Writing on Sports Phenoms - by Pablo Torre & Dave Sheinin

Great sports writing on phenoms can often be more compelling than pieces on established sports stars because the phenoms represent potential not yet fully realized. Granted, that hoped for greatness may not come to pass, but it just might.

Athletes in their teens or early 20's I've linked to pieces on include baseball players Mike Trout, Stephen Strasburg, Trevor Bauer and Bryce Harper and recently I've come across two excellent pieces of writing on young stars playing two other sports.

"The Making of Kyrie Irving" was written by Pablo Torre for the Jan 7 ESPN The Magazine and is a really solid look at the Cavaliers second year point guard. Irving has performed extremely well on the NBA level after his injury shortened single season at Duke and the Torre piece is a revealing look at what got him to this point. Irving's mother passed away when he was five and Torre tells well the story of his father helping develop both Irving's game and confidence while raising he and his sister. Just a very heartwarming tale of a great athlete with potential to become even better.

The second piece of excellent sports writing to mention here was by Dave Sheinin for the Washington Post. "Robert Griffin III emerges as the Washington Redskins’ leader despite rookie status" was done prior to the Redskins recently winning the NFC East and shows the steps taken by Griffin to earn his role as a team captain and someone team veterans want to follow. It's tremendously interesting reading from Sheinin and Griffin's both calculated and completely authentic approach towards assuming leadership could serve as an example for other young stars moving up to the next level of competition.

It was solid writing from both Torre and Sheinin on two athletes that come across in the respective pieces as stars easy to root for.

Excellent ESPN Writing: by Saslow, Jones, Thompson, Friend & Wickersham

There's been a few pieces from ESPN over the past month that stood out as excellent writing on interesting topics.

The June 11 issue of ESPN The Magazine had two stories of particular note to me... one a feature by Eli Saslow and the other the Chris Jones back-page column. The Saslow piece was "One light will not go out" on freestyle skier Sarah Burke who passed away as a result of head trauma suffered Jan 10 while training in Utah. Burke's story is a pretty remarkable one and Saslow tells it extremely well. The Jones piece "Best Day Ever" is much shorter in being an 800 word column and tells of a day he spent with the Stanley Cup. Very cool stuff about the impact of the experience on both the writer and people he shared the Cup with in his small Ontario town.

Another recent ESPN piece that struck me as extremely well written was by Wright Thompson for the website. "A slow walk back to normal" was posted not long after it announced that the horse I'll Have Another wouldn't race in the Belmont Stakes. The piece is about the horse's trainer Doug O'Neil and is captivating in its expression of the disappointment he felt having his horse get so close to the Triple Crown (winning the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont), but then getting injured just prior.

Finally, the ESPN The Magazine NFL Draft Preview issue from a month ago had two solid features on compelling athletes. Tom Friend wrote "Third and gold" on ex Baylor and now Washington Redskins QB Robert Griffin III and "The Stanford predicament" was by Seth Wickersham about the #1 draft pick Andrew Luck and the also extremely talented linemen that protected him at Stanford last year. Excellent writing in both pieces on some seemingly grounded and ready to succeed football players.

Excellent Sports Writing - by Dan Wetzel / Wright Thompson / Tom Verducci / Dave Sheinin

I've been thinking over the past few days that since I brought up the whole topic of types of sports writing, it makes sense to post here on some of the best sports pieces I've seen lately.

Favorite feature story I've seen was "The Kid Who Wasn't There" by Wright Thompson for ESPN. Thompson writes lengthy pieces that tend to appear on the longer form E:60 section of the ESPN site and this one is remarkable both in the amount of research put into it (as revealed in a post to writing site Grangry), and the story itself. Topic of the piece is an Odessa, TX high school basketball player living under the assumed name, Jerry Joseph (he was actually in his early 20s and grew up Guerdwich Montimere in Florida). It's ridiculously good writing that traffics heavily in the concept of identity and how fractured and shape-shifting it can be.

Another very solid lengthy feature piece was actually printed a year ago for Washington Post. The Dave Sheinin written profile "For the love of Bryce Harper: Get ready, Washington. You're about to fall head over heels for the Nationals' newest star." gives an excellent view into the 19 year-old baseball phenom. Also, and onn the occasion his recent major league league call up, Tom Verducci wrote the shorter piece "With Harper, future of Nationals -- and maybe the game -- has arrived" for the Sports Illustrated website.

Final thing to mention in this post is around a writer who consistently produces great work for Yahoo! Sports, Dan Wetzel. My favorite piece from him was "Bubba Watson won the Masters with his own brand of golf, but family trumps his green jacket" and two other stories that stood out were "Pat Summitt stepping aside as Tennessee coach could lead to her raising awareness of Alzheimer's" and "Andrew Luck, Robert Griffin III go 1,2 in the draft, and now pressure really starts to mount." Wetzel's writing (at least that for Yahoo!) seems to tend towards blended player analysis/feature piece work and he publishes frequently... with 15 pieces (including those on Pat Summitt and Luck/Griffin) between the Apr 10 Bubba Watson piece and today.