Sports Biblio Digest, 10.9.16: On Sportswriters, Real and Imagined
News, Views and Reviews About Sports Books, History and Culture
In This Proudly Trump-Free Issue: Richard Ford; George Plimpton; Australian Sports Writers Festival; Prime-Time Cubbies; Jürgen Klopp; Watching Women’s Team Sports
Welcome to the Sports Biblio Digest, an e-mail newsletter delivered each Sunday. You can subscribe here and search the archives.
This is Digest issue No. 57, published Oct. 9, 2016. The Digest is a companion to the Sports Biblio website, which is updated every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. To view this newsletter in a browser, please click here.
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A Few Good Reads
The Ringer: Richard Ford Is Not ‘The Sportswriter,’ by Sean Fennessey;
The New Yorker: Good Night Mets, by Roger Angell (because, Roger Angell, and, who else uses “The Tatterdemalions” near the lead these days?);
The Myles Thomas Diaries: The Golden Age of Baseball Writing, by John Thorn;
Deadspin: I Covered The Braves For A Newspaper That Did Not Exist, by Phil Braun;
The New York Times: Cubs Enjoy Coveted Time Slot for Story Line 108 Years in the Making, by Richard Sandomir;
New York Daily News: Francona, Indians giving $1M to kids for the Larry Doby Fund, by Ebenezer Samuel;
ESPN The Mag: The Korean Bat Flip, by Mina Kimes;
Slate: Why doesn’t anyone care about Mike Trout?, by Mike Shur;
Joe Posnanski: The room where it happened, a recollection of the writer’s friendship with the late Negro Leagues star Buck O’Neill;
The Jonah Keri Podcast: John Smoltz, Baseball Hall of Famer and Fox Sports analyst;
Adweek: ESPN's Long-Form Storytelling Could Turn Sports Podcasting on Its Head, by Christopher Heine;
The Footy Almanac: A Sports Writers festival comes to Melbourne;
These Football Times: Jürgen Klopp and the subtle art of Gesamtkunstwerk, by Glenn Billingham;
The Allrounder: The Curious Case of Professional Women’s Team Sports Fandom, by Andrew Guest and Anne Luitjen (here’s my piece for Today’s Fastbreak on the WNBA finals and the challenges of finding an audience during the busiest time of the North American sports calendar).
Book News and Reviews
Uni-Watch: Review, The Unforgettable Buzz: The History of Electric Football and Tudor Games, by Earl Shores and Roddy Garcia;
New York Review of Books: Review: The George Plimpton Story, the reissued collection of Plimpton sports books, by Nathaniel Rich;
Emeritus University of Nevada-Reno professor Richard Davies publishes third edition of “Sports in American Life: A History.”
Off the Sporting Green
The Guardian: Robert Gottlieb, the editor who changed American literature;
Publishers Weekly: The 10 Most Haunted Places In America;
The Millions: On Elena Ferrante, privacy and women authors.
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