There's been a few pieces from ESPN (both online and The Magazine) that stood out to me recently, with topics ranging from Aaron Hernandez and Odin Lloyd to a rodeo bull and then paraplegic fly-rod maker.
Posted to the ESPN site on July 3rd was "The ties that bind Hernandez, Lloyd" By Elizabeth Merrill. It was a really thoroughly reported piece about the respective lives of the two men as well the events that left Hernandez in jail and Lloyd dead. Also about Lloyd was the back page essay from ESPN The Magazine's July 22 issue. By Chris Jones, "Death in the family" was a poignant short work with the subtitle "The Boston Bandits play on in memory of slain teammate Odin Lloyd".
The other two excellent stories to note here were both features by Wright Thompson. From the same July 22 "body issue" that contained the column by Jones was "Unridable: Bushwacker, an angry 1,700-pound bull, has the baddest body in sports" and then posted online last week was "Unity with the Universe" on Tom Morgan and his craftsmanship. The subtitle of this piece is "Can a fly rod really hold the secret of life? In the central Montana mountains, a paralyzed man and his wife are proving the answer just might be yes" and it's compelling writing on both a marriage partnership and great work being produced by Morgan and his wife, Gerri Carlson.
