He’s Been Tensing Up His Arms and His Legs

The Best American Sportswriting 2009
Leigh Montville, Guest Editor; Glenn Sharp, Series Editor

I am hopelessly clumsy though not quite an oaf. If one of the seven intelligences is bodily-kinesthetic, that’s the one in which I came up short.

The basics–walking, for instance–I find manageable,  but much more than that presents a challenge. Even the sorts of things that supposedly benefit from drills

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I’m Gonna Go Fishing

Surfcaster’s Quest
Roy Rowan

It’s just a fortnight or so past the Feast of St. Stephen,  with sub-zero wind chills and the remnants of a snowstorm lying about less than deep and crisp and even. So, what better time to turn one’s thoughts to fishing?

Allow me to cut to the chase. The present volume offers

Hit It Then Quit It

The Best American Sportswriting 1994
Tom Boswell, Guest Editor; Glenn Stout, Series Editor

Why,  you may wonder, is anybody spending time reading an anthology of sportswriting from 1994? Even if the contents were confined to coverage of the Little League World Series the subjects would be on the cusp of middle age.

So what gives? I attribute its appearance to a particular

Running into the Sun

The  Best American Sports Writing 2015
Wright Thompson, Guest Editor; Glenn Stout Series Editor

Cutting corners. It’s what we do to survive.

And yet I have a suspicion that doing so doesn’t sit easily with many of us. In my own case, blessed with the near-eidetic ability to recall every flub and deliberate act of incompleteness, it’s a glued-on hairshirt. Others, I  hope, have saner ways of coping.

Perhaps that explains the general  fascination with sports. I have said before that I have a complete inability

I’ve Got the Fever

Fever Pitch
Nick Hornby

I hate to say this, but I think my mom was wrong.

Growing up my mom was the reader in the house even though the demands on her time had reduced that to mostly newspapers and magazines with the occasional book borrowed from the local library.  The hard evidence was locked away in an antique oak bookcase with a glass door that lived in the basement. There stood several