How people are paid at the top in a free-market system has always been a contentious issue, especially in bad times. Babe Ruth’s most famous quip was not about baseball but about salaries. When asked in 1930 if it was right that he should be making more money than President Hoover, he replied, “I had […]
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Posted inEditor's Pick
How a Soccer Star Is Made
Like other professional clubs in Europe and around the world, Ajax operates something similar to a big-league baseball team’s minor-league system — but one that reaches into early childhood.
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Heart of Los Angeles
When Vincent Edward Scully first came to Los Angeles to broadcast Dodgers baseball games in 1958, he worried because he could not find the essence of the city. The center. The heart. He was 30 years old, and he had some clear ideas about what it took to call a baseball game.
Posted inUncategorized
The Social Network
The Social Network Jose Canseco says he has regrets. The man is reportedly broke. The man is a pariah — he has been excommunicated by the high priests of baseball. He seems to believe this is because he told the truth about some things, because he admitted using steroids and named a few other players […]
Posted inUncategorized
Coke, Hookers, Hospital, Repeat
Coke, Hookers, Hospital, Repeat “Here’s a peek into my insanity,” Charlie Sheen tells me one afternoon in February. “People say, ‘What are you thinking?’ and here’s the truth. It’s generally a quote from Apocalypse Now or Jaws.” It’s Sheen’s fourteenth day of sobriety (this time around), and he’s calling from a baseball diamond on the […]
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Longreads Best of 2012: Jamie Mottram
Jamie Mottram is the Director of Content Development for USA Today Sports Media Group and a proud supporter of Longreads. I work in sports media and read and think about sports A LOT. So the task of boiling the year in sportswriting down to some kind of best-of list is daunting indeed, and I won’t […]
Posted inBooks, Member Pick, Nonfiction
How a Convicted Murderer Prepares for a Job Interview
“In prison Angel thought that it wouldn’t be too hard to find a job once he got out. He believed he had come a long way.”
Posted inFirst Chapters, Member Pick, Nonfiction, Story
Jesus Land
“They don’t know the first thing about us; they just hate us because we’re black.”
Posted inMember Pick, Nonfiction, Story
On the Far Side of the Fire: Life, Death and Witchcraft in the Niger Delta
Jessica Wilbanks | Ninth Letter | Fall/Winter 2013 | 27 minutes (6,860 words) Download as a .mobi ebook (Kindle) Download as an .epub ebook (iBooks) One of our previous Longreads Member Picks, an essay by Jessica Wilbanks, is now free for everyone. “On The Far Side of the Fire” first appeared in Ninth Letter and was awarded the journal’s annual creative nonfiction award. This is […]
Posted inNonfiction, Story
How One Magazine Shaped Investigative Journalism in America
The following story comes recommended by Ben Marks, senior editor for Collectors Weekly: Doris Kearns Goodwin’s most recent history, The Bully Pulpit, chronicles the intertwined lives of Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, often in excruciating detail, from Roosevelt’s struggles with the bosses of his Republican party to the fungal infections that plagued Taft’s groin. […]
