Status Updates From The Best American Sports Wr...

“The night had a cold, phantasmal beauty that intensified as we ascended. More stars than I had ever seen smeared the frozen sky. A gibbous moon rose… washing the slope beneath my boots in ghostly light, obviating the need for a headlamp” -John Krakauer, Into Thin Air (1996, Outside)

For the most part this anthology displays an impressive breadth of subject matter. But I could have done with fewer pieces about a washed up baseball legend who’s now staring down leaving the game behind for good.

I get it man, mortality comes for us all.

Reading the Billy Conn profile (“The Boxer and the Blonde”), it’s so funny that as recently as 1985 the father in law of a famous athlete could be the de facto villain in a profile for being angry that an adult man started dating his daughter when she was 16.

If any Frank Deford superfans read this. Yes I know his articles are penetrating character studies that defy the simple morality of most sportswriting