get away with it again. Everything about this team is polarizing. Brady is a great quarterback. He might well be the GOAT. But, wouldn't it be nice to know that he had accomplished so much of his greatness without cheating of one kind of another. It would, but we will never know.
From The Sun, Henley O'Brien writes of her experience as a member of her college crew team. She loves the sport but her four years are tortured by her head coach. Old school he is, yelling, intimidating, insulting, manipulating. What he does would seem hardly acceptable. Of course, he would point to the results of his teams, their national level success. He and many others would call it " Getting the most out of his athletes." The writer ends up not so sure of that and neither am I.
There are many articles I did not comment on. Rock Climbing, Bicycling, NCAA corruption, Snooker, and Fishing amongst them. Not my thing but might be yours. These sets are always worth a read
Still, there are some well worth reading and a couple that were simply dumbfounding in the information presented.
Matt Calkins wrote from The Seattle Times about how a small phrase uttered by Marshawn Lynch " I'm all about that action, boss " inspired him to change his life and lose well over one hundred pounds. The article titled " Its Only a Few Words But It's Motivation From Lynch " is interesting with another Lynch quote at the end to reward the writer.
In SI Chris Ballard writes " Revenge of the Nerds " about the Caltech basketball program. Very strong article about a nerd school that makes NO accommodations on test scores for potential athletes. Try that Harvard.
From ESPN magazine Eli Saslow writes " Why Him, Why Me " a very moving article about a young man who executes a simple normal hit on a punt return and has his life change. The boy he blocked in his high school football game ends up dying. A freak accident. Something that occurs numerous times each year. We know how terrible this is for the loved ones of those who die. It's unimaginable. This article shows how it will change the life of the person who was not injured on the play. In this story we meet a high school player as well as a man who has been living for a long time with his own hit delivered years ago.
If Eric Moskovitz of The Boston Globe did not win an award for his story " Her Decision, Their Life " about a victim of the Boston bombing named Jessica Kensky then, simply put, the system did not work. Dealing with the aftermath, she has lost one leg and is valiantly trying to save the other, the decision to be made, the emotional and physical pain. It is moving and makes one long for an update.
" Learn to Dunk " from an SI article by Michael McKnight is a great article. At six foot one, in his early forties, he loves basketball. He decides that he wants to understand the feeling of dunking a basketball. The story follows him on a six month journey, a grueling training schedule that took him ( guiltily) away from other things and people that he KNEW were more important. Still, for any of us, who have wondered what it would be like to lift that much, run that fast, or, yes, dunk that ball, this article is grand.
William Browning from SB Nation Longform writes " A Long Walks End ", another article that was fantastic. What would you do if you embezzled millions of dollars. White sand beaches, warm waters? Or would you start spending eight months a year walking The Appalachian Trail. The story of " Bismarck " and how, improbably, he lived just such a life and was, just as improbably caught.
More on the subject of football and the dangers of playing it was ESPN magazine's " The Most Dangerous Man in Football. " Who is it ? Why it's Chris Borland, who having just completed a very successful rookie season for the 49ers announced his retirement from football. Was he injured ? Not really. He retired out of fear of the obvious long term impact of playing football. Worse yet for the NFL, he is not going quietly. He is an extremely intelligent, erudite, young man who has strong reservations about a game he loves that he fears cannot be saved.
From The New York Times Dan Barry writes a heartbreaking, absolutely, brutal article titled " Meet Mago, Former Heavyweight." Mago is Magomed Abdusalemov, once known as the Russian Mike Tyson. When we meet him he is bedridden in a small Greenwich apartment being cared for by his diminutive, constantly optimistic wife. A small woman she must turn her still large husband three times a day to prevent the large, gaping, bedsore, an open wound above his tailbone from getting worse and infected again. This story, the result, of a boxing match gone wrong, should give pause to anyone before they pay for their next pay per view. I say should, but probably won't. For a person such as myself whose memory goes back to Ray Mancini and Du Ku Kim (SIC?) this was a reminder of how dangerous boxing is and will remain.
More violence in sport. Brett Popplewell writes " Stopping the Fight " from Sportsnet about Kevin Westgarth. Westgarth, is one of the last enforcers in the NHL. Well, was is the better word. In this article the author follows him as he plays hockey in Ireland a s decides on his future. A Princeton graduate, who had planned to be a surgeon, the story of he became a fighter, an enforcer in the NHL is very interesting. As he decides what he will do next in his life he realizes he has options most of the now discarded enforcers might not have. He also does not apologize for his former role. He considers it an honorable job, a part of the game that was necessary if little understood. No matter how you come down on that opinion Westgarth is a very interesting person
From SI Michael Rosenberg writes " A Woman Fell From the Stadium. " what do you think about when you hear these stories. Drunk, Foolish, crazy, yes that might be the case. Do you consider the personal tragedy. In this excellent story we meet a man that tried to catch a falling woman in just such a situation, and watch how this interaction affects both his life and the young woman whose life he saves.
In an absolutely standout article ESPN 's Wright Thompson gives us " The Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived On. " Remember when Ted Williams died? Those crazy kids of his put his head on ice so he could be reborn one hundred years from now. Remember the jokes, the ridicule? I sure do, I thought it was terrible how such a great player and American hero fighter pilot could be made into an object of ridicule after his death. Well, now comes Mr. Thompson to introduce us to Ted's daughter Claudia Williams, his last living child, she who convinced Ted to allow the freezing. When you finish this article you will likely have a different opinion of both her and her often ridiculed, now dead of leukemia John Henry Williams. You might also have a better understanding of the terrible demons that lived inside the " greatest hitter who ever lived."
Without a doubt, however, the keeper is Don Van Natta and Seth Wickersham's " The Patriot Way " from ESPN magazine. Beginning as an article exploring Tom Brady's deflategate the article becomes an indictment of the complete tenure of Bill Belicheck, Roger Kraft, and to some extent Roger Goodell. I live in Patriot fandom. I am not a fan of the Patriots. For a long time I have found it impossible to cheer for The coach and his tactics. Watch any game. Some play will occur, if for no other reason, to make sure everybody knows old Bill is the smartest person in the room. Brady is petulant and Robert Kraft is a great friend of Donald Trump. Ugh!! But, while that is all true, this article takes us back to Spygate, the Patriots illegal taping of other teams. Their false answers under questioning, their stories which made no sense, and Roger Goodell's inexplicable handling of that case. Then, when Deflategate happens, we see Kraft somehow think he will get away with it again. Everything about this team is polarizing. Brady is a great quarterback. He might well be the GOAT. But, wouldn't it be nice to know that he had accomplished so much of his greatness without cheating of one kind of another. It would, but we will never know.
From The Sun, Henley O'Brien writes of her experience as a member of her college crew team. She loves the sport but her four years are tortured by her head coach. Old school he is, yelling, intimidating, insulting, manipulating. What he does would seem hardly acceptable. Of course, he would point to the results of his teams, their national level success. He and many others would call it " Getting the most out of his athletes." The writer ends up not so sure of that and neither am I.
There are many articles I did not comment on. Rock Climbing, Bicycling, NCAA corruption, Snooker, and Fishing amongst them. Not my thing but might be yours. These sets are always worth a read
November 16, 2016
I hesitate to give a collection 5 stars, but this really was an outstanding collection. Can only think of one or two pieces that weren't great. Otherwise, full of excellent traditional reporting, excellent storytelling, and everything in between. This series continues to deliver the goods and I look forward to ordering it ahead of time next year.
October 13, 2017
Not one of the best in the 'Best American Sports Writing' series. A few standout articles but a few others which I started to read but never finsihed
November 18, 2017
What an awful collection of depressing stories. Come on guys, this is sports!
April 29, 2018
This year's edition stands up the others with an interesting array of articles about sports and outdoor activities that aren't sports in the sense of winners and losers. There's a lot of death and loss in this year's book. I haven't compared it to past years to see if there's more of it, but I get the sense that the darker side of sports is the growth area for serious journalism, and that's what we are seeing. A decade ago, maybe statistics was the growth area, and before that it was the rise of superstardom, such as Michael Jordan and the hyper-selling of the NFL's top players. Now it's individual heroism that often leads to injury or death.
The longer stories aren't about traditional sports. They're about mountain climbing, skateboarding (but not at a high level), hiking, and obscure sports like snooker. So for the fan of major U.S. sports, this book will feel a little thin.
Here are examples of the dangerous ones. Mountain climbers who jump off ledges in those winged contraptions so they can soar thousands of feet. In a long story, a friend of several of them recounts their deaths and their achievements. There's another about NFL'er Chris Borland walking away after his rookie year, out of concern about concussions -- and the obligatory recounting of other guys who are suffering from life-changing brain injuries. Another one in which a high schooler paralyzes an opponent, and never has gotten over the incident. There's one about a murderer on the Appalachian Trail. And one about a hockey hit man who instead of taking his Ivy League education into medical school, became a goon who's now trying to hang on in some European minor league and can barely open his hands due to so many injuries from fistfights.
There are also stories about regrets, and those have interesting twists. Like the Bulgarian boxer who was the last person to beat Floyd Mayweather, and lost his own career due to the politics of Eastern European boxing. Or the psycho who is apparently the best snooker player in the world today and who knows he's sabotaged a lot of his life. Or about sportswriter Jim Dent, who seems like one of the biggest a-holes who ever lived.
There are some about the seamy side of sports. Steroid and other abuse by high schoolers. African kids recruited to the U.S. to play basketball and then abandoned if they weren't as good as expected. Or the final story, which is one of the best, told in a series of short anecdotes about a brutally cruel crew coach in England who inspired his women's team to greatness -- told by the woman who was captain her senior year.
And finally, there are some purely entertaining or inspirational stories. I think people like those the best. A woman facing amputation after having been injured in the Boston Marathon bombing. One is about rugby. Another is about two very good amateur bike racers (one more of a bike jumper than racer) who meet, fall in love, and through that love redeem their tattered lives -- wonderful story. And there's a fun and funny one about a 40-year-old guy trying to be able to dunk for the first time in his life.
The longer stories aren't about traditional sports. They're about mountain climbing, skateboarding (but not at a high level), hiking, and obscure sports like snooker. So for the fan of major U.S. sports, this book will feel a little thin.
Here are examples of the dangerous ones. Mountain climbers who jump off ledges in those winged contraptions so they can soar thousands of feet. In a long story, a friend of several of them recounts their deaths and their achievements. There's another about NFL'er Chris Borland walking away after his rookie year, out of concern about concussions -- and the obligatory recounting of other guys who are suffering from life-changing brain injuries. Another one in which a high schooler paralyzes an opponent, and never has gotten over the incident. There's one about a murderer on the Appalachian Trail. And one about a hockey hit man who instead of taking his Ivy League education into medical school, became a goon who's now trying to hang on in some European minor league and can barely open his hands due to so many injuries from fistfights.
There are also stories about regrets, and those have interesting twists. Like the Bulgarian boxer who was the last person to beat Floyd Mayweather, and lost his own career due to the politics of Eastern European boxing. Or the psycho who is apparently the best snooker player in the world today and who knows he's sabotaged a lot of his life. Or about sportswriter Jim Dent, who seems like one of the biggest a-holes who ever lived.
There are some about the seamy side of sports. Steroid and other abuse by high schoolers. African kids recruited to the U.S. to play basketball and then abandoned if they weren't as good as expected. Or the final story, which is one of the best, told in a series of short anecdotes about a brutally cruel crew coach in England who inspired his women's team to greatness -- told by the woman who was captain her senior year.
And finally, there are some purely entertaining or inspirational stories. I think people like those the best. A woman facing amputation after having been injured in the Boston Marathon bombing. One is about rugby. Another is about two very good amateur bike racers (one more of a bike jumper than racer) who meet, fall in love, and through that love redeem their tattered lives -- wonderful story. And there's a fun and funny one about a 40-year-old guy trying to be able to dunk for the first time in his life.
April 7, 2018
This is my favorite annual collection of writings, although I don’t read it every year. I’ve glad I picked up 2016’s Best American Sports Writing. The articles are diverse and don’t favor any one sport, giving almost equal exposure to the conventional team sports and the solo, to the foreign and exotic sports, to the urban, the indoors and the outdoor sports, with stories centering on family, on winning, on drug addiction, on climate change. I’ve been reading this book for more than a year, dipping into it now and then, rarely spending more than a few days at a time focusing on the book. But when I read the list of contents, I can recall at least one special, one memorable moment of almost every article. I think this is the best collection of this series I’ve read. This has introduced me to a new favorite writer, and has given me what is the most beautiful paragraph I’ve read in recent memory, one I wanted to share with Marisa literally minutes before our road trip to Vermont:
“...From 1997 to 2012 I traveled by dogsled, usually with Jens and his three brother-in-law ... The dog trot often lulled me to sleep, but rough ice shook me to attention. ‘You must look carefully,’ Jens said. From him I began to understand about being “silanigtalersarput”: a person who is wise about things and knows the ice, who comes to teach us how to see. The first word I learned in Greenlandic was “sila” which means, simultaneously, weather, animal, and human consciousness and the power of nature. The Greenlanders I travel with do not make the usual distinctions between a human mind and an animal mind. Polar bears are thought to understand human language. In the spring mirages appear, lifting islands into the air and causing the ice to look like open water. Silver threads at the horizon mark the end of the known world and the beginning of the one inhabited by the imagination. Before television, the internet, and cell phones arrived in Greenland, the coming of the dark time represented a shift: anxiety about the loss of light gave way to a deep rich period of storytelling.”
- Gretel Ehrlich “Rotten Ice,” Harper’s Magazine April 2015.
I wouldn’t expect such poetic, mystical imagery in an article about hunting, but was glad for this and the many other quiet moments I was lucky to have encountered with this book.
“...From 1997 to 2012 I traveled by dogsled, usually with Jens and his three brother-in-law ... The dog trot often lulled me to sleep, but rough ice shook me to attention. ‘You must look carefully,’ Jens said. From him I began to understand about being “silanigtalersarput”: a person who is wise about things and knows the ice, who comes to teach us how to see. The first word I learned in Greenlandic was “sila” which means, simultaneously, weather, animal, and human consciousness and the power of nature. The Greenlanders I travel with do not make the usual distinctions between a human mind and an animal mind. Polar bears are thought to understand human language. In the spring mirages appear, lifting islands into the air and causing the ice to look like open water. Silver threads at the horizon mark the end of the known world and the beginning of the one inhabited by the imagination. Before television, the internet, and cell phones arrived in Greenland, the coming of the dark time represented a shift: anxiety about the loss of light gave way to a deep rich period of storytelling.”
- Gretel Ehrlich “Rotten Ice,” Harper’s Magazine April 2015.
I wouldn’t expect such poetic, mystical imagery in an article about hunting, but was glad for this and the many other quiet moments I was lucky to have encountered with this book.
May 22, 2017
I flipped through this book on a whim, started reading an article called, "A Woman Fell From A Stadium," and immediately decided that I wanted to read the book. Why not? It was a collection of articles, so it would be a good thing to read in bursts (or to ~~cleanse my palette~~), and also I didn't (still don't) know very much about sports, and I felt that I should try to expand my horizons (...Right?).
While the theme of this book is OBVIOUSLY sports (in some way, shape or form), it also goes into economics, science, the environment, and immigration, and so on. I found so many of these articles to be compelling, which surprised me — I didn't go into this book expecting to be drawn into the drama of snooker, or of a felon's arrest after hiking the Appalachian trail several times over.
Bottom line: if you're """not into sports,""" then I totally recommend picking this title up; there's a little bit of everything in there, and you may be surprised by what you find.
(....like snooker.)
While the theme of this book is OBVIOUSLY sports (in some way, shape or form), it also goes into economics, science, the environment, and immigration, and so on. I found so many of these articles to be compelling, which surprised me — I didn't go into this book expecting to be drawn into the drama of snooker, or of a felon's arrest after hiking the Appalachian trail several times over.
Bottom line: if you're """not into sports,""" then I totally recommend picking this title up; there's a little bit of everything in there, and you may be surprised by what you find.
(....like snooker.)
January 23, 2019
As always, everything was good, but only a handful of the 27 (!) essays really stood out to me. My favorites were:
"Revenge of the Nerds" by Chris Ballard
"Spun" by Steve Friedman
"Her Decision, Their Life" by Eric Moskowitz
"Board in the Florida Suburbs" by Chris Wiewiora
"Learn to Dunk" by Michael McKnight
"Zilong Wang and the Cosmic Tale of the White Dragon Horse and the Karmic Moonbeams of Destiny That Restored All Faith in Humanity" by John Brant
"Smack Epidemic" by L. Jon Werthheim and Ken Rodriguez
"The Most Dangerous Man in Football" by Steve Fainaru and Mark Fainaru-Wada
"Ruck and Roll" by Steve Rushin
"Rotten Ice" by Gretel Ehrlich
"About Winning" by Henley O'Brien
There is an abundance of good sportswriting going on right now, and these anthologies are always good, for sports fans obviously, but also for people who simply enjoy good writing about interesting subjects.
"Revenge of the Nerds" by Chris Ballard
"Spun" by Steve Friedman
"Her Decision, Their Life" by Eric Moskowitz
"Board in the Florida Suburbs" by Chris Wiewiora
"Learn to Dunk" by Michael McKnight
"Zilong Wang and the Cosmic Tale of the White Dragon Horse and the Karmic Moonbeams of Destiny That Restored All Faith in Humanity" by John Brant
"Smack Epidemic" by L. Jon Werthheim and Ken Rodriguez
"The Most Dangerous Man in Football" by Steve Fainaru and Mark Fainaru-Wada
"Ruck and Roll" by Steve Rushin
"Rotten Ice" by Gretel Ehrlich
"About Winning" by Henley O'Brien
There is an abundance of good sportswriting going on right now, and these anthologies are always good, for sports fans obviously, but also for people who simply enjoy good writing about interesting subjects.
August 3, 2018
I've purchased this series for years now and this was the most poorly chosen group of stories I have ever encountered in "The Best ..." series.
I gave this an extra star (2-star) based on the overall series, which I've always found insightful and enjoyable. This year's collection just didn't hit for me.
A few shining examples in the mix, but I found most of the selections to be meandering and long-winded. I enjoy reading about some nontraditional sports and usually the ones included here are solid, but this 2016 collection was unbalanced heavily toward nonconventional activities. I'm still scratching my head how global warming is a sport?
First time I've been disappointed in this series, but I'll look forward to tracking down the 2017 series.
I gave this an extra star (2-star) based on the overall series, which I've always found insightful and enjoyable. This year's collection just didn't hit for me.
A few shining examples in the mix, but I found most of the selections to be meandering and long-winded. I enjoy reading about some nontraditional sports and usually the ones included here are solid, but this 2016 collection was unbalanced heavily toward nonconventional activities. I'm still scratching my head how global warming is a sport?
First time I've been disappointed in this series, but I'll look forward to tracking down the 2017 series.
December 19, 2017
These annual "Sports Best Writing" are good books. Similar to short stories, but about a variety of stories that came out during 2016. One was named Spun, which turned out to be about friends Dominic and Judi, owners of my bike shop, here in Cincinnati. Also about the "cheating" Patriots, the melting of Greenland Ice and how a rower dealt with her over-bearing coach for four years of college.
Very good
Very good
September 3, 2019
This book is full of engaging, entertaining, thought-provoking, tear-inducing essays, that all happen to have one thing in common: sports. I loved the wide variety of this collection and could see myself applying more than one of these selections outside a "sports" class. I will be picking up another volume because of the quality of this one!
April 4, 2019
Even non-sports fans would enjoy the writing in this series.
March 10, 2017
Really lives up to the name. There are some great stories and great reporting compiled in here.
April 24, 2017
This is a fine collection of sports writing topped perhaps by Gretel Ehrlich's "Rotten Ice" from Harpers which should be mandatory reading for all climate change skeptics.
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