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 four of this five-part list are excellent works on the beast
with the baddest body in all of sports, the English tavern where thumb
wrestlers from around the world decide who’s the very best, what it’s like to
try to make a professional football team out of training camp, the secret of a two-time Super Bowl winning quarterback who simply seems average most of the
time and the possibility that a great sporting event from 40 years ago may have
actually been fixed.
Eli Manning is one of the real tough cases to crack of any athlete in
sports. He’s a two-time Super Bowl winning quarterback who looks terrific at
times, but simply average for most of his career. He’s also known for as being
aloof and having a seemingly uncaring attitude. But, as Brian Phillips writes in his
Grantland.com piece (his second outing on this list) there’s a secret side to
Eli Manning that many people apparently don’t know about … and it’s far more
interesting than the character we believe him to be.
John Metcalfe’s story of an aspiring actor working
in a Los Angeles restaurant that ended up as a championship level thumb
wrestler for The Atlantic is one of those truly great sports stories because it
lets you into a world that you never knew existed. When you find out that these
all-star thumb wrestlers go by pseudonym’s like Thumberlina, Thumbertaker and
Jack the Gripper and travel from all across the world every year to meet up in
a tavern in England it truly becomes a must-read.
Sports Illustrated’s Peter King debuted his new football-only website “Monday
Morning Quarterback” this year and within just a few days of its debut it was
featuring top notch football articles such as Jenny Vrentas’ “What It’s Like to
Make the Cut,” which followed Minnesota Vikings training camp invitee Zach Line
in his attempt to make the Vikings’ season roster. The story of how hard this
fullback had to work to make the team is a unique insight to the toughness a
football player must exhibit and the drive he must have within him just to be
one of 53 players to make the team.
7. "The Match Maker: Bobby Riggs, The Mafia and The Battle of the Sexes " by ESPN/Outside the Line's Don Van Natta Jr. (August 25)
One of the biggest shockers I read this
year was Don Van Natta Jr.’s piece for ESPN.com and “Outside the Lines” on the
possibility of Bobby Riggs having thrown the famed “Battle of Sexes” exhibition
tennis match in 1973, losing to Billie Jean King. The expose on Riggs, his
Mafia ties and his debts makes me believe that this legendary event 40 years
ago may have been fixed. How it came about and why it took 40 years to uncover
is part of this great mystery.
Every year ESPN the Magazine publishes its “Body Issue,” basically the
magazine’s answer to Sports Illustrated’s “Swimsuit Issue,” which features
fitness and the chiseled physiques of nearly nude professional athletes. But,
it came as a surprise when one of the best bodies in the sports world this year
tipped the scales at a whopping 1,700 pounds, kicked dirt and snorted snot from
his massive nostrils. But, as Wright Thompson (in his second piece to make this
list) tells us Bushwacker, the meanest and best bull on the Professional Bull
Riders circuit, had the baddest body in all of sports. The article is must-read,
but the segment for ESPN’s news program “E:60,” which was awesomely narrated by
Thompson, is a classic (but, unfortunately cannot be found in its entirety).
