15 Best sportswriter Bloggers You Need to Follow

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One reason that writing about sports is nonfiction is that you can't compete with this reality's inherent drama. I stumbled with Roger Angell of The New Yorker and Peter Gammons from the Shea Stadium press box at the end of Game Six of the World Series between the Red Sox and the Mets. I was 23 paying careful attention not only to the games, but also to those two. Mr. Gammons was the relentless private investigator probing a public kingdom, an obsessive who, throughout his years in The Boston Globe, opened up the game to subscribers by covering huge pages of the Sunday newspaper with sprees of information, speculation, gossip and discourse. Mr. Angell shaped belles-lettres out of ballplayers; his prose was a martini poured throughout the page -- smooth and tasteful, with juniper wit and distilled insights that created something you already liked much more complicated in its own tastes. That October day, it was 68 years since the Red Sox won baseball's championship, during which time they had become the indefatigable fatigables of the sport. Year after year they crept close to success, only to drop in ever-more-histrionic style. Here they had been winning, 5 to 3, and the nearest yet, forward three games to 2, as the bottom of the 10th inning began. The press box was located high above the area, requiring a trip to accomplish the level. As they came indoors to celebrate the long-awaited triumph throngs of all sportswriters climbed to find the Red Sox. Mr. Angell and Mr. Gammons, nevertheless, did not move, so neither did . When the infamous ground ball rolled Bill Buckner's legs giving the match to New York, I had the impression we were the only three left up to see. It's like they knew. -- before declaring"no shorthand can convey the enormous, encompassing, supplicating sounds of the night, or the sense of encroaching threat on the field." Like Mr. Angell, most sportswriters are impassioned fans, but of course writing about games requires distance. A powerful figure in American press boxes throughout my Sports Illustrated years has been Jerome Holtzman of The Chicago Tribune. Mr. Holtzman wore sharp suits to the ballpark, and had eyebrows so dense they looked like a pair of nesting voles. Sportswriters who left hagiography their business so annoyed him that he published a book called"No Cheering in the Press Box." (The recent unmasking of Joe Paterno makes his point concerning the"Godding upward" of athletic characters .) Somewhere between the contentious fashion of Dick Young of routine contracts and The New York Daily News, matters swung sportswriters and the other way started to be perceived not as giddy fans but as antagonists from the athletes they cover. There's some truth to their own complaints. Where it is acceptable to insult your subjects I can't think of different forms of journalism. "It's just like a sex columnist who hates sex," is the way a young N.F.L. coach I understand believes about people covering Visit this link his group.