"You know who won the Super Bowl, you know who the world champions are. Whether we’re on the front page every day or not, it’s not that important. New Yorkers know."
— Tom Coughlin, 3/28/12
Every Baseball Diamond in Manhattan, by Jenny Odell
"It’s just a subject—Cleveland sports—about which I feel the kind of passion that I don’t really feel about almost anything. I don’t mean my family. But my relationship to those teams defines me in the same way that being a Jew defines me or being a man defines me. It’s at a profound level."
— Scott Raab, author of The Whore of Akron, on his intense relationship to Cleveland’s sports teams, in a terrific, sprawling interview with Alex Belth on Alex’s Bronx Banter blog.
"I would like to know how the Giants continually manage to unearth monster pass rushers. The number of elite pass rushers they’ve managed to draft is fucking insane: LT, Strahan, Osi, Tuck, JPP, etc. There are franchises that go decades without unearthing that kind of pass rushing talent, and yet the Giants seem to produce a new measty pass rusher every other year. They should draft NOTHING but defensive ends from now on, and then concoct a defense that consists of eleven long-armed quarterback mutilators."
— Drew Magary, from his Deadspin Jamboroo column, 12/15/11.
For the 3 people who might get this joke, Jason Garrett’s facepalm Sunday night was merely an homage to Gus Sands.
"There is something beyond the reach of all these troubles, something that’s the Mets’ greatest strength — and it’s you. You, and me, and Greg, and all the rest of us. We’re the ones who define this franchise, who weave the thread of identity and life and hope even as the uniforms get tweaked and the stadiums go up and come down and the players arrive and depart and the win-loss records wax and wane. No matter how long you’ve been here, you’ve seen bright days of the baseball soul alongside dark nights. On the bright days, we add to the glitter and the gleam. In the dark nights, we are the only source of light. Either way, we’re there. And despite these recent trials and amid these current woes, we’re not going anywhere."
— Jason Fry, from a post to Faith and Fear in Flushing, December 6, 2011
31 Recommended Sports Websites
A publicist at the book publishing company where I am employed recently asked me to recommend for her a handful of sports websites she could peruse to help her gain a better understanding of sports, sports culture and sports media. I started typing, and by the time I was done I had listed 31 sites.
I figured it might be a good idea to reprint the list here as well, though I suspect followers of this Tumblr will be familiar with most if not all of the sites included:
Like most things, the quality of sports blogs/websites varies wildly.
- Outside of ESPN, Yahoo Sports and CBS Sportsline, the two most popular general sports websites/blogs on the internet are Deadspin and The Big Lead. Deadspin can get a little TMZish at times, but writers like Tommy Craggs and Luke O’Brien tend to balance out the site’s more prurient elements.
- I also like to read Rick Chandler’s Off the Bench blog over at NBC, Yahoo Sports’ The Postgame, New York magazine’s The Sports Section and the Wall Street Journal’s Daily Fix.
- For smarter, more writerly takes/analysis, I turn to Bill Simmons’ Grantland and the not-yet-fully-launched The Classical. Specific writers to check for at Grantland are Charles Pierce (formerly of the Boston Globe), Chris Jones (also of Esquire and ESPN the Magazine) and Katie Baker.
- For quick-hitters, links and up-to-the-minute takes, you can’t beat Dan Shanoff’s Quickish. You could pretty much use Quickish as a personal sports newsfeed, though it’s definitely shaped by the editor’s personal tastes and interests.
- For a more specific, literate focus, I go to Pitchers & Poets (baseball), Josh Wilker’s Cardboard Gods (baseball, personal), and Faith and Fear in Flushing (Mets).
- For the best major sportswriter blogging today, check out Joe Posnanski’s blog at SI.
- For NFL news, analysis and opinion, it’s all about National Football Post, Pro Football Talk (also TMZish at times), Football Outsiders, Pro Football Focus, and Smart Football.
- For college football, nobody can touch Spencer Hall and the boys at Every Day Should be Saturday, though Clay Travis’ Outkick the Coverage is also quite good.
- For quality hyper-local coverage, I recommend the various blogs under the SB Nation umbrella. They’ve got individual blogs for every major pro and college team, plus city-specific pages. DO NOT, however, mistake SB Nation for Bleacher Report, which employs a similar content model at a significantly lower quality.
- For unabashed sports dorkery, there’s no beating Paul Lukas’ Uni Watch.
- For sports comedy, I recommend Kissing Suzy Kolber, The Sports Hernia, Sportress of Blogitude, and With Leather.
- For longer, more in-depth pieces including old, forgotten gems, I recommend Long Reads sister site, Sports Feat.
- For sportswriting about sportswriting, I recommend Jason Fry’s and Dave Kindred’s posts at the National Sports Journalism Center’s site.
- For hockey, I get most of my information from Greg Wyshynski’s Puck Daddy blog at Yahoo.
- For New York/Lifestyle/Yankees, I go to Alex Belth’s Bronx Banter.
- For funny/lifestyle/Mets, I go to Ted Berg’s TedQuarters.
Besides all the team-specific sites/blogs I read with regularity, that just about covers it.
"I don’t try to be a literate sportswriter; I try to be myself. It’s as simple as that. Everybody’s got to find what their voice is. You’ve got to end up sounding like yourself if you’re going to write in a way that’s going to reward you when you’re done. If you end up sounding like somebody else, you’re not going to be any good. You won’t get anywhere. Readers are smart. They will pick up whether the tone is genuine or not. Tone is the ultimate thing writers have to think about. You could write on a given subject–a ball game or a national crisis or a family crisis–in twenty or thirty different ways. You only have to pick what you want people to make of this."
— Roger Angell, from an interview with Jared Haynes originally published in Writing on the Edge, 1993 (via Bronx Banter)
"When the Giants were champs, I especially enjoyed Joe Morris. Joe, who also broke most of my records up at Syracuse, had a near-perfect year. He was small, smart, and the Giants went to him when they needed tough yards. New York had Phil Simms and Lawrence Taylor and that proud, physical defense. But Joe Morris was the soul of that team."
— Jim Brown, Out of Bounds (1989)
Ruby’s Sunday best
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