All-time favorite piece of sports journalism?

I liked the reference to Reilly earlier, and his Schott piece.

His column work is so formulaic it makes me cringe. However, he used to put together some great, colorful features and I looked forward to reading him. I hope he's remembered for his earlier stuff, down the road.

His Craig Heyward feature was great.

I also remember him describing Kruk's physique, or lack thereof, as "a third helping of mashed potatoes".

 

The Smith story on the black basketball coach in Amish country makes me cry every time I read it.

Also, this story from Outside Magazine written by Tim Zimmerman is fantastic. It is long, but well worth the investment of a half hour or 45 minutes of your life.

http://outside.away.com/outside/features/200508/dave-shaw-1.html

 

I think Outside is really underrated.

Great writing there!

 

"When Your Dream Dies," By Rick Reilly
It's a story about an Illinois referee who attempts to commit suicide after blowing a call.
It was in the Dec. 26, 1994 Sports Illustrated
If I still had it, I'd post it, but for some reason highbeam.com won't allow me to access SI articles anymore.

 

Jenkins piece a classic example of a writer at the height of his powers, blessed with
an exemplary game from within his favorite niche. Great stuff.

 

Yeah, I don't think that one's even close...

This may be the second best gamer I've ever read... Maybe the best I've ever read in a newspaper...

http://apse.dallasnews.com/contest1999/writing/over250.roberts.html

 

Mike Bianchi's column from Dale Earnhardt's funeral was completely brilliant...

 

Dan Jenkins' 1966 Notre Dame-Michigan State gamer in Sports Illustrated was brilliant.

 

And yet newspapers existed, even in those dark caveman days. And radio. And television.

In 1971 SI would have arrived in your mailbox almost a week after the game. Even the most casual sports fan would have known the score by then. SI's mission, then and now, was more analytical than reportorial.

 

The Jenkins piece was in SI, not the newspaper.

 

I know it was in the 2002 BASW. It was chilling...can't find it online anywhere. If anyone can, please post it.

 

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- What must they have been thinking as they filed into the memorial service Thursday and saw the sad faces with faraway eyes and heard the wistful music and smelled the fatal fragrance of funeral flowers?

Would this all be for them someday too soon?

Dale Earnhardt died in a race car a couple of months before his 50th birthday. And there sat Jeff Gordon, 29, somber-faced in a church pew. Was he contemplating his own mortality? Would he make it to 30? Adam Petty died last year in a race car. He never made it to 20.

And what was Dale Jarrett thinking as Earnhardt's widow, Teresa, made her way to the front of the church? She turned toward where the other drivers sat, blew a kiss and tearfully whispered the words, "Thank you." One wrong swerve, one twitched nerve, one treacherous curve and couldn't that just as easily be Jarrett's wife, Kelley, standing on trembling legs in front of a roomful of forlorn friends?

And what was Michael Waltrip thinking as he watched 12-year-old Taylor Earnhardt trying to hold back tears, trying to be brave, trying to figure out why God took her daddy away? Was Waltrip wondering if he would be there to give away his own little girls -- Caitlin Marie and Margaret Carol -- at their weddings?

These are the morose reflections racers contemplate when they attend the funeral of a friend. Which is why they rarely do. There were a handful of Winston Cup drivers at Earnhardt's memorial ceremony Thursday, but there were many more who weren't there.

Earnhardt would have understood the mass truancy. He, too, refused to go to funerals. You have to understand racers. They are trained not to think about dying. That's why they avoid funerals as if they were clogged carburetors. It hurts them to see the survivors suffer; reminds them too much of their own families.

Why do you think it is drivers always carry their young kids to the car with them just before the beginning of every race? Why do you think the last thing they do before they hit the ignition switch is hug their children and kiss their wives? Because, deep down, they know. They know every time they get into a race car that they might have to be cut out of it.

And now, they really know. Because if the indestructible Earnhardt can be put into an early grave, they all can. If Earnhardt must walk through the valley of the shadow of death, nobody is immune. To achieve anything in racing, you must navigate that nebulous line between danger and disaster. It's like English racer Jackie Stewart once said, "In my line of work, the fastest are too often listed among the deadest."

Earnhardt's death finally began to set in Thursday for many fans who have been holding impromptu vigils since the fatal crash of their hero Sunday in the Daytona 500. In the aftermath of a tragedy, the optimists always say, "At least the sun's going to come up in the morning." Appropriately, it didn't Thursday in North Carolina.

The dank, dreary day seemed an appropriate climax to a sunless, joyless week. Raindrops mixed with teardrops. Shivering fans stood outside the invitation-only ceremony and cried out whatever tears they had left.

"I think this weather is God's way of saying the world is a cold and lonely place without Dale Earnhardt," says Terry Wright, who made the trek from Trenton, N.J.

Inside the church, the ceremony is ending, and fellow drivers file out one by one by one.

They are ashen-faced, as if they've just seen a ghost.

Or worse:

Maybe they've just seen themselves.