The Best American Sports Writing 2011 (54 page)

 

P
ATRICK
H
RUBY
is a freelance writer and frequent contributor to ESPN. com. He previously wrote for the
Washington Times,
holds degrees from Georgetown and Northwestern, and lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife, Saphira. This is his third appearance in
The Best American Sports Writing.

 

S
ALLY
J
ENKINS
is a sports columnist and feature writer at the
Washington Post.
She is the author of several books, most notably the bestseller
It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life,
with cyclist Lance Armstrong, and
The Real All-Americans.
This is her third appearance in
The Best American Sports Writing.

 

B
RET
A
NTHONY
J
OHNSTON
is the author of
Corpus Christi: Stories
and the editor of
Naming the World and Other Exercises for the Creative Writer.
His work has appeared in
Esquire,
the
New York Times Magazine,
the
Paris Revie
w,
and the
Oxford American
and in anthologies such as
The Best American Short Stories.
He is on the core faculty at the Bennington Writing Seminars and is the director of creative writing at Harvard University. His website is
www.bretanthonyjohnston.com
.

 

C
HRIS
J
ONES
is a writer at large for
Esquire
magazine and a contributor to
Grantland.com
. This is his third appearance in
The Best American Sports Writing;
he has also won two National Magazine Awards. More of Jones's work appears on his blog about writing and words,
sonofboldventure.blogspot.com
. He lives with his wife and two sons in a house that looks like the house from Scooby Doo in Port Hope, Ontario, Canada.

 

This is M
ARK
K
RAM
J
R
.'s sixth appearance in
The Best American Sports Writing.
He has been a feature writer on the sports staff of the
Philadelphia Daily News
since 1987 and contributes an essay on American sports for the South African periodical
Business Day Sports Monthly.
He is currently at work on a book for St. Martin's Press on two brothers—after one brother was paralyzed by a football injury, the other became his caregiver, confidant, and conduit for his plea to end his life via an injection administered by Dr. Jack Kevorkian. Kram lives in Haddonfield, New Jersey, with his wife and is the father of two daughters.

J
OHN
M
C
P
HEE
began contributing to
The New Yorker
in 1963. He has taught writing at Princeton University since 1975 and was awarded Princeton's Woodrow Wilson Award for service to the nation in 1982. McPhee has published 28 books, among them
Annals of the Former World,
which won the Pulitzer Prize, and
Uncommon Carriers.
He lives in Princeton, New Jersey.

 

P. J. O'R
OURKE
is a political reporter who lives in New Hampshire. Once every four years there's something political to report. This leaves him ample time for bird hunting. He is an avid, if involuntary, practitioner of catch-and-release grouse and woodcock shooting. He owns a splendid Brittany spaniel, Millie, which he attempted to train himself. She ate the TV room sofa. His most recent book is
Holidays in Heck.

 

A
VNI
P
ATEL
is a television producer in the ABC News Brian Ross Investigative Unit. "The Coach's Secret" segment and a follow-up series of 17 broadcast stories about sexual abuse by coaches affiliated with USA Swimming, the sport's national governing body, won an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award in broadcast journalism.

 

M
ARK
P
EARSON
attended the University of Michigan on a wrestling scholarship and then returned to his home state of Pennsylvania, where he worked as a journalist and pursued his interest in fiction. He earned a PhD in English from the University of Georgia; he also has an MA in English and creative writing from the University of California, Davis. His fiction has appeared in
Aethlon, Blueline, Broken Bridge Review, Carve, Gray's Sporting Journal, Short Story,
and
Stories.
He lives in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, with his wife and two daughters.

 

B
ILL
P
LASCHKE
joined the
Los Angeles Times
in 1987 and has been a sports columnist since 1996. Plaschke is also a regular panelist on the ESPN daily talk show
Around the Horn,
and he made his film debut with three lines in the Will Smith movie
Ali,
playing a sportswriter. Plaschke was recently named Man of the Year by the Los Angeles chapter of Big Brothers/Big Sisters for his longtime involvement as a Big Brother. He has also received a Pursuit of Justice Award from the California Women's Law Center for his coverage of women's sports. This is his seventh appearance in
The Best American Sports Writing.

 

J
OHN
P
OWERS
has worked for the
Boston Globe
since 1973, writing for the sports, metro, Sunday, magazine, and living departments. He shared the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting for a special
Globe
magazine report on the nuclear arms race. As part of his international sports beat, he has covered the Olympic Games since 1976 as well as seven men's and women's soccer World Cups and has written stories from five continents. Powers is the author of
The Short Season, One Goal
(with Art Kaminsky),
Yankees
(with George Sullivan),
Mary Lou
(with Olympic gymnast Mary Lou Retton),
Seasons to Remember
(with Curt Gowdy),
The Boston Dictionary,
and
The Boston Handbook.
Powers, a 1970 cum laude graduate of Harvard and a former Poynter Fellow at Yale, lives in Wellesley, Massachusetts.

 

S. L. P
RICE
has been a senior writer at
Sports Illustrated
since 1994. This is his sixth appearance in
The Best American Sports Writing.

 

S
ELENA
R
OBERTS
is a sentor writer for
Sports Illustrated,
where she has written the "Point After" column, investigative pieces, and features. She joined the magazine in January 2008 after spending 12 years covering pro teams and the Olympics and writing the "Sports of the Times" column for the
New York Times.
A graduate of Auburn University, Roberts began her sports writing career at the
Huntsville Times
in 1988 and then moved on to the
Tampa Tribune,
the
Orlando Sentinel,
and the
Minneapolis Star-Tribune.
She has written two books,
Necessary Spectacle: Billie Jean King, Bobby Riggs, and the Tennis Match That Leveled the Game
and
A-Rod: The Many Lives of Alex Rodriguez.

 

R
OBERT
S
ANCHEZ
is the senior staff writer at
5280
magazine in Denver, writing mostly long-form features and narrative stories. This is his second appearance in
The Best American Sports Writing.
A former reporter for the
Denver Post,
the
Rocky Mountain News,
the
Philadelphia Inquirer,
and the Associated Press, Sanchez has won or been nominated for multiple state and national awards, including the City and Regional Magazine Association's Writer of the Year, and he has twice been a finalist for the Livingston Award for Young Journalists. He graduated from the University of Missouri School of Journalism and is married to his high school sweetheart, Kristen. The two have a daughter, Alexandra, and a son, Michael.

 

B
ILL
S
HAIKIN
is the national baseball writer for the
Los Angeles Times.
He has worked at the
Times
since 1997 and previously covered baseball for the
Riverside Press-Enterprise
and the
Orange County Register.
He also teaches sports reporting at the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and is the author of
Sport and Politics: The Olympics and the Los Angeles Games.
Shaikin graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, and he hopes to see Cal play in the Rose Bowl just once during his lifetime.

 

P
AUL
S
OLOTAROFF
is the author of
The Body Shop, Group,
and
House of Purple Hearts.
A contributing editor at
Men's Journal
and
Rolling Stone,
he has written features for
Vanity Fair, GQ, Vogue,
and the
New York Times
Magazine.
This is his sixth appearance in
The Best American Sports Writing.
He lives in New York.

 

W
RIGHT
T
HOMPSON
is a senior writer for
ESPN.com
. He and his wife, Sonia, live in Oxford, Mississippi. This is his sixth appearance in
The Best American Sports Writing.

 

W
ELLS
T
OWER
, a native of Vancouver, grew up in North Carolina. He received a BA in anthropology and sociology from Wesleyan University and an MFA in fiction writing from Columbia University. He is the recipient of two Pushcart Prizes, the 2002 Plimpton (Discovery) Prize from the
Paris Review,
and a Henfield Foundation Award. Tower's first short story collection,
Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned,
was published in 2009.

 

C
RAIG
V
ETTER
is a freelance writer living in Chicago. He is currently finishing a second novel.

K
ENT
B
AAB
Boxer's Death Was Blow to KC.
Kansas City Star,
May 30, 2010

T
ODD
B
ALF
Desperate Measures.
Runner's World,
August 2010

C
HRIS
B
ALLARD
The Magical Season of the Macon Ironmen.
Sports Illustrated,
June 28, 2010

B
RUCE
B
ARCOTT
Mind Games.
Runner's World,
March 2010

R
ICK
B
ASS
Wild at Heart.
Texas Monthly,
July 2010

K
EN
B
ERGER
Determined Grant Eyes Future While Battling Relentless Opponent.
CBSSports.com
, January 28, 2010

L
ENNY BERNSTEIN
A Dreamer's Run.
The Washington Post Magazine,
May 2, 2010

S
AM
B
ORDEN
Frankie Scafone: Unexpected Master with a Black Belt.
The Journal News,
February 21, 2010

P
ETER
J. B
OYER
Changing Lanes.
The New Yorker,
February 8, 2010

J
OHN
B
RANT
Liberty and Justice.
Runner's World,
September 2010

J
AMIE
B
RISICK
The Rosey Resurrection.
The Surfer's Journal,
Summer 2010

C
HIP
B
ROWN
What the Hell Happened to David Duval.
Men's Journal,
June-July 2010

P
AUL
B
URKA
Mister Bridge.
Texas Monthly,
May 2010

 

E
RIC
C
ALDERWOOD
Waiting for a Goal.
The American Scholar,
Autumn 2010

J
IM
C
APLE
Johnny Weir Is a Real Man. ESPN. com, January 14, 2010

G
ED
C
ARBONE
The Great Race.
Rhode Island Monthly,
May 2010

D
IRK
C
HATELAIN
The Legend of Bubba.
The Omaha World-Herald,
December 26, 2010

P
ETER
C
HILSON
Sporting Lives: Travels with My Brother.
Ascent,
December 2010

R
OBIN
C
HOTZINOFF
The Ride of Their Lives.
Bicycling,
March 2010

K
EVIN
C
OOK
The Unstompable Roach.
Playboy,
October 10, 2010

A
NDREW
C
ORSELLO
The Biggest Little Man in the World.
GQ,
April 2010

R
ON
C
URRIE
J
R.
How I Became a Yankees Fan.
The Southern Review,
Spring 2010

B
RYAN
C
URTIS
Arms Race.
Texas Monthly,
September 2010

 

N
ICHOLAS
D
AWIDOFF
Rex Ryan: Bringing It Big.
The New York Times Magazine,
September 8, 2010

J
OSH
D
EAN
The Great Santino.
GQ,
May 2010

M
ARK
D
ENT
Speaking About the Rucker.
The Brew House,
July 19, 2010

T
OM
D
INARD
The Finish Line.
Flipcollective.com
, April 26, 2010

T
YLER
D
UNNE
Sting of Tragedies Can't Shake Lumberton High Coach's Bond with Players.
The Fayetteville Observer,
October 10, 2010

 

J
ASON
F
AGONE
May the Best Nerd Win.
Wired,
December 2010