Posted: August 2nd, 2010 | Filed under: Essays | 57 Comments »
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First event: 100-Meter Dash
Rafer Johnson came into the decathlon 50 years ago — at the 1960 Olympics in Rome — as the heavy favorite and the world-record holder. He got off to a bit of a rough start. There were three false starts in his 100-meter heat, and on the third he ran about halfway before realizing he had to come back. The extra energy he exerted may have depleted him, and Johnson ran a 10.9 … slow by his high standards. He had run a 10.6 when setting the world record at the Olympic Trials in Eugene, Ore., just months earlier.
Johnson’s close friend and training partner, Chinese Taipei’s Yang Chuan-Kwang — known internationally as C.K. Yang — ran well, posting a 10.7 to win the event. And one of the great duels had begun.
Result: Yang led Johnson by 86 points (1,034-948)
* * *
These are some stories of an extraordinary life. No. Wait. They teach you early on in the storytelling business to never set expectations too high. For instance, you don’t want to say “Oh, I’ve got this hilarious joke I have to tell you.” Let the joke breathe. You don’t want to say, “Here is a story you will not believe.” Let the story speak.
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Posted: July 25th, 2010 | Filed under: Essays | 122 Comments »
This is kind of insider sportswriting talk and so it almost certainly is of no interest to you. But, for personal reasons, I thought it would put it out there anyway.
In the last week or so, some people I respect and admire have taken some hard shots at Detroit sports columnist and best-selling author Mitch Albom. I thought those columns and posts were fair, as far as that goes, and entertaining without reservation. But I’m probably not the best person to judge. Albom has been awfully cold to me personally. I’ve heard horror story after horror story about the way he has treated people. And, like most of my journalism friends, I’ve had an issue with some of the things he has done as a sportswriter.
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Posted: July 21st, 2010 | Filed under: Essays | 106 Comments »
You probably have seen that there has been quite a lot of hype about the I Write Like site. The site, supposedly, “analyzes your word choice and writing style and compares them with those of the famous writers.” More than a million snippets of text have been analyzed so far, which means that hundreds of thousands of people have found that they write an awful lot like H.P. Lovecraft.
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Posted: June 30th, 2010 | Filed under: Essays, Pop Culture | 62 Comments »
CAPE TOWN, South Africa — So I want to tell you about this sweet moment I had here in South Africa, this tiny little moment that I will probably remember longer than I remember anything that happens at the World Cup. But I’m just not sure I can convey it. Isn’t it just like that for the sweet little moments in our lives? Why is it that I so clearly remember sitting next to my father at Cleveland Municipal Stadium and watching him drink a beer out of a waxed paper cup (my father almost never drank beer — it seemed so exotic then) when I can’t remember the name of my sixth grade teacher? Why is it I can remember stumbling out into the white-hot sunlight after the movie ended, holding my mother’s hand as we stumbled through the parking lot looking for the car when I can’t remember what movie we saw? Why is it I can remember shakily walking back and forth in a dark nursery, whispering into my baby daughter’s ear to go to sleep already when I can’t remember my hotel room number? Why do these little memories that would seem so ordinary to anyone else — so ordinary to me even — animate the mind?
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Posted: June 5th, 2010 | Filed under: Essays, Other Sports | 38 Comments »
Most people can live with the vague. For instance: What is success? Well, um, you know, um, there’s that old line about art: I know it when I see it. I know it when I feel it. Success is like that, right? I can’t quite put it into words what success means, and other things like “happiness,” or “class,” or “integrity,” but I don’t need the words, right? These are things that come from wordless places deep inside, things that cannot be defined, things that we believe transcend definition. That’s OK. We KNOW what success means, even if we can’t really SAY what it means. Most of us can live comfortably in that hazy world.
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Posted: May 27th, 2010 | Filed under: Essays | 45 Comments »
A few years back, I wrote a column about then Kansas City Chiefs coach Dick Vermeil that drew about as much response as anything I wrote for The Kansas City Star. I firmly believe Vermeil is a great guy, but we all know that he could get pretty wrapped up in his life — the guy did quit coaching for years after burning out — and we all know that he could get very emotional, win or lose. That day, he was announcing the resignation of defensive coordinator Greg Robinson. And he kind of lost his mind.
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Posted: May 23rd, 2010 | Filed under: Baseball, Essays | 69 Comments »
The image of Jose Lima that will stick with me forever comes from the Kansas City Royals clubhouse in the moments after he had pitched a beautiful baseball game. Lima had gone nine innings, allowed just five hits and one run to the Detroit Tigers. He had tipped his cap to the crowd as he exited the field. As he sat in front of his locker, he had this big grin on his face and this big cigar between his fingers — a cigar he had just pulled out of his humidor. It was the look of a man contented. Alexander wasn’t this happy when he conquered the Persian Empire. Matthew Webb wasn’t this triumphant when he swam across the English Channel.
To complete the image, though, there are three other things you should know.
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Posted: March 31st, 2010 | Filed under: Essays, Other Sports | 79 Comments »
“There’s one thing you have to understand something about us. We don’t get blown out. We play too hard to get blown out.”
– Bob Huggins, 1994
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Posted: March 12th, 2010 | Filed under: Essays | 56 Comments »
Adrian Burgos Jr. is Associate Professor of History at the University of Illinois and is the author of the fine book “Playing America’s Game: Baseball, Latinos and the Color Line.” He has written an essay about Torii Hunter and his comments, which I post as follows. I will post my own comments feeding off this post in the next couple of days.
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Posted: March 11th, 2010 | Filed under: Essays, Other Sports | 74 Comments »
In this week’s Sports Illustrated, I wrote a little something about the Kansas Jayhawks and the challenge of being the tournament favorite. Along the way, I spent quite a bit of time with Bill Self. He’s one of my favorite people in sports. I actually think that Self is about as good a coach as anyone in America, any sport. I dropped this opinion at a dinner the other day. It’s fair to say that not everyone at the table agreed.
But to me, when you look at the whole coaching package — coaching, recruiting, building a program, selling the program, dealing with the media, building an atmosphere — Self is as good as anyone. The thing about coaches and managers (with Gardy being Exhibit A) is that you can always argue that it really isn’t about them. It’s about the players who actually do. A coach with great players should win. A coach with lousy players should lose. There will always be some serious questions about the worth of any coach because it’s hard to define what the coach actually does … and whether or not the team would have won or lost anyway.
In any case, I think Bill Self is terrific. And I find him fascinating. And so, I wrote the following insanely long piece about him.
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