All-time favorite piece of sports journalism?

I know this one's in the pantheon and all, but I've never been able to get past the second graf. That line, "The maddest of existentialists, one of the great surrealists of our time ...," brings me up short every time. Ali was a great many things, but, no, sorry, he was not an existentialist; if I got anything out of "Nausea" it was that. And, seriously, what on earth made him a surrealist? (If we insist on playing this particular game, wouldn't he be more in league with the Modernists anyway?) Nitpicking, I guess, but if you're gonna overwrite, it better be justified.

 

Nothing beats "Pure Heart" by Nack ... goosebumps every time.

One of my favorite pieces is "The Trophy Son" written by Randall Patterson, appearing in The Houston Press and the 1999 BASW. It's basically an account of a kid who got benched on his high school baseball team and his parents more or less flipped out and sued the school, etc ... The entire time you're reading it, you're thinking that these are the craziest people on Earth. And in fact they are ... only until you reach the end do you realize that Patterson never comes out and says it directly - the parents' hanging is all in their own words.

 

I have several favorites but a newspaper piece that sticks out recently is a column from Bucky Gleason from the Buffalo News about the Aud. During the NHL lockout, he toured the old arena with a city worker and resurrected all of my childhood memories in the span of 20-24 inches. Damn, I miss that rink.

 

It's not overwritten, Janie. You're underreading it.

 

Wow, some great stories in this thread. The column on the NASCAR drivers is chilling.


This next story is the reason I am in this business. It is missing something without the Ralph Steadman illustrations, but still is magnificent.

"The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved"
By Hunter S. Thompson

http://www.derbypost.com/hunter.html

 

That's what I posted the last time this thread popped up. Great stuff from a great writer.

 

Here's a neat story about that team.

In 1960 they needed to raise money so they could play a match in Holland, so some of the players started a band. The leader was a drummer who had never played before, but he learned quickly and developed a jackhammer-style beat that immediately attracted a lot of attention.

It wasn't long before the football players realized that they actually had some musical talent, so they kept at it and pretty soon music had replaced football as their primary activity. They signed a record contract in 1962 and within a year their first huge hit single had knocked "I Want To Hold Your Hand" off the top of the British pop charts. They arrived in America in the first wave of the British Invasion and had several more hits, records that are still played "over and over" on oldies radio stations today.

Who are they?

The Dave Clark Five, from Tottenham, North London.

 

If you like that, read his whole biography of Secretariat, "The Making of a Champion."

Terrific sustained narrative story telling about an athlete that can't talk.

 

That's a great call, Sly. Love that story. Love how he lets the parents hang themselves with their own rope. I can imagine they read that story and, crazy as they were, said "Yeah, that's totally how we felt." Meanwhile, any sane and rational person would read it and immediately understand how looney toons they really were.

 

Here's the lead to the story:

In her immaculate kitchen, remembering the saddest day, Mrs. Sonja Rutherford's lip began to tremble. "It makes me cry even now," she said, sniffling. "Sorry." And she reached for the Kleenex.

 

Lot of great stories here. Fascinating to read the diversity of opinion.

One of my favorite stories, that I randomly happened to reread for the first time in years, is: "Hills of Coal, Feets of Clay" by Sam Heys in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Won "Best Feature Story" in the 1989 Best Sports Stories from The Sporting News. (Think this was the precursor to the BASW).

Anyhow, great story about the high school basketball team from the rural Kentucky mountains, led by Richie Farmer, that went on to win the KY state championship against far taller, more athletic teams (one of which featured Allan Houston).

 

I'll fourth (fifth?) the Kram SI gamer on the Thrilla in Manilla. I think about it every time I see that fight on ESPN Classic.

Another favorite: Red Smith on the Bobby Thomson home run, if only for the lead: "Now it is done. The story ends, and there is no way to tell it. The art of fiction is dead. Reality has strangled invention. Only the utterly impossible, the inexpressibly fantastic can ever be plausible again."

His column kind of backslides after that. But every time I find myself at an event that can even remotely be described as epic, I think of how he started that piece. Makes a fellow seem inadequte, somehow.