Great sports stories - by Branch, Jenkins, and Castrovince

Three great pieces of sports writing I've seen recently included a pair of stories about an amazing climb done in Yosemite, a piece about an incredibly free-spirited and whimsical NBA player and one about an MLB umpire that's a tale of loss and moving forward.

The climbing pieces were by John Branch for the New York Times with first "Abduction. Lost Finger. Now a Rock Climber's Tallest Hurdle." and a week later "Pursuing the Impossible, and Coming Out on Top" with both on Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgensen and their epic first ascent of El Capitan's Dawn Wall.

The NBA player story was "The Man Behind The Swag: Nick Young" by Lee Jenkins for Sports Illustrated and an amusing and interesting tale on Young, perhaps better known for dating pop star Iggy Azalea than being a Los Angeles Laker.

On almost the complete opposite end of the profoundness spectrum was a piece by Anthony Castrovince for Sports on Earth with "John Hirschbeck's Survival Guide" on the man who had two children die from the rare genetic disease Adrenoleukodystrophy, or ALD, just over 20 years apart. It's a solid piece that brought to mind Lisa Pollak's 1997 Pulitzer Prize winning story "The Umpire's Son" on Hirschbeck.

Boy On Ice by John Branch

Boy On Ice by John Branch is a solid book that was written out of a lengthy three-part series on the late NHL player Derek Boogaard that Branch wrote for the New York Times.

The magazine series and then book show how the pressure is bad enough in someone trying to become a professional player, but seems to take it to a whole new level when they're early on put onto the track of being a hockey enforcer. They've got one role as a fighter all the time, don't know when they’re going to do it, aren't directly getting points that lead to winning and losing and can suffer repeated concussion head trauma through the process of it, along with normal injury risk that other skaters take. Related to this idea of the hockey enforcer as a specific subset of players different than the rest, I found interesting how in reading of Derek’s minor hockey career, the same names of fighters kept popping back up, and they were often people who I recall then going on to play in the NHL as he did.

Branch split the book into thirds, with the first part about Derek growing up and then playing minor hockey, the second on his time as an NHL player in Minnesota and third his brief time as a New York Ranger prior to his death. Derek grew up in Saskatchewan and it’s covered in the book how it was challenging growing up the son of the local Royal Canadian Mounted Police representative, never staying one place long, as well as being a bigger hockey player than others. Derek played top level youth hockey due to his size, 6'4" and 210 pounds at 15, but wasn't a great skater or player and other parents would complain about him. At the age of 15, Derek had an incident playing youth hockey where he fought someone, then went into the penalty box of the opposing team and sent them scattering. From this, he was invited to the training camp of the Regina Pats Western Hockey League team and then at 17 was traded to a team in Prince George, British Columbia. Again, it’s got to be tough for any kid to make that kind of move away from family at such a young age and seems particularly hard for someone like Derek who was playing in the leagues he was simply for his ability to be the team enforcer. When Derek was 19, he was drafted in the seventh round by the Minnesota Wild, went to training camp with the Wild in 2001, then was sent back to Prince George and subsequently traded to a team in Medicine Hat, Alberta. Twenty year old Derek then wound up playing with the Louisiana Ice Gators, an East Coast Hockey league affiliate of the Wild and at 21, Derek was sent to the Wild's American Hockey League affiliate Houston Aeros, with the Wild sending instructions to Aeros coaches Todd McLellan and Matt Shaw that Derek was to be groomed as the future enforcer for the Wild. In Houston, Derek began to get injuries and was first prescribed pain relievers, then after two seasons in Houston made the Wild roster out of training camp in 2005.

Derek instantly became a popular player in Minnesota, both because of his fighting and how he was a mild-mannered and nice kid. At the same time that he was having success on the ice, again as an enforcer who played little and fought regularly taking and receiving blows, his body started to betray him and he began being prescribed by Wild team doctors lots of drugs, ranging from Ambien for sleep and Toradol, Oxycodone and Hydrocodone pills for pain. Additionally, Derek supplemented his readily available supply of drugs he was getting from team doctors with illegal sources for pain medications. People began to see changes in Derek’s personality with him becoming more sullen and withdrawn and an additional interesting note that Branch made about Derek’s time with the Wild was how even as he was loved in the community, he as an enforcer was treated differently than other players, he was the one fans wanted to have a picture taken where he pretended to punch them. Derek in 2009 was put in the NHL/NHLPA substance abuse program and after that he didn't get team doctor prescriptions for some painkillers, but still got prescribed lots of other drugs. Really, the amount of drugs that team doctors would prescribe him in the NHL, both before and then while he was actually in the NHL/NHLPA drug treatment program, was astounding.

After the 2009-2010 season Derek was a free agent and signed with the New York Rangers. Following an injury he suffered from a December 9, 2010 fight with Matt Carkner, Derek poured himself into his use of Ambien and pain medications, now heavily supplemented by a local illegal source for OxyContin. Derek for the rest of the 2010-2011 season was injured, not part of the team, lonely, depressed and addicted to painkillers. Additionally, his behavior was becoming increasingly erratic, likely exacerbated by the mix of toxins going into his body and the abuse it had taken over the years. The Rangers sent Derek back to rehab in April 2011, but he appeared to have different rules than everyone else, coming and going as he pleased and was back in Minneapolis in May with team approval to go there for physical therapy. During that trip he overdosed on painkillers and alcohol, double the legal alcohol limit for driving, and died.

After his death, Derek’s parents gave permission to have his brain examined for CTE, a degenerative brain disease that can only be diagnosed posthumously and is caused by repeated blows to the head. Examination of his brain showed stage two (of four) CTE, more severe than the doctor looking at his brain had ever seen in a 28 year old. While doctors couldn't say for sure what led to Derek's behavior, manifestations of the disease are memory loss, impulsiveness, mood swings, disorientation and addiction and Branch notes that Derek may well have had dementia in his 30's had he lived. The idea of the hockey enforcer could be seen as culpable, but more specifically, the role of team doctors and the NHL/NHLPA drug treatment program seems to bear examining. The amount of drugs Derek was prescribed was astounding, as was how he abused legally and illegally obtained drugs throughout his time in the treatment program. As a result of this Derek’s family in 2013 filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the NHL.

His story is a sad one on many levels and in both the book and shorter New York Times series, Branch tells it very well.

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.

New York Times Snow Fall interactive feature

"Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek" was an amazing feature from the New York Times that stood out on multiple levels. The piece was written by John Branch and in 18,000+ words details the avalanche that claimed the lives of three expert skiers on an out-of-bounds run at Stevens Pass ski area outside Seattle.

Previously written on this tragedy was the piece "Tunnel Vision" by Megan Michelson for Outside Magazine. The writing by Michelson was compelling and I previously linked to it in a post on writers and their writing as she was part of the group skiing that day. 

It's in no way a knock on the Michelson piece, but Branch definitely expands on the story as "Snow Fall" features the following postscript: "The reporting for this article on the Feb. 19 avalanche at Tunnel Creek was done over six months. It involved interviews with every survivor, the families of the deceased, first responders at Tunnel Creek, officials at Stevens Pass and snow-science experts. It also included the examination of reports by the police, the medical examiner and the Stevens Pass Ski Patrol, as well as 40 calls to 911 made in the aftermath of the avalanche. "

This level of reporting done by Branch was reminiscent of what must have gone into his three-part series "Punched Out: The Life and Death of a Hockey Enforcer" on Derek Boogaard for the Times a year ago. Continuing with this idea of reminiscent parallels, I linked to the Boogard story with it's in-depth level of journalism in the same way that I did the Michelson piece, under the subject of writers and writing.

Not to simply use this post as a vehicle to link to past blog posts done here, but the recent "Snow Fall" story  falls into this same category of being interesting not just as a piece of excellent writing, but in relation to the field of journalism and writing. Along with the aforementioned level of reporting done by Branch, the piece differs from most in that the Times published it as an interactive feature that incorporates extremely well-done graphics, images and video along with the text.

About the concept and construction of the Times feature (incorporating both Branch's text and everything beyond) were a few different pieces from The Atlantic. On December 20th, Rebecca Greenfield wrote "What the New York Times's 'Snow Fall' Means to Online Journalism's Future" which included an interview with two editors from the Times Graphics and Digital departments. Then a day later, Atlantic editor Derek Thompson did "'Snow Fall' Isn't the Future of Journalism" about how as incredible as the feature is, it's likely not going to become a norm in journalism simply because of how much work it required. Finally, Greenfield a week later added "So What if Tons of People Read That 'Snow Fall' Story on the Times Website?" that included mention of how the feature got as many page views for the Times that the entire Outside Magazine site gets in a month.

It was interesting reading these pieces from The Atlantic and to probably generalize a bit on the message conveyed, they echoed what I thought while reading "Snow Fall"; it's a thoroughly reported and well written feature that included lots of additional work outside of writing, but it doesn't seem sustainable for publications to provide this on a regular basis. While it's true that the Times and Byliner collaborated to make "Snow Fall" available for purchase as an e-book, the note "A version of this article, which includes an epilogue, is available as an e-book" doesn't seem as it if would draw in many readers who have just enjoyed the 18,000+ works and numerous interactive features for free on the Times site.

That said, while the field of journalism and how writing should be delivered (and paid) still very much in flux, it's heartening to see the attempt made to figure it out and a great feature (including the writing by Branch and everything else that went into it) provided in the process.

John Branch on Derek Boogaard / Sports Journalism Today

Remarkable profile of former NHL player Derek Boogaard earlier this month in The New York Times. Written by John Branch, the three-part series is titled Punched Out: The Life and Death of a Hockey Enforcer with first Learning To Brawl about his early years and then Blood on the Ice about his National Hockey League career. Finally, A Brain 'Going Bad' covers both his accidental overdose (from painkillers and alcohol) death last summer and then damage found upon study of his brain.

It's captivating reading about first the idea of sixteen and seventeen year-old hockey players seeking to make a career with their ability to fight during games and then those same players having severe neurological trauma later in life... in Boogaard's case, a life of just 28 years.

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Branch's piece is an extremely thorough profile that's sports journalism by virtue of it's athlete subject, but does more than hold it's own in the broader category of journalism. To this point, there's been several interesting stories come across lately about sports journalism and the great work being done in the field.

For New York Magazine, Gabriel Sherman wrote Blitz!: How sports journalists learned to go for the hard tackle which uses the Branch series as an example of the deep investigative reports being done into sports topics in recent years.

A second piece lately on sports journalism is The Sporting Scene column for the New Yorker by Reeves Wiedeman. It's an interesting short missive about the volume of solid beyond the boxscore sportswriting being generated online.