Daily Archives: December 15, 2008

Looking for that ideal last-minute holiday gift for the sports fan in your life?  Look no further than The Best American Sportswriting of 2008, edited by Bill Nack, who is one of the finest sports writers we have.  

Nack is a first-rate reporter, a dedicated craftsman, and a true storyteller.  He came up with Newsday in the late Sixties and wrote about horse racing.  His experience in the field culminated in the seminal book, Secretariat: The Making of a Champion.  In 1979, Nack joined Sports Illustrated where he excelled at the bonus, or take-out piece, writing beautifully about Willie Shoemaker, Keith Hernandez, Rick Pitino, Bobby Fischer, Rocky Marciano, and, of course, Secretariat, to name just a few. (Nack’s best work is compiled in the stellar collection, My Turf.)  

Nack now works for ESPN.com.  Roger Ebert, who has been friends with Nack since they went to college together, wrote a wonderful essay about his friend last week.  If you love words, and care about language, you must check this out.  It could be the highlight of your week. 

I recently caught up with Bill recently to chat about The Best American Sports Writing 2008.

Bronx Banter: As a writer, how do you approach a project like this?

Bill Nack: I just look for the stuff that I liked the most. The stuff that I thought was the best written and best told stories. I read 70-80 stories that Glenn Stout sent me. I got it down to 35-40 and then it became really tough to pair it down. The last ten were very difficult.

BB: Did you work with Glenn or alone?

BN:  I did it on my own. There were a couple of pieces that I had questions about but not many. He left it up to me totally. I trusted him to give me what he thought were the 70 best and after that I felt it was up to me to find the ones that I thought were the best. And occasionally, I’d call him up and say, “What do you think of this one?” Some to me were slam dunks, in fact most of them were. Jeanne Marie Laskas, SL Price. The only problem that I had was in trying to get a mix–of traditional sports with obscure sports. And I was very conscious of the mix.

BB: Did you also want to mix-up bonus pieces and newspaper stuff?

BN: Yeah I did actually. I wanted to make sure there was an adequate representation of newspaper columns which are a dying species. And when I read Rick Telander’s piece on Doug Atkins that was a no-brainer. Same thing on Rick Reilly’s piece. The piece on Bo Jackson, by Joe Posnanski, that was kind of a column, that to me was an easy one. That raised a problem because I wondered if we should have two Bo Jackson stories in one book. And I really liked the ESPN.com piece by Michael Weinreb. I loved both of them. And what I liked about them together is that they were completely different takes on the same guy. I think I did consult with Glenn on that one. I said, “Do you mind if we have two Bo Jackson stories?” And he said, “No, no, they are both very different.”

BB:  I actually like having them back-to-back for just that reason.

BN:  The one thing that I noticed in the first batch of stories that Glenn sent me was that there was no humor. It was very serious. The poor woman who was lost in the wilderness and saved by her dog, the Terry Fox run across Canada, the world’s tallest tree, Scott Price’s piece on the poor coach who died from a foul ball.  And I looked at it and thought, “God, some of this stuff is really gloomy.” I happened to be a subscriber to Golf Digest and Dan Jenkins is a regular contributor. I started looking through my old issues and ran across Dan’s piece about trying to play golf as you grow old. I started laughing as I read it, because he’s one of the funniest writers that’s ever written about sports. I finished it and thought this has got to go in there. So that’s the one humorous piece that I found. I also liked it because I’m 67 and play golf. And there are a lot of older men who still play, so I thought it had a wider appeal. It was not just funny, which I needed, but it was something that a lot of guys could relate to. You don’t have to be 67, all you have to do is be 50.

BB: Was there a sense with the Tom Boswell column on Clemens and the Hank Aaron story that you wanted to get in pieces that were timely?

BN: Oh, definitely. I did think of that. I thought people would like Tom Boswell’s piece because it is a comment on Clemens.

BB: I thought the Aaron piece was phenomenal.

BN: I showed some of the pieces around before I made my final choices. Some people loved the Tommy Craggs thing and other people said, “You can’t put this in there. Who is this guy?” I just laughed. But they were bent out-of-shape because Craggs is criticizing the press in his piece. Who is this guy to criticize the press? I said, “I have no idea and I don’t care who he is.” I thought he had a very interesting, sharp take. And when I read it I thought, you know there is a lot of truth in this. I might not agree with everything, but I thought there was a lot of truth in it. I had friends in the piece that he criticized but I ran it anyway.

BB: The collection has some good young talent, like Wright Thompson, who has made the series several times now.

BN: I thought that was a terrific piece he did on Beijing. Really well done. Almost personal in a way. He didn’t just write a piece. He got you into it with vivid imagery. I’ve never met Wright Thompson, I’ve only read a little bit by him but I thought, this is really good. I didn’t know anything about him, but like Tommy, I liked his work and was happy to put it in this book. If you want to know the bottom line, I didn’t consider personalities, I didn’t consider names, I just put in people who contributed to making this the best possible anthology I could put together.

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Orders were flying over the counter at a deli on Water Street this morning.

“I’ll take a Western with home fries and rye toast,” someone shouted.

“Give me a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich to go,” someone else yelled.

“What kind of bread?” the man on the grill asked.

“Slap it on a well-buttered roll,” they answered. “What else would you use for a heart-attack special?”

“I’m just trying to make sure you get what you want,” the grill man said.

Everyone seems to be getting what they want these days.

The Yankees got CC Sabathia to head the rotation.

Sabathia got a record contract and a call from Derek Jeter.

“The money is nice,” the guy who ordered the Western said, “but I bet the call from Jeter didn’t hurt.”

A call to A.J. Burnett added another power arm to the pitching staff.

“The Yankees are pulling out all the stops to get everything for everyone,” the guy waiting for the heart-attack special said. “We’re getting what we want and the players are getting what they want and the media is even getting something.”

“What’s the media getting?” the Western guy asked.

The heart-attack special guy smiled and said:

“The newspaper writers can now use the old ‘hefty lefty’ tag they’ve had in storage since David Wells left town.”

The grill man wrapped the sandwich and slid it down the counter.

“One heart-attack coming right at you.”

Guess the Yankees Opening Day payroll … win a prize!  (nah …)

Here’s the news:

• Buster Olney of ESPN.com believes that just because the Yanks have committed 1/4 of a billion dollars to two pitchers, it doesn’t mean they’ve lost their minds and abandoned their supposed new ways of team-building:

Because the Yankees waited to pursue Sabathia, rather than deal for Santana, they still have Hughes and Ian Kennedy and Austin Jackson and all the players mentioned in the Santana talks, and as the pitching talent pool has increased at the major league level, there is now more time for those youngsters to develop. It actually has been more than a decade since the Yankees have had as much minor league talent stacked up as they do now. Yes, they will sacrifice draft picks in landing Sabathia and Burnett. But keep in mind that the Yankees will have picks in the first and second round of the draft in 2009 because of players unsigned in 2008; it’s not as if they are being shut down.

• Over at the Boston Globe, Nick Cafardo wonders if the Yanks acquisition of Sabathia and Burnett will make people think of them as prohibitive favorites in the same vein as the Tigers were supposed to be after acquiring Miguel Cabrera and Dontrelle Willis last year.  Nonetheless, one N.L. executive offered this opinion:

“The one difference is that the Yankees are loading up on pitching while the Tigers did get Dontrelle, [but] there were still questions about their bullpen and their starting rotation,” said one National League executive. “If the Yankees get another guy [Burnett], re-sign Andy Pettitte on top of Sabathia, I’ll take my chance that they might be the best team in the American League.”

• If not Tex, then who?: Lyle Spencer at MLB.com writes of the Yanks interest in Mark Teixeira, but has some ideas on what they might do if they don’t sign him, but DO sign Manny:

If the Yankees pass on Teixeira — leaving first to Swisher — and move on Ramirez, they could shop outfielder Xavier Nady, who made $3.35 million in 2008. Nady, who can play first as well as the corner outfield spots, is eligible for free agency after the 2009 season, and would be an appealing fit for all the clubs who lose out on Teixeira and Ramirez.

• Hank is psyched, and wants the world to know it: Newsday’s Kat O’Brien goes over the Yanks successes at the Winter Meetings, and includes this deliciously-grandiose quote from Hank Steinbrenner:

“I can sense the excitement and the confidence that’s spreading around the entire organization about what we’re getting done and what we may get done still. A rising tide lifts all boats, and the confidence and the excitement right now among the team and the organization is contagious.”

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