Launching Sports Biblio, BASW At 25, and ‘The Babe Ruth of Writers’
Now that the Sports Biblio website is up and running (introductory post here), I’d like to say thanks to all of you for your kind wishes, follows, newsletter subscriptions, etc.
If you know of others who may be interested in the subject matter here -- sports books, history, culture, film/docs, art, literature and so on -- please spread the word. This is a passion project for me, and I want to connect with the passionate audience for this material that I know is out there.
As I wrote in my first post, I want to appeal to a sense of sports connoisseurship, the interests of those that marketing guru Seth Godin has described as "the elites of curiosity, passion and taste.”
I’m beginning with three posts a week -- Monday, Wednesday and Friday -- and rounding them up in the Digest here every Sunday, along with related links such as you see below.
(Signing up for the newsletter, if you haven’t done so, is free and easy. Sports Biblio also is on Twitter and Facebook. Future plans include a podcast with sports authors, historians, artists and others. Stay tuned!)
Every other Friday is a book review, and I began this week with “Professor in the Cage: Why Men Fight and Why We Like to Watch” by Jonathan Gottschall. After failing to get tenure in a college English department, he took to the MMA ring and rediscovered his masculinity in middle age.
Gottschall’s perspective is as an evolutionary thinker, and his views don’t sit well with the media, academic and feminist establishments, which is why I like what he has to say -- for the most part.
Also this week I wrote about a sports book that has influenced me deeply, Michael Novak’s “The Joy of Sports.” I will be writing more about that book on the blog and here in the coming weeks.
I appreciate your feedback; please feel free to contact me with suggestions, book recommendations, story links and more at sportsbiblio@gmail.com.
25 Years Of Best American Sports Writing
Yes, that’s two words, and there’s a good reason for that, according to series editor Glenn Stout.
He’s been there from the start, presiding over the first volume of Best American Sports Writing in 1991. On Tuesday, the latest edition was published, with selections chosen by guest editor Wright Thompson of ESPN.
The selected authors include Chris Jones, Chris Ballard, Elizabeth Merrill, Tommy Tomlinson, Don Van Natta Jr., Flinder Boyd, Brian Phillips and Dan Wetzel.
Stout explained in this Gangrey longform podcast why he doesn’t call it “sportswriting” but “sports writing,” and how Thompson chose stories that went heavy on storytelling.
Stout, who oversees SB Nation’s excellent longform vertical, wrote a deeply personal foreword to the book that explains the history of the series, and how it has evolved during the digital age.
Also Published This Week
“Das Reboot: How German Soccer Reinvented Itself and Conquered the World” by Raphael Honigstein; review in The Independent. Fascinating timing too, given the appointment of Jürgen Klopp this week at Liverpool FC, only the second German manager in the English Premier League;
“Fun City: John Lindsay, Joe Namath, and How Sports Saved New York in the 1960s,” by Sean Deveney;
A reissue of “Saving Face: The Art and History of the Goalie Mask,” by Jim Hines and Gary Smith, and a foreword by Gerry Cheever;
“Walter Camp: Football and the Modern Man,” by Julie Des Jardins. This one's on my list for a review in the near future.
My Favorite Reads of the Week
Two from from Joe Posnanski, on the 25th anniversary of the Negro Leagues Museum in Kansas City; and saying farewell to a dying sportswriting friend. I got to know Ken Burger, formerly of the Post and Courier in Charleston, S.C., on the Southern college football trail. He was full of warmth and charm and humor. The guy never seemed to break a sweat on deadline. I'm devastated to hear of his battle with prostate cancer.
Vin Scully will miss the postseason due to an unspecified medical procedure. The Dodgers official blog dusted off this 1965 Los Angeles Times piece by the announcer that demonstrates his gift for language, written and verbal. Jacob Silverman writes in The New York Times that the “most distinctive feature” of Scully on play-by-play is “his use of silence.”
In the U.S. edition of The Guardian, soccer journalist Michael Lewis writes about how Shep Messing’s 1972 Olympics turned into tragedy.
The Best Sportswriter You Never Heard Of
On Wednesday, “Hano! A Century in the Bleachers,” a documentary about southern California sportswriter Arnold Hano, will have its world premiere in Laguna Niguel (official trailer).
Hano, 93, is the author of 27 books and hundreds of magazine articles, and has seen major league baseball players since 1926, prompting some to call him “the Babe Ruth of writers.”).
He’s also known in the Orange County area for his political activism and among baseball players for social activism, including advocacy on behalf of Latino players.
Among those lauding him in the film are George Vecsey, John Schulian, Felipe Alou, Orlando Cepeda, official baseball historian John Thorn, Ron Kaplan of the Baseball Bookshelf and Alex Belth of the Bronx Banter Blog.
Directed and produced by Jon Leonoudakis, the Hano film also will be screened in Pasadena and the Bay Area and at a Nov. 13 event at the Bergino Baseball Clubhouse in New York. DVD sales will be available online on Nov. 1.
Two previous documentaries by Leonoudakis were screened at the Baseball Film Festival.
Passings
Harry Gallatin, a versatile big man for the New York Knicks in the early years of the NBA, at the age of 88;
Dave Meyers, 62, UCLA basketball All-American and brother of Naismith Hall of Famer Ann Meyers.
Off The Sports Green
In The New York Times Sunday Book Review, long distance swimmer Diana Nyad, author of the forthcoming memoir “Find a Way,” discusses her favorite books and her reading life. She admits she hid her love of German literature from her mother, a Frenchwoman who lived under Nazi occupation: “She threatened to never talk to me again.”