« ‘Crowley Is Lucky He’s in F—ing Baseball’ | Home | Markakis Tops Manny’s High-Five Play »
Run Don’t Walk: ‘The Best Sports Writing Of Pat Jordan’
By Jamie Mottram | May 23, 2008
This is a collection of previously published material by a guy I hadn’t heard of until Deadspin ran his piece on Jose Canseco two months ago, and it’s the best book I’ve read all year.
The Best Sports Writing of Pat Jordan is two dozen or so other Pat Jordan athlete profiles from various publications spanning the past four decades, as compiled by Alex Belth. In tribute to the great Gay Talese, the book is divided in two halves — “Fame” and “Obscurity” — and both are terrific. The former has jaw-droppers on Roger Clemens, the Williams sisters, Wilt Chamberlain, Carlton Fisk, Deion Sanders, Whitey Herzog and Tom Seaver, but the latter sticks to your insides with not-to-be-missed looks at troubled early ’00s phenom Toe Nash, post-Simpson trial O.J. Simpson, and especially freshly-melted-down Rick Ankiel.
Jordan’s method and perspective are the foundation for a bad-ass brand of journalism, but it’s the writing that carries the day. Case in point, this excerpt from his Bruins story for Sport magazine in 1970:
Boston Garden is a dark, cold, concrete tomb. Its echoing corridors smell of cigar smoke and stale beer. It is the kind of arena where people instinctively reach to their back pockets when jostled in a crowd. The Garden’s shadowy runways are patrolled by sour-faced ushers in stiff red uniforms who seem to get more pleasure from pushing people out of the aisles than leading them to their seats. But no matter how gruff the ushers might be, and no matter how much dampness is seeping up through the seats, you could not sell even your soul for a seat in that Garden when the Bruins are playing hockey.
We should all be able to observe and recount like that. And we should all be afforded the access and openness that Jordan received in the ’70s with guys like Seaver. He covers this in yesterday’s piece on Josh Beckett for Slate (regular denizen of the web this 60-something year-old is!), and how athletes are more guarded with less incentive to speak now than then. That’s bad news for Jordan and his tribe, but he doesn’t need access to tell a great, revelatory story. The aforementioned ‘Chasing Jose’ story was stunning because he never actually talked to Canseco, not in spite of it. It was also published on Deadspin because magazines wouldn’t touch it without Jordan speaking to the subject. Their loss.
That piece is a stone knockout, as are so many other Jordan profiles expertly compiled in this masterpiece of an anthology. It’s an educational text for sports writers, a key hole into the kingdom for sports fans and a brilliant diamond in the rough for us all. I wasn’t hip to this stuff the first time around, but, thankfully, it’s not too late. Highly recommended.
Topics: Bookworm, Recommended | 3 Comments »
May 23rd, 2008 at 9:31 AM
Yes, but what do you think of 90210: The Book?
May 23rd, 2008 at 9:50 AM
The last two books I’ve picked up are Gang Leader For A Day and Snuff
http://www.amazon.com/Gang-Leader-Day-Sociologist-Streets/dp/1594201501
http://www.amazon.com/Snuff-Chuck-Palahniuk/dp/0385517882
I haven’t read them yet, but they certainly smell good.
May 23rd, 2008 at 11:11 AM
James Frey’s new one is next in my queue, though I could use some recommendations beyond that lest I finally read that copy of Dubliners on my nightstand.