When work of any kind becomes predictable, produced by the same impulses and written and edited by the same people according to the same criteria, it suffers. Ambition can ossify into the formulaic. If writing has an enemy, it is predictability, and if there is one thing I decry after two and a half decades of wading through this bottomless word bog every day, it is work that is safe and smug and satisfied with itself, the “good enough” story that checks off all the boxes and then goes to lunch. That’s one of the reasons this series features a guest editor—to ensure that it never stays the same.
If writing has a savior, however, it is the individual writer, usually unattached, hungry, ambitious, and necessarily more creative. As digital media began to flourish, unconfined by the material and economic restraints of print, the scope of the genre began to expand again. In the last decade—really, the last five years—another form has developed, filling the space left between the decline of the newspaper and the shrinkage of magazine advertising, on one side, and a similar contraction in the book world, on the other, when major publishers virtually abandoned the nonfiction midlist. In between was left an appetite unfulfilled.
Leave it to the writers to fill it. We all know it when we see it, but it goes by many names: narrative journalism, creative nonfiction, deep reads, longreads, or the handle that seems to raise so many hackles bound to the past, longform. (Let’s just get this out of the way early—if the name bothers you, call it what you want.)
This type of writing was always there, only now there was a place designed to support it. If there is any material difference in this kind of work, it may be that traditional print features and book-length narratives tend to rely on the reader’s preexisting interest in a subject. The best longer features overcome this, just as the best poems and best fiction do; the “subject” does not matter and is secondary to the execution of the form, the creation of an interesting narrative and the development of characters. That is part of what makes longform so attractive to writers: the inherent challenge is to write something that’s engaging regardless of a reader’s preexisting interest, but that respects the reader who is already interested in the subject. This means you never dumb down; you write up. Longform is an exciting place to be. Once upon a time, I regularly heard from younger people who wanted to know, “How can I be a sports writer (or sportswriter)?” I don’t get asked that question much anymore. They tell me, “I want to write longform.”
Here’s the thing. The skills and craft required to produce good work—good sports writing, of any length—have not changed. If I have realized anything over the last 25 years, it is this. Length is only a consequence of the time and care spent reporting, writing, and editing. As many stories are killed for being too short or underreported as for being too long. Every story in every circumstance can be told in any number of ways. That might mean a story of 1,500 or 3,000 words, but it might also mean a story of 15,000 or 30,000 words. Every story, regardless of length, must feel as if it is organic and just as long as it needs to be.
So what do I look for when seeking out “the best”? From my chair, after 25 years of professional reading, not to mention nearly 30 years as a professional writer, the best stories share a few qualities that never change and are as necessary today as in 1920, or when I was swaddled in my bed as a 10-year-old.
I believe the best work features thorough reporting and has a defined shape, a structure and a backbone, an architecture and a music, all its own. The stories I wish to read again are organic, written from within, from the material outward rather than plugged into some preexisting template or journalistic equivalent of verse, chorus, verse. They are confident from the first word, and certain—they sound as if they already know the end of the story, as if every word is predetermined from the first syllable. I once heard Bill Heinz talk about how important it was for him to find the opening chords, for they define all that can follow. The best stories allow the reader to identify characters by revealing something universal, something authentic we share. They unfold, they answer questions before the reader asks them, they create three-dimensional pictures that play out over that fourth dimension, time, they let the reader create an internal movie of what is happening, they play to the senses, they involve the senses.
All the parts can be in place, but in the end I think it’s the sound of a story that plants it in the reader’s mind and makes it matter. By that I mean a literal, singular sound that, even if never uttered aloud, is distinctive, its pace and tone seductive, a rapt voice whispering in your ear. Just as one need not know the singer’s language to appreciate the song, the sound of a story should be just as engaging. I don’t read for the stories in this book as much as I listen for them.
The really good story provides an experience that approaches the book experience—it takes you from one place you’ve never been before and by the end leaves you in another place, changed. The lede is important, of course (why else continue?), but the end is no less so. Stories should not just stop: they should finish by leaving the reader unable to close the book, relishing the reading experience and wanting to share it. The best close makes the reader pause and allows the momentum of the story to wash over like a wave that runs up the sand and then sinks and disappears, leaving a trace behind. That sensation is what first carried me away from my sickbed and still does so today.
I believe that the goal of reading and writing is to change lives in ways large and small, that when the water recedes the reader must know something has changed. This is the payoff for time spent listening to words. This is why we bother. You emerge at the end of a story almost without breath, transformed, and you want to read it again.
This is what I listen for more than anything else: to want to read it again. After 25 years of editing this series, if that was not the case, I do not think I could read another word. The last thing I want is for this book to come out and to have no desire to read it again myself. This has not often happened. Amid all the false starts, the hundreds and thousands of stories I’ve started to read over the years and then put down because, well, I discover I don’t even want to read them once, the rare story that demands to be read again and again keeps me at it.
That’s the dirty little secret of this series. Many readers have already read some of the stories collected in these pages each year, and it is easy enough to find virtually all of them online. Yet it is just that—the desire to read a story again, to reexperience its craft and drama—that provides the rationale for this series. Discovering work you’ve never encountered before is great and essential—but so is becoming reacquainted with work you might already know, this time stripped down to its core, just words on a page where the reader and the writer, not to mention the editor, can all share something saved.
And in the end that is the justification for bothering with any of this at all, whether as an editor, a writer, or a reader. We hope to be taken away—to share, through words, and to become more than we are. If you give yourself to something long enough and completely, it gives you something back.
So I have learned from the words in this book.
Each year I read every issue of hundreds of general-interest and sports magazines in search of writing that might merit inclusion in The Best American Sports Writing. I also write or email the editors of many newspapers and magazines and request submissions, and I make periodic requests through Twitter and Facebook. I search for writing all over the Internet and make regular stops at online sources such as Gangrey.com, Longreads.com, Longform.org, Sportsdesk.org, Nieman.org, and other sites where notable sports writing is highlighted or discussed. However, this is your book, not mine. I also encourage everyone—friends and family, readers and writers, editors and the edited—to send me stories they believe should appear in this series. Writers in particular are encouraged to submit—do not be shy about sending me either your own work or the work of those you admire.
All submissions to the upcoming edition must be made according to the following criteria. Eac
h story
must be column-length or longer.
must have been published in 2015.
must not be a reprint or book excerpt.
must be published in the United States or Canada.
must be received by February 1, 2016.
All submissions from either print or online publications must be made in hard copy and should include the name of the author, date of publication, publication name, and address. Photocopies, tear sheets, or clean copies are fine. Readable reductions to 8½-by-11 are preferred. Newspaper submissions should be a hard copy of the story as originally published—not a printout of the Web version.
Individuals and publications should please use common sense when submitting multiple stories. Because of the volume of material I receive, no submissions can be returned or acknowledged, and it is inappropriate for me to comment on or critique any submission. Magazines that want to be absolutely certain their contributions are considered are advised to provide a complimentary subscription to the address listed below. Those that already do so should extend the subscription for another year.
All submissions must be made through the U.S. Postal Service—midwinter weather conditions at BASW headquarters often prevent the receipt of UPS or FedEx submissions. Electronic submissions—by email, Twitter, URLs, PDFs, or online documents of any kind—are not acceptable; please submit some form of hard copy only. The February 1 deadline is real, and work received after that date may not be considered.
Please submit an original or clear paper copy of each story, including publication name, author, and date the story appeared, to:
Glenn Stout
Po Box 549
Alburgh, VT 05440
Those with questions or comments may contact me at basw [email protected]. Previous editions of this book can be ordered through most bookstores or online book dealers. An index of stories that have appeared in this series can be found at glennstout.net, as can full instructions on how to submit a story. One of the selections for this year’s edition is from SB Nation Longform, for which I serve as editor, but like all other stories, it was submitted to the guest editor blindly, not identified by source or author, and was selected entirely on merit. For updated information, readers and writers are also encouraged to join The Best American Sports Writing group on Facebook or to follow me on Twitter @GlennStout.
I wish to extend my thanks to Wright Thompson for his hard work, commitment, and support for this book, and to all those at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt who have helped with the production of this series for 25 years. My thanks also go to Siobhan and Saorla for bearing with my 25 years of distracted inattentiveness. And to all the writers who made it possible.
GLENN STOUT
Alburgh, Vermont
Introduction
THE FIRST ENTRY in this book is a profile of an aging football legend, Y. A. Tittle, written by my best and oldest friend, Seth Wickersham. It’s a story about time, and about what a young man wants and what an older man gets, and about the relationship between the two. It’s my favorite piece from last year, and reading it, along with the other stories I chose, takes me back 15 years, when Seth and I were both students at the University of Missouri, when we could only dream of writing something as sophisticated and nearly perfect as his story on Y.A. We had a tight group of friends, and I often think about how much fun it would be to go back and be with them again. We all covered sports for the Columbia Missourian, led by our mentor and guru Greg Mellen, and our lives revolved around the stories we read.
I remember finding Gary Smith’s “Shadow of a Nation” and “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold” by Gay Talese. We recited openings: OK. Golf Joke . . . We begin way over there, out on the margin. . . Go with him. Go out into the feed yards with Jack Hooker. . . Few men try for best ever, and Ted Williams is one of those. We searched out these stories, to read and study, but also to hold, more of a talisman than textbook. We dug through the archives of old Sports Illustrateds and Esquires, and Willie Morris’s Harper’s and Clay Felker’s New York. We read stories online and in the school library, speaking the names of the canon with a reverence that only college journalism students really understand: Gary Smith, Tom Junod, Gay Talese, Richard Ben Cramer, Charles P. Pierce, Rick Telander, Michael Paterniti. We read all of their work, and we also waited for the Best American Sports Writing to be released each year. We wanted to be in the book, yes, but more than that, we wanted to be part of the community of people trying to write the kind of stories that might end up in the book.
We formed an impossibly nerdy secular church with the classics of narrative nonfiction as our holy text. We’d sit around and argue: I remember a particularly intense fight at a bar called Harpo’s with my friend Steve Walentik over Junod’s profile of Michael Stipe. Steve and Seth, Justin Heckert, Daimon Eklund and Tony Rehagen, and so many others—we were a brotherhood who wanted something, and while that something seemed impossibly far away most of the time, the stories in Best American Sports Writing made it seem reachable.
We did bad Gary Smith impersonations and filed stories written in second person from the point of view of alcohol (uh, Seth) and game stories that began with imagining outfitting a food or drinks vendor with a tape recorder (ahem, Heckert). We wrote schmaltz and sap and saccharine, laced with over-the-top allusions to ancient literature—one defensive end was “a Grendel among the Danes” (sadly, me)—and we copied our heroes and tried to improve. We wrote awful stuff and one or two halfway decent things; the best story any of us did in college was Heckert’s profile of Missouri football player Jamonte Robinson, which I remember reading with fear, because I wasn’t capable of doing work like that, but now I had my target. That story inspired us to try to be as good as Justin. Seth got a job before any of us, at ESPN The Magazine. He soon began talking of “narrative arc,” and he wrote a profile of Antwaan Randle El, the first one of us to actually have a national magazine byline, and suddenly there was a new target. We pushed each other that way, and when I look on my shelves and see my collection of the Best American Sports Writing books, I remember those friends and that time.
The publisher asked me to write an introduction to this book, which I know many sports fans buy because they cherish the stories. I think of the book as something to be treasured by the many young writers, in college and in their first jobs, who want to create stories that people read and remember.
The work collected here offers many specific lessons. See how Seth constructs the Tittle story, or how Chris Jones evokes the emptiness of a house built for loud boys, a story about the Gronks but also about being left behind. Watch Dan Wetzel pull off deadline magic, or see Jeremy Collins channel Larry Brown or Raymond Chandler in his story about his best friend watching Greg Maddux. Wells Tower’s piece is a kind of literature, as is Flinder Boyd’s. Don Van Natta Jr. takes us inside the world of a famous and rarely understood man, which to me remains the most important skill in magazine writing: the profile. Rick Bass reminds us that a magazine story’s highest aspiration is to be a short story that is true. I see so much in these pages to emulate in my own work, little hints for making it better. For instance, the best profiles are of people who are going through something you are going through in your own life. Also, find the central complication in someone’s life and show through scenes how, on a daily basis, they solve it. (I stole that advice.)
When I first started reading The Best American Sports Writing, I imagined the book as sacrosanct, but now I see that it’s just one person’s opinions. For this edition, I picked what I liked. Here’s exactly how it happened. Glenn sent me a pack of maybe 70 stories, which he’d culled from the hundreds of entries he gets and collects himself. They were all printed without byline or headline, cut-and-pasted into a Word document. I began reading. If I finished a story without ever wanting to stop, it went into the yes pile. If I didn’t like all of a story, it went into the no pile. Everything else became a maybe. I was surprised by how many I’d never read before; my World Cup travel this past yea
r evidently made me miss a lot of stories. I picked “Haverford Hoops,” written by Chris Ballard, without any idea who wrote it or where it ran.
I wanted a specific kind of story. Years ago, at some conference, I heard someone say they wanted “the stench of journalism” off their work, which I took to mean all those canned phrases and boilerplates that break the spell a writer is casting. I wanted stories with a beginning, middle, and end, and stories that not only told of a character encountering an obstacle and being changed by it, but also evoked some larger human condition. I picked some stories outside that definition because they made me feel, or see, something.
These are not the “best” 21 stories of the past year—they are simply the ones I liked best out of a stack Glenn Stout mailed me. I added three that were not in his selection, including Scott Eden’s story on Yasiel Puig. A year ago, Scott’s Tiger Woods story wasn’t selected, just to show how the book really is compiled according to one person’s whim. Since this essay is aimed at journalism students, here’s a lesson on how to end a story. This is the last paragraph of Scott’s Woods story, referencing the famous clip of Tiger as a young child on a television show:
What you might not recall is the club. It is a sawed-off adult 3-wood with a stiff steel shaft, a standard-size persimmon-wood head and what appears to be a grip of adult gauge. The club would have likely weighed about 300 grams, not much less than an adult male’s driver today. And it’s only in rewinding this tape that you see that this foreshortened club, made by Earl, is clearly too heavy for the boy. So heavy that when he makes his backswing, the club goes far past parallel; for an instant, you think he might drop it. From that point, in order to get this ponderous thing square to the ball, the boy must uncork his hips with all the might available in his toddler body. And then he must whip his hands, also as hard as he can, so they’ll catch up with his hips. Which they do. Pop. The ball launches into the net in the shadows of the stage’s backdrop. Cheers erupt from the crowd. And when you rewind the clip and watch it again, and again, the moment reveals itself: Tiger Woods, at 2 years and 10 months, is making the very same move, containing the very same flaw, that the man version of this boy will spend his entire career striving to erase. Only a person with world-class coordination and kinesthetic sense could possibly swing a club like that as a toddler. The flaw, in other words, was grooved by his own talent.
The Best American Sports Writing 2015 Page 2