The Best American Sports Writing 2013

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a sportswriter. I loved sports (still do), but was a terrible athlete, and since I had a talent as a writer it seemed a logical ambition. But I'm glad I didn't pursue it, as it seems to me that having to write about sports and all its warts would crush one's fandom. I mean, who wants to write about steroids, concussions, salary caps, and DUIs?

In The Best American Sports Writing 2013, edited by J.R. Moehringer, some of that comes through. The pieces here are all features--no game reporage, which is what I considered sportswriting when I was a kid. As series editor Glenn Stout puts it: "The kind of writing that was once 'only' about sports filled thousands of newspapers every day. That doesn't happen much anymore, because now readers ask for more; outcomes and easy answers are often not enough, and that includes writing that is only about sports. That is, I think, one reason that readers have undeniably fled from the kind of writing that once first came to mind whenever anyone mentioned the word "sportswriting."

In fact, very little in this book is about anything that happens on the field of play. The closest is "The Most Amazing Bowling Story Ever," about a fellow that was going for a 900--that's three consecutive perfect games. There's also Karen Russell's "The Blind Faith of the One-Eyed Matador" (it also appeared in The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2013):  "Soon everyone can tell from the bull's ragged breathing that the end is near. Padilla and the bull are staring into other's faces with an opaque intimacy...It's almost sunset now; the planks of blood down the bull's back look violet."

Of course, whether bullfighting is a "sport" is subject to debate, the same with strongman competitions, but "The Strongest Man in the World," by Burkhard Bilger, is fascinating nonetheless. On the other hand, bicycling is definitely a sport, but Bill Gifford's "It's Not About the Lab Rats" is all about Lance Armstrong's duplicity. It's the kind of thing I would have hated writing. The same for Jason Schwartz's "End Game," about Curt Schilling's financial woes.

The book is thematically arranged, so two "dead teen" stories (one is about a basketball player who dies on the court of a heart attack, the other a baseball player in a car accident) are back to back, as are a string of stories about long-distance running. One is Barry Bearak's "Caball Blanco's Last Run," about a long-distance runner who started a race in Mexico but died while running through the desert, another is Dan Koeppel's "Redemption of the Running Man," about a man who may or may not have run around the world: "What does it mean to run around the world? Give the idea a moment's thought, and you'll soon conclude that it is unimaginable, perhaps impossible," and then there's the simply titled "Running," a memoir by Cinthia Ritchie, that is one of the best descriptions of the joy of running I've read: "Growing up on a farm in northwestern Pennsylvania, I ran through the fields and pastures, down the hilly dirt roads, across the marsh and through the narrow, cold creek. Arms outstretched, eyes slit against the sun's glare. I ran in cheap Kmart sneakers, kicking them off in midstride, the grass warm and dry against my bare heels, callused tough and hard as an animal's. Sun hot, air smelling of hay and dust  and sweet cow manure. I ran because I loved the feel of wind on my shoulders, loved my hair scattering my face, loved the wisdom of my knees instinctively bending to absorb the shock of rocks and hard, narrow gullies."

Some of the other best pieces here are "Did Football Kill Austin Trenum?" by Patrick Hruby, that details the growing crisis of concussions in football, and Wright Thompson's "Urban Meyer Will Be Home for Dinner," discussing the workaholic nature of college football coaches, notably Meyer, who left Florida because of stress but then went back to Ohio State, after his wife laid down a few rules.

On the more amusing side of things, we get Erik Malinowski on "The Making of 'Homer at the Bat,' the Episode That Conquered Prime Time 20 Years Ago Tonight," about the episode of The Simpsons featuring nine active major leaguers (and one of my favorite episodes), and Jeff MacGregor's "Waiting for Goodell," which re-imagines Beckett's play as about the NFL commissioner.

So if this isn't sportswriting as I imagined it, no descriptions of a ball in play, it is at least some very good writing. Covering sports isn't the same as it used to be.