Great sports stories - by Jenkins, Wickersham & Jones

A few of the great sports stories I've read since my last post a few weeks ago on solid sports writing included large feature stories for Sports Illustrated and ESPN respectively as well as two shorter and really well done World Cup pieces for the ESPN website.

The latest issue of SI had as it's cover story a piece titled "Back to the Future" and it's a look by Lee Jenkins at the return to the Caviliers of LeBron James. Jenkins is an excellent writer and it totally made sense to me that James chose Sports Illustrated through Jenkins as the place to annouce the Cavs as his choice given the extremely thorough profile on James that Jenkins wrote in December 2012 for SI (and which I did a lengthly blog post on it's construction).

The recent ESPN issue had as it's largest feature story the great piece "Awakening The Giant" by Seth Wickersham on long-retired NFL star Y.A. Tittle. Each of the stories from Wickersham I've posted on previously were related to football and this probably my favorite story by him as it's a riveting telling of Tittle's life at 87 and the effects of dementia... and correspondingly on his daughter who helps care for him.

The two ESPN World Cup pieces were both by Chris Jones and marvelous storytelling with first "U.S. campaign reaches end of the line" from July 1st and then "Memories of the World Cup" written just prior to the final between Germany and Argentina. Both stories are creatively put together with the U.S. team piece going man by man through many of the players and the Cup wrapup sort of walking a path (well, actually very much walking a path with how Jones wrote it) through the tournament.

Lee Jenkins Feature on LeBron James

The latest issue of Sports Illustrated had an excellent cover story by Lee Jenkins on SI's 2012 Sportsman of the Year, LeBron James.

Most of the stories I'm writing on and linking to here are grouped together with other related pieces, but this James profile seemed to lend itself to an entire post as I was struck by the subject, the quality of the writing and probably most importantly, the construction of the piece.

In terms of James himself, I love the idea of someone who has been through different experiences than others as well as someone with great talent who also works harder than others. From a quality of writing perspective, Jenkins combines together excellent prose with what feels to be an exceptionally well organized and developed piece. To this end, below was how the structure seemed to lay out:

Section 1 (by opening photograph of James) - Jenkins creates a form of suspense by making reference to James having a goal, but not stating what that goal actually is.

Section 2 (the actual start of the piece) - Open question around the goal is resolved with an anecdote about James chasing the "best of all time" distinction. Section then went to cover how James has always been a great athlete, and especially in recent years has put in the work to improve upon that natural ability.

Section 3 - Jenkins follows up on the prior section with detail around how James through the years has both matured and improved as a player.

Section 4 - Additional detail is provided on the level James has reached through his work and mental preparation.

Section 5 - Jenkins goes back to James outside of the game and covers what he's done through his foundation and the impact on kids in Akron.

Section 6 - More detail provided on what James has both contributed to the community and provided in terms of leadership on the court. Related to this is in mention of the friendly rivalry between James and Kevin Durant (with Durant chasing James).

Section 7 - Jenkins closes off the profile with detail around the obligation James feels in each game played.

Just an excellent overall piece by Jenkins that provides some great anecdotes (an indicator of in-depth reporting) with stellar organization. Again, just my take on the writing, but short-version structure would be (A) hook, (B) hook payoff, (C) James as someone different than others... and who maximizes his ability, (D) more on James the player, (E) James the person, (F) James the player and person brought together.

J.R. Moehringer Writing

As this blog is all about great writing... the reading of it, the linking to and commenting on it, I find myself constantly seeking out information on and new work from the writers I like the most.

Picking up a Sport Illustrated and seeing that Susan Casey (who I first wrote on here) has a new book excerpted there (which I then posted about), reading a Roger Ebert blog post which gives an e-mail address for Esquire writer Chris Jones, finding out Erik Larson has a book coming out in May... to me, that stuff is just golden.

To this whole writing crush concept, I'm kind of amazed that it's not terribly easy to find much about the excellent writer J.R. Moehringer (author of "The Tender Bar" ... one of my two favorite books read last year, with the aforementioned Casey book as the other). Yea, he's got a Wikipedia page, but in today's hyper connected twitter-using world, I expected to find more about him and what he's working on. Fairly incredibly to me, a google search for the term "who does J.R. Moehringer write for?" provided my "Tender Bar" review as the fourth result.

With this as the impetus, I set out to find and read me some more Moehringer... and glad I did.

-----

First thing I found was a Sept 2010 piece for GQ titled "Three Weeks in Crazyville". About the author's time spent with LeBron James prior to his "The Decision" ESPN event, it's great writing about both a guy (James) and a process. It reminded me of his "Tender Bar" memoir in that Moehringer injects himself into the story and as a result reveals more about James by revealing the process of writing about him. Not to overstate things, but it struck me as a pretty audacious approach... that worked very well.

While reading this piece, I saw mention on the GQ site of another Moehringer athlete profile from earlier in 2010. "In It To Win It" looks at the life and drive of Kobe Bryant and while the story was written in a more conventional manner than that on James, it's still solid work on a pretty fascinating guy.

Two other features from Moehringer I found (and enjoyed) whilst browsing on the worldly wide interwide net...

Written on the town of Gees Bend, Alabama, "Crossing Over" looks at a pocket of the country unknown to many and seemingly caught in a tug of war between staying that way and becoming "modernized". While I wasn't as captivated by this as I was the GQ pieces (primarily due to interest in the subject), it's excellent writing from Moehringer... as evidenced by his 2000 Pulitzer Prize for the story.

Also from the L.A. Times (and later made into a movie), "Resurrecting the Champ" is about Moehringer's relationship with and search for the truth about an ex heavyweight boxing contender. It's pretty riveting stuff and though written some 13 years before the story on James, features (very effectively) the same narrative device of writing about writing. Reading about the author's intereactions with the subject provides a piercing view into him.

So, anyhoo... Moehringer... really solid writer and I look forward to reading more stuff by him in the future.

Now, if only he would get a twitter account and/or blog to make said stuff easier to find...