Sunday, May 16, 2010

Sports Illustrated Stories - Dallas Braden Perfect Game & Genes Impacting Sports

Two different pieces from the May 17 issue of Sports Illustrated that stood out to me... neither for what I thought was necessarily great writing, but both with very interesting content.

The cover story was "Happy Mother's Day" about the 19th Perfect Game in Major League history... thrown by Dallas Braden.  Written by Tom Verducci, the story chronicles the trials and tribulations that Braden has been through and how they led up to his masterpiece performance.  Such a great narrative around the performance with it being on Mother's Day / Breast Cancer Awareness Day and in front of his grandmother who raised him after his single mom passed away from cancer.

Below is the clip from Comcast Sports Net Bay Area:



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From the same May 17 issue was "Sports Genes" by David Epstein about how genetic markers can and do influence athletic performance.  What was terribly interesting about this piece to me wasn't so much from the perspective of what's known now about genes and their impact on sports, but what the future holds.  With performance enhancing drugs or the possibility of their use being so prevalent in many sports, gene therapy takes the idea of artificial enhancement to a new level.