Well done and interesting sports stories - by Davis, Sneed, Knapp & Adelson

There's a few recent sports stories to mention here that struck me for different reasons.

From SB Nation Longform came two excellent features with "The Prospect" by Brandon Sneed and "She Is Gone" by David Davis.

The feature by Sneed was about Montaous Walton, a 29 year old from Milwaukee who has consistently over the past decade fabricated stories of his baseball career, seemingly for the purpose of hoping to wish it into becoming true. It's a tremendously interesting read that walks through the details of Walton's life and lies and the piece inspired more than anything else a sense of pity for Walton and his never given up on dream of playing baseball for a career. Also interesting to me about the piece was both Walton's appearance in the comments attached to it and the note from Sneed about how he happened across Walton while doing research for an intended story on obscure baseball prospects.

The Davis feature for SB Nation also stood as a lengthy and compelling one that's really about two different topics, Dodgers baseball and the author and his family. A fascinating story in and of itself is detailed with how the home run ball hit by Kirk Gibson to win game one of the 1988 World Series hasn't been conclusively found. Beyond this, Davis writes about living in Los Angeles as a Dodger fan and his sister's mental illness and suicide two years prior to Gibson's famous home run. It's highly personal writing that would seem to be unrelated to the game of baseball, but Davis puts together two stories into a really great narrative.

Two other pieces of sports writing I saw about a month ago, but haven't yet linked to here weren't as long as the SB Nation ones, but each interesting. "Baseball's most entertaining fans" was by Gwen Knapp for Sports On Earth and about Oakland A's fans in the rightfield bleachers section 149 of the stadium. It's just a very nice look that contains some memorable stuff about positive interactions with opposing players like Jeff Francoeur of the Kansas City Royals. The final story to mention here was an update by Eric Adelson titled "Devon Walker shows strength in face of paralysis" for Yahoo Sports. It's uplifting writing about Walker and support received since his injury suffered last September while playing football for Tulane University.

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.