Selected sports writing from newspapers and magazines, includes David Halberstam on Michael Jordan, the story of a former Mr. Universe's steroid addiction, and Dave Barry on why the NBA is less offensive than people think.

Capturing the century's greatest moments in every sport from basseball to chess, these authors (Red Smith, Tom Boswell, John Updike, Jim Murray, Norman Mailer, W.C. Heinz, Tom Wolfe, Jimmy Breslin, Dick Schaap, David Remnick, Ring Lardner, Gay Talese, William Nack, Frank Deford, George Plimpton, Jon Krakauer) and their subjects (including Joe DiMaggio, Secretariat, Bobby Knight, and Muhammad Ali) reflect the rising societal importance of sports in this century, showing how sports have been shaped by such monumental events as war, the civil rights movement, and the changing economyomy.

The latest addition to the acclaimed series showcasing the best sports writing from the past year. For over twenty-five years, The Best American Sports Writing has built a solid reputation by showcasing the greatest sports journalism of the previous year, culled from hundreds of national, regional, and specialty print and digital publications. Each year, the series editor and guest editor curate a truly exceptional collection. The only shared traits among all these diverse styles, voices, and stories are the extraordinarily high caliber of writing, and the pure passion they tap into that can only come from sports.

Presents an anthology of the best sports writing published in the previous year, selected from American magazines and newspapers.

Presents twenty-one sports writings on a wide variety of sports subjects.

Bill Littlefield (NPR's Only a Game) presents the second installment in the Library of America series devoted to classic American sportswriters, a defintive collector’s edition of the pathbreaking writer who invented the long-form sports story. Like his friend and admirer Red Smith, W. C. Heinz (1915–2008) was one of the most distinctive and influential sportswriters of the last century. Though he began his career as a newspaper reporter, Heinz soon moved beyond the confines of the daily column, turning freelance and becoming the first sportwriter to make his living writing for magazines. In doing so he effectively invented the long-form sports story, perfecting a style that paved the way for the New Journalism of the 1960s. His profiles of the top athletes of his day still feel remarkably current, written with a freshness of perception, a gift for characterization, and a finely tuned ear for dialogue. Jimmy Breslin named Heinz’s “Brownsville Bum”—a brief life of Al “Bummy” Davis, Brooklyn street tough and onetime welterweight champion of the world—“the greatest magazine sports story I’ve ever read, bar none.” His spare and powerful 1949 column, “Death of a Race Horse,” has been called a literary classic, a work of clarity and precision comparable to Hemingway at his best. Now, for this essential writer’s centennial, Bill Littlefield, the host of NPR’s Only A Game, presents the essential Heinz: thirty-eight columns, profiles, and memoirs from the author’s personal archive, including eighteen pieces never collected during his lifetime. Though Heinz’s great passion was boxing—the golden era of Rocky Graziano, Floyd Patterson, and Sugar Ray Robinson—his interests extended to the wide world of sports, with indelible profiles of baseball players (Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio), jockeys (George Woolf, Eddie Arcaro), hockey players, football coaches, scouts and trainers and rodeo riders.

Bissinger gathers together stellar prose on a dizzying array of sporting endeavors: triathlon, tennis, wrestling, bookmaking, basketball, boxing, chess, golf . . . Any reader's favorite game can be found in these pages. But every piece here transcends its subject; every piece crystallizes the emotions all great competitions evoke -- joy, fear, heartache, affection, surprise -- in both players and fans. David Grann weighs the burden of superstardom with Barry Bonds. Susy Buchanan explores demolition derby, possibly the most Darwinian sport in America. Gary Smith examines the baseball that ignited a lawsuit. Josh Sens tees up with the ultimate Zen golfer, a Tibetan lama. S. L. Price looks back at Pancho Gonzalez, one of the greatest, and likely the most irascible, tennis player ever. Michael Agovino recalls life with a bookmaking father. Stephen J. Dubner hangs out with NFL draftees at their league-mandated "rookie symposium," a mix of "motivational seminar, boot camp, and Scared Straight." These pieces and many more delve beneath the stats and the hype to unveil the raw, compelling essence of sport. Since its inception in 1915, the Best American series has become the premier annual showcase for the country's finest short fiction and nonfiction. For each volume, a series editor reads pieces from hundreds of periodicals, then selects between fifty and a hundred outstanding works. That selection is pared down to the twenty or so very best pieces by a guest editor who is widely recognized as a leading writer in his or her field. This unique system has helped make the Best American series the most respected -- and most popular -- of its kind. "This American sportswriting series is a venerable institution." -- Boston Globe Buzz Bissinger selects the very best writing on a vast variety of competitive endeavors, from baseball to weightlifting, skating to demolition derby. Herein today's foremost journalists throw revealing light on a pantheon of stars: Shaquille O'Neal, Bobby Fischer, Mike Tyson, the San Diego Chicken, and more. Rene Chun Stephen J. Dubner Elizabeth Gilbert Mark Kram Jr. Rebecca Mead Bill Plaschke S. L. Price Gary Smith

Beyond the Game brings together the fifteen greatest stories by one of the most highly acclaimed sports journalists working today, Gary Smith. From the inspirational story of an extraordinary mentally retarded man named Radio and the high school football team that has adopted him for over thirty years, to the unforgettable profile of basketball coach Jim Valvano and his courageous battle against cancer, these stories are more than just great sportswriting. They are great writing, period. Each of Smith's stories -- of dreams and fears, failure and triumph, self-destruction and salvation -- will profoundly touch you and remain with you, long after you have closed the pages of this book. Book jacket.

The Best American Sports Writing gathers the very best from sports journalists from the past year.