All year
long I’ve been reading great sports journalism online to recommend to the
followers of my podcast’s (Basement Sports) Facebook fanpage. I’m a writer and
a huge sports fan, so the two mingling together to form great journalism has
always mesmerized me. The year has truly seen some great sports writing, and I
wanted to share the best of the best that I’ve read from 2013.
Over the
next few days I will be unveiling the ‘25 Best Sports Writing Articles of 2013’
from the many that I have read. While I’ve read more than 100 fine pieces this
year I’m sure that some truly fantastic online sports writing has slipped
through my grasps, so I do apologize if an obvious piece of great sports
writing has been omitted.
In part one
of this five-part list are fine writings on the unsung heroes of NASCAR, the dying
out of a controversial Spanish tradition, a Cooperstown weekend where no living
hall of famers were inducted, a wild-and-wacky college football game that’s
almost too unbelievable to believe and the sad tale of an auto racing legend
who’s pain became too much for him to bear.
Click on the article title to read ...
I must first get this little disclaimer out of the way
… Aprille Hanson is my girlfriend, but as anybody who truly knows me knows this
would not be a good enough reason for me to stick an article written by her on
my list of the finest sports journalism of 2013. Hanson’s piece stands out on
its own and the reason it makes this list is because it’s an incredibly
interesting aspect of a sport that’s almost never seen or talked about … the
NASCAR hauler driver. Hanson shows us that NASCAR hauler drivers, with their
colorful personalities and even more colorful nicknames like “Pickle,” are the
unsung heroes of the sport of NASCAR.
Grantland’s
Brian Phillips’ recounting of an unbelievably crazy college football game 45
years ago between Tulsa and Houston that featured a future NFL head coach, a
future country music star and may or may not have featured TV’s Dr. Phil McGraw
is a must-read for its sheer wackiness and the fact that, at least to my
knowledge, such an unusual game as this has never been recounted.
Bullfighting is a sport that fascinated the great
Ernest Hemingway, who’d write about it multiple times in his works, but one of
this year’s great sports articles came from Salon’s Guy Hedgecoe about how the
controversial Spanish tradition is dying out in Spain due to protests from
animal rights activists and a bad economy.
Grantland’s
Bryan Curtis’ piece on a baseball hall of fame class in Cooperstown, N.Y. in
which not a single living soul was being inducted is interesting because it
allows us to delve into the politics of hall of fame voting, the camaraderie of
the living hall of famers coming back each year to take part in the
celebrations and the always entertaining Pete Rose, who should be in the hall,
signing autographs across town on the weekend of the ceremony.
Jeremy Markovich of SBNation wrote this beautifully sad
piece on the great short track auto racer Dick Trickle, who became a sports
punchline for his name, but meant so much more to the racing industry and fans
of the sport throughout the country. The story perfectly captures Trickle’s
legacy, what he meant to fellow drivers like Rusty and Kenny Wallace and the
pain he felt toward the end of his life before the moment he decided to end it
all.
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