What Makes This Piece Good, Vol. 1: Buster Olney on Mariano Rivera's cutter

Olney's obit/tribute to Tony Gwynn is up on the ESPN main page.

 

Can we get a VOL. 2 for this please

 

Yes. I'll have it up later today.

 

Looking forward to it. Great idea for a thread DD. Glad that you chose to spotlight
Olney in first volumn. In many ways I've always felt that he was a bit unsung in how good
a baseball writer that he is.

Just curios when did Olney hit your radar screen? He hit mine in '97 when he started covering The
Yankees and became a daily read in '98 record season

There's a great story about Olney confrontation with Deon Sanders after Buster wrote an unflattering piece about him:
http://www.cantstopthebleeding.com/development-of-a-jerk-neon-deions-bush-league-days

Sanders replied to Olney by writing on a baseball "Keep writing like that your whole life and you'll always be a loser."

 

This is a brilliant piece on many levels.

By talking to so many sources (I counted 10, not counting Rivera), from all different aspects of baseball, it shows just how respected/feared Rivera and his "cutter" are.

The most impressive part to me is that regardless of what type of baseball fan you are, Olney is able to explain how dominant Rivera is. He's got stats to back up the dominance, anecdotes from All-Star across the league and even a "Sports Science" type of breakdown. All of these viewpoints are on display and explained in a way that all fans can understand. The stats aren't too complex for those who are sabermetrically disinclined, the stories give you an "inside baseball" feel without making the reader feel like an outsider and while the technical breakdown is good, you don't feel like you had to have passed Physics to understand.

The multiple angles also makes it a surprisingly quick read and not make it feel like Olney is banging you over the head with the argument, even though it is nearly 2,000 words long.