The Best of the Best

The Best of the Best

   Recently, I've been finishing something totally not me, that of reading about sports.  This came up when I happened to glance at a bargain book, The Best American Sports Writing (2010), part of a series of "best American" books by the publishing company, Mariner Books (they do this type of book series such as Best American Essays and Best American Travel Writing).  I shouldn't have been surprised, since this was, after all, a best-of book;  but the writing stunned me, capturing me in ways I didn't expect, for you see, I'm not all that into sports.  I don't golf, but I found the golf story on the "ghost" course and how golf began way, way back, utterly fascinating.  Same with the basketball stories, and the football stories and the bicycling and running and tennis stories.

   Some of the stories bring you to tears, such as the story in Runner's World about Jenny Crain.  A world class athlete and runner, she was nearing 40 and feeling that this was her last chance to qualify for the Olympics (she'd won the female division of the 2004 NYC marathon and qualified for the Olympic trials three times), training on a run that she had done close to a thousand times.  But on this one occasion, she stepped just an inkling too early into an intersection as the cars slowed, the light still yellow but turning red.  An unseen car in the back changed lanes unexpectedly trying to make it through, going at an estimated 30 mph, and unfortunately, Jenny was in the way (the driver wasn't charged since the investigation showed that it was likely still a yellow light when the driver entered the intersection).  Here's a portion of what the author captured after that moment:  The post supporting the windshield on the driver's side, the connector between the roof and the hood, slammed into the right side of Jenny's unprotected skull.  She was thrown over the hood and landed on the far side of the vehicle.  The one piece of good luck was that the accident occurred in the heart of a major city; an ambulance arrived within minutes.  Jenny was still conscious when she arrived in the emergency room of Milwaukee's Froedert Hospital, where doctors determined that the impact had fractured vertebrae, shattered her jaw, bruised her aorta, and most grievously caused massive brain damage.  In the ICU surgeons opened her skull to drain the swelling from a blood clot...The human brain is a miracle, a mystery, and a paradox.  Intact, it can process information faster than a supercomputer; damaged, it can never fully heal, unlike other parts of the body.  Each brain is one of a kind, and so is each brain injury.  This makes treatment simultaneously hopeful, fascinating, frustrating, and unending.

   Another story from The Texas Monthly titled  (Still) Life  brought out another mix of emotions, a mother's love and devotion unerring as she cares for her injured promising-star-athlete son.  The editor of this particular series, Glenn Stout, is himself a devoted reader and writer, something quite apparent in his forward:  First and foremost, this is and has always been a book for those who love writing.  That the writing is about sports is, of course, not insignificant, but my goal has always been to seek out stories that are so well written that the subject matter hardly matters, to find stories that readers will enjoy, not simply because of the topic, but, just as a non-athlete can enjoy the artistry of an athlete, because of the artistry displayed by the writer.

   And what a (difficult) job he has, not that he has to go through hundreds and hundreds of already-published submissions, but that he has to narrow the field down to just seventy or so, and then pass those on to other editors to chop 2/3 of those that he picked out of consideration.  At that level, the smallest details, the slightest "not quite" feeling, makes all the difference.  And imagine this, after so many years (he's been doing this since 1991), he has still managed to compile a best-of-the-best-of-the-best list of three stories (out of the thousands that he's read), something I'll let you discover since there needs to be some surprises.

   What surprised me, however, was realizing several things.  One, that this was just the top writing (at least from this publishing house's eyes) from this particular year, and this particular field (sports) and this particular country.  Imagine other years and other fields and other countries.  Casting aside all the exceptional books being written and publicized, the field of essay and story and reporting writing was refreshingly alive and thriving, and, from all appearances, showing no signs of aging or slowing down.  From the small monthly to the large mass market publication, editors were still receiving a slew of creative journalistic endeavors, and we readers were the better for it.  And to think...it took sports to get me there.