Favorite Sports writer(s)?

Love Joe Posnanski. I'm also a big fan of Peter Gammons, Brian Phillips and Tom Verducci.

By the way, big ups to this board. I hadn't discovered it until a few days ago and just got the e-mail confirmation code just now. I love reading the topics posted here.

 

Welcome!

Beer, newb.

 

All of my coworkers.

/copout

 

I am a bit late with this, I suspect.
I worked with a few of the guys mentioned here (Albom and Mike Downey) and know some of the rest. Some may even say I was among the best --- oh, 1,000 or so -- columnists of the late 21st century.

To my mind there is only one #1, though I know some will disagree (what the hell, some will even vote Republican).

The best sportswriter in the history of the business wrote this lead from Palm Desert, Ca.:

"The cultural shock is the worst. Going from NFL playoff games, bowl games, nosebleeds, black eyes and separated shoulders to a game where the worst thing that can happen to you is a ball out of bounds is almost too hard to take. It's like going from the Gulag Archipelago to Miami Beach, from a Siberian prison camp to Waikiki.
"Golf is a game where a 'late hit' means a slice, not a fracture. It's where 'rough' does not refer to Mean Joe Greene but high grass. Where hardly anybody ever needs crutches and the bleeding is all internal."

Every time he wrote, Jim Murray wrote like this. Early in my career, I was naive enough to try to write like him. I stopped trying and still had a pretty good career.

But there was only one Jim Murray and he was absolutely the best, if not in history, at least in the past 50 years.

 

Dr. Z.

 

Gammons is good as well as credible.
Ralph Russo with The AP has always written with a clear head and no ulterior motives or allegiances.

 

You're not late.

Jim's all-time place in the parthenon is secure, and dusted, daily.

 

Back when he wrote long-form and for awhile at Sports Illustrated, Rick Reilly was the greatest writer I knew. I was very young back then, but even now I'll look back on some of that stuff and just enjoy it for a few minutes.

Others I like now:

- Chris Jones, who is excellent beyond sports as well.
- Gary Smith, with a lot of his being memorable, although I particularly remember, for some reason, his profile of Kelly Slater a couple years ago.
- Jeff Pearlman's books, especially the Payton one. I'm only part of the way into it, but what I've read so far, I like a lot.
- Dan Wetzel. One of his that I always remember is the piece about Colt McCoy and how his arm died in the BCS title game a few years back.
- Jeff McGregor
- Joe Posnanski
- Honestly, Drew Magary cracks me up. He's very hit or miss for me, but when it works, man alive, it kills me.
- Tom Lake. Some of the stuff he's done for SI has been phenomenal.
- S.L. Price. His book Heart of the Game, about Mike Coolbaugh, the minor league coach who got killed by a line drive, is an all-time favorite of mine.

Just a few. I read a lot. But I'll stop.

(Update)

Okay, thought of a few more soon as I hit Post.

Seth Wickersham (ESPN: The Magazine) doesn't get enough credit, I think. His piece about Mike Vick's time in prison was, to me, pretty great.
Michael Kruse. He's mainly a feature writer for the St. Pete Times, but he's done some sports stories, and he just started writing for Grantland, and I'm looking forward to that.

 

Good call on Schulian.

Deford at his best was hard to surpass.

Very underrated for sheer readability on the NBA: Jack McCallum