Ebbets Field
The Spotlight
The Top 10 American sportswriters
Good sportswriting is like a delectable meal: it satisfies a powerful hunger. The best sportswriting attempts to vividly describe, rigorously analyze and/or fairly evaluate the games people play. Ebbets Field keeps a close eye on American sports journalism and accordingly, in our first issue, we would like to provide the reader with a look at the best sportswriters in the country. What EF looks for in a sportswriter is a distinctive voice, wit, humor, insightfulness and an eye for an interesting story. What follows is a brief look at the top 10 sports scribes in the land with the URL for each writer�s newspaper or magazine homepage in parentheses:
1. Bill Conlin, Philadelphia Daily News. The wittiest columnist in sports writing. Nobody is smarter or works harder at writing a readable, adroit, funny column. Conlin is American sportswriting�s premier sardonic poet. He also appears each Sunday on ESPN�s �The Sports Reporters� and his parting shot essays shouldn�t be free. Conlin also has an irregular baseball radio show on WPHT 1210 AM in Philadelphia. It comes on in the early evening and can be heard on most of the East Coast. Conlin sampler: �Mickey Morandini is an upgrade from coach to first class. Thank you for flying Air (Phillies� general manager Ed)Wade. At the conclusion of the meal, cake will be served, and you can eat it, too.� (Philadephia Daily News)
2. Mitch Albom, Detroit Free Press. I figure the book, Tuesdays with Morrie, is over-rated, but Albom is consistently readable -- and humble. Thank God one of the panelists on �The Sports Reporters� is not from the Northeast. Albom also has a radio talk show called the �Albom in the Afternoon� that comes on WJR (www.wjr.net) Monday-Friday 3-6 p.m. (ET). You gotta like any sportswriter whose favorite book is E. Annie Proulx�s The Shipping News. Albom sampler: �You live in a country where, after Columbine High School, after 11-year-old Nathaniel Abraham and after 6-year-old Kayla Rolland, our lawmakers still will not budge on even registering a gun the way you register a car, or demanding safety locks the way medicine has safety tops, or recalling a single new firearm, even though we recall millions of products the moment they are proved dangerous.� (Detroit Free Press)
3. Peter Gammons, ESPN. The TV sports network has a lot in common with NIKE, more than we might be willing to admit. How can you prohibit the Boston Globe from printing Gammons� baseball column, which is the best sports page in the country each Sunday, even if you don�t like baseball? Gammons knows more about baseball than God. Visit his new site at ESPN�s wesbite early and often. Gammons, sports editor of the UNC Daily Tar Heel when he was an undergraduate in the 1960s, is the most prolific sportswriter in the land. Gammons sampler: �(Yankees� owner) George Steinbrenner still has his thing about umpires. The signs outside the umpires' dressing room are in braille.� (ESPN.com)
4. Tom Boswell, The Washington Post. Every age needs a Boswell to transcribe its triumphs and tragedies. Boswell is best golf writer on the face of the planet. We highly recommend that you go to the Post and do a search for his 1999 U.S. Open columns. He is also the very prick the Baltimore Orioles need to regain their glories. Boswell has written several books on baseball. Each is highly readable. Boswell sampler: �Occasionally, someone on the PGA Tour has the momentary fantasy that, if everything goes just right and the gods conspire, it might actually be possible to beat Tiger Woods, head-to-head, on Sunday battling for the lead. They know the odds. The last 12 times Woods has been in the lead or tied for it going into the last round, he has won. But, still, they dream.� (The Washington Post)
5. Skip Bayless, the Chicago Tribune. Nobody writing sports today is fairer while maintaining a critical eye. Bayless is sharp, very sharp. The Windy City�s largest paper pulled off a major coup in getting Bayless away from Dallas. Bayless sampler: �The Sox have the better team. The Cubs have the better chance. The White Sox are baseball's best-kept secret because there is so much to like about them but so little to love. They are building a nice, plain, sturdy three-bedroom, two-bath just down the street from Cleveland's spare-no-expanse mansion. The Sox will have a quietly impressive season, improving 10 games to 85-77 and shaving 10 games off Cleveland's division-winning margin. That means they'll finish only 11 1/2 back of the team I pick to win the World Series, and no one outside Chicago will remember whether Chicago, Detroit or Kansas City finished second. That's because the Sox still have all the personality of light poles along the Dan Ryan. So much on-the-verge talent, so little billboard power.� (Chicago Tribune)
6. Tony Kornheiser, The Washington Post. Sure his Style columns are often better than his sports columns, and he ought to be doing standup in the Catskills. Yes, he has a Dave Barry-like formula. Yet nobody is consistently funnier in sports. And sports needs more comedy. He also has the best sports radio show in the country which is available through WTEM (www.wtem.com) in Washington or ESPN Radio. Kornheiser sampler: �Anyway, the other day, she (Kornheiser�s daughter) said to me, �They�re not serious with these gas prices, right?� I smiled and said, �No, honey, these are the frivolous gas prices. The serious prices are coming soon. Bet you never thought you�d have to choose between filling your tank and going to college.� � (Washington Post)
7. Bob Ryan, the Boston Globe. Ryan has the best basketball sense of anyone writing. Too bad it is wasted on the Celtics. We wish he were covering college ball full-time. A link to his piece on John Rocker appears in our first edition. Ryan sampler: �You say there is no recorded instance of a town ever actually being drunk dry? There's a first time for everything, and that time might be next weekend. Load up on the brewskis. Board up the windows. Wisconsin is coming to Indianapolis. That's Wisconsin, as in state of. Wisconsin, as in state of mind. That's Wisconsin, as in the partyingest people north of Bourbon Street. And Wisconsin, as in University of, a school whose rampaging basketball team has rolled into the Final Four -- 13 losses, No. 8 seed and all - by virtue of a 64-60 victory over Big Ten rival Purdue in yesterday's West Regional final.� (The Boston Globe)
8. Billy Reed, the Lexington, Ky., Herald-Leader. This guy must love hoops and horses more than his own wife. There�s no way he should be in such a small market. Even if UK is his main beat, national basketball fans should read him often. He�s that good, especially on college sports. Reed sampler: �You couldn�t kick the South Carolina Gamecocks out of the Southeastern Conference simply because of their nickname, even though chicken-fighting is a disgusting, redneck endeavor that shouldn�t be tolerated in any civilized society. But the SEC seriously ought to consider giving South Carolina the boot on the basis of sheer incompetence. Since joining the league in 1992, the Gamecocks have brought virtually nothing to the table in football and men's basketball.� (Lexington Herald-Leader)
9. Phil Mushnick, New York Post. Funny, irreverent and critical. An heir to Howard Cosell, even if Mushnick is not enthralled of Cosell�s ego and self-promotion. We need more Mushnicks writing about TV sports. The question is: why doesn�t every town have a sports media critic? If your hometown paper doesn�t, then we suggest you make Mushnick your eye on the media jockocracy. Mushnick sampler: �Mike Francesa�s credibility rating has fallen so far, so fast, that getting on his case for his in-yer-ear conflicted interests has become too easy, like shooting fish in a barrel. While Francesa�s unmitigated gall and arrogance is such that he now tells his listeners that he doesn't care if they care that he has become a Bill Parcells shill, what prevents WFAN management from sitting Francesa down and demanding that he cut it out? That meeting should have occurred the day Francesa referred to the Jets, on the air, as �we.� � (The New York Post)
10. Tony Barnhart, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. ESPN had it wrong in tabling Gammons� Globe baseball column, but they had it right by hiring Barnhart on college football. The best around at analyzing the college game. Barnhart often appears on �The Sportswriters� Round Table,� a discussion of sports topics on Atlanta radio station WSB Sundays from 5-8 p.m. WSB comes in well at night over most of the Eastern Seaboard and Midwest. Barnhart sampler: �When Dick Bennett became coach at Wisconsin five years ago, his new players were presented with a theme: �Start the Dream.� Back then, the Dream was to make Wisconsin competitive in the rough-and-tumble Big Ten. Once that was accomplished, Bennett modified the theme to �Reach for the Dream.� The Badgers did that in 1999 when they went 22-10 and earned a spot in the NCAA Tournament. The theme for this season? �Touch the Dream.� � (The Atlanta Journal Constitution)
Ebbets Field will provide links to these writers� best-written pieces whenever they appear. However, many of their more mundane columns and articles are dazzling too. The fact that each is free on the Internet seems criminal. Take advantage now before newspapers and magazines start charging for Web services.
Back to Ebbets Field homepage
| Disclaimer | About EF | Staff | Contact EF | Production | Search |
� 2000 Ebbets Field
[email protected]
Get your own Free Home Page