All-time favorite piece of sports journalism?

Top 6 (because one through five seems too few, and seven through 10 is too many):

1. The Hit King, Scott Raab, GQ
2. Resurecting the Champ, J.R. Moehringer, LA Times Magazine
3. The Man. Amen., Charles P. Pierce, GQ
4. The Red Sox, 2004 Sportsman of the Year, Tom Verducci, SI
5. The Passion of Tiger Woods, Chris Jones, Esquire
6. A Reminder of What We Can Be, E.M. Swift, SI

 

Lips Gets Smacked by Bruce Buschel. Philadelphia Magazine, Jan. 1993.

Lenndy Dykstra not looking his best, as the kids say.

 

Good call. Much of this piece can be found in Kram's description of the fight in his terrific book Ghosts of Manila, which I finished yesterday.

 

What Do You Think of Ted Williams Now? by Richard Ben Cramer -- Esquire, 1986

http://www.esquire.com/features/articles/2003/030905_mfe_cramer_1.html

 

Ain't the web an amazing thing? Seriously, no sarcasm. You can find the stuff for people who never got a chance the first time around:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/magazine/features/si50/states/nebraska/flashback/

 

Folks have mentioned some great stuff.

In my opinion, best-evah deadline story was by Peter Gammons (and I am glad he's recovering so well).

Game 6 of the 1975 World Series.

The lead alone sings like poetry.

And all of a sudden the ball was there, like the Mystic River Bridge, suspended out in the black of the morning.

When it finally crashed off the mesh attached to the left-field foul pole, one step after another the reaction unfurled: from Carlton Fisk's convulsive leap to John Kiley's booming of the "Hallelujah Chorus'' to the wearing off of numbness to the outcry that echoed across the cold New England morning.


Here's the rest:


http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/gammons/story?id=2118859

Best magazine article. It's been 15 years, but I still hold Gary Smith's "Shadown of a Nation," about Montana Indian reservation basketball in SI, as my favorite.

 

That gameover had the best first sentence I've ever read in a sports story.

 

Is that the one about Jonathan Takes Enemy? I loved that piece, probably my favorite ever. To this day I occasionally find myself wondering wonder whatever happened to Jonathan.

 

A couple of books:

Lords of the Realm by John Helyar, and Only in America by Jack Newfield. Terrific reporting.

 

Nack's Secretariat story in BASW.

I don't recall the writer, but the back-of-book piece on Watson-Nicklaus at the 1977 British Open made an impact on me, and I didn't even care for golf at the time.

 

Like I said.
Best. Gamer. Ever.

 

Speaking of Gammons and the 1975 World Series, how about this one, after Game 7.

"We have postponed autumn long enough now.
There are storm windows to put in, wood to chop for the whistling months ahead.
The floorboards are getting awfully cold in the morning, the cider sweet.
Where Lynn dove and El Tiante stood will be frozen soon, and while it is now 43 years for Thomas A. Yawkey and 57 for New England, the fugue that was the 1975 baseball season will play in our heads until next we meet at the Fens again."

Beauty, eh?

And, what, no love for Death of a Racehorse?