The Best American Sports Writing 2006

by Stout, Glenn

• ISBN13: 9780618470228
• ISBN10: 0618470220
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-10-11
• Publisher: Mariner Books

Summary

For fans of sports and just plain great writing, this collection of twenty-seven of the finest pieces from the past year features "outstanding sports reporting on a wealth of different topics" (Booklist). Guest editor Michael Lewis, the best-selling author of Moneyball and Coach, has assembled a compelling look at the sports stories and issues that dominated 2005. Pamela Colloff reports from the politically and sexually charged world of competitive cheerleading in Texas. Paul Solotaroff meets the star of the University of Georgia wrestling team, a nineteen-year-old world-record weightlifter who was born with no arms or legs. Ben Paynter travels the gay rodeo circuit. Pat Jordan profiles the world's greatest poker player, a boyish thirty-year-old whose mom still packs him a brown bag lunch. Jeff Duncan travels to Florida, where a New Orleans high school and its football program are picking up the pieces in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. We also discover Linda Robertson reporting on the supersizing of NFL players. S. L. Price profiles the most famous U.S. Paraolympian. Katy Vine introduces a girl who can dunk -- in eighth grade -- and more. The pieces in this outstanding volume show the true reach and impact of sports, its importance often extending far beyond the playing field. As Lewis writes in his introduction, "What's reassuring about great sports writing is what's reassuring about great sports performances: facing opposition, and often against the odds, someone, at last, did something right."

Table of Contents

Foreword	xi
Introduction by Michael Lewis	xvii
PAUL SOLOTAROFF
There Is Nothing Special About Kyle Maynard	1	(14)
from Men's Journal
JEFF DUNCAN
Desire Without End	15	(11)
from The New Orleans Times-Picayune
KURT STREETER
The Girl	26	(61)
from The Los Angeles Times
PAMELA COLLOFF
Flipping Out	87	(14)
from Texas Monthly
JAMES BROWN
Dirty Moves	101	(9)
from The Los Angeles Times Magazine
STEVE FRIEDMAN
Driving Lessons	110	(14)
from Travel and Leisure Golf
PAT JORDAN
Card Stud	124	(8)
from The New York Times Magazine
GREG GARBER
A Tormented Soul	132	(25)
from ESPN.corn
DAVID GRANN
Stealing Time	157	(15)
from The New Yorker
DAN KOEPPEL
Standing Still	172	(8)
from Bicycling
STEVE ONLY
Fallen Angel	180	(22)
from Los Angeles
S.L. PRICE
The Sprinter	202	(13)
from Sports Illustrated
L. JON WERTHEIM
Saved by Sports	215	(12)
from Sports Illustrated
J.R. MOEHRINGER
The Unnatural Natural	227	(10)
from The Los Angeles Times Magazine
NEAL POLLACK
The Cult of the General Manager	237	(3)
from Slate cons
JONATHAN MILES
What Goes Ninety-five Miles per Hour for Seventeen Days Straight Through Mud, Sand, High-Speed Smash-ups, and Marauding Bandits?	240	(16)
from Men's Journal
GARY SMITH
The Shadow Boxer	256	(15)
from Sports Illustrated
PAMELA COELOFF
She's Here. She's Queer. She's Fired.	271	(8)
from "Incas :Monthly
BEN PAYNTER
So You Wanna Be a Cowboy?	279	(12)
from The Pitch
JEFF PEARLMAN
Moms the Word	291	(6)
from Newsday
LINDA ROBERTSON
XXI,	297	(8)
from The Miami Herald
MICHAEL SOKOLOVE
Clang!	305	(12)
from The New York Times Magazine
KATY VINE
Brooklyn Heights	317	(11)
from Texas Monthly
PAT JORDAN
The Magician	328	(9)
from The Atlantic Monthly
KURT STREETER
Making the Time Count	337	(9)
from the Los Angeles Times
TIM ZIMMERMANN
Raising the Dead	346	(24)
from Outside
CHARLIE SCHROEDER
A (Fishing) Hole in One	370	(9)
from The Los Angeles Times Magazine
Contributors' Notes	379	(4)
Notable Sports Writing of 2005	383

Excerpts

Introduction One of the strange things about people who write for a living is their tendency to dismiss the subjects most important to people who dont write for a living. Even as sports has taken up a position at the center of American life it remains peripheral to American literary life. The literary world treats books and articles about political events with utmost seriousness - even as a fantastically large number of Americans, to judge from their talent for avoiding the polls on election day, dont have the faintest idea what all the fuss is about. Books and articles about sports, and the ideas underpinning sports, remain on the bottom shelf, alongside the self-help books and celebrity memoirs. And yet sports is the one thing Americans can be relied upon to feel passionately about. There may be Americans glued to C-Span, but their numbers are overwhelmed by ESPNs addicts. There may be political leaders who inspire loyalty, but there arent any - so far as I know - who cause grown men and women to paint their faces and tattoo their chests and howl like werewolves. For every little boy or girl who wants to grow up to be a member of Congress there are, oh, about one million who intend to become major league baseball players or professional basketball players or ice skaters or gymnasts. Americans deadly seriousness about the games they play is probably not a good sign for their democracy, but it is unquestionably a sign. You cant govern what people care about. And what people care about is the writers path to their inner lives. The chance to help to rectify this imbalance between what people care about and what good writers write about has been one of the pleasures of being asked to make the final selections for this years edition of Best American Sports Writing. Here we dignify the work of writers who happen to have tackled material that is, in one way or another, related to sports. They wont be winning any literary prizes, but their work is important. They arent merely writing about sports. Theyre describing who we are. I should confess up front that this is a collection of stories with no very good theory to unify it. Ive just picked out the twenty-seven magazine and newspaper and Internet articles that I found the most interesting, of the seventy-five or so thrust upon me by the man who actually edited this volume, the shockingly diligent Glenn Stout. (Glenn apparently has read every article about sports ever written in America.) Several writers are represented here more than once: they are not blood relations of mine. So far as I know, Ive never met any of the writers whose work Ive selected. Literarily, the pieces dont have much in common with each other. Some are among the most finely written things on any topic; others are distinguished less by the quality of their prose than by the beauty of the story they tell. They range from elaborate narratives to simple opinion pieces, and they illustrate, among other things,

---

Excerpted from The Best American Sports Writing
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.