The Best American Sports Writing 2017 Read online

  Contents

  * * *

  Title Page

  Contents

  Copyright

  Foreword

  Introduction

  RICK TELANDER: William Perry

  PAT JORDAN: Barry Switzer Laughs Last

  DAVE SHEININ: A Wonderful Life

  DAVID REMNICK: The Outsized Life of Muhammad Ali

  KURT STREETER: The Spirit of a Legend

  JESSE KATZ: 26.2 to Life

  LUKE CYPHERS AND TERI THOMPSON: Lost in America

  ALEXIS OKEOWO: The Away Team

  RUTH PADAWER: Too Fast to Be Female

  S. L. PRICE: The Longest Run

  JOHN BRANCH: Why Steve Kerr Sees Life Beyond the Court

  PATRICK HRUBY: Four Years a Student-Athlete

  BOMANI JONES: Kaepernick Is Asking for Justice, Not Peace

  DAVE ZIRIN: Andrew Cuomo Would Have Blacklisted Muhammad Ali

  JOHN COLAPINTO: Some Very Dirty Tricks

  DON VAN NATTA JR.: Welcome to the Big Time

  GEORGE DOHRMANN: Hooked for Life

  GRAYSON SCHAFFER: The Most Successful Female Everest Climber of All Time Is a Housekeeper in Hartford, Connecticut

  JON BILLMAN: (Long) Gone Girl

  WRIGHT THOMPSON: The Secret History of Tiger Woods

  TERRENCE MCCOY: Today, Her Whole Life Is a Free Skate

  SEAN FLYNN: The Shooter and the Saint

  TIM ELFRINK: Sucker Punch

  JEFF MAYSH: Why One Woman Pretended to Be a High-School Cheerleader

  DAN BARRY: Hit Man

  LOUISA THOMAS: Serena Williams, Andy Murray, and a Political Wimbledon

  ROGER ANGELL: Almost There

  Contributors’ Notes

  Notable Sports Writing of 2016

  Read More from The Best American Series®

  About the Editors

  Connect with HMH

  Footnotes

  Copyright © 2017 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company

  Introduction copyright © 2017 by Howard Bryant

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  The Best American Series® is a registered trademark of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. The Best American Sports Writing™ is a trademark of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

  No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of the copyright owner unless such copying is expressly permitted by federal copyright law. With the exception of nonprofit transcription in Braille, Houghton Mifflin is not authorized to grant permission for further uses of copyrighted selections reprinted in this book without the permission of their owners. Permission must be obtained from the individual copyright owners identified herein. Address requests for permission to make copies of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt material to [email protected] or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

  hmhco.com

  ISBN 978-0-544-82155-2 (print) ISBN 978-0-544-82156-9 (ebook)

  ISSN 1056-8034 (print) ISSN 2573-4822 (ebook)

  v1.0917

  “Almost There” by Roger Angell. First published in The New Yorker. Copyright © 2016 by Condé Nast. Reprinted by permission of Condé Nast.

  “Hit Man” by Dan Barry. From the New York Times, October 30, 2016, copyright © 2016 by the New York Times. All rights reserved. Used by permission and protected by the Copyright Laws of the United States. The printing, copying, redistribution, or retransmission of this Content without express written permission is prohibited.

  “(Long) Gone Girl” by Jon Billman. First published in Runner’s World. Copyright © 2016 by Rodale Inc. Reprinted by permission of Rodale Inc.

  “Why Steve Kerr Sees Life Beyond the Court” by John Branch. From the New York Times, February 25, 2016, © 2016 by the New York Times. All rights reserved. Used by permission and protected by the Copyright Laws of the United States. The printing, copying, redistribution, or retransmission of this Content without express written permission is prohibited.

  “Some Very Dirty Tricks” by John Colapinto. First published in Vanity Fair. Copyright © 2016 by John Colapinto. Reprinted by permission of John Colapinto.

  “Lost in America” by Luke Cyphers and Teri Thompson. First published in Bleacher Report. Copyright © 2016 by James D. “Luke” Cyphers and Teresa D. Thompson. Reprinted by permission of James D. “Luke” Cyphers and Teresa D. Thompson.

  “Hooked for Life” by George Dohrmann. First published in the Huffington Post. Copyright © 2016 by George Dohrmann. Reprinted by permission of the Huffington Post Highline.

  “Sucker Punch” by Tim Elfrink. First published in the Miami New Times. Copyright © 2016 by the Miami New Times. Reprinted by permission of the Miami New Times.

  “The Shooter and the Saint” by Sean Flynn. First published in GQ. Copyright © 2016 by Sean Flynn. Reprinted by permission of Sean Flynn.

  “Four Years a Student-Athlete” by Patrick Hruby. First published in Vice Sports. Copyright © 2016 by Vice Media LLC. Reprinted by permission.

  “Kaepernick Is Asking for Justice, Not Peace” by Bomani Jones. First published in The Undefeated. Copyright © 2016 by ESPN, Inc. Reprinted by permission of ESPN.

  “Barry Switzer Laughs Last” by Pat Jordan. First published in Men’s Journal. Copyright © 2016 by Pat Jordan. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “26.2 to Life” by Jesse Katz. First published in GQ. Copyright © 2016 by Condé Nast. Reprinted by permission of Condé Nast.

  “Why One Woman Pretended to Be a High-School Cheerleader” by Jeff Maysh. First published in The Atlantic. Copyright © 2016 by Jeff Maysh. Reprinted by permission of The Atlantic.

  “Today, Her Whole Life Is a Free Skate” by Terrence McCoy. From the Washington Post, February 26, 2016, © 2016 by the Washington Post. All rights reserved. Used by permission and protected by the Copyright Laws of the United States. The printing, copying, redistribution, or retransmission of this Content without express written permission is prohibited.

  “The Away Team” by Alexis Okeowo. First published in The New Yorker, December 12, 2016. Copyright © 2016 by Alexis Okeowo. Reprinted by permission of The Wylie Agency, LLC.

  “Too Fast to Be Female” by Ruth Padawer. First published in the New York Times Magazine. Joint copyright © 2016 by the New York Times and Ruth Padawer. Reprinted by permission of Ruth Padawer.

  “The Longest Run” by S. L. Price. First published in Sports Illustrated and Time. Copyright © 2016 by Sports Illustrated. Reprinted by permission of Sports Illustrated.

  “The Outsized Life of Muhammad Ali” by David Remnick. First published in The New Yorker. Copyright © 2016 by Condé Nast. Reprinted by permission of Condé Nast.

  “The Most Successful Female Everest Climber of All Time Is a Housekeeper in Hartford, Connecticut” by Grayson Schaffer. First published in Outside. Copyright © 2016 by Outside magazine. Reprinted by permission of Outside magazine.

  “A Wonderful Life” by Dave Sheinin. From the Washington Post, February 12, 2016, © 2016 by the Washington Post. All rights reserved. Used by permission and protected by the Copyright Laws of the United States. The printing, copying, redistribution, or retransmission of this Content without express written permission is prohibited

  “The Spirit of a Legend” by Kurt Streeter. First published in ESPN: The Magazine. Copyright © 2016 by ESPN, Inc. Reprinted by permission of ESPN.

  “William Perry” by Rick Telander. First published in Sports Illustrated. Copyright © 2016 by Spor
ts Illustrated. Reprinted by permission of Sports Illustrated.

  “Serena Williams, Andy Murray, and a Political Wimbledon” by Louisa Thomas. First published in The New Yorker. Copyright © 2016 by Condé Nast. Reprinted by permission of Condé Nast.

  “The Secret History of Tiger Woods” by Wright Thompson. First published in ESPN: The Magazine. Copyright © 2016 by ESPN, Inc. Reprinted by permission of ESPN.

  “Welcome to the Big Time” by Don Van Natta Jr. First published in ESPN: The Magazine. Copyright © 2016 by ESPN, Inc. Reprinted by permission of ESPN.

  “Andrew Cuomo Would Have Blacklisted Muhammad Ali” by Dave Zirin. First published in The Nation. Copyright © 2016 by The Nation. Reprinted by permission of The Nation.

  Foreword

  When I lived in Boston in the 1980s and early ’90s and trudged through Kenmore Square on the way to work or to see some band in some bar, the sidewalk was often littered with flyers for a local psychic. Usually distributed by some college student who stuffed them in your hand as you passed, they were often discarded as quickly as they were delivered, leaving the ground covered with tiny chartreuse or hot pink ad cards that breathlessly read in bold: “THOUGHTS HAVE WINGS!”

  I threw my share to the ground, but even then I loved the idea, the metaphor—thoughts flying off in all directions, destination unknown, influence unpredictable, impact unforeseen. When I found one of these flyers in an old book the other day—I must have used it as a bookmark—I was thrilled, and soon followed the memory path back to that sidewalk. Thoughts do have wings, and that one had been carried forward for more than three decades before, improbably, landing here. As the late, great, and now nearly forgotten Dominican pitcher Joaquín Andújar once wisely observed: “There is one word in America that says it all, and that word is, ‘You never know.’ ”

  This brings me around to this book, sports writing, and writing in general. As I have learned, not only do thoughts have wings, but so too do words, and so does this book. Over nearly three decades, The Best American Sports Writing has been carried to places hard to imagine and to writers of all backgrounds who have in some way found it either instructive or even formative.

  Just today, as I type this, a writer sent me a note asking if I had seen a particular story written by someone else, because she thought it might be something for the book. I had, and that led me to send her a copy of something else that appeared in this book 15 years ago (“Her Blue Haven” by Bill Plaschke), a story I still can’t forget, one that I don’t think anyone who has ever read it ever will.

  And just now, I swear, another writer just posted on Facebook a photo of a letter to the editor from a magazine. It referenced a story she wrote that the letter writer had encountered in an earlier edition of this book—the photographer had been the writer’s high school sweetheart and met her again through her story.

  I’ve lost count of the number of times a writer has told me that this book, a story they read in these pages, or a writer they first encountered here changed their lives. This duplicates the same experience I wrote about in a long-ago foreword in which I recounted how my writing obsession was first lit by a poem by Langston Hughes. And only a few weeks ago I was contacted by a writer, an academic researching the early history of the black press, about my first mentor, Mabray “Doc” Kountze. She had first learned of him from my foreword to the 1994 edition of this book.

  Words really do have wings.

  Their reach is not confined to this country, or even to the Americas. While The Best American Sports Writing has always been open to writers in both American and Canadian publications (I’m a Canadian citizen myself), for years I have heard from writers in Europe, Australia, South America, and Africa bemoaning the fact that there is no similar collection for their home country. Many note that the kind of sports writing they find in this book doesn’t even exist in their own culture. In other places the genre is usually confined to sports reporting or argumentative debate and doesn’t take the more nuanced, thoughtful, and thought-provoking approaches one finds here.

  Outside of the United States, the notion that sports writing might have “literary merit” (the publisher’s loose criterion for inclusion in this volume) is almost an alien concept. I do know that there was once an annual Best Australian Sports Writing collection, and there is apparently a Best Canadian Sports Writing collection in the works. There have been many comprehensive anthologies of historical sports writing from other nations, such as India and Germany, and some overseas websites (such as the Irish-based The 42) regularly curate sports writing, but I am aware of no other similar annual collection. As a result, in other nations this book has become the de facto volume to which many English-reading sportswriters, particularly younger sportswriters, turn for inspiration. I regularly hear from readers in Australia, Ireland, England, the Philippines, Germany, and other countries with a significant English-reading population. They order the book (often at great cost depending on the currency rate), ask friends and relatives in the United States or Canada to send it to them, or scour used-book shops for older copies abandoned by tourists. (It makes great plane, bus, or train reading.) I myself have placed copies on “share-a-book” shelves in the Caribbean, leaving the pages to be scattered by the winds.

  The way each of these volumes finds its way into a reader’s hands creates its own story. One Kenyan reader, Bill Ruthi, an extremely talented younger writer I admire and now consider a friend, came across his first copy of this book a few years ago at a streetside used-book vendor in Nairobi. He recognized some of the writers from his online reading. Although he has yet to find the book in a Kenyan bookstore or library, he keeps finding “more and more editions” for sale on the street, he writes, and now has a fairly complete collection. When his Kenyan friends ask why he bothers reading about American sports, he tells me that he answers simply, “Here are some of the best writers I know of.” I have no doubt that he could discuss the merits of various BASW contributors better than many readers in this country.

  A young Texas woman, Rachel Goodman, recently copied me on a tweet that read “Best graduation present just completed the move to Philly . . . all 27 of them @GlennStout. I guess I’ll call this place home now!” Attached was a photograph of her windowsill lined with all 26 previous editions as well as The Best American Sports Writing of the Century. I thanked her, and she wrote back that she had “stumbled upon the 2013 edition just wandering around the sports section of a book store my freshman year of college. I’ve always been interested in how sports speak to bigger issues happening around us, so BASW was perfect for me. And one of my sports reporting professors in college, Kevin Robbins [a senior lecturer at the University of Texas], used 2015 as our ‘textbook.’ ” I then asked if the collection really was a graduation present. She answered, “Yes, from my parents! And a few from a childhood friend . . . It is no exaggeration to say that BASW has influenced the trajectory of my life and career . . . and hope to end up in BASW one day. Looking forward to the next one!” Well, Rachel, next time your name appears in this book, I hope it’s in a byline atop your own story.

  Last spring I received a letter from a man incarcerated in a federal prison in Pennsylvania. He had come across an earlier edition of the book in the prison library. He asked: If he were to publish a story someday, even from inside prison, would it be eligible for this book, which he has found helpful in his current situation? I told him that of course it would, and offered to send additional copies of previous editions to the prison library. He wrote back that he’d been told it was “too much of a hassle” for the library to accept donations. Then he added, “I’ll send you a copy of my story when it appears.” I look forward to it, and nothing would make me happier than to see it earn its way into these pages.

  I meet many younger writers and am sometimes embarrassed—a few years ago, at the Mayborn conference, one extraordinarily talented young writer blurted out upon meeting me, “This is surreal!” I felt the same way hearing him say that. My in
fluence on this volume is often overstated by people who don’t bother to do even a modicum of basic investigation into the process—such as reading the foreword, where the selection methodology has been described for 27 years. I don’t know how many times or in how many ways I’ve had to explain that this is in no way “my book,” just as none of the other Best American volumes is the province of the series editor. We’re all freelancers who work year to year, and in 27 years I have not selected a single story for inclusion on my own.

  Every year I read widely and put out a call to readers, editors, and writers to submit work of merit. Literally anyone on the planet can submit a story that fits the publisher’s criteria. My role, beyond the merely custodial, is to assist the guest editor by forwarding perhaps 75 stories for initial consideration. (As a professional in the field, each guest editor presumably reads hundreds of stories, if not thousands, on his or her own as well.) I forward these stories blind: each is reduced to a Word file identified by neither author nor source, and given the volume of stories I consider, I often know nothing whatsoever about the author. In the interest of full disclosure, there is one story in this volume in which I played a minor editorial role in advance of publication, but it too was submitted blindly to the guest editor.

  In general, submissions are representative of the larger industry: wide and varied, but also narrow in some ways, reflecting this time of continuing contraction in the print industry and new media struggling with its commitment to journalism. If that prisoner in Pennsylvania writes something good enough that I read it twice, and if the guest editor concurs, he has as good a chance of having that story put forward as any freelancer or staff member for any publication or online outlet in the United States or Canada. The guest editor is under absolutely no obligation to select a single story I put forward, but most do. After all, many of the very best stories in any given year not only stand out immediately but are often widely known and discussed. Still, I always make certain that guest editors feel welcome to make as many of their own selections as they care to.