Sports Illustrated pieces on Newtown - by S.L. Price & Gary Gramling

Two recent Sports Illustrated features that really stuck with me both were about a subject I've previously written on and linked to under the post label "Newtown."

From the December 9 issue of SI was "What We Lost: Remembering Newtown victim Jack Pinto" by S.L. Price and it's the typical excellent work I've come to expect from him as a writer and closes with mention of the charity Kids in the Game Jack's family has partnered with.

The other piece was "A boy helps a town heal" from Sports Illustrated for Kids Gary Gramling. About fourteen-year-old Jack Wellman of Newtown and winner of the SI 2013 SportsKid of the Year award, it's a great story that also struck me as a result of one of the people noted in it. The youth wrestling team Wellman helped with was coached by Curtis Urbina, one of the subjects of the amazing Jim Dwyer New York Times piece "Running and Hoping to Find a Child Safe" from a year ago.

Eli Saslow on the family of a slain Newtown child

Such a great story by Eli Saslow for the Washington Post a few days ago. "After Newtown shooting, mourning parents enter into the lonely quiet" was about Mark and Jackie Barden, parents of three children until their youngest, Daniel Barden, killed in his classroom.

Like others (well, at the least like one other shown below), I find myself thinking of the story in relation to some areas other than the overwhelmingly horrible loss.

I defend myself emotionally from stories like Eli's by thinking about the work. That is a perfectly written story. It's flawless.
— Chris Jones (@MySecondEmpire) June 9, 2013

The writing itself - Saslow is a someone who I've previously posted on and linked to ESPN pieces he's written and I'm sure there will be additional great analysis done on his Washington Post story, but two I've seen thus far were from the website Gangrey and by Paige Williams with a "Why's This So Good?" for Nieman Storyboard that features a breakdown of the story along with short Q&A with Saslow. As was noted by Williams and others I've seen commenting on the story, it just felt so incredibly restrained and created for myself as a reader the feeling of sitting and watching a family's life lived.

Other related writing - Two different post labels I've used on this blog are Newtown and Gabrielle Giffords and between them there's five posts that link to multiple pieces. The stories are by some great writers and run the gamut in terms of subjects and emotions. There's David Von Drehle on what happened in Tucson and why, Joe Posnanski on the loss of a young girl, Jim Dwyer on one family not knowing if their child safe, Gary Smith on how he envisions responsible gun legislation coming about from tragedy and, as a sort of counterpoint to Smith, Joe Klein, Charlie Pierce and Gabrielle Giffords on the prevention of said responsible gun legislation.

Efforts by the Bardens - It's remarkable reading in Saslow's piece of the strength that Mark and Jackie Barden show in campaigning for responsible legislation around guns. On one hand, it seems as if their efforts are futile in the face of both active opposition and passive ignoring of the problem, but on the other, the Bardens are working towards something important so perhaps the odds of their success don't matter as much as the end goal itself.

All in all, it was great work by Saslow that was both difficult to read and an important and revealing story.

Writing on Boston & on Guns - by Charlie Pierce & Gabrielle Giffords

It's somewhat remarkable to me that conversation around the Boston Marathon bombing would be completely separate from the larger question of weapons (i.e. guns) and the ease in which people can get them, but that certainly seems to be the case over the past week. While many people (myself included) closely followed the aftermath of the bombing and manhunt yesterday for apparent co-perpetrator Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the U.S. Senate voted Wednesday to block legislation strengthening background checks on gun sales.

On the subject of the Sentate actions (or inactions) were two great pieces of writing, with one from former U.S. Congresswomen Gabrille Giffords and one from Esquire writer Charlie Pierce, with Pierce more recently writing another piece that felt very much related.

The writing by Giffords was "A Senate in the Gun Lobby’s Grip" published in the New York Times and an extremely direct and well written op-ed piece from someone in a position to write about gun violence.

From Pierce for the Esquire website the morning after the Senate inaction around background checks was "The Violence We Live With". It's a powerful essay that opines how we as American people seem to deplore horrific violence while at the same time accept that it's going to happen sometimes and not take steps that could curb it. It was a tremendously interesting idea put forth by Pierce and another Esquire piece of his published this morning had a similar notion in it to me.

"Guns Along The River: A Late Night In Watertown" was about the manhunt for Tsarnaev yesterday and exceptional writing.The thing that got me more than any other from his more recent piece was the repeated phrase "cops being cops" and Pierce writing of how capture of Tsarnaev means he can (and as he should) go to trial in our U.S. court system like any other criminal.

My thought out of this was that while the violence was much more high profile than that done by a "typical criminal with weapons", it's still violence resulting in the death of innocent people, just like the violence perpetrated by Jared Loughner in Tucson, James Holmes in Aurora or Adam Lanza in Newtown. It's a great thing that Tsarnaev will be tried for his crimes, but what will be interesting to see is whether the crimes committed have any impact on U.S. perception of violence or lawmakers reactions around violence through various means.

Would be a shame if the response is for Congressional leaders and other decision makers to either (A) accept that these things can happen and not try to look at additional ways to prevent it (basically what Pierce wrote in his essay about gun violence) or (B) put the Boston bombing in a specific bucket and try to stop that (i.e. make pressure cookers illegal). While this hypothetical option B may seem absurd, anyone that's had to pour out water or take off their shoes in an airport security line may recognize it as an approach that we've taken before.

Sports stories that matter - by R.A. Dickey, Gary Smith & Matthew Jeffers

A topic I've thought a lot about through the course of watching, reading about and writing on sports is how much it exactly matters. I've been a fan of sports since childhood, but as time has gone on and life experience and children added to the equation, it's become more and more clear that wins and loses just not that terribly important. There's lessons to be learned through sports (many bad, but some good and I'll think about the good ones for now), shared experience that can be gained (and just like good vs bad lessons, let's focus on positive shared fandom experiences), but really me thinks that being a grown-up sports fan is about simple entertainment value. Not to speak dismissively about entertainment value as it's an important part of life, but far down the list in terms of most important things.

With this in mind, the sports stories I love the most are those that take the construct of sports and then use it to provide something of greater heft. I recently did a blog post on my favorite writing linked to in 2011 (yea, I know, it's 2013) and the six pieces of sports writing included all were in different ways about things much more important than wins and loses.

On this same theme of sports as a vehicle to a more important story were three different pieces of writing I've come across recently that stood out.

For the New York Daily News last month, MLB pitcher R.A. Dickey wrote an essay thanking New York fans after his trade to the Blue Jays. It would be a well written and nice letter in and of itself, but more than anything for me, it's a reminder of the his past and the good Dickey has tried to accomplish. Eloquently described in the Sports Illustrated cover story "Stand Up, Speak Out" by Gary Smith was the story of Dickey and Judo gold medalist Kayla Harrison using their respective platforms as athletes to bring more light on the topic of sexual abuse each a childhood victim of.

The second piece of recent sports writing on something of great import was also by Gary Smith with his Sports Illustrated column "After Newtown: Change Has Gotta Come." It's written with the same what's possible if people speak out approach that Smith used when writing on Dickey and Harrison and in this case is on gun violence and the impact that sports figures can have if they make the effort.

Finally, the last piece to note here was similar to that by Dickey in two respects, it was both only sort of sports writing and not by an actual sports writer. Posted to the Baltimore Ravens official website by Community Relations VP Kevin Byrne was "Ravens Fan's E-Mail Inspires Team" which included a message from 21 year-old Matthew Jeffers. It's not in the same vein of using an athlete's public platform to accomplish good (though at least one Ravens player has been doing this, as Gwen Knapp writes about "Flipping the Script" for Sports on Earth), but rather the idea of doing your best under trying circumstances. Winning at a competition is certainly something to attempt, but not as important as the battles that life can bring.

Really a powerful message from Jeffers and along with those from Dickey and Smith it shows well for me a perspective towards sports along with the potential for it to impact change. May be a bit of a reach to bring these pieces and ideas all together here, but nah... I don't think so.

NY Times Piece on a mother and father rushing to Sandy Hook Elementary

After avoiding for about a week reading anything in depth on what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, I found from a post on the writing website Gangrey an amazingly well written piece by Jim Dwyer for the New York Times.

"Running and Hoping to Find a Child Safe" is about Michelle and Curtis Urbina, parents of a student at Sandy Hook, and to take a description from Gangrey site creator Ben Montgomery's tweet on the story, the piece was "breathtakingly good".