The Woman Who Would Save Football

Neuropathologist Dr. Ann McKee, a Green Bay Packers fan, on her autopsies of former NFL players and research into chronic traumatic encephalopathy:

“Over the last four years, McKee has become the most visible member of a cohort of research scientists and family members — wives, mothers, daughters, and sisters of the dead, dying, and demented — who have forced the issue of chronic brain trauma into the forefront of American consciousness. The process has engendered enormous publicity as well as criticism and jealousy in the scientific community, which is every bit as competitive as the NFL. Her work has brought ‘a great deal of acclaim, exposure, and recognition,’ says neurosurgeon Robert Cantu, clinical professor of neurosurgery at Boston University and co-director of CSTE. ‘But at the same time it’s brought a great deal of pressure. Not everybody greets her findings with the same degree of enthusiasm.’

“War-painted denizens of the upper deck may view her as The Woman Trying To Destroy Football. In fact, she is The Woman Trying To Save Football From Itself. The process has engendered a particular intimacy with those who entrust their loved ones to her posthumous care. Virginia Grimsley, whose husband, John, was the first NFL player diagnosed by McKee, says, ‘He’s in good hands with her. They’re all in good hands with her.

‘If Joe Six-Pack was as educated as the wives that have gone through this and as Dr. McKee, Joe Six-Pack would sit down, shut up, and continue to drink his six-pack,’ Grimsley says. ‘She’s not trying to destroy football.’

“McKee says: ‘I’m just trying to tell football what I see.'”

Author: Jane Leavy
Source: Grantland
Published: Aug 17, 2012
Length: 33 minutes (8,369 words)

Dinner with Daniel: Michael Keaton

The actor reflects on his career choices, the films he passed on, and his early days working for Mister Rogers:

Michael: What people don’t realize is what his crew looked like — they almost all had hair down to their lower backs, one guy just dripped with patchouli and marijuana smoke, worse than Tom Petty. But everyone was really funny and would do these insane things — and Fred just loved them. And they loved him back.

Daniel: So he’d never just lose his shit and scream at a gaffer for getting in the shot?

Michael: No! In fact, one time, my friend Nicky Tallo, who was this really funny, big Italian kid who was his floor manager — and I don’t think I’m telling tales out of school when I say generally Nick was feeling the effects of smoking dope the night before — or maybe even that morning …

Daniel: It was a different era …

Michael: So one day, we were taping, and Fred comes in, and starts singing, ‘It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood, a beautiful day … ‘ puts the shoes down here, goes to hang up the sweater in the closet. And he’s singing, and he opens the door — and there’s his floor manager, Nick, this big guy with his long goatee, pierced ears, hair all over the place, totally nude, just standing there naked in the closet. Well, Fred just fell down; it was the most hysterical thing you’ve ever seen. He was totally cool.”

Source: Grantland
Published: Jul 13, 2012
Length: 17 minutes (4,470 words)

The Sound and the Fury

An oral history of the first all-sports talk station, WFAN, which included Don Imus, Mike Francesca, and Christopher “Mad Dog” Russo:

Jeff Smulyan (founder and CEO, Emmis Broadcasting): Imus was just getting out of rehab when we bought the station. His agent was a friend of mine; we laughed because we had a bad radio station and a bad personality who’s probably going to be a drug addict for the rest of his life and a baseball team [the Mets] with rumors about drugs. It was kind of like the grand slam.

Mike Breen (updates, ‘Imus in the Morning’): He was a bad drunk and a drug addict. You didn’t know what you were gonna get. The first day I started working with Imus at NBC, I asked the program director to bring me back to meet him; it was two o’clock in the afternoon and he was drunk. So the program director says, ‘Can this kid fill in on sports for Don Criqui tomorrow?’ And Imus was like, ‘Sure, now get out of my office.’ He didn’t even look up. When I went in the next day, I sat down and he had no idea who I was. So he shuts his mic off and he looks at me and he says, ‘Who the f— are you?’ I said, ‘I’m filling in for Criqui.’ He turns his mic back on and he says to Charles McCord, ‘Charles, do you know this kid? He claims he’s fillin’ in for Criqui.’ Now this is on the air, this part. So he spent the next 10 minutes interviewing me, asking me how I got to work on his show.”

Source: Grantland
Published: Jul 10, 2012
Length: 62 minutes (15,675 words)

A Question of Identity

Jeremy Lin’s sudden stardom has also put the spotlight on how Asian Americans are viewed in the U.S.:

“Not since Barack Obama’s presidential campaign has there been so much national discussion about the appropriateness of discussing race. The 2008 election set the groundwork for an aggressive sort of colorblindness — as long as you voted for Barack and/or can celebrate, say, Jackie Robinson, you now have the right to flag down anything that might shake us from our post-racial dream. Statements like ‘I see everybody equally, therefore everyone should just talk about him as a basketball player’ and accusations of ‘playing the race card’ have become even more ubiquitous. And although the former signals a nice sentiment, it also provides convenient cover for those of us who benefit most from the status quo, regardless of race. Yes, Jeremy Lin became Linsanity because he has been playing at a level that has recalibrated expectations of any obscure player. And yes, there’s nothing more tiresome than a long-winded meditation on a basketball player, especially if he’s clearly been hijacked to promote some other agenda. But to strip Jeremy Lin of his status as the Great Yellow Hope not only seems dishonest and lazy, it also deprives the community he represents — willfully or not — of the unabashed joy of seeing one of its own succeed in the most improbable arena.”

Source: Grantland
Published: Feb 22, 2012
Length: 8 minutes (2,188 words)

Kickoff: ‘Madden NFL’ and the Future of Video Game Sports

A trip to John Madden’s man cave, and whether sports video games can ever be described as “art”:

“Clearly, the way sports games are played, and the way Madden in particular is played, is ripe for some massive paradigm shift. Why doesn’t the quarterback position feel as visceral and pinpointy as firing a rifle in a first-person shooter? Could you make the experience of being an offensive lineman as interesting as anything on the ball? Why, for that matter, is running the ball such an isometric experience? When I put these and other questions to the Madden team in Florida, many of them smiled.”

Source: Grantland
Published: Jan 17, 2012
Length: 30 minutes (7,703 words)

The Fragile Teenage Brain

What helmets can’t fix when it comes to concussions and high school football:

“Because of its national reputation — and extremely well-funded athletic department — Mater Dei has been on the leading edge of concussion prevention and treatment for high school football players. The coaches are vigilant; the equipment is top of the line; the latest medical recommendations are exactingly followed.

“And yet, even when a football program does everything right, it’s still not clear if it’s enough. This uncertainty haunts the Mater Dei coaching staff, who struggle on a daily basis to effectively manage the risk of concussions among their players. The new research on concussions has allowed them to prevent many of the worst injuries, but it has also made them increasingly aware of the ubiquity of injury. They know better than anyone that if an elite program like Mater Dei can’t solve the problem of head trauma, it seems unlikely the problem can be solved. The sport may simply be too dangerous for teenagers.”

Source: Grantland
Published: Jan 10, 2012
Length: 15 minutes (3,899 words)

Being Babe Ruth’s Daughter

Julia Ruth Stevens, his sole surviving daughter, calls him Daddy. Odd as it is to hear a nonagenarian refer to a man 60 years gone as Daddy, it is also a tender reminder of the limits of hyperbole, how grandiose honorifics obscure the messy, telling details of an interior life.

To others he is a brand, an archetype, a lodestar. His shape is ingrained in our DNA. His name recognition, 96 percent, is higher than any living athlete. (His Q score, a measure of how much the people who know him like him, is 32 percent compared to 13 percent for today’s average major leaguer.) And yet, as well-known as he is, the most essential biographical fact of his life, one that demands revisiting what we thought we knew, one that Julia assumed everybody knew, remained unknown.

Author: Jane Leavy
Source: Grantland
Published: Dec 19, 2011
Length: 23 minutes (5,906 words)

Grown-ups Must Act Like Grown-ups

As I read, something quite unexpected occurred, an “aha” moment in the quiet of my kitchen, with the dog asleep on the floor and coffee cooling in a cup. I leaned against the cooktop. I realized I was writing the wrong story.

Forty-one years ago, while an exchange student living at a convent school in Belgium, I was sexually assaulted by a teacher, a married woman with an 8-month-old son. This is not a newly recovered memory. This is a story I have told repeatedly, though not publicly, for years. I needed to tell it to convince myself it was true.

I choose to tell it here, not because I wish to detract in any way from the severity of the alleged abuse that took place at Penn State but because it illustrates the power of the mind, as psychologist Richard Gartner, author of the definitive book on the subject, Betrayed As Boys, told me, “to put experience in a kind of box so that it doesn’t disturb the rest of you.” Because, while I am a reluctant citizen of the confessional states of America, my experience, which pales in comparison to the trauma described by the grand jury, illustrates the banal ubiquity of sexual abuse and its insidious aftermath.

Author: Jane Leavy
Source: Grantland
Published: Nov 11, 2011
Length: 9 minutes (2,421 words)

The Mysterious Death of Sammy Wanjiru

Here is what we know about the death of Sammy Wanjiru: It happened late in the early hours of May 15 at his posh home in Nyahururu, a Rift Valley town about 100 miles from Nairobi. Sammy fell from a second-story balcony — a drop of about 16 feet — and landed on the pavement outside. He lost consciousness. Hospital doctors could not revive him.

Here is the mystery: whether Sammy fell, jumped, or was pushed.

Author: Anna Clark
Source: Grantland
Published: Oct 6, 2011
Length: 12 minutes (3,043 words)

Noel Gallagher After Oasis

I want to hear about Be Here Now. “At the time, I was taking a lot of fucking drugs, so I didn’t give a fuck,” Gallagher says. “We were taking all the cocaine we could possibly find. But it wasn’t like a seedy situation. We were at work. We weren’t passed out on the floor with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. We were partying while we were working. And when that record was finished, I took it back to my house and listened to it when there wasn’t a party happening and I wasn’t out of my mind on cocaine. And my reaction was: ‘This is fucking long.’ I didn’t realize how long it was. It’s a long fucking record. And then I looked at the artwork, and it had all the song titles with all the times for each track, and none of them seemed to be under six minutes. So then I was like, ‘Fucking hell. What’s going on there?'”

Source: Grantland
Published: Sep 6, 2011
Length: 16 minutes (4,052 words)