The Best Sports Writing of Pat Jordan

The Best Sports Writing of Pat Jordan
Author: Alex Belth
Publisher: Persea Books
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2008-02-26
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 9780892553396

"Twenty-six articles from a span of more than thirty years, including many of his most celebrated--and controversial--pieces"--Front flap of jacket.

The Best Sports Writing of Pat Jordan

The Best Sports Writing of Pat Jordan
Author: Pat Jordan
Publisher: Open Road Media
Total Pages: 446
Release: 2016-04-19
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1504033663

The acclaimed author of A False Spring profiles athletes famous and obscure in this captivating and incisive anthology Once a young pitching prospect with the Milwaukee Braves, Pat Jordan went on to become one of America’s most revered sports journalists, writing for Sports Illustrated, Esquire, the New York Times Magazine, and a host of other major league publications. The Best Sports Writing of Pat Jordan showcases his finest journalism, with twenty-six extraordinary articles covering virtually the entire range of professional sports in America—from baseball, football, and basketball to boxing, tennis, and Formula One racing. Jordan offers indelible portraits of some of the most legendary sports figures of our time, exposing the imperfections often obscured by the bright lights of fame. He explores the miracle of the Williams sisters and their brash, charismatic father, Richard, and turns his unflinching gaze on such controversial sports personalities as Roger Clemens and O. J. Simpson. Other highlights include a poignant account of Duke basketball legend Bobby Hurley’s rehabilitation after a devastating car accident, a profile of transsexual tennis star Renée Richards, and fascinating side-trips to the Professional Poker Tour, the child beauty pageant circuit, and a depressed, blue collar town in Pennsylvania where high school football offers the only solace.

A False Spring

A False Spring
Author: Pat Jordan
Publisher: Open Road Media
Total Pages: 211
Release: 2016-04-19
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1504033647

“One of the best and truest books about baseball, and about coming to maturity in America.” —Time In the late 1950s, acclaimed sportswriter Pat Jordan was a young pitching phenom, blowing away opposing batters for his Fairfield, Connecticut, high school baseball team. Fifteen major league clubs offered him a contract, but it was the Milwaukee Braves who won out, signing Jordan to a $45,000 bonus—one of the largest paid to any new player by the organization—and shipping him off to McCook, Nebraska, to play for their Class D ball club. It did not take long, however, for Jordan to realize he was out of his depth in professional baseball’s backwoods. He battled with inconsistency and a lack of control for three dismal seasons in such far-flung locales as Keokuk, Iowa, and Palatka, Florida, before the Braves released him and he gave up his dreams of big league greatness. Declared “unforgettable” by the Los Angeles Times and “a major triumph” by the Philadelphia Inquirer, A False Spring is a powerful and deeply affecting memoir about the gift of athletic talent and the heartbreak of unfulfilled promise.

Rules of the Game

Rules of the Game
Author: Matthew Mills Stevenson
Publisher: American Retrospective
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2010
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 9781879957589

Harper's Magazine has been America's preeminent monthly periodical for more than 150 years. Rules of the Game: The Best Sports Writing from Harper's Magazine takes a look into this storied magazine's unparalleled archive and uncovers funny, touching, exciting, intriguing stories of the sporting life, both professional and amateur, and what it means to us. These essays show that how we play and write about sports not only reflect our nation's character, but challenge it. Including stories from Mark Twain and James B. Connolly at the turn of the twentieth century, visiting with George Plimpton, Tom Wolfe, Bill Cardoso, and A. Bartlett Giamatti along the way, and continuing with Lewis Lapham, Rich Cohen, and Pat Jordan today, this collection is the definitive voice on sports-writing through the last hundred years. Edited by Matthew Stevenson and Michael Martin, with a humorous, insightful preface by Roy Blount Jr. (Fifth in the American Retrospective Series.)

Black Coach

Black Coach
Author: Pat Jordan
Publisher: Dodd Mead
Total Pages: 264
Release: 1971
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN:

African American football coach Jerome Evans takes over as football coach at predominantly white Walter Williams High School in Burlington, North Carolina, in the fall of 1970.

The Year's Best Sports Writing 2021

The Year's Best Sports Writing 2021
Author: Glenn Stout
Publisher: Triumph Books
Total Pages: 324
Release: 2021-10-05
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1641257091

A must-read collection featuring the best in sports journalism Glenn Stout, founding editor of the Best American Sports Writing, has curated an essential anthology showcasing incredible feats and diverse perspectives across the world of sports. Selected from a wide range of newspapers, magazines, and digital publications during the previous year, these stories capture enduring moments while celebrating the craft of writing at its most sublime. This extraordinary collection reveals the fascinating stories behind the sports we love, the competitors who push their boundaries, and the cultures they are ultimately embedded in.

The Cost of These Dreams

The Cost of These Dreams
Author: Wright Thompson
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 402
Release: 2019-04-02
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 0525505660

The instant New York Times bestseller! From one of America's most beloved sportswriters and the bestselling author of Pappyland, a collection of true stories about the dream of greatness and its cost in the world of sports. "Wright Thompson's stories are so full of rich characters, bad actors, heroes, drama, suffering, courage, conflict, and vivid detail that I sometimes thinks he's working my side of the street - the world of fiction." - John Grisham There is only one Wright Thompson. He is, as they say, famous if you know who he is: his work includes the most read articles in the history of ESPN (and it's not even close) and has been anthologized in the Best American Sports Writing series ten times, and he counts John Grisham and Richard Ford among his ardent admirers (see back of book). But to say his pieces are about sports, while true as far as it goes, is like saying Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove is a book about a cattle drive. Wright Thompson figures people out. He jimmies the lock to the furnaces inside the people he profiles and does an analysis of the fuel that fires their ambition. Whether it be Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods or Pat Riley or Urban Meyer, he strips the away the self-serving myths and fantasies to reveal his characters in full. There are fascinating common denominators: it may not be the case that every single great performer or coach had a complex relationship with his father, but it can sure seem that way. And there is much marvelous local knowledge: about specific sports, and times and places, and people. Ludicrously entertaining and often powerfully moving, The Cost of These Dreams is an ode to the reporter's art, and a celebration of true greatness and the high price that it exacts.

A Nice Tuesday

A Nice Tuesday
Author: Pat Jordan
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 356
Release: 2005-09-01
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 9780803276253

In A Nice Tuesday, Pat Jordan chronicles his decision to reclaim the failed potential of his youth. A young baseball pitcher of inordinate promise, Jordan had been one of the Milwaukee Braves first ?bonus babies.? His struggle through the minor leagues and ultimate failure to play in the majors, eloquently chronicled in A False Spring, defined his youth. At fifty-six, Jordan realizes that ?this trivial thing? has also defined his life and decides to make a comeback. He whips himself back into playing condition and convinces an independent minor-league team, the Waterbury (Connecticut) Spirit, to let him return to the mound one last time. In this memoir, Jordan lays bare his midlife quest with honesty and humor, making A Nice Tuesday about much more than baseball.

Tom Seaver and Me

Tom Seaver and Me
Author: Pat Jordan
Publisher: Post Hill Press
Total Pages: 168
Release: 2020-05-26
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1642934623

I tell him what Hemingway said about writing talent, “It’s like a knife blade. If you save it it gets dull and rusty. Better to use it constantly to keep it sharp even if it wears down.” Tom tilts his head like dogs do when confused by their master. He says, with a small smile, “You just keep thinking, Butch. That’s what you’re good at.” I say, “I got vision, Sundance, and the rest of the world wears bifocals.” Tom throws again. Fastball, low outside corner to a right handed batter. I shake my head and say, “If I could have thrown my fastball to that spot, Big Guy, you’d be interviewing me now.” *** Pat Jordan, a $50,000 bonus pitcher with the Milwaukee Braves in 1959, first met Tom Seaver, himself a $50,000 bonus pitcher with the New York Mets—and the greatest pitcher of his generation—in 1971. Combustible, combative, hilarious, and even touching at times, Tom Seaver and Me tells the story of the forty-year friendship that followed.

Michael Jordan

Michael Jordan
Author: Roland Lazenby
Publisher: Little, Brown
Total Pages: 740
Release: 2014-05-06
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0316228761

The definitive biography of a legendary athlete. The Shrug. The Shot. The Flu Game. Michael Jordan is responsible for sublime moments so ingrained in sports history that they have their own names. When most people think of him, they think of his beautiful shots with the game on the line, his body totally in sync with the ball -- hitting nothing but net. But for all his greatness, this scion of a complex family from North Carolina's Coastal Plain has a darker side: he's a ruthless competitor and a lover of high stakes. There's never been a biography that encompassed the dual nature of his character and looked so deeply at Jordan on and off the court -- until now. Basketball journalist Roland Lazenby spent almost thirty years covering Michael Jordan's career in college and the pros. He witnessed Jordan's growth from a skinny rookie to the instantly recognizable global ambassador for basketball whose business savvy and success have millions of kids still wanting to be just like Mike. Yet Lazenby also witnessed the Michael Jordan whose drive and appetite are more fearsome and more insatiable than any of his fans could begin to know. Michael Jordan: The Life explores both sides of his personality to reveal the fullest, most compelling story of the man who is Michael Jordan. Lazenby draws on his personal relationships with Jordan's coaches; countless interviews with Jordan's friends, teammates, and family members; and interviews with Jordan himself to provide the first truly definitive study of Michael Jordan: the player, the icon, and the man.