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Good Sportswriting 2013

G-Fafif Jan 14 2013 03:10 PM

A life of Falcons fandom misery (written before Sunday), by Thomas Lake of SI. (No link yet for non-subscribers; it's the issue with Alabama winning the national championship on the cover.) Told through the prism of his brother Red and himself. Makes it a universal feeling. IF YOU'RE LIKE ME AND MY OLDER BROTHER, you've waited all your life for something that may never come. Nothing you do can make it happen; no amount of screaming or holding your breath. This thing is small -- meaningless, compared with cancer or hurricanes -- but we still care about it, desperately, a little more with each passing year. We are waiting for a championship, a ticker-tape parade, a license to dance in the streets of the city we call home. Just once we wish we could be the best. Today I'm writing about our favorite team, the Atlanta Falcons, playing since 1966 and still without a Super Bowl victory, but I could just as easily be writing about your favorite team. You are loyal and unwavering. Your team is your birthright, your fate, and you would never jump on anyone else's bandwagon. You would rather wait 44 years with your Jets than have anything to do with the Giants. You are from San Diego, Sacramento, Seattle. You bought season tickets for the '86 Clippers and actually showed up. You were born in 1909 on the North Side of Chicago, and you'll go to your grave without acknowledging that the White Sox exist. You are the Vikings, the Lions, the Buffalo Bills. You are the city of Cleveland. Imagine our story, then, as a stand-in for yours-as an ode to a lifetime of hope and disappointment. There is nothing more human than falling short. Where it begins: November 3, 1991. We're losing again, to the Niners again, but this time it's close, less than one touchdown instead of six, and we have time for one more play. Our starting quarterback has left the game with injured ribs. The end zone is 44 yards away. My brother and I have never been to a game because we can't afford tickets, and we can't even see the game because Mom and Dad don't believe in television, but we have the radio, a portable thing on the carpeted floor of the family room in our house in Stone Mountain, Ga., and we hang on the words of Larry Munson. He is grim, as always, narrating the game in the voice of a weary general, infusing it with the drama of life and death. We overload three to the right, trips are on the right, we're goin' Hail Mary.... With his choice of personal pronoun, Munson has taught us how to follow sports. There is no dividing line between players and announcers and fans. We are all the same: winners together, losers together. Mostly losers together. My brother and I have followed the Falcons since 1989, during which time we have won 12 and lost 28. ... there goes Tolliver, a long, high pass ... We've shared a bunk bed for as long as I can remember. I'm short for 11, with olive skin and blond hair, and he's tall for 13, with pale skin and red hair. I'll call him Red. We look nothing alike. He has punched my stomach, and I have bitten his nose. But we are the closest in age of the six children and the only two who really care about sports, and so, although we rarely say anything nice to each other, we spend many hours together by the radio. ... down in the corner, batted, they fight ... We should not even have this chance. We do only because Joe Montana is injured, and Joe Montana's replacement, Steve Young, is injured, and the Niners missed four field goals in the first half, and they fumbled a punt with 2:39 to play, and our own Andre Rison caught a pass for 19 yards on fourth down to get us this close, and now: TOUCHDOWN! TOUCHDOWN! TOUCHDOWN! That couldn't have happened. Ungodly. My God, somebody caught the ball. Who caught it? It's Michael Haynes. I can't believe that happened. That couldn't have happened. Red and I yell very loudly, and perhaps jump on the furniture, but we don't hug, because that would be weird. With a 17-14 win over the team we hate most, we stand at 5-4, with a chance to reach a high and unfamiliar place: the playoffs. January 4, 1992. Biggest day of our football lives. Dramatic win last week against the Saints in the wild-card round, and now we face the Redskins in the divisional playoff. Even better, we get to watch the game on TV at Grandfather's old house. Grandfather showed us how to watch football. Taught us the meaning of third-and-six. Predicted the result of one or two plays per game, and was never wrong. Stood up and walked toward the television when the game was on the line, as if by proximity he could alter the outcome. On special occasions he'd pack up his old 19-inch RCA, rabbit ears and all, and drive his pale-green Monte Carlo to our house, stopping at Big Star on the way for Nacho Cheese Doritos and Eagle potato chips. And then we would watch football on television in our TV-free house, the rules suspended because he was Grandfather. Now he's moved far away, to help Grandmother look after her old family homestead in south Georgia, but he hasn't forgotten us. He calls his youngest daughter, our aunt Helen, who lives in the house where he used to live, eight miles away, and asks her to come pick us up so we can watch the big game on her ancient cabinet-style Zenith. And she picks us up and serves us a fine array of Grandfather-style football snacks. We're a team built for speed. Rison, our slowest receiver, runs the 40-yard dash in less than 4.5 seconds. We beat the Saints on a 61-yard touchdown pass to the explosive Michael Haynes. We have "Neon" Deion Sanders, the best return man in the game, the superlative cornerback who occasionally lines up at receiver in the Red Gun offense. None of this matters today. Heavy rain has turned the field at RFK Stadium into a quagmire. Gusts of wind reach 30 mph. We slip and fall and turn over the muddy ball six times. The Redskins smash us up and down the field with their hulking linemen and powerful running backs. "We like to say it was Redskins weather," their coach, Joe Gibbs, says after winning 24-7 and sending us, chastened, back to Atlanta. This excursion into the playoffs has taught me and Red a cruel lesson about sports and life: The closer you get to the thing you want most, the more it hurts when you see it slip away. A "highlight" of the story is the hope Lake and his brother invested in Michael Vick and what happened to it. December 24, 2006. Soon, of course, the search warrant will be served, the indictment will be returned, the details will emerge-the hanging, the drowning, the death of at least six dogs who were deemed unfit to fight-and the plea will be entered, and our quarterback will go to prison, and lost in the worldwide uproar will be this simple fact: Long before the full truth came to light, we knew we had lost Michael Vick. Knew it from his endless repetition of the same mistakes. The fumbles. The running into sacks. The failure to hit receivers in stride. The complete lack of improvement from his first year as a starter. The lame excuses and the shifting of blame. The Ron Mexico incident. The water-bottle incident. The Rolex incident. The 2005 collapse. The 2006 collapse. His two middle fingers raised to the bleachers. And today: the worst loss in the history of Red and me and the Atlanta Falcons. The Panthers enter the Georgia Dome on a four-game losing streak, including a 37-3 dismantling by the Steelers last week at home. Their starting quarterback is injured. Their substitute quarterback, Chris Weinke, has lost 17 consecutive starts over the past five years. Today he will throw for only 32 yards. And it will be enough to beat us. The Panthers come out with 12 straight running plays. They score the game's only touchdown on a drive that lasts nearly 11 minutes. We know what they will do, and we do nothing to stop it. We let the NFL's 27th-ranked rushing offense hold the ball for nearly 42 minutes. Vick goes 9 for 20, for 109 yards, with two interceptions, for a rating of 22.7. It's been a hard year for Red. He tells me a few things and keeps many more to himself, but I know the lost children weigh heavily on his mind. Now he watches the man who took our love and our money and never loved us back. Red watches him sleepwalk right out of Atlanta. And Red kicks a hole in the wall. Nice to read a sportswriter not pay obeisance to the gods of professional detachment and still care as much now as he did then about his childhood team. November 29, 2012. Another fall, another season, and with the cold we feel a strange new energy. I board the MARTA train at the East Lake station and head west toward the Dome. The train is full of my brothers and sisters in black and red. We are white women in Julio Jones jerseys. We are black men in Matt Ryan jerseys. We are a married couple in our 60s with our season tickets on lanyards around our necks. We are loud and boisterous and confident. We are 10-1. We have won games we should win and games we should not. We picked off Peyton Manning three times in the first quarter and withstood his furious comeback. We stormed back from the dead against Carolina. We destroyed Kansas City and San Diego. We swaggered into Philadelphia and took down Vick and the Eagles. We neutralized Doug Martin and survived the red-hot Buccaneers. We threw five picks against Arizona and still won. We bend without breaking. We find a way. We've lost only once, barely, in New Orleans, and tonight we have another shot at the Saints. We get off at the Dome station and pour onto the escalator. I meet Red at CNN Center for a pregame Sweetwater. Then we march through the cold night, up Andrew Young International Boulevard, into the Dome, our home for the last 20 years. Red and I like the Falcons' owner, Arthur Blank, and the winning ambition he brought when he bought the team 10 years ago. But we also like our Dome, the comfort, the noise, the gray light that always reminds us of November, and we see no need for Blank's plan to abandon this place in favor of a costly new home with a retractable roof. We climb to our upper-level seats. On the giant screens above the end zones, Samuel L. Jackson and a Gospel choir costar in a video designed to fire us up. "When a city lights up," he says. "We all rise up together. "When we come on the field, we rise up. "From kickoff to the last play, WE RISE UP. "THIS IS OUR TIME, ATLANTA. "WE'VE BEEN KNOCKIN' ON THE DOOR. "NOW IT'S TIME TO BLOW IT UP. "TELL ME, WHAT DO FALCONS DO?" "RISE UP," the choir sings. "WHAT DO FALCONS DO?" Jackson thunders. "FALCONS, FALCONS RISE UP," the choir sings, and we intercept Drew Brees. A 350-pound drunk man staggers to his seat in front of us, looking for Saints fans to heckle, and we're astonished that he can't find any. We intercept Drew Brees. Red and I jump out of our seats, slapping fives with strangers and with each other. We intercept Drew Brees. In a couple of hours, after our 23-13 win, we'll be the least respected 11-1 team in NFL history. In 17 days we'll beat the defending Super Bowl champion Giants 34-0 and still get no respect. We intercept Drew Brees. Maybe we'll fall short again this year. The experts have already written us off. We have 46 years of losing behind us. We intercept Drew Brees for the fifth time. The clock runs out. My brother and I walk into the night, looking straight ahead.

Ashie62 Jan 16 2013 03:56 PM Re: Good Sportswriting 2013

Why do the best sportswriters have the smallest of audiences. I will confess to enjoying Vaccaro in his Ledger days.

G-Fafif Mar 22 2013 10:24 AM Re: Good Sportswriting 2013

A trip to St. Pete puts a Spring in Marty Noble's step. Love the flow his reminiscences take. Memories of reality remain despite all the renovations. The three-tier chain link fence that surrounded much of the two-field acreage has been replaced by a shorter, less imposing fence, so the challenge of hitting a baseball 450 feet and over a 15-foot barrier is no more. But Strawberry took Bob Forsch over the barrier -- to center field, no less -- in a morning "B" game in 1985. It was after that home run that Lenny Dykstra christened his teammate "Awesome Strawsome." And Darrell Johnson, the former Red Sox and Mariners manager who later scouted for the Mets, swore Mantle routinely hit batting practice pitches into a lake 100 feet beyond the right-field fence in the early '50s. Johnson was the Yankees' No. 3 catcher at the time, behind Yogi and Elston Howard. He had time to monitor Mantle's in-the-cage swings. "But everyone watched when Mickey got in the cage then," Johnson said. Ruth probably hit 'em just as far, but no one was around in the '70s to tell of them. His locker still was around, though. It stood between two doorways. And, as the stories go, DiMaggio preferred not to use it. Years later, Herbie Norman, the Mets' clubhouse guy, contacted Pete Sheehy, the Yankees' clubhouse guy from Ruth through Reggie, and determined Mantle has used that locker. It was assigned to Keith Hernandez for his four Mets camps. Few hits were left in that cubicle for Orioles personnel. Across the room from Hernandez's locker was where Mookie Wilson sat and wondered aloud whether his vision would be compromised after a rundown drill throw had shattered his glasses and imbedded pieces of a lens in his eye in '86. Nearby was the locker Dwight Gooden used as a frightened, 19-year-old in 1984. A year later, he owned the place, proudly driving his blue 'Vette -- with "Doc" stenciled on the windshield -- to camp. Parked next to it one day were the wheels of Doug Sisk with a wonderful bumper sticker affixed. It read "This is not an abandoned car." Hernandez's locker was close to the manager's office, twice identified as "Gil's office" by Seaver when he returned to the Mets in 1983. Gil Hodges was 11 years gone by then, but Seaver sensed a presence. George Bamberger was the manager in the springs of 1982 and '83. He used his office as a stage; he loved to tell stories. After making the first cuts of the Mets camp in '82, he told one of his favorites that had occurred years earlier when he was managing the Brewers. A young pitcher from Latin America didn't respond well when, in late March, he was assigned to the Minor Leagues. "I told him 'Son, you've got great stuff. You're going to help us win. You just need some more time to polish what you have,'" Bamberger said. "Then the kid reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a knife. 'You cut me, I cut you.' Hondo was Frank Howard, 6-foot-8, 315 pounds of body guard wrapped in niceness. A remarkable man. He could have been a story every day. He hit Fungo fly balls with such stunning might that he had to move against the backstop or lose eight of every 10 fly balls he hit. Howard occasionally stayed behind when the team played road games to work the outfielders. After a half-hour of foul-line-to-foul-line Fungo chasing on a March day in 1982, Joel Youngblood objected to what he considered borderline abuse. He removed his glove and cap, placed them on the outfield lawn and headed for the clubhouse. He'd had enough. Then he heard from Howard: "Young man, you might want to think twice about leaving. We're not done yet." Forty minutes later, Youngblood trudged off the field, spent. Hondo congratulated him and said "See you tomorrow." Other threats existed. In 1981, Dave Kingman, Doug Flynn and Youngblood occasionally brought dogs to camp. Flynn had a happy sheepdog named Woody that everyone enjoyed. Youngblood had a German Shepherd that wasn't so popular. And Kingman, appropriately, had a menacing Doberman. Showered players didn't wrap themselves in towels in those days. They walked immodestly to their lockers. But never when Kingman's pet was in the clubhouse. Marty: a) shows unabashed appreciation for all he witnessed; b) shares irreplaceable institutional memory.

dinosaur jesus Mar 22 2013 10:39 AM Re: Good Sportswriting 2013

That's really great. But why do I have the feeling the last two paragraphs aren't really about dogs?

G-Fafif Mar 22 2013 10:54 AM Re: Good Sportswriting 2013

I was gonna invoke the slang term for Dachshunds, but I'll resist going there.

Edgy MD Mar 22 2013 11:00 AM Re: Good Sportswriting 2013

A menacing Doberman may fit the Kingman narrative, but Marty the winky-watcher rmis-remembers. The doberman (named "Sangre de Joven") was Youngblood's.

G-Fafif Mar 22 2013 11:09 AM Re: Good Sportswriting 2013

Don't tell Kingman, but I borrowed his dog for this wacky picture.

John Cougar Lunchbucket Mar 22 2013 11:10 AM Re: Good Sportswriting 2013

Edgy MD wrote: A menacing Doberman may fit the Kingman narrative, but Marty the winky-watcher rmis-remembers. The doberman (named "Sangre de Joven") was Youngblood's. Thought of that too. Is there a picture of Kong with a German Shep? That would nail it.

Benjamin Grimm Mar 22 2013 04:00 PM Re: Good Sportswriting 2013

A Woody Flynn siting!

G-Fafif Jul 23 2013 01:38 PM Re: Good Sportswriting 2013

Sport magazine profiles Dick Young in 1985, preserved by Deadspin's The Stacks, curated by Alex Belth. The author is the late Ross Wetzsteon. Dick Young, they say, has broken so many stories because he's a mouthpiece of management. Come again? When Dick Young first began covering baseball, writers routinely showed up in the press box five minutes before the game and only visited the lockerroom if the press box toilet was broken. "I had to stop by the clubhouse at 11:00 one morning," says a colleague from those day, "and Dick Young was already there, sitting on his haunches beside the trainer and a ballplayer, taking notes. That was the first time I ever saw a writer in the lockerroom at any time, so don't tell me he got handouts from the front office." Then they say Dick Young is contemptuous of his colleagues, a competitive son of a bitch who'll knee you in the gut for a beat. But his critics don't know this story—it's never been printed until now. Joe Trimble, Dick Young's colleague at the Daily News, is sitting at his typewriter in the press box at Yankee Stadium, staring at a blank piece of paper. An hour ago Don Larsen pitched a perfect game in the World Series and now the press room downtown is freaking out—where's Joe Trimble's story? "I'm blank," Joe Trimble says to Dick Young in a cold-sweat panic. "I can't write a word." Dick Young calmly rolls a piece of paper in his own typewriter, types out a sentence, takes out the paper and hands it to Joe Trimble. "The imperfect man pitched a perfect game." Forty-five minutes later, Joe Trimble's story is finished, it's the best story of his career, he wins awards for that story—and Dick Young never says a word. Brash, vulgar, pushy—that's yet another count in the indictment. But hey, the man is a reporter, not a hired gun. Dick Young walks into the press conference where it will be announced that Doug Flutie has signed with the USFL. He sees a row of chairs occupied by TV people, celebrities, Donald Trump favorites and flunkies, sees the newspapermen standing three and four deep at the back. So he walks up the steps to the stage, sits down on a wall in front of the podium and takes out his notepad. Donald Trump's security goons politely ask him to move. Choosing his words with the care if not the vocabulary of Flaubert, he informs them that this is a press conference, that he's press and goddamned if he's going to budge. They find him a chair near the podium. Christie Brinkley may be there to get her picture in the paper, but Dick Young is there to get his story.

themetfairy Jul 23 2013 02:23 PM Re: Good Sportswriting 2013

I still hate him.

LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr Jul 23 2013 07:32 PM Re: Good Sportswriting 2013

For good cause. Still, a great piece.

G-Fafif Jul 24 2013 12:52 PM Re: Good Sportswriting 2013

Good news: Dick Young went to Hell. NEWS ITEM: Young dies in September '87 When I first arrived here, I took one look at the place and I felt. . . well, let down. I figured Heaven should be a playground filled with stickball-playing kids and ringo-levio shouts and all the cold ones you could drink, served up by Pete Sheehy, the great Yankee clubhouse guy. Gofer. I looked around. OK, maybe I wasn't expecting a marching band, but at least St. Peter, or an angel. . . a telegram. Something. I mean, I paid my dues, I made my deadlines, I never pretended I was Hemingway. Not to sound greedy but I was due a final reward. Then I saw this place—the so-called "Heaven." Ha! This is Heaven? I said to myself. This is this man's pie-in-the-sky? In the first place, the sports page doesn't have any West Coast scores. Ever. Instead we get the Broadway Show League scores. Updated inning by inning. Day and night. And the food is worse than half the clubhouse spreads I spent a lifetime loading up on. Great, I think to myself, they ruined Brooklyn, they killed the Bronx, and they even let Heaven go to hell. Figures. It's all over, I said to my pal Toots Shor—"Heaven ain't what it used to be." I had to shout this, to get it over the goddamn disco music, but when he hears me he lifts his Bud Light (which is the only beer you can get here) and he says, "Dick, this ain't Heaven. . . It's Hell." Then Toots tells the bartender—who looks a lot like Roy Cohn, by the way—what I said, about Heaven not being what it used to be. And my line makes the rounds all the way to the back. Everyone's laughing so much I order another Bud Light and Roy says, "Sorry pal, it's a two-beer-a-night limit." That's when it hit me. It wasn't the case of Heaven going to seed. It wasn't like the bureaucracy and the bleeding hearts and the milquetoasts had ruined a good thing. It wasn't that way at all. Someone up in the sky had goofed, and I was in the Other Place. NEWS ITEM: Young gets shaft That night I wandered the streets—which all smell like the tunnel that connects the 1 Train to Port Authority—and I saw the place with new eyes. Maybe I even shed a tear. The place was filled with tons of my old pals, sure, but cigarettes cost a deuce, and women wear pants and running shoes. This wasn't Heaven all right. This was Hell. Hell. Me, Dick Young, in Hell. Well, I knew it was a mistake, of course, and I knew I'd get out so I didn't indulge myself in whiny self-pity a la Tom Seaver, but I will say this: I'm not impressed. This is Hell? This rundown gyp joint is hell? Like Hell it is. I've seen Hell. I've seen it in Washington Heights as a little boy sleeping on a fire escape at night in the days when poor people had too much dignity to demand air-conditioned housing projects. This, this is like some great ultimate civil service honky-tonk on a sweaty summer night. But Hell? Tell that to some reporter who walked his beat and earned an honest buck and only switched papers toward the end which anyone would've done if they had a chance. The Hell with all the guff he took for it. The only people who called this Hell are crybaby ballplayers pulling seven figures to play a little boys' game half as well as real men played it in '40s—baseball when the halvah was green.

batmagadanleadoff Jul 25 2013 08:59 AM Re: Good Sportswriting 2013

Pulitzer Prize winning Ira Berkow's Mets book makes the rounds in Vegas. Berkow regales Mets fans - and baseball fans - in 'Summers at Shea" By RON KANTOWSKI LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL I have a colleague in the writing business named Tim, who once had mentioned that his mother had gotten remarried — to a famous sports writer. He probably told me it was Ira Berkow of the New York Times (and other literary places), but I must have been on the phone or on deadline. I had sort of forgotten it. Then one day Tim said I should come to the break room, there was someone he wanted me to meet. It was Ira Berkow. Ira Berkow won a Pulitzer Prize for writing about a white quarterback at Southern University, a historically black college. (You can read it here: http://tinyurl.com/kxsam2u.) He also was a Pulitzer finalist another year. In the newspaper business, the Pulitzer is as good as it gets, way better than Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt in the movies. It’s like winning the Heisman Trophy. It’s like winning two Heismans. It would be like a college football enthusiast walking to where the vending machines were at his workplace and meeting Bo Jackson or Barry Sanders or Archie Griffin, who, in fact, did win two Heismans. I received Ira Berkow’s latest book in the mail the other day. From the man himself. With his return address on the envelope and everything. It’s called “Summers at Shea: Tom Seaver Loses His Overcoat and Other Mets Stories.” I mention this now because the 51s have begun the second half of the Pacific Coast League season, at home, and it can’t always be $1 beer night, though it is tonight, against Reno. And I mention this because a lot of fans you encounter at Cashman Field talk as if they are experts on the Mets — this is especially true of any lout who refers to the players as “dem guys,” or the group from your office as “youse guys,” or the batboys as “the two utes” — and now you, too, can become an expert on the parent club, if you read Ira Berkow’s book. If you read the book, you can bet the lout a Yoo-hoo chocolate soda over how Tom Seaver lost his overcoat, because guys who talk like Ralph Macchio’s cousin Vinny generally do not read books, and so you are practically guaranteed to win. (Spoiler alert: Tom Seaver lost his overcoat on his way to catch a train — a train! — from New York to Rochester to receive the Hickok belt for being the best athlete of 1969. The pitcher and the writer shared a tiny sleeping berth. Try as I might, I just cannot imagine Derek Jeter sharing a sleeping berth with a sportswriter nowadays, unless the sportswriter resembled a supermodel or that actress from “Friday Night Lights.”) Do not, however, bet the Cashman lout over Ed Kranepool’s lifetime batting average, Jerry Koosman’s ERA in Pittsburgh, or something like that. Ira Berkow wrote about the Mets for 40 of their 45 years at Shea Stadium but he does not write about statistics, because statistics are boring. Unless, of course, they are used to describe Derek Jeter’s latest girlfriend. Ira Berkow tells stories, and he uses wonderful words to tell his stories, and he always puts the wonderful words in their proper order. Except when he’s writing about Casey Stengel, because it’s impossible to put words in their proper order when the ol’ Perfessor is speaking. Otherwise, reading Berkow is like watching Gil Hodges make out his lineup card during the summer of ’69. Here is the first paragraph of Tom Seaver Loses His Overcoat: “For an individual to be talented, famous, youthful, facial features all in order, prospering, coordinated, bright and a New York Met is one thing, but to be humble, too, is a combination as near to impossible as to be sacrilege.” Here are the last two: “Outside it was raining in the dark before dawn and Seaver and the others waited for the chartered bus with the bad memory. Blefary gave Seaver his coat, to keep the shoulder warm. “And there for all time, etched in memory like a daguerreotype, was Tom Seaver in the dark and chill-rain, and thinking that tomorrow morning he must again be up at 6 a.m. to catch a plane. His wife, Nance, expected him back early to their new home in Greenwich, Connecticut. He was to finish painting the pantry.” Ira Berkow sent along his best wishes to “a fellow scribe” on the inscription page. I was honored and thrilled, like a Met fan watching Tommie Agee run down those deep Oriole drives in the World Series, the ball hanging from the webbing but not falling out. http://www.reviewjournal.com/columns-bl ... mmers-shea

Ceetar Aug 06 2013 01:18 PM Re: Good Sportswriting 2013

My baseball jibber-jabber thread vanished, so I'm gonna link this here. I was working on transferring files over 4g to a crappy laptop for work and got into a discussion about Jeff Francoeur's 100th HR and how irate Mike Sielski was over him getting benched by the Mets with just one to go. This deadspin article breaks it down, with a healthy dose of WTF Jerry Manuel?. good reading, even features this comment: Francis EnglertUblogsarefun1L @blogsarefun: Quick digression: Why aren't more people talking about how terrible Jerry Manuel is? Because, at this point, it makes our heads hurt, noses bleed, and our hands yearn to taste slappable fellow-human flesh. 9/22/10 3:29pm

batmagadanleadoff Aug 06 2013 01:32 PM Re: Good Sportswriting 2013

My baseball jibber-jabber thread vanished, so I'm gonna link this here. I was working on transferring files over 4g to a crappy laptop for work and got into a discussion about Jeff Francoeur's 100th HR and how irate Mike Sielski was over him getting benched by the Mets with just one to go. This deadspin article breaks it down, with a healthy dose of WTF Jerry Manuel?. good reading, even features this comment: Francis EnglertUblogsarefun1L @blogsarefun: Quick digression: Why aren't more people talking about how terrible Jerry Manuel is? Because, at this point, it makes our heads hurt, noses bleed, and our hands yearn to taste slappable fellow-human flesh. 9/22/10 3:29pm That there is gold, Ceetar, gold! Super snark from one of the fellers that brought us the Fire Joe Morgan blog. That article deserves its' own thread. And if it did have its own thread, I'd name it Cocksucker Blues.

John Cougar Lunchbucket Aug 06 2013 01:56 PM Re: Good Sportswriting 2013

That article was supposed to be a joke, I think.

Ceetar Aug 06 2013 02:15 PM Re: Good Sportswriting 2013

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: That article was supposed to be a joke, I think. He updated the deadspin article saying he'd heard the same but that it certainly didn't read like it. I get the Onion and the WSJ mixed up all the time though, certainly.

Edgy MD Aug 06 2013 02:36 PM Re: Good Sportswriting 2013

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: Edgy MD wrote: A menacing Doberman may fit the Kingman narrative, but Marty the winky-watcher rmis-remembers. The doberman (named "Sangre de Joven") was Youngblood's. Thought of that too. Is there a picture of Kong with a German Shep? That would nail it. Here Kong is in his post-Met days with his baby, Bodie, who looks like a black lab --- a breed whose temperament is typically the exact oppostie of menacing. Free Kingman!

John Cougar Lunchbucket Aug 07 2013 07:43 AM Re: Good Sportswriting 2013

Maybe I missed this, but in case you did too, a fan letter from a kid who was hit by a flying bat to Mariners 3B Kyle Seager.

Centerfield Aug 07 2013 07:48 AM Re: Good Sportswriting 2013

No disrespect intended for FAFIF, but that is the best baseball writing of the season.

G-Fafif Aug 07 2013 08:22 AM Re: Good Sportswriting 2013

Centerfield wrote: No disrespect intended for FAFIF, but that is the best baseball writing of the season. Lyle has better handwriting.

Edgy MD Aug 07 2013 08:24 AM Re: Good Sportswriting 2013

I think there should be a Lyle Raymond Night and the team should wear ASTROWS jerseys. Check out how he starts off double spacing but bails on that because there's TOO MUCH TOO SAY!

batmagadanleadoff Aug 09 2013 09:45 PM Re: Good Sportswriting 2013

The BestCoolest Players I've Ever Seen: Pitchers By Jonah Keri on August 8, 2013 3:00 PM ET Any time a discussion of best-sports-anything starts, it has a tendency to get heated. Float a couple of top-of-the-head tweets even hinting at ranking the best baseball players of this generation, and suddenly everyone wants to chime in. "This guy can’t possibly be on the list." "How could you forget that guy?" Basically, the Internet was invented for three purposes: arguing about your favorite athletes, cat videos, and that other thing (Troy McClure movie poster Tumblrs). With all that in mind, and in the grand how-could-you-be-so-wrong tradition of my own heavily biased ballpark rankings, it’s time to unveil the BestCoolest Players I’ve Ever Seen power rankings. Why am I making up words? Doing a straight ranking of best players of the past three decades could be accomplished with one click on your website of choice, for your stat of choice. This is more of a hybrid approach, combining the best players of the past generation with the coolest ones, the ones that were the most fun to watch. Here are the rules: • "Best" remains the most important criterion here. We’ll lean on objective metrics as we always do. But there’ll be some subjectivity too. I’m not above giving bonus points for flair, or for a pitcher who, say, threw a no-hitter at a game I attended. Of course that means — you guessed it — Tommy Greene at no. 1. Roughly speaking, we’re counting a player’s accomplishments as 70 percent of the equation, cool factor as about 30 percent. • To be eligible, players had to have played at a time when I was old enough to watch and appreciate baseball. I was born in 1974. Ed Delahanty just misses the cut. • Players are ranked by both peak and career achievements. This is similar to the concept behind Jay Jaffe’s excellent JAWS system of player evaluation, and the same way I’d vote for Hall of Famers, if I had a vote. • All-time greats who did their best work before my time don’t count. I only got to see players like Tom Seaver, Steve Carlton, and Pete Rose when they were near the end of their amazing careers, so they don’t make the cut. My first vivid baseball memory is from 1981 (it was very painful, let us never speak of it again). So the players likely to get the most consideration either broke in around or after 1981 (or not much earlier), or were so great that even if a decent chunk of their career happened beforehand, they still warranted consideration. Today, we cover the pitchers. Tomorrow, the hitters. Let’s go.... 7. Dwight Gooden The good Doc isn’t anywhere near the rest of these guys on career value; his is a case built entirely on a ludicrously great peak, and cool factor. Gooden launched his career with a spectacular rookie season at age 19, leading the league with 276 strikeouts, posting a 2.60 ERA, and doing more than virtually any other teenage player has done before or since. The next season was something else altogether. Per Baseball-Reference, Gooden’s '85 campaign, in which he led the league in innings pitched (276?), strikeouts (268), complete games (16), and ERA (an unbelievable 1.53) ranks as the best season by any pitcher in the past 99 years. If it’s possible for a pitcher to be more transcendent than numbers that suggest he was better than anyone in a century, Gooden was it. His fastball was terrifying and on many nights unhittable. It was a high-90s ball of flame that echoed through the park when it smashed into Gary Carter’s mitt. His curveball was a nightmare, a 12-to-6 home-wrecker that offered only one possible solace: the slim possibility it might not break for a strike. So many tributes have been written about those early, precocious years of Gooden’s short-lived prime, that it might be hard for younger fans to believe he earned all that hype. But Gooden did. He was better than everybody else and cooler than everybody else, forming a 1-2 punch of young talent that for a time made the Mets into the celebrity team, demoting the Yankees to second-class citizens, if you can imagine that. Doc Gooden was a comet sent from some faraway galaxy to destroy hitters, and to burn so bright that he self-combusted. http://www.grantland.com/blog/the-trian ... n-pitchers

G-Fafif Aug 10 2013 11:41 AM Re: Good Sportswriting 2013

You know what was cool about Doc's 1985? That it seemed perfectly normal while it was going on.

batmagadanleadoff Aug 10 2013 01:03 PM Re: Good Sportswriting 2013

The BestCoolest Players I've Ever Seen: Pitchers By Jonah Keri on August 8, 2013 3:00 PM ET Any time a discussion of best-sports-anything starts, it has a tendency to get heated.... The BestCoolest Players I've Ever Seen: Hitters By Jonah Keri on August 9, 2013 12:30 PM ET After writing about pitchers yesterday, a refresher on the rules: [***] • Finally, we expanded the list to 20 for position players because, well, baseball teams carry more position players than pitchers (or they used to, before managers lost their damn minds). There are already enough omissions on this list to fill multiple All-Star teams. Had we restricted this list to just 10, there might’ve been a riot (or whatever it is you call it when people on the Internet register their disgust throughout the world). 15. Eric Davis and Darryl Strawberry If you’re a baseball fan younger than 25 and your dad’s not from Cincinnati, it’s entirely possible you’ve never heard the name Eric Davis. This is really too bad. Injuries may have cut his career short, but in his prime, Davis would put up numbers in 130 games that most couldn’t manage in 230. In his first season as a full-time player, Davis cracked 27 homers and stole 80 bases … despite missing 30 games. The next year he cranked 37 bombs, swiped 50 bases … and missed 33 games. He became something of a medical marvel later in his career, sitting out the entire 1995 season because of injuries and coming back to slug 26 homers the following season, then receiving a colon cancer diagnosis in 1997, only to return and slam 28 more in 1998. But for those of us who remember baseball in the '80s, it was young Eric Davis who stood out, a player blessed with a better combination of power and speed than all but a few players ever. You couldn’t find anyone cooler either. Just look at this. [youtube]3Fvuk__F2Zw[/youtube] Born two months before Davis, Darryl Strawberry grew up in the same neighborhood of South-Central L.A. Like Davis, Strawberry’s star burned bright from an early age. He slammed 26 homers and won the Rookie of the Year award as a 21-year-old with the Mets in ’83, then teamed with Doc Gooden to form the dynamic duo of young talent in baseball. Tall and rangy like Davis, Strawberry used lightning-quick hands and wrists, not bodybuilder brawn, to launch tape-measure home runs. On Opening Day 1988, Strawberry pulled off the most indelible moment I ever witnessed from an opposing player. Having already hit one home run earlier in the game, Straw faced Expos reliever Randy St. Claire in the seventh inning. On the first pitch of the at-bat, St. Claire tried to sneak a fastball by him … and failed miserably. Strawberry did something no one else ever did at Olympic Stadium, crushing a ball all the way up to the concrete ring around the roof; it might still be flying today if it hadn’t bounced back down to the turf. And hey, any player who inspires classic taunts in every stadium, and, totally hypothetically, a bunch of Canadian teenagers to chuck strawberries at him in the middle of a game, is a big winner. 10. Tim Raines [Some unfortunate Met content here] It’s tough enough writing about Pedro Martinez or Larry Walker while maintaining a thin veneer of objectivity. But Raines was my favorite player of all time. So we’ll skate through the stats (808 stolen bases with the highest success rate of anyone with anywhere near that many attempts; more times on base in his career than Gwynn; considered Henderson’s peer when both were in their prime) and just offer two anecdotes: • Baseball’s owners actively colluded against players in the mid-’80s. It got so bad that in the winter of 1986-87, several elite players couldn’t get even a single offer from other teams, leaving them to decide if they wanted to go back to their old teams for no raise or even a pay cut, or just not play baseball. Andre Dawson was so pissed off by the intransigence of the Expos and the rest of the league that he showed up to Cubs spring training, told them to put any number they want on a contract, and he’d sign it; the Hawk hit 49 home runs the next season and won the NL MVP. Raines and the Expos couldn’t come to terms for months, so thanks to an arcane contract rule, he couldn’t come back to play until May. On May 2, 1987, Raines made his return, figuring to be well behind the pitchers and other players who’d already played a month’s worth of regular-season games. In that first game back, he faced the Mets, on NBC's Game of the Week. All Raines did that day was bang out a homer, a triple, two singles, a walk, a steal, three runs scored, and four knocked in, capping the performance with a game-winning grand slam in the 10th inning. • Reposting one of my favorite Raines stories: Of all the kooky traditions the perpetually weird Montreal Expos had, none topped the scoreboard chickens. Every time a pitcher threw over to first, a supremely low-tech image of a chicken — possibly an actual cardboard cutout — would flash on the screen, "Bawk-Bawk-BAWWWWWK" echoing through the stadium. We lost our minds the day Tim Raines goaded an opposing pitcher into 13 chickens during one turn on first. Decades later, I finally got to interview Rock. "Did you ever notice the scoreboard chickens?" I asked. "Sure! We'd all compete to see who could get the most. I always won." http://www.grantland.com/blog/the-trian ... en-hitters

Edgy MD Aug 10 2013 01:20 PM Re: Good Sportswriting 2013

The funny thing about that Straw shot at the Big O was that it was the first game ever that the stadium had the inflatable roof in place, and that brand new roof may have prevented the first and only ball ever hit out of the park.

G-Fafif Aug 10 2013 05:31 PM Re: Good Sportswriting 2013

The roof was installed for the '87 season; it was on good and tight that June when I attended my one and only Olympic Stadium game (Keith Miller's MLB debut -- who wouldn't cross an international border for that?). The "first" where Darryl's tension-ring shot was concerned was Montreal hosting an Opening Day for the first time in its then 20-year history on 4/4/1988. Five other homers that day: another from Darryl, two for McReynolds, one apiece from Elster and Dykstra.

G-Fafif Aug 16 2013 10:08 AM Re: Good Sportswriting 2013

Don Shula not getting around much these days but coaching his head off in his mind. Good profile by Jenny Vrenta for Peter King's site. Time slows down and weakens people, but it’s had the opposite effect on Shula’s legacy, strengthening and preserving it. His 347 career wins and his 1972 undefeated season with the Dolphins seem all the more remarkable with each passing autumn. In this way Shula stands alone in NFL history. But where does that place him in the pantheon of coaches? Shula lets out a genuine, hearty chuckle when presented with this premise. You get the sense that this living legend—a man who coached in six Super Bowls, who was a contemporary of Vince Lombardi, who was the one-time boss of Chuck Noll—could still hold his own in a postgame press conference. His pale eyes twinkle, and he asks, “You want me to say that I’m the greatest coach of all time?” There was a time when Shula never wanted to entertain this sort of question. He wanted a clean break when he walked away from the game following the 1995 season. He saw no worth in preserving his meticulous library of game plans, all 33 seasons’ worth, some handwritten and others computer-generated depending on the decade. “Just throw it away,” he told Mary Anne. “I don’t want any of it.” She made sure he didn’t part with his life’s work and filed the papers away in Shula’s home office—except for the 17 game plans from 1972 that are kept in a safe. But Shula couldn’t stay away from football. He still writes notes on a yellow pad of paper during Panthers games to share with his son, Mike, who was promoted to the team’s offensive coordinator this year. He advises his son to find a balance between using all of quarterback Cam Newton’s distinctive abilities, but not asking him to run too much to minimize the risk of injury. He knows the Panthers’ roster by number, and as he did so well during his career, suggests tactics to create favorable matchups. “He’s into a lot more trick plays now,” Mike says, laughing. “But trust me, there is a reason for everything he says, so I always listen and try to make it fit.” This father-son bond isn’t Shula’s only connection to the NFL. Until Mike Westhoff retired at the end of last season, Shula would call the special teams guru to talk strategy any time the Jets blocked a punt. “He loves that kind of stuff,” Westhoff says. “I can’t think of a part of the game that he wasn’t an expert in.” Shula has also been sought out by current Dolphins coach Joe Philbin, who asked him to address the coaching staff and the scouting department this spring at team headquarters in Davie, Fla. This was a meaningful gesture to Shula, whose legend in the franchise wasn’t always embraced by his successors. Jimmy Johnson, who made his name at the University of Miami and was waiting in the wings to replace Shula when he retired, made no secret that he cared only about the present and not the past. Johnson only lasted four years with the Dolphins, never finishing better than 10-6. Feeling distanced from his beloved team, Shula slyly recalls that “it wasn’t hard to watch” the Dolphins struggle under Johnson. By the way, his wife calls him Coach.

G-Fafif Sep 09 2013 08:54 AM Re: Good Sportswriting 2013

From November 2012 (close enough), Ben Austen immerses himself among the lost souls of the Bills Mafia and affiliated communities. A great look at what a team -- even a losing one -- means to a town -- also a losing one. It was about 24 hours till kickoff, and the Bills Mafia had taken over the Hotel Lafayette's bar in downtown Buffalo. They numbered in the 50s, though possibly there were many more. Other hotel patrons and passersby also wore Ryan Fitzpatrick jerseys and T-shirts with proclamations that said BE LOUD, BE PROUD, BELIEVE! Buffalo the team and the town, so long locked in a spiral of mutual hardship, seemed more culturally entwined than any other city and its professional sports franchise. I headed there during the run-up to the Bills' September game against New England, a festive time known locally as "Patriots Week." The Bills Mafia was observing the occasion by replaying the entire telecast of last year's Bills win over the Pats, watching the game with a holiday's gaiety, reflection, and thanks. Their celebration of the Bills was the third I had stumbled upon in two days. As early as Thursday, the game-day blimp already appeared to be pacing the skies overhead, as if personifying the teeming anticipation in the tiny-seeming people down below. The Bills Mafia called its gathering a pre-tailgate party, since members also planned to convene outside Ralph Wilson Stadium early the next morning. The Mafia was a Twitter group whose 9,000 followers include Fred Jackson, Aaron Williams, and several other current Bills players. Linebacker Nick Barnett sent a gift basket and signed gear to the bar for a Bills Mafia raffle. LaMark Brown, a 23-year-old tight end on the practice squad, joined the meet-up, talking to fans for three hours. (At the time I thought this noble and possibly expedient, a way to build a grassroots following that would lobby for his signing and extended playing time, but come Monday he was cut.) Del Reid, the group's co-founder, showed me a fist-size tattoo above his heart, the colors still moist, of the Bills Mafia logo — the Twitter bird in navy blue with a Bills red streak running along its side. Del explained that the group formed by accident, not long after Stevie — that's Bills wide receiver Stevie Johnson — dropped that pass against the Steelers; you know, the one that would have won the game back in 2010. "I PRAISE YOU 24/7!!!!!! AND THIS HOW YOU DO ME!!!!!" Stevie had tweeted. To God. The true Buffalo fans reacted by sending Johnson tweets of support. They were intimate with anguish and loss. Forget the disappearance from the city of factories and jobs and more than half the population, the Bills hadn't won a title since 1965, back when they still played in the American Football League. And over the past 12 seasons, the team hadn't even managed a wild-card berth in the playoffs, finishing above .500 just once in that stretch. Real Bills fans implicitly understood that a period of amnesty existed for no less than a day after any game, a window in which you were forgiven for whatever batshit form the enduring despair took until by, say, Tuesday, an unrequited hopefulness again took flight. But ESPN's Adam Schefter was no true fan. He retweeted Johnson's words a whole day later, which in Twitter time, Del said, might as well be 100 years. And so the social media mob dealt with it, bombarding Schefter's account with barbs for piling on so late. Someone referred to these stalwarts as the Bills Mafia, and the group was born. They became made men. Thomas DeLaus, a 24-year-old front-end supervisor at Walmart, and Nick Primerano, 31, who sells communications systems to the federal government, broke down the ethos of the group, and really of the Bills faithful more generally. "It's been a rough decade," Thomas said. "But we're a positive push for growth," Nick chimed in. "The hashtag can't be used for negativity." "No matter what, we're about team." "Whether wide right … " "And no matter what happens at 'The Ralph' tomorrow … " "It doesn't matter if it's zero degrees at the game … " "We back the players." "Community," said Thomas. "Once Bills Mafia, always Bills Mafia." The two of them seemed perfectly in sync, like a quarterback and receiver who after many seasons learn to anticipate each other's moves. Despite some differences in appearance — Nick's black goatee to Thomas's wispy blond one, Nick's bench-press bulldog build and Thomas's willowy frame — they were even dressed alike. Both wore Bills Mafia caps backward and cocked at the same leftward slant, rubber Bills Mafia bracelets, and Bills jerseys hanging loosely over jeans. So I was surprised to learn that they had met in real life only a few moments before. Up until today, they had known one another only through the tweets of @RandomlyRufus and @RealNickPrim. "I saw Fred Jackson at the mall," Nick said of the Bills running back. "I said 'Bills Mafia' to him. He said it back and gave me a pound. Now it's part of Bills nomenclature." Another fan there worried aloud that I might think them pitiful for rewatching last season's game. On the television, the year-old contest had reached the fourth quarter, and most everyone had thronged in front of the set. "I don't care if you do," the fan decided, clearly relieved. That 2011 game against the Patriots had been particularly special. Buffalo had lost 15 in a row to New England until then, dating back to the season opener in 2003, and 20 of the last 21. Tom Brady ruled them. An old-timer at the bar compared the victory last year to one in 1980 that snapped a 20-game losing streak against Don Shula's Dolphins. After last year's win, the fans remained in the stadium for 40 minutes; security ringed the field while groundskeepers preemptively took down the goalposts. Fred Jackson lofted a Bills flag and raced across the turf. The Bills were 3-0 at that point and had vanquished their nemesis. Buffalonians started debating who among them were the diehards and who were the Johnny-come-lately bandwaggoners. Bills management quickly worked out a six-year, $59 million contract extension for their quarterback, Ryan Fitzpatrick, who was with his third team and had tossed almost as many career interceptions as touchdowns. The Bills ended up losing 10 of their next 13 games. "It says a lot," a 25-year-old fan reflected, "that the greatest moment in my life is a Week 3 win over New England." The bar fell silent in the waning seconds of the year-old telecast. Bartenders stopped serving, craning their necks screenward. Older folk dining in booths laid down their utensils. "I have butterflies," Del said. When they again watched Rian Lindell kick the winning field goal as time expired, the bar shook with exultation. Fans started a chorus of the team's anthem, a version of the "Shout" song that is chanted heartily at many a Western New York wedding. "Hey-ay-ay-ay! Let's go, Buff-uh-low! The Bills make me want to SHOUT!" Someone yelled, "Fandemonium!" Jacob Gauda, a hulking 30-year-old prep cook who dressed up for games in a kind of carnival-cum-Hun regalia of zebra-print Zubaz pants, beads, helmet, and tie-dyed leg compressors, was recalling with astonishment his reaction from a year before. "I was hugging people," he announced. "I was just hugging everyone." Then last year's broadcast showed the instant replay of the very same kick. And the scene inside the bar became its own instant replay: All eyes locked on the screen, sound stopped, the patrons enrapt.

G-Fafif Nov 06 2013 08:39 AM Re: Good Sportswriting 2013

Joe Posnanski with one of the best lines of the year: Tommy John surgery is a bigger part of baseball than Cracker Jacks. You almost never see people at the ballpark eating Cracker Jacks. You almost always see a pitcher who had Tommy John surgery.

Mets Guy in Michigan Nov 06 2013 11:36 AM Re: Good Sportswriting 2013

Joe Posnanski with one of the best lines of the year: Tommy John surgery is a bigger part of baseball than Cracker Jacks. You almost never see people at the ballpark eating Cracker Jacks. You almost always see a pitcher who had Tommy John surgery. Wonderful story. Some good comments in there, too. If the surgery is one of the arguments in favor of Tommy John, shouldn't the iargument be for the innovative surgeon, Dr. Jobe?

G-Fafif Nov 06 2013 12:31 PM Re: Good Sportswriting 2013

Joe Posnanski with one of the best lines of the year: Tommy John surgery is a bigger part of baseball than Cracker Jacks. You almost never see people at the ballpark eating Cracker Jacks. You almost always see a pitcher who had Tommy John surgery. Wonderful story. Some good comments in there, too. If the surgery is one of the arguments in favor of Tommy John, shouldn't the iargument be for the innovative surgeon, Dr. Jobe? Done!