All-time favorite piece of sports journalism?

I've mentioned this piece before in a thread on a different topic, but when I was in high school the (then) Wilmington, Del. Evening Journal used to run Jim Murray's stuff. Some readers thought Murray was a little acerbic, and also, who cared about LA in Delaware. So the Journal had a vote, Murray stay or go, and he won with about 54 percent of the vote.
Murray's next piece was about the vote, starting off by praising Wilmington to the skies, having second thoughts, and denouncing us as only Murray could. Laughed so hard I couldn't breathe. Sorry for no links, but I have no idea to find that lost jewel.

 

That's funny, Michael, because I remember seeing Murray's column when I was a teenager in a small or mid-size New Jersey paper and thinking "who the heck is this guy"

Reading him everyday in southern California gave me a somewhat better appreciation of him. Duh

 

Gary Smith piece on Richie Parker (kid from NY accused of sexual assault) in SI a while ago

 

My personal favorite was the SI story Frank DeFord did on Bull Sullivan, an obscure junior college football coach in the 1950s and 1960s in Mississippi: "The Toughest Coach There Ever Was." Laughed and cried in the same story. I was highly pissed when DeFord came out with a compliation of his stories, and that wasn't included. This coach made Lombardi look like a touchy-feely enabling headshrinker. My favorite anectode DeFord had was from a former player under Sullivan. One day, he was killing them doing up-down drills in practice until they were all puking. A squadron of military jets flew in very low. The player said his first thought was this: "I thought they were Russians, and they knew they would have to take out Coach first."

I loved that story. If anyone has a way to find a link to it, I would be most grateful.

 

I could swear that story was in Deford's compilation The World's Tallest Midget. I never saw it in SI and I'm sure that's where I read it.

 

It was in SI, because the cover had the jersey and helmet the guy designed for his JUCO team in Scooba, Miss. I'll try to find that DeFord book.

 

I should have phrased it differently: I know it was in SI but that's not where I read it.

 

Gary Smith's story on a dying Jim Valvano (I believe it was titled "As Time Runs Out") was tremendous. It was an SI cover story.

 

Rushin's story on Alan Page in the SI's first "where are they now" edition was great. He tells a wonderful story about when he was a kid and went to see the Vikings as they checked into their hotel the night before a home game as part of a sleepover. He was a big Page fan but instructed not to ask Page for autographs. I don't want to spoil it the ending, but if anyone out there has a link to it, I'd love to reread it.

 

I don't have a link to it, but I know Rushin included a version of that story in his book, "Road Swing."

 

Paul Gardner's pieces on soccer from the last 30 years or so, have a special place with me, but there's one story in particular which I'm quite fond of. I can't recall the name of it, but he goes to great lengths to trace the roots of soccer, rugby and American football...and he ties them all together in a way which makes perfect sense.

Hunter Davies early 1970s book about living with the Tottenham Hotspur Football Club The Glory Game is the best depiction of a team I've ever read.

The Beautiful Game?: Searching the Soul of Football by David Conn reached down deep inside me and severely disturbed my passion for modern day global soccer...and it is a good thing. While we in America may think our leagues have vast issues to deal with, nothing comes close to the monumental scandals which have built the English Premiership. There's roughly five chapters in this one which I cried straight through. The ones about the Hillsborough stadium disaster should be read by all.

Football Against the Enemy by Simon Kuper...Kuper might not be the best writer at all times, but the man has balls the size of watermelons. In 1993 and 94 a 22-year-old Kuper took off on a trek around the world with virtually no money to experience soccer cultures from far and wide. The amount of access he gained was amazing. Without that experience, he could've never written the definitive tome about soccer in the second world war Ajax, the Dutch, the War: Football in Europe During the Second World War
. By using soccer as his backdrop, Kuper tells the story of the Netherlands' brush with The Holocaust by tracking down old players, coaches and fans who make the whole thing seem like it just happened yesterday.

 

Soccer? I thought this was a tread about "sports" journalism