Great sports writing - by Graff, Jenkins, Reiter & Wickersham

My favorite recent sports pieces covered a number of different subjects: a skydiver, NBA player that's improved both professionally and personally, NFL team chaplain, and players from the old USSR hockey team juggernaut.

By Michael Graff for the Feb 2015 issue of Charlotte Magazine was "Grounded," a fantastic story of competitive skydiver, and former Army Golden Knight, Cheryl Stearns and the accident she suffered just prior to her 20,000th skydive.

The first of two Sports Illustrated stories to note here was by Lee Jenkins with "Michael Kidd-Gilchrist's jump shot, voice remain a work in progress," on the Charlotte Hornets player and his diligent efforts to overcome both a stutter that began in childhood and problem in his game.

The second SI piece was "Red Army: Spirited documentary about Soviet hockey goes deep" by Ben Reiter about the recently released in theaters Red Army. Just an awesome trip down memory lane for someone who remembers the great Soviet team of the 1980s.

Written for ESPN was "Love in the Time of Deflategate" by Seth Wickersham on New England Patriots team chaplain / character coach Jack Easterby. Very cool and heartwarming look at a different aspect of the NFL world that Wickersham has written well about so many times.

Excellent Sports Illustrated writing- by Smith, Reiter, Chen, Price & Rushin

Not sure if this was a change that Sports Illustrated just made, but apparently watching a short ad online now makes available for reading a number of magazine stories that previously weren't even searchable. As a result of this, there's a few excellent stories from SI to link to here... along with a few that were already available online.

The most profound feature for me was "Frank Hall, American Hero" from the June 24 edition. The cover story by Gary Smith was on a high school football coach from Chardon, OH who in Feb 2012 helped prevent additional deaths in a school shooting that claimed the lives of three students. It's a great piece from Smith made all the more powerful with it beginning on the prevalence of this type of gun violence and then ending with mention of how the violence seems all too quickly forgotten.

Two other pieces I found noteworthy from SI over the past few months were each on the fascinating to me subject of baseball phenoms. "Where Will He Be?" was from the July 8 edition and written by Ben Reiter on Dodgers outfielder Yasiel Puig. Very interesting stuff about how the Dodgers worked to sign Puig as a relative unknown coming out of Cuba and additionally on a baseball phenom (actually, two) was "Glimmer Twins" by Albert Chen from the Aug 19 issue of SI. About Minnesota Twins prospects Byron Buxton and Miguel Santo, it's on two players who may well have a huge impact on a franchise.

From the Aug 5 edition of SI was another stellar cover story with "The Last Days of A-Rod" by S.L. Price. I'm always interested when I see a feature being done by the excellent Price and on Alex Rodriguez he writes a thorough look at someone who's fallen so far through the course of his career.

The final piece to note here isn't terribly recent, but definitely great writing worth linking to. "Symphony for a Foghorn" was by Steve Rushin from the June 10 Sports Illustrated and about the NHL playoffs. I suppose it's a description that may get bandied about excessively, but (and in line with the piece title), it's extremely lyrical and captivating hockey writing from Rushin.