Tag: Sports Illustrated
1964: A Sidelong View of Sports
Below is a guest reading list from Daniel A. Gross, a journalist and public radio producer who lives in Boston. * * * Fifty years ago, a champion boxer picked up his son from school, a literary critic was tackled by NFL players, and a famed NASCAR racer tended to his chicken farm. Such was the […]
Tony Gwynn: 1960-2014
“The best thing for me has just been the passion of wanting to play. The challenge of stepping in the box, the challenge of trying to be successful. When I started out, I guarantee you nobody figured I would be where I am today. Nobody. Not even myself. Maybe there’s something that makes you want […]
How A Black High School Basketball Coach Transformed A White, Mennonite Town: A Longreads Guest Pick By Chris Mahr
Chris Mahr is the managing editor of Lost Lettermen, a college sports website and athlete database. “Talk to any young sportswriter today and odds are that their introduction to both Sports Illustrated’s long-form journalism and renowned writer Gary Smith are one in the same: ‘Higher Education.’ Smith’s March 2001 masterpiece tells the tale of Perry […]
Longreads Guest Pick: Rustin Dodd on 'The Courage Of Jill Costello'
Rustin Dodd is a sports reporter at The Kansas City Star. For the most part, he spends his time covering Kansas basketball and football, but he has also covered the Kansas City Royals for the last five years. He’s covered two Final Fours, two Major-League All-Star Games and The Masters. He resides in Lawrence, Kan., […]
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[Not single-page] Ten years after Ken Caminiti became the first prominent Major League Baseball player to confess to steroid use, a look at four players whose lives and careers were forever changed: The 1994 Fort Myers Miracle, a Class A affiliate of the Minnesota Twins, included four pitchers of similar attributes. They each threw righthanded, […]
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Two of the world’s best tennis players meet for a match 1912, just weeks after they both survived the Titanic disaster: Now consider a scenario in which two of the survivors were dashing, world-class athletes in the same sport, destined to face off against each other many times. The hype surrounding those matches would be […]
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How the former baseball star went from unlikely business success to financial ruin—and now sentenced to three years in prison: Even after his financial and legal troubles came to public light, Dykstra refused to give up the trappings of the gilded life. He continued to fly on private planes, and the charges that landed him […]
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High school hockey player Jack Jablonski was left paralyzed after a hit during a game—leading Minnesota to get tougher on rules, and leading families to rethink hockey’s risks: “I forgot to tell you,” he says. Something in his voice is strange. He looks at me. Cade and Raye are both staring at me now. Peter […]
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A Michigan high school basketball player hits the game-winning shot. Moments later he collapses from cardiac arrest and dies: After the autopsy, when the doctor found white blossoms of scar tissue on Wes Leonard’s heart, he guessed they had been secretly building there for several months. That would mean Wes’s heart was slowly breaking throughout […]
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The search for Clifton (Pop) Herring, Jordan’s high school coach, and the truth about the NBA legend’s early days: And so, over the next four years, as Michael Jordan became an Olympic gold medalist, a rookie NBA All-Star and the scorer of 37 points per game, Pop Herring went from suspended to unemployed to unemployable. […]
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Doyle approached him and said, “Do you know there’s a retired number in Williams football?” “Williams doesn’t retire numbers,” Quinn replied. “Apparently it does,” Doyle said. On the Monday after that game Quinn called Boyer and asked, “Williams has a retired football number?” “I don’t know about retired,” Boyer said, “but there’s this box down […]
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Doyle approached him and said, “Do you know there’s a retired number in Williams football?” “Williams doesn’t retire numbers,” Quinn replied. “Apparently it does,” Doyle said. On the Monday after that game Quinn called Boyer and asked, “Williams has a retired football number?” “I don’t know about retired,” Boyer said, “but there’s this box down […]
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It’s been two autumns now since Russell last played a down of organized football. This fall, when capable quarterbacks have been in high demand and short supply, he’s gotten no calls. The Raiders lost his successor, Jason Campbell, to a broken collarbone on Oct. 16, and last week they acquired 31-year-old Carson Palmer, who had […]
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“Now, thanks to that pampering, upon his retirement in the winter of 1988 as the NFL’s alltime leading rusher, Walter Payton found himself burdened by a realization that had struck thousands of ex-athletes before him: I am bored out of my mind. When strangers asked, he talked about how thrilled he was to be free […]
