Great Sports Illustrated writing by Jenkins & Ballard

There's been a few different stories from Sports Illustrated in recent months that have struck me as particularly outstanding, with one from Lee Jenkins on a high school baseball phenom and two basketball-related pieces from Chris Ballard.

The Jenkins feature was "Hunter Greene is the star baseball needs" on the Sherman Oaks, CA pitcher / shortstop and a cover story, with the most recent previous SI high school athlete cover subjects Jabari Parker, Sebastian Telfair, Bryce Harper, and LeBron James. I'm often captivated by writing about potential future stars and recall the Harper piece by Tom Verducci back in 2009.

The older of the two Ballard stories to note here was "'You Can't Give In': Monty Williams On Life After Tragedy" about the NBA coach whose wife died unexpectedly. The story of how Williams and their five kids dealt with the grief and have carried on with their lives in honor of Ingrid is a great one well told by Ballard.

The final piece to note here was the cover story from the latest SI issue, with Ballard writing "Steve Kerr's Absence: The True Test Of A Leader" about the Warriors' head coach. It's great stuff on Kerr, including him being a grinder, over-communicator, someone who works with people based on how they are and what they'll respond to, doesn't take himself too seriously, and is joyful and just plain likable. Ballard wrote a really compelling story and also interesting from it was mention of how Kerr last season brought into a pair of practices Dacher Keltner, a social psychologist from Cal who studies verbal cues and the dynamics of compassion, and Ballard notes as having played a role in how the filmmakers of Pixar's Inside Out looked at emotion.

The Inner Game of Tennis by Timothy Gallwey

The Inner Game of Tennis by Timothy Gallwey was an interesting read that I heard of from an article by Chris Ballard for Sports Illustrated titled "The little-known book that shaped the minds of Steve Kerr and Pete Carroll."

Gallwey's book is subtitled The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance and in it, he writes of how "every game is composed of two parts, an outer game and inner game, that which takes place in the mind of the player, and is played against such obstacles as lapses in concentration, nervousness, self-doubt, and self-condemnation."

This inner game is written of by Gallwey as being one that can easily hurt us, with our "telling self" judging results, and distracting from our "doing self" completing activities. In terms of simply doing, Gallwey writes of how if we focus on having a clear picture of what we want to accomplish and then just act, we'll likely be happier when all said and done. This clear picture can be formed by observation, of both others and ourselves, with a non-judgmental awareness of our movements.

It's a short book from Gallwey and one with some compelling ideas.

Great sports writing about the Golden State Warriors - by Jenkins, Ballard, & Posnanski

There was a series of great pieces over the past few weeks on the Golden State Warriors and their championship-winning team and players.

Lee Jenkins wrote a number of them for Sports Illustrated with the June 8th issue having "Oracle Arena brings the noise for an NBA Finals worth screaming about," "Steve Kerr: The Warriors' Ringmaster" for the June 15th and "Andre and the Giant: How one veteran helped the Warriors turn the Finals" published in the June 22nd issue.

Additionally, Jenkins for the SI website wrote "Golden Hours: Inside the Warriors' nightlong NBA Finals celebration" after the series-clinching win over the Cavilers.

Also, two great pieces to note here from other writers were "Pursuit of perfection: Jerry West's fire burns as deep as ever with Warriors" by Chris Ballard for the SI site prior to the Finals and then after they were over, Joe Posnanski doing "The Right Steph" for the NBC Sports website.

It's a bit of a laundry list of pieces, but some great writing from Jenkins, Ballard and Posnanski on the Warriors.

Great sports writing - by Mooney, Price & Ballard

Three recent great pieces of sports writing included work by some of my favorite sports writers in Michael Mooney, S.L. Price & Chris Ballard.

For ESPN, Mooney wrote "Is J.J. Watt the next Texas legend?" on the Houston Texans star defensive end and two powerful Sports Illustrated pieces were "Max Lenox's amazing journey to much-admired Army hoops captain" from Price and "Ryan Anderson tries to move forward after girlfriend Gia Allemand's suicide" written by Ballard. This piece on Anderson was particularly moving and just really poignant and important.

Great sports writing - by Pollak, Ballard & White

There's been a few recent pieces of sports writing I've seen that I found particularly noteworthy, with two of the pieces very much profound and the third an entertaining tale.

The first piece was from the Baltimore Sun with the 1997 Pulitzer Prize winning "The Umpire's Son" by Lisa Pollak on MLB umpire John Hirschbeck and his family. In 1992 they learned of the rare genetic disease Adrenoleukodystrophy, or ALD, that would claim the life of eight-year-old John Drew Hirschbeck and leave his younger brother Michael afflicted with the disease, along with his two sisters as carriers that could pass it along to any males they might eventually give birth to. It's an empathically written story from Pollak that becomes even more profound with the Hirschbeck family's tragic news from April of this year.

The second story of heft to note here was from the recent July 28 issue of Sports Illustrated with Chris Ballard writing "A First-time Skydiving Experience, a Fall to Earth and a Terrible Accident." The piece is a detailed account of the cataclysmic 2009 injury suffered by instructor Dave Hartsock as he saved the life of his first-time jumper client Shirley Dygert and a great retelling of a heroic act.

The final piece to mention didn't necessarily have the same gravitas as the first two, but was a well-done story on an topic geographically close to my heart. Set on the Richardson Highway between Glennallen and Delta Junction (middle of nowhere Alaska sort of between Anchorage and Fairbanks) is the annual race and party Arctic Man and written about it was "Artic Man: Wild Rides and Crazed Nights at America's Most Extreme Ski Race" by Matt White for SB Nation Longform. It's an entertaining story and brought to mind the also entertaining segment on Arctic Man by the Adam Richman show "Fandemonium" on the Travel Channel.

Favorite soccer writing so far - by Phillips, Ballard, Thompson & Jones

There's of course been a tremendous amount of writing on soccer since the World Cup began June 12th and my favorite pieces so far have been by Brian Phillips, Chris Ballard, Wright Thompson and Chris Jones.

The Phillips story is the one I saw most recently with him writing "Train in Vain" for Grantland and it's a remarkable look at the games themselves juxtaposed against the problems in Brazil and just brilliantly done work.

For Sports Illustrated Longform a few days ago, Chris Ballard provided "Coming of Age," an excellent piece on U.S. soccer fandom, told through the lens of the author's trip with longtime friends to watch the Americans play Ghana and that compared to travelling with much the same group to France for U.S. World Cup games in 1998.

As would be expected, there's been a huge volume of writing done for ESPN so far during the tournament, with a big chunk of that provided by Wright Thompson with incredibly frequent posts of stories (and salsa recipes!) to his ESPN World Cup blog. So many of the pieces are well-written features that he's pumping out constantly as he's been travelling through Latin America and the story of his so far that stands out the most as I scroll the blog is "A place that God forgot," written from the "murder capital of the world," San Pedro Sula, Honduras.

The last really good piece of soccer writing to note here wasn't actually on the World Cup, but totally captures the idea of soccer fandom, and to that adds a dollop of fatherhood. "How a Kid Becomes a Fan" was by Chris Jones for the latest issue of Esquire and is just a really nice short piece.

Compelling sports writing - by Ballard, Layden & Sneed

There's been three different pieces of sports writing I've seen lately (each of which covered well an interesting subject) that between them had a connecting thread about storytelling, what a piece could be, what it actually is and writing narratives that don't lend themselves to being tidy.

Two of the features were for the new Sports Illustrated Longform site with "Lost Soul" by Chris Ballard on former NBA player Bison Dele and "Out of the Darkness" by Tim Layden on Jeff Lukas, son of legendary horse trainer D. Wayne Lukas.

The Ballard feature examined the life of Dele: born with the name Brian Williams, retired young from basketball, and then died in Tahiti, most likely at the hands of his brother, Miles Dabord. The feature struck me as a fascinating one that covered big-picture type themes around life, death and identity, and did all of that without absolutely knowing the details of Dele's passing or the two others that died along with him.

One thing to note about the Dele feature is, just as with the one on Lukas, it was published in the magazine as well as on the SI Longform site, and that on Dele was trimmed by I believe several thousand words for the print version. I'm sure this cutting was to fit within the magazine space allotted, and probably done about as it could have been, but the unfortunate thing is it took out much of the Tahiti narrative. That portion was fascinating to me and also made the web feature have much more of a storytelling feel to it, and different than most other pieces I've read.

Another tremendous work, the piece by Layden on Jeff Lukas was about his life before and since a horrific accident two decades ago. The parallel I found to the Dele feature is that both pieces written about something that not everything known about. In the case of Dele, there's the unknown details of his death and with Lukas, there's the question of how his life changed with the accident. The narrative of Lukas' life doesn't seem as simple as him "having great life circumstances which were cruelly taken away," nor that he's "taken the lemons life handed him and made lemonade," but rather that he had a moment in life that had to, and will continue to have to, be dealt with and the best made out of. Layden definitely introduces positives that came out of the accident for Lukas along with the obvious negatives, but what I loved from the writing was how he laid out everything without trying to fit it all into a tightly answered and conventional narrative arc.

Really excellent writing in both SI Longform pieces and hopefully the site continues to develop. There's of course a lot of things that could be done with it, but one thing that comes to mind is as they continue to post new features (and some or all of the time also publish them in print), it would be cool to see some of the past great Sport Illustrated longform writing added to the site. The ability as a reader to for instance select Gary Smith as a writer, baseball as a topic and then the 1980s as a time-period would be a nice functionality.

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The other piece to mention here that was fascinating to me was by Brandon Sneed for SB Nation Longform. "Andre Dawkins Has A Story" was about the Duke basketball player who went through tragedy with his 21-year-old sister passing away in 2009 after a car accident. The story on Dawkins and his struggle to deal with the death of his sister while being a a major-sport college athlete was interesting in it's own right, but what was further interesting to me was how Sneed wrote the piece as being partially about Dawkins and partially about the idea of writing a feature on a young athlete who would rather not be profiled, especially when the reason for the profile is his working to overcome such a tragedy.

To this end, there were a number of comments about the piece and writing approach both below the story and in a thread to the writing site Gangrey. My opinion is that I follow what Sneed ran into with the story and his difficulty, but find myself conflicted about whether it made sense to write such a lengthy "inside baseball" portion about the writing process. This story wasn't written for a general interest sports print magazine, but rather for a great site devoted to sports writing... and to have it include a piece of sports writing that was in part about... sports writing, makes sense. Just it seems that the story could have still had all the narrative about Dawkins and also included Sneed's deliberations as a writer, but done so in a shorter fashion with less in the sections on Sneed and the alternate endings (below being what I saw to be word-count math)...

roughly 6,000 words total
first 100 about Sneed
next 2,000 about Dawkins
next 2,500 about Sneed
next 400 about time with Dawkins
next 1,000 about different alternate endings to the story... with two of the three based on time with Dawkins

It's not that I know I could have written a better story and feel like I understand what Sneed wrote about with his internal struggle in writing on Dawkins, but (without my actually working in the field) also imagine it part of the job. It seems to me a non-fiction writer should seek out the truth, but also do so in a manner that's as fair and compassionate as it should be to the subjects. Granted, this allows for a great deal of latitude, but I'd think that comes with the job to figure it out and act appropriately. Dawkins as a college kid may well warrant a different threshold than perhaps a professional entertainer in terms of how dogged someone should be in writing about him, but regardless, he warrants a threshold that should be met when writing for the public about a private individual (which of course, everyone is). Basically, we're all characters in narratives and there's nothing wrong with those of us in the public eye being written about, as long as the authors write honestly and as appropriately (in both the writing and reporting) as should be done about them.

Sneed wrote very interesting stuff about Dawkins and also raised very valid questions about the writing of a feature on him, just I wonder both if it's part of the job to be report and write appropriately and if whether a shorter piece would have kept the story more about Dawkins rather than what felt to be a feature first about Dawkins and then about the writing on him. Related to this, I found interesting the long-sought interview with Dawkins which then led to the alternate endings written to the story. The time with Dawkins wasn't profound, but it didn't have to be. I don't think there any evidence that Sneed as a writer wanted to force this to be so, but Dawkins as a subject of course not required to be profound nor fit into a convention or have a particularly tidy narrative to have a solid story written about him, which even with my quibbling about the writing dilemma portion, I think was delivered by Sneed.

Writing education & wisdom

There's been a few great things to note here that I've seen recently that fall under the closely linked subjects of writing education and writing wisdom.

For his personal blog earlier this month, Tommy Tomlinson wrote "The Four Questions" about what he asks students in his writing workshops to help them guide what to write about. Really great things to think about from Tomlinson with the questions (written about more in his blog post) below along with a solid fifth question added by Chris Ballard:

1. What do you know about?
2. What do you care about?
3. What are you curious about?
4. What scares you?
5. What pisses you off?

Another great link around writing education and posted a few weeks ago to The First Bound was the syllabus for a narrative non-fiction course taught by Chris Jones. Included is a ton of interesting material from Jones with his thoughts on the course, resources in the form of published stories to review and weekly schedule. Some of the particular planned days that stood out to me as particularly interesting included the following:

9/21 - Your Ideas (Please come to class with three or four ideas for the "Best Story of Your Life So Far." The class will discuss the merits of each.)
9/28 - Reporting: Where to Begin?
10/05 - Cultivating Sources
10/07 - The Art of the Interview
10/21 - Reporting Finished (Please come to class with all of your reporting for your story, including transcripts. After this class, you should be able to begin writing in earnest.)
11/18 - First Drafts Due (During this class, you will submit a first draft of your story to me and exchange a second copy with a fellow student for peer review.)
12/07 - Final Edit Due

Also very much in the writing education area was a tweet sent out by Paige Williams about the upcoming Nov 8 deadline to apply for a Nieman Foundation Visiting Fellowship. Some of the details noted at the link include the following:

- The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard offers short-term visiting fellowships to individuals interested in working on special research projects designed to advance journalism.
- Applicants need not be practicing journalists, but must demonstrate the ways in which their work at Harvard and the Nieman Foundation may improve the prospects for journalism’s future.
- Successful applicants are invited to the Nieman Foundation for a period ranging from a few weeks to three months, depending on the scope of the project.

I hadn't heard before of the short-term Nieman Fellowships, but they're related to the 10 month long Nieman Fellowships which have had a number of well known writers participate in, including the aforementioned Tomlinson who was recently written about on Nieman Storyboard as a 2009 Nieman Fellow.


The last things around writing to mention on this post aren't necessarily as squarely in the category of journalism education, but definitely fall under the area of writing wisdom and start off with two posts to the writing site Gangrey. "Letter to a Young Journalist" was from Tampa Bay Times writer Lane DeGregory and features some great advice on thoughts on people entering the field. Additionally,"I'd Like To Have Everything, You Know, Nice" was a post about what stories writers on the site view as great pieces to aspire to the level of writing in them and there's now 20-25 different pieces linked in the comments.

Also of interest lately has been a few mentions of the Gangrey podcast series with interviews by Journalism professor and writer Matt Tullis. Podcast episodes range from 20 to 50 minutes and the 9 recorded so far feature the following writers: Luke Dittrich, Jason Fagone, Brian Mockenhaupt, Jesse Lichtenstein, Stephen Rodrick, Kelley Benham French, Pamela Colloff, Michael J. Mooney and Justin Heckert.

Great sports writing - by Ballard, Pearlman, Kluwe & Mailer

There's a few different excellent pieces of sports writing I haven't previously posted on with them from a wide variety of authors and sources.

Posted on August 9th to the Sports Illustrated site Monday Morning Quarterback was the personal essay "There Can Be Only One" by Chris Kluwe. The longtime NFL punter is known by many for his brilliant and profane takedown of a bigoted Maryland politician and in this piece for SI, Kluwe writes of his his competition with Marquette King for the Oakland Raiders punting job. It was a battle which Kluwe ultimately lost and the SI piece featured very cool writing from Kluwe about the responsibility he felt to (as he wrote) "be a human being" and act at times as a veteran mentor to the much younger King.

Two additional great pieces of Sports Illustrated writing to note here were from Chris Ballard a few months back. The July 22 issue bonus feature was "The Wizard Of Kabul" on Tom Gouttierre and from the Aug 12 issue was "Imagine Me And You..." on Wes Welker. The pieces were of course very different with Welker a pro-bowl NFL receiver and Gouttierre a university administrator who coached basketball in Afghanistan, but both really well done.

From SB Nation Longform was a really poignant work by Jeff Pearlman titled "Two Carries, Six Yards". Posted on Aug 20, it was about former Tampa Bay Bucs and then San Diego Chargers running back Ricky Bell and about the piece, Pearlman posted "Ricky Bell and the story I long wanted to write". 

Finally, a short piece that I saw recently that struck me as remarkable was "The Death of Benny Paret" by Norman Mailer. Written in 1962, it's incredibly descriptive and shows why Mailer was such a renowned writer.

Best writing linked to in 2012

Rather than repeat the lateness of my post that went up on Jan 7th, 2013 titled "Best Writing Linked to in 2011", I'm noting here my favorite writing linked to in 2012 less than two months after the year over! With that preamble...

Best writing on writing linked to in 2012

"Writing" by Scott Raab for his personal blog. Written on and linked to in Jan 2012.

"Some thoughts and musings about making things for the web" by Matthew Inman for his site The Oatmeal. Written on and linked to in Nov 2012.


Best writing on adventure linked to in 2012

"The Ballad of Johnny France" by Richard Ben Cramer for Esquire and reposted to the site Alex Belth's Bronx Banter. Written on and linked to in Jan 2012.

"Why Noah Went Into the Woods" by Mark Sundeen for Outside Magazine. Written on and linked to in Apr 2012.

"The Devil on Paradise Road" by Bruce Barcott for Outside Magazine. Written on and linked to in Sept 2012.

"Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek" by John Branch for the New York Times. Written on and linked to in Dec 2012.


Best writing on sports linked to in 2012

"Mourning Glory" by Chris Ballard for Sports Illustrated. Written on and linked to in Oct 2012.

"Stand Up, Speak Out" by Gary Smith for Sports Illustrated. Written on and linked to in Dec 2012.


Best other writing (longform) linked to in 2012

"How One Response to a Reddit Query Became a Big-Budget Flick" by Jason Fagone for Wired Magazine. Written on and linked to in Mar 2012.

"The Hazards of Growing Up Painlessly" by Justin Heckert for the New York Times Magazine. Written on and linked to in Nov 2012.


Best other writing (short) linked to in 2012

"John Hickenlooper's Long, Hot Summer" by Robert Sanchez for Esquire. Posted on and linked to (along with an excellent Elon Musk profile by Tom Junod) in Dec 2012.

"Are You John Lennon?" by Jimmy Breslin for the New York Daily News and reposted to the blog Ralrika. Written on and linked to in Dec 2012.

"Running and Hoping to Find a Child Safe" by Jim Dwyer for the New York Times. Written on and linked to in Dec 2012.

So much great writing linked to last year and there was of course a ton of excellent pieces I've overlooked, but these stood out as particularly well-written and ones that seem worthy of this (highly arbitrary) "Best Writing" designation.

Solid Sports Writing - by Tomlinson, Ballard, Layden, Davis, Price & Miklasz

It may be a lot to include in one post, but I've recently read six pieces of really good sports writing that group into three different reasons for standing out.

The first set of pieces was excellent in that each story more what might typically be expected given the type of writing. "Shattered Dreams" was by Tommy Tomlinson for Sports on Earth and took the concept of a game writeup and went way beyond it. Rather than simply reporting on the Alabama-Georgia SEC title game events and outcome, Tomlinson went into the emotions of the game and included the tremendously insightful quote "Why do sports hold so much power? Not because they’re life and death -- they’re not. But they make us feel life and death, in all its messy glory, in all its numbing agony." These two sentences struck me as a great encapsulation of being a player or passionate fan of a sport.

The second piece that had this same type of unexpected payoff was from Chris Ballard in last week's Sports Illustrated. "Moneyballsy" is a profile of Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey, but goes beyond a typical profile piece in a few different ways. There's how Ballard shows Morey's analytic approach to assembling a team roster as part of a larger trend towards data analysis in sports and outside (see: political predictions and Nate Silver) as well as a number of interesting anecdotes provided about Morey and his interests. It's just a very revealing look at the guy.


If the first set of stories noted here had more than the type of piece would generally provide, the second set to mention included simply very well written in-depth feature stories. From the same SI issue that had the Morey profile was "Tinker To Evers To Chance ... ... To Me" by Tim Layden. It's a fascinating and detailed look at Johnny Evers, one third of the famous (to baseball enthusiasts) Tinker to Evers to Chance double play combination and also the great uncle of Layden. The story of Evers is an interesting one and combined with the connection to Layden it becomes all the better of a read.

Another feature profile I've seen recently that did an excellent job telling the story of a compelling individual was "Still Richard: Richard Simmons Keeps Grooving at 64" by David Davis. Written for the Longform section on SB Nation, it's a great profile of the extremely emotionally invested in his work fitness advocate.


Final two pieces to mention here are both on college basketball coach Rick Majerus who recently passed away from heart disease. The more personal of the two stories was "Majerus lived his life to help others" from friend and St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Bernie Miklasz, but the 2008 Sports Illustrated feature "The Life and Times of Rick Majerus" by S.L. Price is also great writing on an interesting individual.

Excellent Sports Writing - by Chris Ballard, Jeff Passan & Chris Jones

There's been two pieces of great sports writing I've come across lately that also brought to mind solid work from years past.

Story I've thought about the most was "Mourning Glory" for the October 22 issue of Sports Illustrated. Written by Chris Ballard, it's on a Maryland high school baseball coach, team and how they responded to tragedy. There's also a remarkable connection to Nick Adenhart who died three years ago after pitching his first start of the year for the Los Angeles Angels. This connection for me helped give the story an appropriate balance between inspiration and devestating loss and I found myself wondering whether Ballard had in mind these things while writing. Regardless of what he thought about during the process, the piece he finished with was just excellent.

The topic is of course completely different, but an additional Ballard story I've read recently was his 2008 SI feature “The Birds”, a tremendously entertaining “fear & loathing-like” look at homing pigeon racing in Las Vegas.

Another recent piece of writing that stood out as outstanding was “Bonded by failure, Barry Zito, Tim Lincecum give Giants right stuff in Game 1 of World Series.” Written by Jeff Passan for Yahoo Sports, it’s great stuff on the two pitchers.

Zito is one of my favorite athletes and his recent success (after thus far not meeting the expectations of his contract) has brought up mention on the World Wide Super Tubes of a 2002 Zito profile “He Came from Outer Space”, Chris Jones’ first published work in Esquire.

"One Shot at Forever" by Chris Ballard

Finished yesterday reading One Shot at Forever: A Small Town, an Unlikely Coach, and a Magical Baseball Season by Chris Ballard and found it an engaging and well written book.

I met Ballard at a book signing a few weeks ago and just prior to that came across his Sports Illustrated column "Memories that last forever" about the book (which is based on an SI feature from a few years ago) and one its main characters. Granted, I wanted to enjoy One Shot at Forever as I liked Ballard and knew so much about the book going in, but it really was an enjoyable read.

I'm always fascinated by the idea of writing that combines the elements of lyrical prose and solid reporting (hopefully on a topic of interest) and Ballard really brings these together in the book. The prologue and first chapter of the book were posted on Byliner and I was initially struck by the landscape description from Ballard in the very first words. After this, the book proceeds to spin an interesting tale that flows really well and which had to have been thoroughly reported to have the whole story. To this point, the combination of Ballard talking during the book signing about getting quotes used and his notes in the book show just how much work (including hours and hours of audiotape generated) he put into the whole process.

In terms of the story itself, the point of reference to the book is going to be the movie Hoosiers with its back in the day tale of small town high school sports, but there was a couple of additional things in the book (which might or might not make it into a more compressed view movies usually entail) I found of particular note.

One was the whole picture view that Ballard provided... with the lead-up to this particular season in question and also the 40 years later lookback for those involved. From one player wrapped up in the results to another remembering back every year on the way to MLB Spring Training, the people and events told of in the book certainly had a lasting impact on many.

The second and most profound thing that struck me from the book was Coach Lynn Sweet and his completely different than usual approach to the players (who he viewed as people able to make decisions) and the game's relative importance. The scene from the book that particularly showed how Sweet viewed the game of baseball and his players was him warming up the 9th grader during the game against Lane Tech of Chicago. Just a brilliant anecdote to include in the book and for me one of those cases of one segment summing up a dominant overall theme.

Really cool read and highly recommended.

Chris Ballard Book Signing for "One Shot at Forever"

Attended last night a reading and book signing with Chris Ballard, author of (among other titles) the just released One Shot at Forever: A small town, an unlikely coach and a magical baseball season.

Ballard writes for Sports Illustrated and the story told in the book first appeared as the SI feature "The Magical Season Of The Macon Ironmen". I haven't read the book yet, but the magazine story was an excellent read about a high school baseball team... including its players, iconoclastic head coach, and impact on its small town of Macon, Illinois.

I've posted a number of times on Ballard with both his SI pieces and interviews on writing and was happy to see that he'd be doing the event. Though it was a bit of a drive to Books Inc. in Berkeley, I figured if I fancied myself as both a writer-type and someone who appreciates solid sports writing (affirmative on both counts), I should make the trip. Definitely glad I did as it was an interesting event that struck me on a few different levels...

Small world, this writing - Was somewhat surprising to me that an appearance by a Senior Writer for Sports Illustrated (who wouldn't be interested in that??!!) would wind up to be a fairly small (maybe 25 people) gathering... with many of the people connected to Ballard (he lives in the area) or the book. Along with family and friends were: a daughter of one of the books central characters (Coach Lynn Sweet), one of the opposing high school pitchers from 40 years ago and at least one other published sports writer, Jordan Conn, a 2010 UC Berkeley J School graduate and writer of an excellent ESPN profile I recall reading a few weeks back. I guess I figured that since excellent writing (both the reading of and hopefully producing) is of interest to me, than it is to everyone else. Not that the turnout was bad, all the seats were pretty much filled, just struck me that there wouldn't be more people similarly interested who would make a point of attending.

The mystical world of quoting - The portion of the book that Ballard read from was both interesting and really descriptive... with much of that coming from the quotes in the book. To this point, I've always viewed written quotes as a sort of Dark Arts that I haven't trafficked in so don't understand how to either get or utilize. I raised this "how to get quotes" question to Ballard and the answer both made sense and demystified things a bit for me. In short, he said that you're not always going to have available quotes (and there's stretches of the book without many), but the ones he does have often came from just a few sources... both interview subjects with detailed recollection of events (at least they thought they remembered) and old newspaper stories from the time. I took from the discussion that quotes are great as a writer, you work to get them, but then utilize what you have available.

Idea of an entire book on a 1971 small town high school baseball team - Yea, it's easy to bandy about how "it's like Hoosiers", but I was fascinated by the idea of Ballard selling to both an editor and himself that a book on the subject could be written and then appeal to a large enough audience. Prior book from Ballard was The Art of a Beautiful Game: The Thinking Fan's Tour of the NBA and it seemed to me this subject much more obviously commercial. Ballard's response to this also made sense in that he said the magazine story generated a lot of reader feedback and interest from people wanting to have it made into a book or movie. He also made the comment of how writing One Shot at Forever was challenging at times, but... I feel the challenge at times in writing a simple blog entry so it makes sense to me.

Writing what you know and it can work out - This wasn't necessarily anything Ballard directly said, but I took from the event affirmation that things can get accomplished if you work at them. Specifically in relation to writing, Ballard was a perfectly normal and seemingly very nice fellow who has built for himself a solid writing career.

Extrapolating from this, my thought is that if I continue to work at writing (by continuing to write), the work I produce will continue to improve and increase the chances of making a living from words written down on a page (not, you know, from this Words Written Down blog, but from words literally on a page... well, not meaning I wouldn't want to sell anything via Kindle or on the web, but... well, never mind).

Back to the point... there's a lot to be said for things like Journalism School and writing conferences & resources (McSweeney's, Mayborn, Nieman and Creative Nonfiction to name a few), but there's also a lot to be said for becoming a writer by just writing about things you know that are of interest. Heck, it was Stephen King who said in his book On Writing something to the effect that people love to read about work... so, if someone is a plumber who loves Science Fiction, why not a Science Fiction novel about a plumber? Granted, I'm not that and don't love that so won't be doing that, but... the point still holds.

Wrapping things up... was a cool event with Ballard and I'm looking forward to reading his book (which is good since it cost a lot more to purchase than just get from the library). Also, I previously linked to an interview with Ballard about this new book and today saw another interview on the book posted to the blog of Ingram Content Group publishing CEO Skip Prichard.

Writers and the Writing Process - Wright Thompson, Chris Ballard, E.B. White, John Irving, Tommy Tomlinson & Ben Folds

I suppose it's only been a few weeks since my last post on the writing process, but there's been some great pieces I've seen about the subject.

Starting things off on writers on writing is some content around one of my current favorites, Wright Thompson. He writes long form pieces for ESPN and interesting mentions around his recent story "The Kid Who Wasn't There" were a post to the writing site Gangrey and interview he did for the Nieman Storyboard. The Nieman piece covered a lot of ground (struck me as a sort of long form version of the Gangrey post) and the parts I found most compelling were those on pure process. It's of course different for all writers (I recall Chris Jones noting writing late at night), but Thompson describes writing starting off first thing in the morning (6:30 being his first thing) and wanting to wrap up by 2:00. Also interesting was his following the same convention as Jones (and Chris Ballard for that matter) of listening to the same music over and over while writing.

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Speaking of Chris Ballard... another writer on writing piece of note lately was from the blog TVFury with an interview with Ballard in advance of his book One Shot at Forever: A small town, an unlikely coach and a magical baseball season. It's a solid interview and the part that stood out the most to me was where he referenced working on his writing (and as part of this quoted an interesting missive around "figuring out your voice")...

"I’ll be stuck for a lede and make the mistake of reading an old Smith story, or a Moehringer story or something by Price or John Jeremiah Sullivan and then hate myself for doing so because the next hour is wasted as I spew out low-grade mimicry. That said, I think that’s a necessary and valuable period for any writer to go through. Ben Folds recently wrote a blog post — which I saw linked on Twitter — in which he talked about that process of discovery. He was talking about music but it really holds true for writing.

One excerpt: 'You will eventually find that it takes no effort to just be yourself, but the road to that place can be long and rough. The truth is that most artists would not want you to see the evolution of their Voice. It would be very embarrassing. Imitating your heroes, trying on ill-advised affectations. It’s all part of the trip. … While I couldn’t put my finger on why my singing sucked I found that I more easily identified the fake ass singer affectations in others and would encourage them to straighten up the delivery, as if they were sing speaking. As I heard myself coaching them on rehearsal tapes, I heard the Voice that would bring my songs to life. It took no real effort just to be me but it took some time and effort to realize that. We have to learn that we have no control over who we are musically but we do have the choice to be that or to try and be some other motherf*cker. The latter is a lot of work.'"

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A couple of other pieces to mention here around the concept of writing included "Some Book: Celebrating 60 Years of ‘Charlotte’s Web’" by Michael Sims for the New York Times and a Time Magazine video with author John Irving. The piece by Sims overviews the inquisitive nature and subsequent research put in by E.B. White to write Charlotte's Web and the Irving interview included him noting a story approach of "seeing the ending and writing towards it." It's a fascinating concept that one would have to work hard to overstate the importance of in either story creation or simply working towards a goal.

Last thing to note around writing isn't necessarily on the writing process, but more on a writing career. Tommy Tomlinson wrote for his last column at the Charlotte Observer (leaving after 23 years to write for a new venture) "Moving on to the first day of the rest of my life." Very nice piece that shows for me the impact writing (and a career in writing) can have.

Writers on Writing (it's Work) - Chris Jones on Robert Caro / Gary Cartwright / Mark Kram Jr.

I've seen a lot of interesting "about writing" content lately that warrants posting on so... here's the posting on.

Lengthiest piece was "The Big Book" for Esquire by Chris Jones on author Robert Caro. Written in advance of Caro's The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson (his 4th of 5 planned volumes on the 36th President), the piece details Caro and his writing process. It's an excellent feature from Jones and the depiction of Caro is of someone who puts an almost obsessive amount of work into his reporting and seems to build a story brick by brick (with lots of outlining), rather than just "plopping down at the typewriter and letting magical prose flow". To this idea, a quote from Caro in the Jones piece is "you feel almost like a cabinetmaker, laying planks. There's a real feeling when you know you're getting it right. It's a physical feeling."

It was very cool stuff that emphasized for me the methodical labor involved in solid writing and Jones spoke of that and other thoughts on his piece in a Q&A with Jones for the blog TVFury. Also interesting from the profile on Caro was significant mention of the other people involved in the book process. From the publisher to the editor and book designer, there's a lot to it and Jones provides fascinating content around everything involved.

Two other writer pieces I've seen recently echo the same idea put forth by Jones on Caro about the efforts and steps needed write great content. Published by Texas Monthly, "A Lifetime of Achievement for Gary Cartwright" has a transcript of Cartwright accepting an award in his home state and features some solid words from the author. Of particular profundity was his statement that reminded me of that by Chris Ballard on the importance of writing things down immediately (from a Brandon Sneed interview)...

"Okay, say some thought or notion or wild dance of words pops into your head. If the moment makes you smile or in any way causes blood to rush to your brain, stop what you’re doing, take a shot of whisky, and write it down. Never mind that the odds of it being anything important are so staggeringly lopsided that only a crazy person would bother recording it. Having written it down, you will not be able to resist tinkering with the words, moving them about, standing them on their heads, turning them inside out until the combination seems satisfactory and maybe even pregnant with possibilities. At this point you will begin to wonder if it’s too early to make hotel and airline reservations to the National Book Awards. But first there is the problem of a second sentence. So you focus again on the task at hand and think of another batch of words. After a while, the process takes hold."

Final writer wisdom piece to mention here was "Bronx Banter Interview: Mark Kram Jr." It's a Q&A of Kram with Alex Belth and vividly shows the amount of work Kram put into reporting his recently published Like Any Normal Day: A Story of Devotion biography of now deceased Buddy Miley. Moral I took from this is there's not always a guarantee of the outcome whilst you're putting in the work, but if the work doesn't get put in, it's a guarantee to have nothing at the end.

Excellent Sports Writing - from Ballard, Lake, Bamberger & Hruby

There have been a number of sports pieces I've come across lately that featured really solid writing worth noting.

Personal favorite was "Man in Full" from Chris Ballard a week ago for Sports Illustrated. It was profound and thoroughly reported (as detailed in my blog post linking to a Ballard interview) writing on Chicago area high school wrestling coach Mike Powell. Stricken with the muscle wasting disease polymyositis, Powell is put in horrible personal circumstances and what makes the story so compelling is his continued relationship to the team of kids he leads. Really well done piece by Ballard which includes Powell's career path working with kids in need and imparting to his athletes a lesson of "manliness" different than is traditionally associated with the term. Its not to say one guy exactly the same as another, but the story of Powell reminded me of that I saw years ago on youth track coach John Baker (who had an elementary school named in his honor).

The most recent Feb 20 issue of SI also had two pieces that stood out with one being another profound high school athlete related story and one an insightful golf piece. The "writing with great meaning" was done by Thomas Lake and titled "The Legacy Of Wes Leonard". Subtitle to the piece is "You may have heard about the Michigan high schooler who made a game-winning basket and then died. Here's the rest of the story: a violent car crash, a bone-shaking tackle, a near-perfect season, a reluctant substitute and a search for the will to carry on" and what got me most from the story was the content about the automatic external defibrillator. Leonard suffered a sudden cardiac arrest of his heart and its definitely unknown whether a defibrillator would have saved him, but the potentially lifesaving machine at the high school had been neglected and found to have a dead battery when applied to Leonard's chest. Out of this sad situation has come some good, though, with mother Jocelyn Leonard creating the Wes Leonard Heart Team and spearheading efforts to have a working defibrillator available at youth sporting events with someone trained to use it. Additionally, of note on the Heart Team site is a link to an ESPN Outside the Lines 16 minute story "Wes Leonard: Never Forgotten".

From the same issue of Sports Illustrated came a piece that stood out to me in part because I didn't expect it to. "The Meaning Of Pebble Beach" by Michael Bamberger could have simply been a recap of the recent PGA Tour event, but instead wound up as an insightful look into Tiger Woods and where he is now in both life and his golf game. Its very cool to come across pieces like this that don't scream out "feature story on something of great meaning", but wind up as interesting and insightful.

Last piece to note here was written by Patrick Hruby in the Yahoo Sports ThePostGame section. "End Game: Brain Trauma And The Future Of Youth Football In America" details the head injury suffered by Sequim, WA high school QB Drew Rickerson and then gets wider on the danger of concussions and need for concussion education. It was sad, but not surprising to read of mother Jean Rickerson and her attempt to further awareness and training around concussions and getting ignored by some coaches and administrators. This difficulty in getting people to move past their preconceived notions of "toughness" and "playing through pain" reminded me of something from the excellent Thomas Lake SI story "The Boy Who Died of Football". Lake wrote the following towards the end of a piece on Max Gilpin, a 15 year old who suffered heatstroke during a practice and then passed away: "Later, when he looked back at his son's last practice, Jeff Gilpin was filled with pride and wonder. "I underestimated this kid, big-time," he said. "His heart. Can you imagine the fortitude it took to keep running out there?"

Back to Hruby and his piece on concussions, his commentary at the end of the piece is me thinks spot on with "Protect our national pastime. Protect our children's brains. The hope is that we can do both. Biology and physics suggest otherwise. Safer does not mean safe. In locker rooms and school board meetings, quiet funerals and noisy grandstands, the future of youth football may not be matter of risk management. It may be a matter of risk acceptance. Roll the dice."

Writers on Writing - by Ballard, Jones & Sullivan

There's been a few great interviews I've come across lately featuring top level writers dishing on the process of writing.

Its probably fitting that one interview was with Esquire writer Chris Jones as he's the guy whose writing helped spark my interest in great non-fiction prose, and then fed the flames of said interest with his Son of Bold Venture blog about "writing and words". Interview itself was done by Brandon Sneed on his website (which has also been a source of motivation about writing as a process). It was really interesting content under the title "Chris Jones of Esquire on His Zanesville Zoo Massacre Story 'Animals,' 'The Most Dramatic Story Of The Year'". I'm waiting for the hard copy Esquire to arrive before reading the piece, but there was excellent nuggets of wisdom from Jones (prompted by Sneed questions) around writing. My take aways (which may well be different than other people's) from the piece are as follows: Heavy sense of content focus by Jones with it being centered around the police and the writing in it being something sparse, that "reads almost like a police report". Idea I took from this was the import of deciding on a particular approach to take and then following through (maybe that approach gets course corrected in the writing process, but hopefully doesn't come to that). Also interesting from Jones was his commentary about writing to music... which I've heard before and his doing so actually referenced in one of the other recent interviews I've seen).

Since I just brought it up... Sneed even more recently did for his website another great writing interview, this one with a writer answering questions about a piece I've actually already read! "Chris Ballard of Sports Illustrated on his Mike Powell Story "Man In Full"—And Way More" contains some excellent writing wisdom type content from Ballard (again, extracted by Sneed's questions), most notable to me being the following: Ballard started at Sports Illustrated as a fact-checker and built up to doing feature pieces (a completely different approach to getting an SI gig than Thomas Lake wrote of his path being). Interesting was how fact-checking hammered home the need to be thorough in reporting... a common theme from writer wisdom pieces (like this featuring Michael Kruse) is the importance of solid reporting rather than simply grabbing perfect words out of the air. Also tremendously insightful from Ballard was his comment about immediately writing down an insight or feeling that strikes him. I've noticed in my own writing that I'll have a visceral reaction towards something I read, but if I don't note it immediately, I may have a hard time remembering what it was (this has led with the reading of books to needing to decide whether to take notes whilst reading as opposed to just finishing the thing and then going back through to capture the high points). Ballard also writes in this interview some excellent structure content with the Powell story (which was great, and I will post on before long) as containing multiple acts and a specific focus (reminiscent of Jones and his decisions made prior to writing). From a where and how to write perspective, there was interesting content about writing with friends in a bar as well as the idea of (poached from Jones) of writing to one song on repeat). Additionally, there was good content on the outline, structure and lede of this particular piece written about Mike Powell and Ballard provided recommendations to other great writing, including The Imaginary Girlfriend, a sort of autobiography by prolific writer John Irving.

After I've rambled on about the great content from Jones and Ballard, will be somewhat more brief about the third writer piece I've seen lately. Bookforum did an interview with John Jeremiah Sullivan which included content both on his book of essays, Pulphead (which I enjoyed tremendously) and areas of interest as a writer. Specifically, Sullivan wrote "I’m working on a book now about a German lawyer, an obscure jurist from Upper Saxony who came to the New World, to South Carolina, in the 1730s. He tried to establish an enlightened republic among Cherokee Indians beyond the frontier, and he wrote a book, a kind of utopian manifesto that, based on what we know about it, was a century or more ahead of its time philosophically. It was destroyed when the English arrested him in the 1740s and it became a sort of a famous lost book. In my book, I’m making the case that I’ve identified it, that it exists. I’m very curious about what happens to the Enlightenment when it arrives in the South." Sounds to me like it would be a terribly interesting read and brings to mind someone like Erik Larson who writes history, but seems to do so with an excellent narrative bent.

The Best American Sports Writing 2011

Recently finished reading The Best American Sports Writing 2011 and found it had a ton of great writing.



It's probably a strange critique, but it seemed a bit like cheating to have the type of great stories I like discovering all compiled for me by Glenn Stout (series editor) and Jane Leavy (2011 edition editor). That said, the point of a compilation like this is to pull in a number of excellent pieces and it was accomplished well by Stout and Leavy.

There's 29 stories reprinted in the book and of those I had only previously seen four (all in Sports Illustrated)... High School Dissonance by Selena Roberts, Eight Seconds by Michael Farber, Pride of a Nation by S.L. Price and The Courage of Jill Costello by Chris Ballard. Of the remaining 25, five were from ESPN (one ESPN The Magazine and four the website), two each from The New Yorker, GQ and the L.A. Times and the rest from sources with one piece each featured.

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There was a lot of excellent stories in the book with below being those that stood out the most...

- Sally Jenkins for the Washington Post with Culture of Silence Gives Free Reign to Male Athletes - very short and exceptionally well written missive on incidences of assault (including murder) tied to male athletes and the warning signs oft ignored.

- Paul Solotaroff for Rolling Stone with The Surfing Savant - written about Clay Marzo and his experience growing up to become a professional surfer who also has Asperger's syndrome. Compelling writing about someone pulled in different directions by (often times well intentioned) people.

- Bret Anthony Johnston for Men's Journal with Danny Way and the Gift of Fear - super interesting piece that similar to the one of Marzo, features an extreme sport (skateboarding) phenom who went through a number of challenges growing up.

- Chris Ballard for Sports Illustrated with The Courage of Jill Costello - piece was previously included in my listing of Best 2010 Writing Linked To (not sure why it's included in a 2011 anthology, but no matter). Written about the Cal-Berkeley crew member and her final days fighting cancer while continuing to complete with her teammates. Solid writing about a remarkable person.

A lot of great pieces featured in the book and it was overall an excellent read.

Sports Illustrated Writing: from Chris Ballard & Michael Rosenberg

Two excellent feature stories from the last two issues of Sports Illustrated.

From the Jan 6 edition was Tom Brady As You Forgot Him by Michael Rosenberg. It's been widely reported that Brady was a 6th round NFL draft pick out of Michigan, but Rosenberg provides a lot of interesting back story to his time there. Conventional wisdom seems to be that he was always great and nobody noticed, but Rosenberg does a really good job detailing Brady's college experience and how that helped shaped him. Additionally, Rosenberg writes some pretty interesting content on fellow Michigan QB Drew Henson, his career and relationship with Brady.

In the Dec 26 Pictures of the Year issue Chris Ballard wrote The Kiss on the Vancouver riots after the Canucks Game 7 defeat. His story really stood out as solid writing that examined multiple characters associated with the riots (a policeman, a rioter, the couple photographed kissing on the street, person who took the picture) and walked though their experiences chronologically. Was a compelling read that felt like it had been reported on very well.