SI Stories On My Mind
Posted: August 10th, 2009 | Filed under: Media | 44 Comments »
The following is not a Top 10 list. I could do any number of Sports Illustrated Top 10 lists — ten best stories ever to appear in Sports Illustrated, my ten favorite stories ever in Sports Illustrated, the ten best Dan Jenkins stories, the ten best Frank Deford stories, then ten stories every sports fan should read — but I kind of want to do something different here. The thing I love about Sports Illustrated, and one of the big reasons I am excited about joining in, is that there’s such a rich and deep history of great sportswriting. Whenever I go back through the SI Vault to do some research, I come across a story I had never read that is brilliant. Some of these are stories the writers themselves may have forgotten all about … but they are still brilliant.
So, what I have here are the first 10 Sports Illustrated stories that came to my mind while writing this post.
– Let There Be Light, by Steve Rushin (2000): He has written some of my favorite ever stories — his titanic “How We Got Here” essay is a classic, and I will always love his epic poem about New York Mets third basemen just as starters — but what I always loved about the guy is that he would have brilliant passages that would just emerge out of nowhere. After the 2000 Olympics, he wrote this piece about sportswriters written in biblical style.
The money passage:
And these sportswriters were sent to Sydney from the world’s great publications—from Aftenposten and Asahi Shimbun, from Blick and from Bild—to gather the wisdom of the Earth’s Olympians, so that citizens of sundry nations might better understand one another, as when a writer from a land beyond the seas said during a Dream Team basketball press conference in 1996, “Question for Meester Malone—why is basket worth two points instead of one?”
And the Mailman said unto the scribe, “That’s just the way we do it here, my man.” And thus did two nations bridge a chasm.
– A Ring and a Prayer, by Rick Reilly (1987): The brilliant tale of the Wrestling Priest of Xometia, a Mexican priest who wrestled to raise money to keep going the orphanage “that is home for him, 72 boys, 14 girls, three women volunteers, four stray Doberman pinschers, 20 or so pigeons, four kittens and 109,000 flies. ”
The diabetic, overweight, chain-smoking wrestling priest of Xometla doesn’t want to be up at this unholy hour, but if he is to keep this orphanage standing—if that’s what you call what the crumbling structure is now doing—then he has to keep wrestling. And if he is to keep wrestling he must be in some semblance of shape, and that means getting up before the roosters and running through his tiny farming village of Xometla—about an hour northeast of Mexico City—up the road where the farmers walk their pigs and cows and then, dreadfully, up the mountain.
– A New Life, by Gary Smith (1983): There isn’t another writer in America quite like Gary Smith. It isn’t just that he’s an amazing writer and an amazing reporter and an amazing story teller and all that. Of course, that’s true. He has won the National Magazine Award FOUR times. But, for me, the thing that separates him is that every single story he writes for Sports Illustrated is a major event. It’s like Brando appearing in a new movie. He has given himself so much to live up to … and he lives up to it again and again. It’s remarkable, really.
This story is not one of his more celebrated, I don’t think — it is not in his collection of sportswriting, for instance — but it’s absolutely one of my favorites. It is about Dick Vermeil after he burned out as coach of the Eagles.
One day in his second season at UCLA, Vermeil had his staff peering at a film of the previous year’s game against Oregon State. Suddenly he punched a button, froze the picture on the screen and blurted, “My God!” The assistants leaned forward, but all they could see was a sideline shot of Vermeil’s second-oldest son, David. “God,” he said, “has David ever grown a lot in a year!”
“He said it as if the only time he ever saw his kid was on the sideline,” recalls former Assistant Coach Carl Peterson, now president and general manager of the USFL’s Philadelphia Stars. “Not during the game, when he was there with him, but on film a year later.”
– Raised By Women To Conquer Men, by Frank Deford (1978): I don’t watch much television. I’ve mentioned that here before. If I watched more, I wouldn’t have time to write these 4,000 word blog posts. But on Sunday, I wanted to rest, so I sat in my recliner and I ended up watching about an hour and a half of a 1977 tennis match between Bjorn Borg and Jimmy Connors. When it comes to that sort of thing — watching some classic sporting event of the past — I’m usually excited at the start but the excitement fades pretty quickly. Not this time. I could have watched that match for 10 straight hours. And it hit me why I used to love tennis so much more. It isn’t that the players were BETTER than — they were patently NOT better then. Because of the rackets, they hit the ball much, much, much softer. When you watch old tennis now, it’s almost laughable … it’s like watching NBA games from the 1950s when nobody seems dribble with the left hand.
But old tennis was SO MUCH MORE fun to watch. There was a great variety in the shots, it made sense to attack the net, the players used different spins (even Borg, the famed topspinner, sliced the ball often) and they changed speeds and they hit the ball at awesome angles and they ran down everything (because the ball was moving so much slower). They all had different styles. Breaking serve was not impossible. Long rallies were the norm. It was much more like watching Greg Maddux pitch than watching Roger Clemens pitch. It hits a certain point about sports that I’ve often wondered about … can athletes get so good at a game that the game itself is no longer as much fun to watch? I think the answer is probably yes. Players — with better equipment and training — are much better at tennis now. But I don’t think the game is nearly as much fun.
Anyway … the Deford classic piece is about Jimmy Connors, being raised by his mother and grandmother to become the No. 1 tennis player in the world.
Two Mom told Gloria, “Don’t bring anybody else into the picture. You made him, Glo. Don’t ever hand him over to anybody.” If there is one thread that weaves most prominently through the whole fabric of the relationship, it is this one. And yet, contrary to what is generally assumed, Mrs. Connors does not appear to be motivated by selfishness. No, she is simply and utterly devoted to this son, and she is convinced that no one else can serve him so well as she.
“Yes sir, we fought it,” Gloria says. “But if no one would play with Jimmy, he had me. I played him every day—every good day—of the year, every year. And we played hard. We taught him to be a tiger. ‘Get those tiger juices flowing!’ I would call out, and I told him to try and knock the ball down my throat, and he learned to do this because he found out that if I had the chance I would knock it down his. Yes sir. And then I would say, ‘You see, Jimbo, you see what even your own mother will do to you on a tennis court?’ ”
A Death In The Family, by S.L. Price (2007): Scott Price is a good friend of mine, and he has since turned this story — about the death of Class AA Tulsa first base coach Mike Coolbaugh during a minor league game — into a wonderful book. The story is about a seemingly small moment, but it is about the biggest topics — the randomness of death, the pain of going on, the role of fate in the world.
For those closest to Coolbaugh, “God plucked him” is the most palatable explanation for what happened in Little Rock. Within the game itself that Sunday night, so many things had to line up: hits, runs, calls. Heading into the eighth inning the Travelers held a one-run lead, a choice situation for their sidearming closer, righthander Darren O’Day. But Arkansas scored three in the bottom of the inning to erase the save opportunity. Bill Edwards, a more conventional righty, took the mound. Would O’Day have thrown the same pitches as Edwards? No. Would it have mattered?
Miller led off the ninth for Tulsa with a single to right. Up to the plate came Sanchez. Edwards threw three consecutive balls; one more and everyone would be safe. “The 3–0 pitch,” recalls Drillers play-by-play man Mark Neely, “was a very borderline strike on the outside corner. I’m not blaming this on the umpire. But with all the strange things that had occurred to get to that moment…. Many times—though umpires would never say this—on a 3–0 count the strike zone does expand. That was a perfect example: A borderline pitch on the outside corner that was called a strike and made it 3–1.”
It was 8:53 p.m. Coolbaugh leaned over to Miller, standing on first. “We’re down a couple runs, so don’t get picked off,” he said. “Freeze on a line drive.” Then Mike Coolbaugh said his last words: “If you’re going first to third, you’ve got to be sure.”
– The General Whose Army Never Wins, by Tim Crothers (1995): This is the story of Red Klotz, the longtime coach of the Washington Generals, the team that loses night after night after night to the Harlem Globetrotters. I remember when Tim told me that he was writing it — this was MONTHS before it appeared in the magazine — I thought, “Damn, that’s EXACTLY what I want to do with my life.” Years later, I wrote my own story about Red Klotz, a sad imitation … but I just had to do it.
Loss No. 10,314: “We were playing in Peru, and the night before the game we were in a bar when a fight broke out and the army had to intervene to get us out of there. The next morning the headlines read: GLOBETROTTERS ATTACK PERUVIANS. So it was very tense before the game, and the fans actually booed the Trotters. But as the game began and the Trotters started their antics, the mood changed. By game’s end it was all back to normal, the fans were booing us mercilessly…gosh, what a relief.”
– Twilight of a Titan, by William Nack (1991): There have been so many legendary writers at Sports Illustrated. But if you asked me who is the one who writes the way I wish I could write, it’s Bill Nack. He writes the way DiMaggio played centerfielder (or, closer to my heart, the way Carlos Beltran plays): No wasted motion, no unnecessary movement, can fool you into believing it’s effortless …
A.J. Foyt glanced over and saw the trouble Bobby Unser was in, saw he was out of control and about to spin into him. “He saw it,” says Unser. “Saw I’d lost it. You know what the guys does? This’ll show you how smart he is. Most drivers would have shied away. Not A.J. Foyt. Instead of trying to run away, or pulling to the right to get away from me—and maybe he can get away and leave me to hit the wall, but maybe I hit him, too—no, no … he guaranteed the outcome. Guaranteed it. And he did it out of instinct. There wasn’t time to think about it. He pulled down on me. On me! He backed off and came down and cut the draft between us. Let my car bump his. It was a very gentle thing. And he put my race car straight. We quivered a little bit but he got me straight.”
Roaring out of Turn 3, Unser found himself on the lead with those few laps to go, and down the front straight he acknowledged the debt to Foyt in the only way that he knew how, as one race car driver to another. “I had to wave him by,” recalls Unser. “The man saved me from a wreck, and I owed it to him.” That done, they went at each other furiously through the final three laps, with Foyt eventually winning a squeaker. Climbing from his car, Foyt spotted Unser.
“Saved your ass, didn’t I?” said Foyt.
– The Glory Game at Goat Hills, by Dan Jenkins (1965): This one would probably go on any Top 10 Sports Illustrated list you could come up with … Dan Jenkins writing about his classic days playing golf at Goat Hills.
My approach shot carried the concrete porch, hit hard against the clubhouse wall, chased Wells Howard, the pro, back inside the door, brought a screech from his wife, Lola, glanced off one of the rock pillars and finally came to rest—puttable if I moved a chair—about 20 feet from the hole.
Foot played a bounce shot, lofting a high wedge, letting it plop in front of the porch on some gravel, then hop up over the curb and skid against the wall. He was only 10 feet from the hole. Hell of a shot.
We quickly got a broom and began sweeping dirt particles off the porch and took off our cleats because they are very bad for a stance on concrete and put Wells and Lola at ease by convincing them that this would look good in our memoirs one day after we had all won the young National Open and got famous.
A couple of rent-club players strolled out of the golf shop, and Foot asked them not to walk in his line. My putt offered one distinct danger, tapping it too firmly and having it roll past the hole and into a row of golf carts lined up at the far end—which is precisely what happened. I tried to argue that the carts were an unnatural hazard and that I deserved a free lift; but Wells, the pro, no doubt believing the game was my idea, ruled I had to play it. On in five, I 18-putted for a 23. Against anyone else I might still have had a chance. But Foot was one of the great putters in history. He calmly tapped his putt and it dribbled slowly, slowly, over the concrete, wavering, wobbling—and in.
Foot’s 6 was about the best hole I ever saw played, and I have seen several Odessa Pro-Ams.
– The Long Way Up, by Paul Zimmerman (1985): My friend Ed always used to tell me this was one of his favorite ever Sports Illustrated stories, but I had no recollection of it (I must have missed that issue) and it wasn’t until years later that I went back and read it. It’s by the great Dr. Z about Howie Long … and it’s as good as Ed said.
He sits in his grandmother’s kitchen in Charlestown, his great frame crowding the room, his face alight and open as he tells these stories. It’s the face of innocence, an Irish minstrel boy’s face transported to the body of a massive grown man. This magnificent body, combined with those clean, chiseled good looks, already has the Hollywood talent scouts buzzing. Now where is there a part for a 275-pound choirboy? He is 25 years old with two years of All-Pro behind him, a wife who has completed two years of law school and a healthy baby son named Christopher Howard Long. It’s all there ahead of him, a life of infinite promise, and yet almost every story he tells about himself, every anecdote, has an undercurrent of despair. It’s not me, he seems to be telling you, this isn’t really me that you see here in front of you.
– He Does It By The Numbers, by Daniel Okrent (1981): The story Bill James will tell you launched his career.
This season James relishes the textbook cases he expects will develop from the big Boston-California switches of the past winter, when players shuttled between the best hitters’ park in the league (Fenway) and the third-worst (Anaheim). “One is tempted to say,” he writes, “that when you put Carney Lansford in Fenway he will inherit Fred Lynn’s statistics, and when you put Lynn in the Big A, he will pick up those left behind. That could very possibly happen, and I’ve hung myself on cruder scaffolds.”
James then made the following bold declarations:
•Lynn, over a period of years, will not even approach in California the offensive production he had in Fenway. If he hit .300 two-thirds of the time in Fenway, it might be one-third of the time in California. James admits that Lynn is unpredictable, but he estimates that in the long run he will be a .285 hitter in Anaheim, with 18 to 24 home runs a year.
•Third Baseman Lansford, a .261 hitter in Anaheim with 15 homers last year, is pegged for a .310 season in Boston with 25 home runs, but, says James, “that doesn’t represent the upper boundary of his ability.”
Fred Lynn was a lifetime .308 hitter when he was traded to Anaheim — he never hit .300 again. His three full seasons in California he hit .281 and hit 21, 22 and 23 home runs. … Carney Lansford did not get the power numbers Bill suggested, but he led the American League in hitting in 1981 and he hit .301 the next year. What can you say? Bill’s a genius.
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Simply electric.
Sidd Finch.
The (Gary Smith?) story about the two guys and the Bonds ball.
Any list that includes Gary Smith’s Vermeil piece from ‘83 is a good list. Will have to check out some of those.
True story: for most of his life, a friend of mine thought that Peter King and Dr. Z were the same person…that “Dr. Z” was sort like a wacky alter ego that King would adopt for certain pieces or something.
Excellent list, Joe. I really liked SI’s policy in 1994, for the 40th anniversary of the magazine, of publishing one ‘classic’ story per issue so newer readers could experience such classics as that Jenkins piece or ‘Raised By Women To Conquer Men.’
I remember reading Gary Smith’s story “Shadow of a Nation” ( http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1118885/1/index.htm ) as a sophomore at Havre High School in Havre, MT in study hall and deciding at that moment that I wanted to be a sports writer.
Before, I read SI . After that, I started truly “reading.” It not just about the story being told, but how it was being told and noticing how truly fantastic the writing was and how much it made the stories better.
Obviously, I figured out quickly that I would never write like Gary.
Look at this passage:
… Singing. did you hear it? There was singing in the land I once more that day. How could you not call the Crows a still-mighty tribe if you saw them on the move that afternoon? How could your heart not leave the ground if you were one of those Indian boys leading them across the Valley of the Big Horn?
It was March 24, 1983, a day of thin clouds and pale sun in southern Montana. A bus slowed as it reached the crest of a hill, and from there, for the first time, the boys inside it could see everything. Fender to fender stretched the caravan of cars behind them, seven miles, eight—they had made the asphalt go away! Through the sage and the buffalo grass they swept, over buttes and boulder-filled gullies, as in the long-ago days when their scouts had spotted buffalo and their village had packed up its lodge poles and tepee skins, lashed them to the dogs and migrated in pursuit of the herd. …
and later in the story
…Weeping. Did you hear it? There was weeping in the land that day. Sobs for those missing from that glorious caravan, those decaying in the reservation dust, for Dale Spotted and Star Not Afraid and Darrell Hill and Tim Falls Down, Crow stars of the past dead of cirrhosis and suicide and knife-stabbing and a liquor-fogged car wreck. Sobs for the slow deaths occurring every night a mile from Jonathan Takes Enemy’s high school, where an entire squad of jump shooters and dunkers and power forwards from the past could be found huddling against the chill and sprawled upon the sidewalks outside the bars on the south side of Hardin. Jonathan’s predecessors. Jonathan’s path-beaters. “Good Lord!” cries Mickey Kern, the computer-science teacher and former basketball scorekeeper at Hardin High. “How many have we lost? How many?”
Not even on my best of days, could I hope to write like that. You on the other hand are capable of such levels of writing. I’d tell you to keep up the good work, but I know that’s a given.
Ryan Divish
Mariners writer
The Tacoma News Tribune
Don’t forget that SI scooped everyone else by about three decades on PED issues in baseball.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1082543/1/index.htm
Among many others, I remember that Willam Nack piece on Secretariat. It brought me to tears.
thanks for this list! i’ve been reading a huge amount of classic sportswriting pieces lately, and i actually haven’t read most of these, so this is an awesome day!
since this will inevitably turn into a list of everyone’s favorite sports articles of all time, here are a few of mine (i hope html works in these comments. if not i apologize):
- remember his name; gary smith’s tillman article.
-todd marinovich – the man who never was; mike sager’s brilliant piece on marinovich
-what do you think of ted williams now; great williams lookback by richard ben kramer.
Thank you Joe for this great list.
Great list, but–and maybe this is because of my writer’s-man-crush on him–I can’t help but want to see a little Tom Verducci on this list. I thought, in particular, his piece last year on the end of Yankee Stadium was brilliant. What can I say, I’m nostalgic.
Also, have to agree with the Gary Smith Tillman article.
Joe, the link for Dan Jenkins’ Glory Game story should be
here (if I have the HTML right).
One that always sticks in my mind is the piece a few years ago about Devard and Devaughn Darling and how Devard persevered after his twin brother’s death at FSU. I think Gary Smith wrote that one too.
Great stuff and thank you for it. And a special thanks for including the great Paul Zimmerman–Z is the only guy I know who is an expert on the NFL and on Orwell and Nabokov, his two favorite authors. Prayers for his recovery from the November strokes richly appreciated, and needed.
Thanks, Jim K — I was trying to find that.
The Sidd Finch story was the same year as the story of the Royals winning the World Series. One of those things really happened.
The Vault is awesome, but RR has to be in the top 10 worst writers today. By subtracting him and adding Joe P., SI added at least 10 wins.
Every once in a while when I compliment Joe, it’s sort of a backhanded compliment because I always include the comment, “my second favorite sports writer behind Gary Smith”. The online magazine “Slate” had an excellent article on him some time back. Every time I go to the bookstore I look for “Going Deep” but it never seems to be in; ah well, maybe next time.
Two excellent Gary Smith stories I suggest you check out are “Damned Yankee” – http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1011129/1/index.htm
and “Escape from Jonestown” – http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2007/magazine/12/24/jonestown1231/index.html
If those links don’t work, just google the title of the stories with his name. Let me just go ahead and say it right now….”You’re welcome.”
In closing, I agree with J. McCann(#16) 110 percent.
Thanks for taking K.C. with you to the top, Joe. That’s what a good friend does. Can almost taste the brilliant cover story when either the Chiefs or Royals do something worthy of writing about. We’re with you, all the way, my man…
I am so gl;ad that William Nack is one of your faves. Mine too. I believe that Nack and Secretariat must have shared cigars together when they each had the extra time. Nack sure did seem to love the Big Red.
McCann @16: You are so correct. RR is a complete jerk of a writer/commentator even tho’ he does do or did nice things to promote that mosquito netting idea for African kids. Yeh- He’s still a jerk anyway.
John Ed Bradley’s piece on Archie Manning back in 1993 was outstanding. One of my favorite lines was something like: “As a player, Archie Manning was an All-Pro. As a father, he is a Hall of Famer.” I believe the link to that article is:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1137902/index.htm
I’ll add a couple if I may.
The Boxer and the Blonde by Frank Deford. The story of Billy Conn, who nearly took down Joe Louis. Filled with the kind of raffish characters that are Deford’s wheelhouse. My favorite SI story ever and the greatest sportswriter of all time, IMO.
Five Outs Away by Tom Verducci. The 2003 LCS and my favorite recent SI story. Could and should be expanded into a great book.
And as mentioned by others Bill Nack’s piece and subsequent book on Secretariat. In some ways Nack did too good a job. The reality of horse racing has never been able to measure up to the incredible romance and mythology of Nack’s story.
Oh, one other thing. Joe, thanks for publishing this list and ensuring that I’ll get no work done today.
I’ve only ever read this online, so I’ve never seen the picture this story’s about, but Gary Smith’s so good I don’t need to.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1016500/1/index.htm
I’m older than you, Joe, so I’ve got a story from SI that you probably don’t recall since you were too young.
The finest SI piece ever written was Mark Kram’s account of the third Frazier/Ali fight in Manila in 1975. Absolutely the best sportswriting I have ever read. This piece has been discussed on the internet and in magazines because it was so brilliantly written. One writer described it as “lyrical” and I guess that is an accurate description. It is available on the SI website in the “Vault” section. It appeared in the 10.13.75 SI issue.
Paul
I would recommend a few:
Mark Kram’s on deadline story of the “Thrilla in Manila” which he later expanded into a great book.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1090341/index.htm
George Plimpton’s article on George H. W. Bush in 1988 after he was elected President:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1068134/index.htm
Also, Nack put out a collection of his work about five years ago that I would also heartily recommend:
“My Turf : Horses, Boxers, Blood Money and the Sporting Life “
Great stuff, Joe… I’m 39yo and grew up with SI (and Inside Sports, to an extent)…
The two articles that have always jumped out at me were Plimpton’s fabulous Sidd Finch story and Gary Smith’s “The Ripples from Little Lake Nellie”…
I remember getting the Finch SI and reading the article, wondering if this could really be true… I was 14, and Plimpton had just enough stuff in there to make you want to believe that Sidd Finch really existed… No way that story makes as big of a splash today because everyone would know it was a joke before the magazine ever arrived in the mailbox…
Smith’s article on how everyone coped with the deaths of Tim Crews and Steve Olin just four months after their boat accident was one of the most powerful stories I’ve ever read in SI… I’ve saved that issue–it’s probably made about 10 moves with me since 1993–as a reminder of how great writing can move a person… Ironically, I didn’t remember that Gary Smith wrote the article… Here’s the link to it:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1138505/index.htm
Gary Smith’s story about Richie Parker came out when I was in high school and made me decide to give up my dreams of being a lawyer to become a journalist. Thanks?
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1008297/index.htm
Rick Reilly doesn’t belong on any list with those great writers.
Good stuff. I think the SI Vault may be one of the single best web sites ever created.
Gary Smith’s article on Andre Agassi from summer 2006 is my favorite by far.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2006/magazine/08/30/agassi0717/index.html
Gary Smith has my (non-Poz) favorite too:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1021912/index.htm
My wife thinks I waste way too much time reading about Sports. She loved this article about an African American coach of an Amish basketball team.
I have wondered what people think of Frank Deford these days, especially people younger than I who did not read him in his glory days at SI. When I’ve seen Deford on HBO’s Real Sports there can be something vaguely creepy about him. And his NPR pieces grow less interesting by the week.
But, in his prime, what a writer Deford was. I’m glad you included the Connors piece here, Joe. It has always stuck with me. Fascinating study of an athlete and how he became the man and the champion that he was. Anyone interested in great writing would do well to check out Deford’s collection of pieces called The World’s Tallest Midget.
And I would do well to catch up on Gary Smith. I’ve heard a lot more about his writing than I have actually read myself. Thanks, Joe, for a great post.
I was supposed to mow the (big) lawn. You have given me enough great links to keep me here for the rest of the day.
Brent @ 31 – that was a great, great story.
Surprised no one has mentioned Deford’s profile of Bobby Knight, the Rabbit Hunter, which would get my vote as the finest piece SI has ever published.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1124147/index.htm
Agreed on the Rabbit Hunter. Absolutely fantastic profile.
Another piece of Deford’s that I really enjoyed was about Roger Bannister & Sir Edmund Hillary:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1018082/index.htm
I was beaten to Gary Smith’s story on Richie Parker, so here’s another amazing Smith article on Mike Tyson:
Tyson the Timid, Tyson the Terrible
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Frank Deford’s brilliant candle burned out long ago. Now he’s a Bic lighter nearly out of juice. Occasionally a good shake will create a short burst of flame but it’s gone before you know it. Perhaps he’s just tired of the entire sports scene and is rarely enthused about the subject at this point. That’s how his work appears to me.
Gotta second (or third?) the mentions of the Thrilla in Manilla by Kram and the Secretariat piece by Nack. Those are the two I always remember.
BTW, whatzit mean to be a “senior writer?” Like, do you write a certain number of pieces per month/year?
Just wondering…
C.D. Bradley, I think this must be the TCU football team photo the Smith article is about:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_rfngy3s_ngw/Rjt22ROvx0I/AAAAAAAAAC4/HuJettJ5wNc/s320/1957+Cotton+Bowl.jpg
My personal favorite, which I have not seen online, but am looking at here on my desk, is a profile of Clair Bee, legendary coach and author of the Chip Hilton Sports Series by Jack McCallum in the 1/7/80 issue (Ricky Bell on the cover). I’m sure you old timers grew up reading those books, as had McCallum. A truly special article, the feature article of the issue.
The story about Radio (not sure who wrote it) had me crying like a baby when I read it. I was very disappointed when the film came out, I just knew it would not capture the story the way the article did, and I was right.
Casey at the Bat – Frank DeFord
I know this is late, but I keep coming back here to try and print these stories from SI’s website. I get an error message *every* time. Has anyone else been able to print any of these?