Great sports writing - by Moehringer, Van Valkenburg & Rushin

A few different pieces of great recent sports writing included from Sport Illustrated an opus out of the 6oth anniversary issue and from ESPN, a shorter opus on Derek Jeter and feature about offensive football mastermind Hal Mumme.

The Sports Illustrated 60th anniversary review was written by Steve Rushin and unfortunately isn't online now, but the 20,500 word story is a remarkably written piece on the events and people that shaped the world of sports through the past six decades. The piece from Rushin followed up on his SI 40th anniversary piece from 1994 and very much reminded me of the great SI 2012 Sportsman of the Year profile of LeBron James by Lee Jenkins that seems to not be online anymore, but I wrote about here.

The two recent ESPN pieces are both online and excellent work with J.R. Moehringer doing some 9,000 words in "The Final Walk-Off" on Yankee shortstop Derek Jeter and Kevin Van Valkenburg writing "Yoda of the Air-Raid Offense, He Is" on former Kentucky football coach Hal Mumme. This piece by Van Valkenburg was published about a week ago for ESPN The Magazine and brought to mind for me the Chuck Culpepper story "Uniquely Memorable" about former Pacific Lutheran coach Frosty Westering, another coach who worked to have the game be fun for his players.

Excellent Sports Illustrated writing- by Smith, Reiter, Chen, Price & Rushin

Not sure if this was a change that Sports Illustrated just made, but apparently watching a short ad online now makes available for reading a number of magazine stories that previously weren't even searchable. As a result of this, there's a few excellent stories from SI to link to here... along with a few that were already available online.

The most profound feature for me was "Frank Hall, American Hero" from the June 24 edition. The cover story by Gary Smith was on a high school football coach from Chardon, OH who in Feb 2012 helped prevent additional deaths in a school shooting that claimed the lives of three students. It's a great piece from Smith made all the more powerful with it beginning on the prevalence of this type of gun violence and then ending with mention of how the violence seems all too quickly forgotten.

Two other pieces I found noteworthy from SI over the past few months were each on the fascinating to me subject of baseball phenoms. "Where Will He Be?" was from the July 8 edition and written by Ben Reiter on Dodgers outfielder Yasiel Puig. Very interesting stuff about how the Dodgers worked to sign Puig as a relative unknown coming out of Cuba and additionally on a baseball phenom (actually, two) was "Glimmer Twins" by Albert Chen from the Aug 19 issue of SI. About Minnesota Twins prospects Byron Buxton and Miguel Santo, it's on two players who may well have a huge impact on a franchise.

From the Aug 5 edition of SI was another stellar cover story with "The Last Days of A-Rod" by S.L. Price. I'm always interested when I see a feature being done by the excellent Price and on Alex Rodriguez he writes a thorough look at someone who's fallen so far through the course of his career.

The final piece to note here isn't terribly recent, but definitely great writing worth linking to. "Symphony for a Foghorn" was by Steve Rushin from the June 10 Sports Illustrated and about the NHL playoffs. I suppose it's a description that may get bandied about excessively, but (and in line with the piece title), it's extremely lyrical and captivating hockey writing from Rushin.

Joe Posnanski on Jets Fullback Tony Richardson

Great story from the latest issue of Sports Illustrated.

From Joe Posnanski, Made to Last is a profile of 16 year NFL veteran Tony Richardson. It's solid writing about a guy who takes pride in helping every season the young players trying to take his starting job. Definitely worth a read for anyone who likes football... and reading about one of the good guys.

-----

Also from this issue of SI was The Summer's Best @#$%! Comedy by Steve Rushin about "Hard Knocks" on HBO. A really cool show that reveals a more human side of the NFL than is usually shown.