Friday, December 21, 2012

Sports writing from Smith, Chen, Saslow & Carpenter

There's been some remarkable sports writing over the past week from a variety of different sources.

Most profound of the pieces was by Gary Smith for last week's issue of Sports Illustrated. Written about the childhood sex abuse suffered by Cy Young winning pitcher R.A. Dickey and Judo gold medalist Kayla Harrison"Stand Up Speak Out" is a detailed and painful to read story of children being overlooked, manipulated and taken advantage of.

From this same issue of issue was "The Politicization Of Jeremy Lin" by Albert Chen. It was interesting reading that dealt heavily with identity and how enemies China and Taiwan both seek to claim the Rockets point guard (who was born in the U.S.) as their own.

Another piece of noteworthy sports writing lately was by Les Carpenter for Yahoo Sports. "Former NFL QB Jon Kitna finds ‘gold mine’ at his troubled old high school" was a solidly written profile of a remarkable teacher and coach. Contained within the piece was the disconcerting anecdote about the H.S. football team returning back to school at 11:30PM and there being no parents there waiting.

Last piece to mention here was from the latest issue of ESPN the Magazine. Eli Saslow wrote "A trip to the threshing floor" on former Cowboys receiver Michael Irvin and his Hall of Fame induction speech. The story features a ton of interesting anecdotes reported on by Saslow and is just very well done.