The Cubs Way by Tom Verducci

The Cubs Way by Tom Verducci was a really solid read from the Sport Illustrated writer who I’ve posted on a number of times. The book features the subtitle The Zen of Building the Best Team in Baseball and Breaking the Curse and details the 2016 World Series victory that broke 107 years of futility, with the Cubs last world championship in 1908.

The Cubs Way does an excellent job of avoiding the common sports book trap of just covering how "this happened, then this happened," as along with chapters on each of the seven games of the World Series, Verducci writes about the path taken around team construction, principles, and the personalities involved with the Cubs.

Detailed is how Theo Epstein took over baseball operations in 2012 after great success with the Red Sox in Boston and in Chicago built one of the youngest World Series teams ever around position players Anthony Rizzo, Kris Bryant, Kyle Schwarber, and Addison Russell. Also playing a huge role were starting pitchers Jon Lester, Jake Arrieta, and Kyle Hendricks, along with two relief pitchers acquired at the 2016 trade deadline in closer Aroldis Chapman and Mike Montgomery, who was on the mound for the final out of the World Series.

There was also quite a bit about manager Joe Maddon, who won the championship in his second season with the club and the book covers well how both Epstein and Maddon combined the best of modern and old school approaches to the game. Verducci noted work around things like the tracking of curveball spin rates and mental skills development and timeless concepts like the importance of empathy in working with people and building relationships, along with a focus on character in player evaluation and acquisition. Also interesting was how Maddon quoted in the book saying “you will remember 75% of what you write down and 90% of what you teach” and Verducci details the huge focus on communication, including individual player development plans, with management open and frank with players about their strengths and weaknesses. Additionally, a story about Maddon that struck me was his love of a statement made by Arizona Cardinals assistant coach Tom Moore with "in football, you break the other team's will through the relentless execution of fundamentals."

From an actual game perspective, Verducci writes of how the Cubs were down 3-1 in the series, with then a close win in game five, a game six in which Chapman came out for the ninth with a 9-2 lead, and of course the seventh game, in which Chapman lost a lead in the eighth on a Rajai Davis two run homer and then held the Indians scoreless in the ninth. After a fortuitously timed rained delay, Kyle Schwarber (who played the first two games of the 2016 regular season, tore ligaments in his left knee, and then returned for game one of the World Series) led off the 10th with a single and became the first of two Cubs runs in the inning, leading to an 8-7 win.

It was amazing stuff to watch on television and written of very well in book form by Verducci, with also some excellent immediate aftermath of the game writing done, including "In Chicago, the final wait for a Cubs win mixes joy and sorrow" by Wright Thompson for ESPN.

Great sports stories - on Bumgarner, McCloughan & Luck

Three great pieces of sports writing from December included one on World Series MVP Madison Bumgarner, one on NFL talent evaluator Scot McCloughan and one on Colts QB Andrew Luck.

For Sports Illustrated, the excellent Tom Verducci wrote "2014 Sportsman of the Year: Madison Bumgarner" on the Giants starting pitcher with the unbelievable postseason run this year and the feature from ESPN was "The Far Sideline" by Seth Wickersham on Scot McCloughan, who helped build both the 49ers and Seahawks rosters in recent years.

The other football story that stood out to me as excellent was for the Wall Street Journal with Kevin Clark writing "Andrew Luck: The NFL’s Most Perplexing Trash Talker." The banter from Luck after being sacked is definitely different than normal and seems to either be the result of him being a exceedingly nice guy, incredibly crafty or a combination of both. Regardless of the cause, it's a fascinating approach.

Inspiring sports stories - Verducci on Mariano Rivera, Hohler on Bobby Orr & Jones on Michael Weiner

There's three pieces of sports writing I've come across recently that stood out to me as excellent and on inspiring subjects.

From the September 23 Sports Illustrated was "Exit Sandman: Baseball bids adieu to Mariano Rivera" by Tom Verducci. It was done as an oral history on the Yankees closer and was simply interesting to me up until the end when it became incredibly poignant. Verducci included a fairly lengthy story about Rivera meeting with the family of Luke Bresette, a 10-year-old killed in March by a falling airport display board and the article closed with a quote from Luke's father, Ryan Bresette...

"This is something I haven't told too many people. When Mariano came over to me, I stuck out my hand to shake his hand, and he gave me a hug, pulled me close and whispered in my ear, "You're a stronger and braver man than I ever could be."

The second feature to note here was by Bob Hohler for the September 29 Boston Globe with "At 65, Bobby Orr is focused on doing good — quietly." Orr's humility, with him one of the greatest hockey players ever, was remarkable to me and the video that accompanies the piece definitely worth watching.

The last inspiring sports story to note here was by Chris Jones for the Oct 13 issue of ESPN The Magazine. "Labor of love:Terminal cancer hasn't kept Michael Weiner from his dream job" details the executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association and how he spends his remaining time. It's a short and emotional story and it feels like every word from Jones just spot on.

Writing on Writing (it's Work) - Leitch, Smith & Verducci

There's been a few writer interviews I've come across lately that stood out as interesting and reinforced an idea from a post I did last May, "Writers on Writing (it's Work) - Chris Jones on Robert Caro / Gary Cartwright / Mark Kram Jr." This central idea of work and it's import stood out to me in recent interviews with Will Leitch, Gary Smith and Tom Verducci.

The website TVFury provided the first new interview to note here with "The Fury Files: Will Leitch" and the part of greatest impact to me was at the end with Leitch on the effort he feels compelled to put in...

"I feel like I always just have to be a couple of steps ahead of the coroner. I figure if I type really fast, if I always turn in everything in time, if I keep doing things that I enjoy doing (and therefore make sure this never gets stale for me or the reader) … maybe I've got a chance. But I spent a long, long time writing thousands of words that nobody paid me for, that nobody read."

The Gary Smith interview was actually from 2008, but perhaps it's fitting to link to something a few years old here as Smith has for such a long period been doing great features for Sports Illustrated. On the Poynter Institute website was a post by current ESPN writer Jamele Hill titled "‘Going Deep’ with Sports Illustrated‘s Gary Smith." Background was Hill had written Smith back around 2000 asking about his approach to journalism and while there was a number of interesting responses passed along here, I particularly liked Smith on the subject of reporting and getting a source to open up...

"A lot of times it’s rephrasing a question three, four or five ways. A lot of us have the pat answer or the safe answer or the quick answer, [which is] is the first answer we’ll give. Sometimes it takes that many times of coming back at it in a slightly different way to unlock a little something more."

Finally, Jeff Pearlman on his website last month did the interview "The Quaz Q&A: Tom Verducci" with the Sports Illustrated writer / MLB Network reporter / FOX game analyst. Just as Leitch and Smith provided, there's a ton of solid content from Verducci, but (similar to from the Smith interview) the part I found most interesting was on reporting...

"Patience is a requirement. Anybody with a credential and a pen or a microphone can get “a” quote. You've seen it, Jeff: the scrum around the star of the game and the stock questions that typically feature phrases such as “how surprised were you . . . ,” “the mindset,” and “what pitch.” The worst are the non-questions. They almost always start like this: “Talk about . . . .” It’s sheer laziness. The point is that you ask a stock question you get a stock quote. I don’t want mere quotes. I want information. And I want what’s true. You have to be patient if you’d rather drill closer to bedrock than the surface layer."

Solid Sports Writing - on FC Barcelona, Oakland A's & Chris Kluwe

Three different excellent pieces of sports writing to note here... with a couple being a few weeks old and one just a few days.

The recent piece was "The Punter Makes His Point" for the New York Times by Tony Gervino. Well done profile of Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe, now best known for his brilliant and profane takedown of a bigoted Maryland politician posted to Deadspin.

Going back a few weeks were two pieces for Sports Illustrated, one on the website and one for the magazine. The shorter website piece was from Tom Verducci with "A's historic run to AL West title reminds us why we love this game" on... well, that. It's certainly true that as an A's fan I had more interest in the story than many, but it really was excellent writing that gets at what makes baseball such a captivating game to be a fan of.

The magazine feature piece also included this element of "writing about what makes something special" with Grant Wahl doing "The World's Team", a solid piece with the subtitle "FC Barcelona is more than a club, more than a champion and more than Lionel Messi-it is the embodiment of a sporting ideal that has made it beloved across the globe."

Solid Writing from Sports Illustrated on Baseball & ESPN on Football

There's four excellent pieces of sports writing to note here with two from ESPN the Magazine and two from Sports Illustrated.

The ESPN features came from the September 3 NFL Preview issue and both dealt extremely well with the important and much discussed idea of the negatives of the game weighed against the positives. The lead story was a J.R. Moehringer essay "Football is dead. Long live football" that featured the subtitle "Concussions, lawsuits, death -- but fans are still cheering" followed by 120 points to consider about America's most popular sport.

Additionally, David Fleming wrote the piece "Neither saint nor sinner" that looks at Cleveland Browns linebacker Scott Fujita and the suspension the NFL gave him from the Bountygate scandal while he was a New Orleans Saint. Tremendously interesting story that similar to the Moehringer piece delves into the good as well as dark side of pro football.

Switching to a different sport, two Sports Illustrated pieces a few months apart shared for me the common bond of being very good writing about baseball superstars. The recent August 27 issue had Angels 21 year old outfield Mike Trout on the cover and the story within was "Kid Dynamite" by Tom Verducci. It was an well written piece and brought to mind past pieces I've linked to on phenoms Bryce Harper, Stephen Strasburg and Trevor Bauer.

Going a while back in time, but also on a baseball superstar was the June 11 SI cover story "The Curse Of Bigness" by S.L. Price on Josh Hamilton. The piece featured the same type of great in-depth writing that Price seems to always provide and showed a fascinating portrait of Hamilton. Some of the stories told showed character tendencies towards the dramatic and attention craving and that certainly doesn't make Hamilton a bad guy, but does seem to tie into his past drug and alcohol addictions and the possibility (certainly not the guarantee, but possibility) of future struggles.

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.

2011 World Series Writing

Following on the heels of an incredible final day of the regular season was an equally astounding (more so given the stage) World Series with the St. Louis Cardinals winning in 7 games.

There was great writing done on that Game 162 (with pieces by Messrs. Verducci, Posnanski and Kruse linked to here) and as could be expected, also some excellent pieces on the World Series and particularly the epic Game 6. Starting things off with the widest (post World Series) view was the excellent Go Crazy, Baseball, Go Crazy by Tom Verducci story for Sports Illustrated.

It doesn't take anything away from the very solid Verducci piece, but the unbelievable if not real 6th game of the World Series provided the writing that stuck with me the most, with the three most memorable pieces below...

- 2011 World Series: David Freese caps Cardinals’ unbelievable comeback by Thomas Boswell for the Washington Post.

- David Freese, St. Louis force Game 7 by Jayson Stark for ESPN.

- Game Six by Joe Posnanski for his Sports Illustrated blog.

Game 162 of the MLB 2011 Season & Great Writing on the Night

Stunning, crazy, epic, redonkulous... all words that apply to last night's events in the final game of the MLB regular season. I suppose one could make the point that once the playoffs start it doesn't matter how a team got there, but sports fan me would respectively disagree.

Yes, the players are the ones competing and they've all got their own motivations (including of course the paycheck variety), but the fans are by and large in it for the entertainment value provided. To that point, last night's Red Sox-Orioles and Yankees-Rays games were each remarkably entertaining in it's own right, but the two games viewed together as they should be... yep, redonkulous (this doesn't even consider the National League games yesterday).

I fully expected to find some great writing on the events transpired and (not surprisingly) the best I've seen today has been in pieces for the Sports Illustrated website from Tom Verducci and Joe Posnanski respectively.

Verducci wrote the illustratively-titled Drama of Game 162 never seen before and likely never will again and spent more time chronicling the events of the games than Posnaski did in his Baseball Night in America. While I found both works to be exceptionally solid (and Verducci's had the timeline of events), the piece by Posnanski really did it for me with it's vivid descriptions of what makes baseball so great for those who follow it.

Going back in time a bit this idea of baseball fandom was eloquently laid out by Kevin Van Valkenburg in A funny thing happened on the way to Camden Yards for the Baltimore Sun.

Very cool writing from all three guys on a sport that (as Posnanski says) can be boring, but also can be so very much more to it's fans.

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Postscript - The text above was the original post done yesterday, but in the "too good to not include here" category was Six minutes that shook baseball history and put the Tampa Bay Rays in the AL playoffs from Michael Kruse and Ben Montgomery. Written for the St. Petersburg Times, it's got the same timeline approach that Tom Verducci provided, but also provides content around individual Rays fans and how they followed and reacted to the madness. Great human-element writing...

Sports Illustrated Pieces: Dustin Pedroia / Toomer's Corner Trees / Pitching Prospect Trevor Bauer

Three excellent stories from the latest issue of Sports Illustrated.

Cover story was "The Muddy Chicken Hits It Big" on Red Sox second baseman Dustin Pedroia. Solid piece by Senior baseball writer Tom Verducci that really gets into Pedroia, who he is and what he does. The story does a good job of covering both Pedroia's personal and professional lives, with the professional being grounded in his love of the game and how that helps him be a leader on a team full of personalities. Lot of ground written about well by Verducci.

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Another profile piece from this issue was "Trevor Bauer Will Not Be Babied" by Lee Jenkins. No slight at all intended towards the writing, but what stood out here was the subject covered. Similar to Stephen Strasburg and Bryce Harper (SI cover stories about each posted on here and here, respectively), Bauer represents the idea of potential greatness in baseball. As Jenkins details, the 20 year old Diamondbacks prospect could see Major League time as soon as September for the Arizona Diamondbacks.

What makes the story even more interesting is Bauer's single-minded ownership of and contrarian approach to his pitching development. Pretty fascinating content both in terms of what Bauer has done and how baseball thinking has adjusted somewhat in his direction around training and conditioning practices.

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Final story that stood out in this SI was the Tommy Tomlinson feature "Something Went Very Wrong At Toomer's Corner". About the University of Auburn oak tree poisoning, the piece features the type of compelling writing that can often be found in the last feature of each SI issue. Tomlison goes beyond the crime itself and delves deeply into football in Alabama and what it means to people... both for better and much much worse. Excellent "slice of life different than known by many" prose.

Doing it Right: SI Pieces on John Wooden & Joyce/Galarraga

Two good (and very related to one another) features from the June 14 issue of Sports Illustrated.



The cover story from Alexander Wolff is "Remembering The Wizard" about coaching legend John Wooden who recently passed away at the age of 99. I've been extremely partial to anything Wooden after receiving a card in response to a fan letter some 10 year ago, but also found Wolf's piece to be really well written.

If one of the aims of good prose is to impart something new and interesting to the reader, this was very much accomplished in the SI story. Fascinating stuff within about both the coach's devotion to his wife who passed in 1985 and the author's role in convincing Wooden after her death to reengage with the sport of basketball that valued him so much.

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Thinking of Wooden as someone who tried to impart life lessons rather than just basketball coaching (which isn't a stretch at all if you consider his Coach Wooden website), I'd surmise that he'd approve of the actions shown by the subjects of the a different piece in this SI issue.

"A Different Kind Of Perfect" is written by Tom Verducci and about MLB umpire Jim Joyce and Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga. I posted about it previously, but the actions of these two men were remarkable in their approach to a very unfortunate situation (caused by Joyce) and seemed very much in line with some of the maxims that Wooden taught.

Sports Illustrated on Baseball Phenoms Strasburg & Harper

Love me the idea of a phenom in sports.

So interesting to think about athletes with practically limitless potential and then to see what they do with it. Possibilities range from the very little (see: Leaf, Ryan) to quite a bit with more to come (see: Crosby, Sidney... with this post linking to an article about him) and everything in between.

Perhaps more than in football and hockey, baseball lends itself to the idea of phenoms and potential to singularly impact games. This is particularly the case with pitchers as a great starter can every five games (or 3 out of 7 games in a playoff series) shut down an opposition... and reminds me of the Earl Weaver quote "momentum is tomorrow's starting pitcher."

To this end, the June 7 issue of Sports Illustrated has two different pieces that deal with this idea of phenoms in baseball.

First was "Wave Of The Future" by Tom Verducci. The beginning of the piece is about the great equalizer potential of the MLB draft and the end about can't miss (in the eyes of many experts) 3rd base/outfield prospect Bryce Harper (who last year was the 16 year old subject of an SI cover story).

One interesting quote from Verducci's "Wave of the Future" piece was this statement a year ago by uber-agent Scott Boras in talking to Washington Nationals ownership...

"There is a thing called a 50-year player—a player so extraordinary that he comes along once every 50 years. This year there is a 50-year pitcher and next year there is a 50-year player. And they both may be available to you."

Yep... Boras was right, the Nationals next week are pretty much a lock to take Harper with the first pick and last year took starting pitcher Stephen Strasburg with the first pick. It doesn't happen a lot that one team can draft superstars in back to back years, but as the Pittsburgh Penguins experienced with drafting Evegeni Malkin and Crosby in 2004 and 2005 respectively, it does happen sometimes.

From this same June 7 issue of SI comes the Joe Posnanski piece "What Took You So Long?" on Strasburg. Intriguing stuff about a highly anticipated prospect leading up to his MLB debut Tuesday June 8 vs the Pirates.

Of course, success is not guaranteed for either Strasburg or Harper (they are both still "prospects" after all), but the anticipation of what may be possible... that's pretty cool stuff.

Tom Verducci & Matt Lauer on Armando Galarraga / Jim Joyce episode

Really compelling theater from MLB in the last few days that goes beyond sports to being what President Barack Obama might refer to as "a teachable moment."

Starting things off, umpire Jim Joyce got wrong the call that would have completed for Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga the 20th Perfect Game in MLB history. From this came a series of interesting events.

To whit... Galarraga maintains his cool and completes the game; Joyce see the video and realizes his error; Joyce tearfully apologizes to Galarraga; the pitcher accepts his apology and gives him a hug; Joyce speaks to the media and acknowledges his mistake; Galarraga takes the lineup card to home plate for the next day's game and shakes hands with Joyce (who could have taken the day off, but didn't).

In terms of after the fact analysis, I really liked and agree with Tom Verducci from his CNNSI piece "Selig should review Joyce's blown call for the future, not the past" as well as Matt Lauer in his Today Show interview with Joyce.

It was a remarkable sporting event made more remarkable in that out of it, two people acted respectively as forthright and understanding adults. Sports are great, but something like this is just plain cool beyond a mere sporting event.

Sports Illustrated Stories - Dallas Braden Perfect Game & Genes Impacting Sports

Two different pieces from the May 17 issue of Sports Illustrated that stood out to me... neither for what I thought was necessarily great writing, but both with very interesting content.

The cover story was "Happy Mother's Day" about the 19th Perfect Game in Major League history... thrown by Dallas Braden.  Written by Tom Verducci, the story chronicles the trials and tribulations that Braden has been through and how they led up to his masterpiece performance.  Such a great narrative around the performance with it being on Mother's Day / Breast Cancer Awareness Day and in front of his grandmother who raised him after his single mom passed away from cancer.

Below is the clip from Comcast Sports Net Bay Area:



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From the same May 17 issue was "Sports Genes" by David Epstein about how genetic markers can and do influence athletic performance.  What was terribly interesting about this piece to me wasn't so much from the perspective of what's known now about genes and their impact on sports, but what the future holds.  With performance enhancing drugs or the possibility of their use being so prevalent in many sports, gene therapy takes the idea of artificial enhancement to a new level. 

Roy Halladay Profile from Sports Illustrated

Excellent cover story from the latest issue of Sports Illustrated.

Written by Tom Verducci, "What Makes Roy Run" is a detailed profile of new Phillies ace Roy Halladay. I found myself drawn to the story of Halladay for the same reason I found compelling this SI story on Sidney Crosby (which I posted on here)... it chronicles a gifted athlete who works perhaps harder than anyone else to become even better.

So much to be said for someone that couples together work and skill... and it would be so easy to just be content with being near, but not at the top of the game.

Urban Meyer SI Profile by S.L. Price

Excellent feature story on Urban Meyer in the Sports Illustrated "Sportsman of the Year" issue.



Written by S.L. Price, it's a very in-depth look at the University of Florida head football coach and the path he's taken to prominence. Meyer seems a fascinating guy who has had to both work extremely hard and overcome obstacles every step of the way. Perhaps additionally, or perhaps as part of this, Meyer also was raised by an extremely authoritarian father who constantly pushed him to achieve.

What helps make this a great piece is that Price is such a good writer and able to provide a nuanced portrait of the subject. Some of the stuff he's written are the book "Heart of the Game: Life, Death, and Mercy in the Minor League America" which I reviewed here and the SI profile "Big Love "cc!" (which I originally linked to here) about Yankees pitcher CC Sabathia.

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I enjoyed the piece on Meyer primarily for the quality of the writing, but also really liked the "2009 Sportsman Of The Year: Derek Jeter" article for the subject himself. I've never been a Yankee fan, but can't help but admire how the future Hall 0f Fame shortstop conducts himself and how he feels about the game of baseball. So cool to read about someone who gets joy out of what he does and doesn't take anything for granted.

This is completely an aside, but I also have thought of Jeter in the last week as the Tiger Woods infidelity scandal has grown. If Tiger wanted, he could have just as easily developed a Jeter-like "man around town with the ladies" persona and nobody would have faulted him. Rather than Jeter's lifestyle as a single man, Tiger appeared to choose BOTH the playboy and wife with kids lifestyles. C'mon, not sustainable and... frankly, not very cool.

Mariano Rivera & Chris Andersen Sports Illustrated Profiles

Two really good profile pieces in the Oct 5 Sports Illustrated.



The first is by Tom Verducci and titled "Mariano Saves" about the exploits of the Yankee pitcher. Throughout the piece is detailed Rivera's unflappable cool and incredible success closing games. Perhaps even more amazing than what Rivera has accomplished is the manner in which he's done it... with 92% of his pitches thrown being the cut-fastball.

The second is about someone who certainly hasn't had the longevity or success of Rivera, but perhaps is just as popular in the town he plays. Denver Nuggets forward Chris Andersen is profiled in the L. Jon Wertheim story "Flight of the Birdman" and his is quite the ride. After serving a 2 year drug-related suspension from the NBA, Andersen is now a fan favorite due to both his approachable every-guy attitude and reckless abandon style of play.

Both stories portray interesting people and do so through really solid writing... an excellent combination.

Bryce Harper baseball phenom: SI cover story

Really interesting cover story from the latest Sports Illustrated.



From Senior Writer Tom Verducci, "Baseball's Lebron" is a extremely well written look at a guy that many scouts are viewing as a can't-miss prospect. The subtitle pretty much tells what the story reveals in greater detail:

"His name is Bryce Harper. You don't know him, But every big league scouting director does. He hits the ball a desert mile, clocks 96 on the gun, and he's only 16, more advanced than A-Rod and Junior were at the same age. and his ambition is as great as his talent."

Good stuff.

Randy Johnson Profile from Sports Illustrated

Really good writing by Tom Verducci in his piece "Randy Johnson Will Grind Your Bones To Make His Bread" from the May 25 Sports Illustrated (cover below).



It's an interesting look at someone who will be the next (and possibly last) pitcher to win 300 games in a career.