Really just read this piece on Richard Ben Cramer by Sports Illustrated’s S.L. Price. It is ridiculously good and entertaining about one of the all-time great reporters and characters in journalism.

From the piece:

Thirteen years later, long after “What Do You Think of Ted Williams Now?” had been widely acclaimed as perhaps the greatest piece of sportswriting ever, What It Takes was named, by NYU, the 58th-best work of journalism of the 20th century. “Did you see?” Cramer said of one giant listed a few places ahead. “I can write him under the table!”

Yet even with an ego and style that screamed look-at-me — ALL CAPS! Sentences hijacked by dashes and Aghhs and miles … of … ellipses — Cramer, at his best, made you forget he existed. “What you read was the essence of whoever he was capturing,” says David Rosenthal, one of his early editors. “Richard was a bit of a chameleon. He was able to listen to the way people spoke, the way people thought, and started to become one of them.”

I mean, it really doesn’t get much better than this.

In a piece for Sports on Earth, Pat Jordan travels to Napa Valley to visit with his old friend, Tom Seaver. Two legends talking about baseball and life. Only wish someone had been filming it.

Then again, who needs a camera when Jordan is writing? I’m fairly sure you will be seeing this story again in the 2014 edition of Best American Sports Writing.

Please take the time to read this story.

From the piece:

He walked around the truck in that shoulder-weary, graceless, plowman’s walk that he always had, even when he was a young pitcher with the Mets. He was always a blue-collar pitcher, plodding to the mound as if to a hated, backbreaking job; always the dray horse who had to plow the fields, never the thoroughbred. He wasn’t born Tom Seaver, The Franchise, with a blinding, God-given talent. He made himself into Tom Seaver through a monumental act of will. Years of painstaking, meticulous, disciplined, intelligent, hard work.

We shook hands. He said, “Your beard got white.” I said, “No shit.” He laughed, and I added, “You forget I’m older than you, Tom.” He said, “That’s a fact.” I said, “And smarter, too.” He hung his head and said, “Aw, I don’t know about that.”

We sat at a table in the deli and ordered breakfast. Tom spread a newspaper on the table and studied it. When he was a famous pitcher, he opened the newspaper every morning and studied the previous night’s box scores. Now, he studied the weather to check on his “babies.”

When I’d called him a few weeks before, very early in the morning, he answered the phone out of breath. I said, “It’s me.” He said, “I know.” I said, “What are you doing?” He said, “I was sleeping until you woke me up.” I said, “Oh, geez, Tom, I’m sorry. I forgot the time difference.” I heard his evil cackle, and then he said, “I’ve been up two hours, watching the sun rise.” I said, “You prick!” He laughed. I said, “You’re out of breath, watching the fucking sun rise?” He snapped, “I was working, for chrissakes, taking care of my babies.” I said, “Your grandkids are there?” He said, “No, my babies. My grapes.” I said, “Tom, you gotta get a life.”

But of course, he had a life, a new one — Tom Seaver, owner of The Seaver Family Vineyards on Diamond Mountain — which was why I’d called him in the first place. “One last story,” I’d said. “You and your babies.”

Bleacher Report, which continues to evolve, enlisted Jeff Pearlman to write about the one-year anniversary Jovan Belcher’s suicide in Kansas City.

“Jovan was my friend,” says Thomas Jones, the former Chiefs running back. “I loved him, and I wish I could have helped him work through the demons. But what he did was a horrible, horrible act. There’s no getting around that.”

There is, however, getting into that. Or, to be more precise, trying to understand it. The same Belcher who owned eight guns as a Kansas City Chief was, while a student at the University of Maine, an active member of Male Athletes Against Violence, an organization that urged jocks to speak out against abusive acts. He possessed zero firearms then.

“When I heard what Jovan did, I thought, ‘That can’t be right,’” says Sandy Caron, a professor of family relations and human sexuality at Maine, and the anti-violence group’s founder. “They said ‘Jovan Belcher’ on the news and my response was, ‘They said ‘Jermaine, right? Please tell me they said ‘Jermaine.’”

******

At his site, Pearlman writes about how he reported the story.

I immediately decided I didn’t want to write the same ol’ piece: Track down the people there at the end and write about the final moments of Jovan Belcher’s life. I also didn’t want to spend much time inside the Chiefs locker room, where programmed, robotic replies (demanded by the programmed, robotic NFL) would surely ensue. No, I wanted to dig into the lives of two people—Jovan Belcher and his girlfriend, Kasanda Perkins. I wanted to find out who they were. Who they really, really were.

The first thing I did was track down numbers of relatives. I left a message on the answering machine belonging to Jovan’s mother. I reached out to his sisters and cousins and uncles and friends via Facebook. I also tracked down a number for Kasandra’s dad, and left a voice message. He was the first one to respond, roughly two days later. I told him I was trying to learn about his daughter, and asked whether he’d grant me an audience were I to fly down to Austin. “Maybe,” he said. “Let me think about it.” I called back two days later, and his phone was out of service.

Here are a couple good reads from Sports on Earth.

Chuck Culpepper has a fun piece about bowling and the Bowlers Journal, which turns 100 this week.

LAS VEGAS — Quick, name the country’s oldest sports monthly.

Four… three… two… one…

 

That would be Bowlers Journal, which will turn 100 on Friday, which will be “Bowlers Journal Day” in Illinois by legislative proclamation. So happy Bowlers Journal Day, while acknowledging that Bowlers Journal’s longevity does tell us something essential about ourselves: we humans love to drive ourselves half-mad with games.

The knack for driving ourselves half-mad went on fine display Sunday at the South Point Hotel Casino. The half-madness visited even the best. “I think at the high level, the bowlers are better than they’ve ever been; these guys are just phenomenal,” said Bowlers Journal president Keith Hamilton, yet the half-madness bit almost the whole lot of them.

********

Meanwhile, Dave Kindred recalls the first African-American to play in the SEC.

Live long enough, you have a story. That’s why (Nate) Northington came to Oxford. He told his story as part of a university-sponsored event known as Racial Reconciliation Week. Nate Northington’s story neither begins nor ends with Greg Page, but it cannot be told without him.

Northington was the first African-American to play in a Southeastern Conference athletic contest. All-State out of Louisville’s Thomas Jefferson High School, he was recruited for the University of Kentucky by the school president, by the state’s governor and, almost incidentally, by the school’s football coach, a Bear Bryant disciple named Charlie Bradshaw.

Northington then was 6 feet and 175 pounds. He had what coaches call “sudden speed;” here this instant, gone the next. After Northington signed with Kentucky, so did Page. He, too, was an All-Stater and African-American. He was a man among children, 6-2, 220, quick and strong, a defensive end from the mountains of eastern Kentucky. For a year, Northington and Page were roommates. They made unlikely partners, Northington so quiet as to be invisible, Page so boisterous he seemed to be everywhere.

They had in common a mission: They would be the SEC’s first black athletes. That became clear to Northington during a dinner at the governor’s mansion in the winter of 1965. He heard Gov. Ned Breathitt’s recruiting pitch and came away thinking: “Integrating the athletic programs in the SEC would remove one of the last vestiges of segregation in the South and move the country forward.” The governor pulled a scholarship offer sheet from his coat pocket. Northington signed it.

Grantland has done a terrific job of using oral histories, where one quote flows into another and another, tell stories. The latest, by Bryan Curtis and Patricia Lee, is a detailed account on the 1989 Earthquake World Series. They talk to everyone from players, managers, broadcasters, fans. Well everyone.

Here is ABC’s memorable open when the earthquake hit and some excerpts from the piece.

Timothy Busfield, actor: We were in a plexiglass booth at the top of the stadium with all the announcers and everybody. I rode up in the elevator with Johnny Bench and Willie McCovey. They were having a conversation about Willie Mays. From what Bench said and what McCovey said, Mays didn’t want to come that day. He was spooked by the weather, by the stillness and the heat. He didn’t like the air.

Tim McCarver, analyst, ABC: I remember getting sick at Candlestick at around three, after our managers’ meetings. I felt just awful. I don’t know that I had any sense of impending doom at 5:04 that October 17, but I’ve often thought about that.

The Earthquake hits:

Noah Graham, fan, lower deck: I remember seeing the right-field foul pole and it’s bouncing back and forth, like a needle on a metronome.

Busch: I was absolutely convinced we were going to die.

Maldonado: It felt like if you’re surfing, like you’re in a wave, and I felt myself elevating.

Roger Craig, Giants manager: I was in my office when the walls started shaking. I heard Don Robinson hollering, “Earthquake! Earthquake!” I told everybody to run out to the parking lot. It was asphalt and it was just rolling.

Scott Garrelts, Giants starting pitcher: I saw cars kind of bumping each other.

Reporting the story:

Ley: We make our way downstairs. At that point, people are still being led into the stadium. The cops haven’t stopped it. Nobody knows what’s going on.

Gallagher: We had no emergency power. We had no way to talk to people. The emergency preparedness, if you will, was really sorely lacking.

Letendre: Everything was down except for one land line in the press box of Candlestick Park.

Bob Cohn, reporter, Arizona Republic: I go to the press room. I have one phone call. Rather than call my wife — my then-wife — I call the copy desk. Of course.

Murray Chass, reporter, New York Times: I felt I had to do my job. The lights were out in the press box, but there was light outside. So I went out of the press box to read some notes, and then went back to the phone to dictate. I did this several times until I dictated everything I had.

Ley: Baseball gave us a disadvantageous location for our set and our trucks, way out in center field by the parking lot. Because of that, we had to be on generator power. So what had been a marvelous pain in the ass was suddenly a blessing. Also, we had two functioning telephone lines. We gave the police one and kept the other to communicate with Connecticut.

And there’s more. A good read.

Dan Caesar of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch tells us about Ernie Johnson’s life away from the studio and broadcast booth. It is quite a story.

Caesar writes:

But you probably don’t really know Ernie Johnson.

While Johnson, 57, has a very public career at which he has become a major success, his biggest accomplishments come in his home in suburban Atlanta, not far from the Turner studios. That’s where he and his wife deal with a very difficult situation, one that would divide many families. Ernie and Cheryl Johnson’s adult son, whom they adopted as a refugee from Eastern Europe when he was a young boy, lives with them and is on life support — as he has been for two long years.

“He’s on a ventilator with a ‘trake’ (tracheostomy tube),” Johnson says. “We’ve all become very good nurses, everybody in the family. We know how to suction his lungs. He has overnight nursing, but during the day it’s me or my wife or my oldest daughter if she’s got a day off.”

And more:

Michael continues along a tough road. And while his setback of 2011 might have zapped him physically, it didn’t quell his spirit.

“I’ve seen in two years how he’s the same guy, it just takes us a lot longer to do things,” Johnson says. “If we want to go somewhere, we get him up in the morning. It takes a while, because we’ve basically got our own intensive care unit in his bedroom. But we’re able to put the ventilator on his wheelchair; he’s able to drive his wheelchair. We try to do the same things we did before; it’s just without that machine we couldn’t.

“His spirits are always good. What’s crazy too is that he’s a special needs kid and doesn’t have a massive vocabulary but has the most loving spirit.”

Faith plays a major role in the Johnsons’ lives, and the joy of having young Michael in the house led them to adopt a healthy 7-month-old girl, Carmen, from Paraguay in 1993. Then in 2011, the same year Michael’s big challenge arose, the Johnsons brought in two girls — Allison (now 13) and Ashley (now 12). They had been in foster care in Cleveland.

“They had five or six homes growing up, we adopted them and said, ‘Here’s your forever place,” Johnson says.

And finally:

Johnson might have been caught up in that self-absorbing world at one time but no more.

“Sometimes early in my career I thought what I did was who I was,” Johnson says. “As you mature, I’ve learned that is not the case. This is what I do, this is not who I am.”

As Kiely can attest:

“He’s a wonderful human being.” Kiely simply says.

Amen to that.

Diane Williamson of the Worchester Telegram & Gazette writes beautifully about the heartbreak Bob Cousy is experiencing over the loss of his wife. At its core is a reminder that while Cousy is a basketball legend, he also is human. He feels pain just like the rest of us.

Williamson writes:

The grueling travel schedule would define the first half of their marriage. While her husband was transforming the game of basketball and later worked as a coach and sports commentator, Missie raised two daughters and instilled in them her passion for civil rights and the peace movement. Quick-witted, beautiful and kind, she was a mentor to the new Celtics’ wives and especially embraced the wives of black players such as Bill Russell and Jo Jo White. She was a Girl Scout leader and a gardener, a fiercely independent woman who could discuss politics with the same skill she applied to the faulty plumbing in the family’s English Tudor on Salisbury Street.

“I was busy playing a child’s game,” Cousy said last week, sitting in the living room with daughters Marie and Ticia. “I thought putting a ball in a hole was important. Looking back, I should have participated more in the lives of my family. But my girls were in the best possible loving hands.”

Today, the Celtic legend known as “Cooz” is 85 but looks younger by a decade. Articulate and gracious, he tears up easily when discussing his wife and the love affair that flourished as the couple aged.

“Our marriage was somewhat contrary to tradition,” he said. “Most couples have the most intensity in the beginning. But I was always working. So we had the best and most romantic part of our marriage at the end. We literally held hands for the last 20 years.”

And:

The couple’s social life vanished as Missie’s symptoms worsened. Other than a Thursday night “out with the boys” and some quick rounds of golf, Cousy spent all of his time alone with his bride. He watched “General Hospital” with Missie and patiently answered the same questions. He stocked the fridge with her favorite candy, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. At night, she’d cover him with a blanket and he’d stroke her arm.

“I love you honey,” he’d say.

“I love you, too,” Missie would always reply.

The sports legend who led the Celtics to six World Championships said he never felt defeated by the challenge of caring full time for his ailing spouse.

“It drew us closer together,” he said. “It was never a chore, because I knew she would have done the same for me. You just have to go with the flow. Every three months, I’d scream out something just for release.”

ESPN.com’s Ivan Maisel was a natural to write this story. Even though he lived elsewhere his adult life, the Mobile-native never strayed from his Alabama roots, which included a certain football coach.

The occasion of Paul “Bear” Bryant’s 100th birthday prompted this excellent reflection from Maisel. More than 30 years after his death, the legendary coach remains front and center every day at Alabama.

Bryant is a presence on the Alabama campus in the ways that an iconic figure is remembered. The stadium where he won games for those 25 seasons carries his name. So does a main campus street, dormitory, conference center and, of course, the museum, which displays and stores the artifacts and history of his career (admission today is free). Paul W. Bryant High School is nearby.

The Paul W. Bryant Scholarship, set up by its namesake, is available to the children of his former players who enroll at Alabama. Over 40 years, some 800 students have been the beneficiaries, 79 of them in the current semester.

“He laid his fingerprint down here,” Alabama offensive left tackle Cyrus Kouandjio. “It’s easy to see.”

A statue of Bryant stands outside the north end of Bryant-Denny Stadium, literally the central figure of the five Crimson Tide coaches honored for taking the football team to a national championship. The 9-foot-tall Bryant stands straight, wears a jacket, vest, tie and his trademark houndstooth fedora, and carries in his right hand the rolled-up manila folder on which he made his game notes. The folders from his 315th victory, the one that broke Amos Alonzo Stagg’s career record, and his 323rd and final victory, are framed and hanging in the office of Paul W. Bryant Museum director, Ken Gaddy.

Maisel writes on Bryant’s impact on him. Mind you, he attended Stanford, not Alabama:

Forgive the personal nature of this story. For those of us who grew up in Alabama in a time when our state was viewed as a cauldron of hatred, Bryant told the rest of the nation that we could produce success and character. He inspired a level of loyalty unlike any coach before or since in any state in any sport.

I can tell you where I was the day he died, and not just because it was my 23rd birthday. I know where I was because that was the first time a death ever made me cry. The notion that he is just a football coach to the 80 million millennials estimated to live in the United States makes me want to cry again.

From Gene Stallings, his former player at Texas A&M who went on to win a national championship as coach at Alabama.

“One of the reasons of his great success over an extended period of time was, we all wanted to please Coach Bryant,” Stallings said. “The players wanted to please him. The assistant coaches wanted to please him. The alumni wanted to please him. The administration wanted to please him. The president of the university — Coach Bryant just had that little something about him that people wanted to please. We’ll do anything just to hear Coach Bryant say, ‘You did a good job.’ He didn’t say it too often. But we wanted him to say it.

“You know, there was a little fear factor, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with fear factor….whether or not you were doing your job well enough to please Coach Bryant.”