Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} The Best American Sports Writing 2000 by The Best American Sports Writing 2000 by Dick Schaap. AUDIO/VIDEO Sports Reporters ESPN's Sports Reporters remembers its host and good friend Dick Schaap. Real: 56.6. Sports Reporters On September 16, Dick Schaap delivered his final 'parting shot' on . Real: 56.6 | ISDN Cable Modem. Dick Schaap, whose humorous, often brutally honest approach to sports made him one of the most beloved, respected and honored journalists of the past half century, died Friday from post-operative complications after hip replacement surgery. He was 67. Schaap had most recently been the host of "ESPN Magazine's Sports Reporters" on television and "The Sporting Life" on ESPN Radio with his son, Jeremy -- one of his six children. His career in journalism began more than 50 years ago and included work in television, radio, newspapers, magazines and books. Dick Schaap wrote 33 books, a dozen of them autobiographies "as told to Dick Schaap." While sports journalism, aided and abetted by talk radio, has become louder, harsher and more judgmental over the years, Schaap stuck to the basics: a pointed quip, a poignant quote, an amusing anecdote to give his audience a special insight into the people he knew. He was a master storyteller who changed the way we thought about sports and the people who entertain us in stadiums and arenas. Schaap had a politician's knack for remembering people, and he could drop more names in one sentence than someone reading from Who's Who in America. Richard Sandomir of the Times actually counted how many names that Schaap dropped in his best-selling autobiography, "Flashing Before My Eyes: 50 Years of Headlines, Deadlines & Punchlines." The final count: 531. If names were home runs, that would rank him 11th on the all-time list. But Schaap didn't drop names to impress anyone. He often said his favorite sport was collecting people. He was equally at ease in the trendy East Harlem restaurant Rao's breaking bread with the beautiful people or sitting in some silver-sided, small-town diner chatting with the locals who would instantly become friends. , himself a best-selling author, probably summed it up best in his introduction to Schaap's autobiography: "He has walked with kings, ridden shotgun with legends, dined with the power elite and gotten drunk with some of the biggest sports stars of our time. And what he comes away with is not a swelled head, an inflated sense of his own importance, or a need to lecture the world with an opinion much richer than ours. What he comes away with are stories." Schaap was born in and grew up in Freeport, , a "clam-diggers" town as he described it. As a kid he bled Dodger blue. He hated Bobby Thompson for hitting the home run in 1951 that sent the Giants to the World Series, and he hated Ralph Branca for throwing the pitch. Years later, he would call them both friends, sharing meals and golf games and appearing at events to help them raise money for charity. That's just the way it was with Schaap. "I have gotten to know the heroes of my youth, and the villains, and I have learned how thin the line is between them," he wrote in his autobiography. Yet, even in writing about Dick Schaap (As Told To Dick Schaap), the stories weren't so much about him as they were about the people he met, "athletes and actresses, cops and comedians, politicians and playwrights, the eclectic mix that has made almost every day of my life seem like a fantasy to me." The fantasy began with a weekly sports column, "Scanning the Sports Scene," in the Freeport Leader. Schaap was just a junior in high school. "I think I was paid five dollars a column. I was overpaid," he wrote. While in high school he also worked at the Nassau Daily Review-Star for , who later would become a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and one of Schaap's dearest friends. The two also worked together at the Long Island Press, the , where Schaap was city editor, and the World Journal Tribune. As a syndicated columnist in the 1960s, Schaap coined the term "Fun City" for New York. Schaap, who is survived by his wife Trish, also was a senior editor for , editor of Sport magazine, which ceased publishing in 2000, and was sports editor for Parade magazine. His transition from print to broadcast journalism was as graceful as his writing style. His profiles of comedian and Olympian Tom Waddell for ABC's "20/20" earned him Emmys in 1983 and 1988. He won another Emmy for sports reporting in 1986 for a series of four features that aired on ABC's "World News Tonight." In '91 and '94 he won two more Emmys for his writing. And he earned a CableACE Award as best commentator/analyst for his work at ESPN. He hosted ESPN's Sunday morning show, "The Sports Reporters," ESPN Classic's "Schaap One on One," and ESPN Radio's "The Sporting Life with Dick Schaap," which aired Saturday mornings. His biography became a two-hour television special for ESPN. But it wasn't always about sports. He was a correspondent for the "NBC Nightly News" in the 1970s, and was a theater critic for ABC. In fact, he was the only person to vote for both the Tony and Heisman awards. In the 1960s, he was in Mississippi covering the murders of three civil rights workers, and later found himself in Los Angeles covering the 1968 riots in Watts. He also covered the funeral of Malcolm X. He has interviewed a vast cross-section of cultural icons from Bobby Kennedy and George Bush to and , Jackie Robinson and Spike Lee to Yogi Berra and Brigitt Bardot, Muhammad Ali and to Norman Mailer and Tom Wolfe. He played lacrosse with Jim Brown, tennis with Hank Greenberg and Johnny Carson and touch football with Olympic sprinter Meredith "Flash" Gourdine. "What I will remember most about Dick is that he had a good spirit and a good heart," Ali said in a statement. "Like me, Dick appreciated the child in all of us. Dick and I forged a special bond over the course of our 41-year friendship." He has reported on major sporting events from Super Bowls to , earning acclaim from his peers and his audiences. More importantly, his subjects often became his friends, a phenomenon that just doesn't happen today among scandal-seeking reporters and distrustful, self-centered athletes whose scripted post-game interviews pass for insightful journalism. "There was an access [in the 1950s and '60s] that doesn't exist today," Schaap said. Schaap has been called "the Leonardo da Vinci of multimedia journalism" and "the Van Gogh of anecdotes, except he didn't have to lose an ear." And it was what he did with his ears that set him apart. He listened and let others tell their stories. Many of those stories became books. He wrote 33 of them, a dozen of them autobiographies "as told to Dick Schaap." There's Billy Crystal and Dave DeBusschere, Tom Seaver and Hank Aaron, , Frank Beard, Tom Waddell, a Bo and two Joes - Jackson, Namath and Montana. "Bo Knows Bo," was the best-selling sports autobiography ever. "I am devastated at the loss of my great friend Dick Schaap," Crystal said in a statement. "The world has lost a rare man. A journalist who loved his subjects, who treated them with humor and dignity, never malice. He could analyze baseball and Broadway, he could speak with ballplayers and presidents, jockeys and Giants. He loved people, and words, and literature, and fairness." The one that got the biographies all started was "," the 1968 best-seller written with Green Bay Packer . It set a new standard for sports biographies by changing the way readers heard their heroes. The prose wasn't flowery or particularly intellectual. Instead, it was in the tough locker-room style of a real and often profane human being who like all of us had faults. "The words may not be exactly theirs, but the thoughts and the voice are," Schaap once said. "Dick Schaap was synonymous with Lombardi, Kramer and Packers football," NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue told The . "`Instant Replay' created a genre that is part of Dick's tremendous literary legacy. He was always a gentleman and will be missed by all those in the sports community." Crystal credits him with giving his career a big start. "He put me on television for the first time in 1974, where he introduced me to Ali, and the three of us maintained a great relationship until today," Crystal said. "I will miss his friendship, his laughter and humor, and the special insight he had for people. I loved Dick and my family and I will miss him terribly." He took on more serious topics, too. He wrote a biography on Robert F. Kennedy titled simply "RFK." With Breslin, he co-authored ".44" about Son of Sam serial killer David Berkowicz, and "Turned On," a book about upper middle-class drug abuse. Some of the best of those stories, however, were the ones he saved for his autobiography published in 2001. Two of the most frequently cited are these: "Not long after the won III, in the rebel days at the height of his career, came to my house for dinner one night, lay down on the floor of my living room, cadged a joint, puffed and blew the smoke into the mouth of my dog, a collie named Max. As far as I know, neither the quarterback nor the collie inhaled." While posing for a photograph with Wilt Chamberlain, Bob Cousy and George Mikan during a 1992 reception unveiling Madison Square Garden's Walk of Fame, "a crowd gathered, drawn by the three stars, and I couldn't resist turning to our audience and saying, 'Do you realize that among the four of us, we've had twenty thousand and 10 women?' Everyone laughed, except the three guys I was standing with. Mikan and Cousy informed me that they had had only one each. But Wilt was more upset. 'Hey, Dick,' he said, 'that book is two years old.'" Always good with a quip ("The guy who ought to be commissioner of baseball is Fidel Castro, because he speaks Spanish, he's had a lot of dealings with Washington, and he played the game."), he would rather talk about others rather than himself. "My wife would like me to be more introspective, but it's not my strong suit," he once said. "I'm afraid I'd dig deep down and find I'm shallow." We all know better. Dick Schaap brought us a different, richly rewarding view of the world through the magic of his story-telling. And although he is gone now, he left behind a legacy at which we can continue to marvel just by reading his books or watching rebroadcasts of his many interviews. Dick Schaap. Richard Jay Schaap [1] (September 27, 1934 – December 21, 2001) was an American sportswriter, broadcaster, and author. Contents. Early life and education. Born to a Jewish family in Brooklyn, and raised in Freeport, New York, on Long Island, Schaap began writing a sports column at age 14 for the weekly newspaper Freeport Leader , but the next year he obtained a job with the daily newspaper The Nassau Daily Review-Star working for Jimmy Breslin. He would later follow Breslin to the Long Island Press and New York Herald Tribune . He attended and was editor-in-chief of the student newspaper, , during which time he defended a professor before the House Un-American Activities Committee. [ citation needed ] He obtained a letter in varsity lacrosse playing goaltender. During his last year at Cornell, Schaap was elected to the Society. After graduating during 1955 he received a fellowship at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and authored his thesis on the recruitment of basketball players. Schaap was the father of 6 children, Renee, Michelle, Jeremy, Joanna, Kari and David, and had five grandchildren [2] [3] His children included sports/news journalist . [4] Career. Schaap began work as assistant sports editor of Newsweek . During 1964, he began a thrice-weekly column concerning current events. He became editor of SPORT magazine during 1973. It was then that he set in motion the inspiration for the eccentricities of Media Day at the Super Bowl. Opposing the grandiose and self-important nature of the 's championship match, he hired two players, and , to cover Super Bowl IX. Donning costumes inspired by The Front Page , "Scoops Brannigan" (Dryer) and "Cubby O'Switzer" (Rentzel) peppered players and coaches from both the Minnesota Vikings and with questions that ranged from the clichéd to the downright absurd. [5] [6] Schaap was also a theatre critic, causing him to quip that he was the only person ever to vote for both the Tony Awards and the . He interviewed non-sports people such as and produced cultural features for ABC's overnight news program . After spending the 1970s with NBC as an NBC Nightly News and Today Show correspondent, he moved to ABC World News Tonight and 20/20 at ABC in the 1980s. He earned five , for profiles of Sid Caesar and Tom Waddell, two for reporting, and for writing. During 1988 he began hosting The Sports Reporters on ESPN cable television, which in later years often featured his son Jeremy as a correspondent. He also hosted Schaap One on One on ESPN Classic and a syndicated ESPN Radio program called The Sporting Life with Dick Schaap , in which he discussed the week's developments in sports with Jeremy. He also occasionally served as a substitute anchor for ABC's late night newscast, World News Now . He wrote the 1968 best-seller Instant Replay , co-authored with Jerry Kramer of the , and I Can't Wait Until Tomorrow. 'Cause I Get Better-Looking Every Day , the 1969 autobiography of New York Jet Joe Namath. These resulted in a stint as co-host of The Joe Namath Show , which in turn resulted in his hiring as sports anchor for WNBC-TV. Other books included a biography of Robert F. Kennedy; .44 (with Jimmy Breslin), a fictionalized account of the hunt for Son of Sam killer ; Turned On , about upper middle-class drug abuse; An Illustrated History of the Olympics , a coffee-table book on the history of the modern Olympic Games; The Perfect Jump , on the world record-breaking long jump by in the 1968 Summer Olympics; My Aces, My Faults with Nick Bollettieri; Steinbrenner! , a biography of mercurial owner ; and Bo Knows Bo with . His autobiography, Flashing Before My Eyes: 50 Years of Headlines, Deadlines & Punchlines , was reissued under Schaap's original title "Dick Schaap as Told to Dick Schaap: 50 years of Headlines, Deadlines and Punchlines." Death. Schaap died on December 21, 2001, at in of complications from hip replacement surgery that September. Schaap's final regular television appearance was on the September 16, 2001 broadcast of The Sports Reporters on the Sunday after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C. That weekend all major American college and professional sporting events had been cancelled, and Schaap and his panelists discussed the diminished role of sports since the tragedy. After Schaap's death, his estate and members of his family filed a lawsuit against three physicians and Lenox Hill Hospital, alleging that his death had been caused by medical malpractice. Specifically, they alleged that, for two years before his surgery, Schaap had been given a powerful medication called amiodarone to treat an irregular heartbeat. Amiodarone can cause lung damage (known as "amiodarone pulmonary toxicity") and, according to the plaintiffs, an X-ray of Schaap's chest that had been taken before the surgery indicated that he had lung damage. Three days after the surgery, Schaap began having difficulty breathing, and he was subsequently diagnosed with acute respiratory distress syndrome. He died three months after the operation, never having left the hospital. Among other claims, the plaintiffs contended that Schaap's surgery should have been postponed, that he should have been taken off the amiodarone, and that his lungs should have been given time to heal before the performance of the surgery. The court dismissed the claim against the hospital on the ground that the physicians were not employees of the hospital. The plaintiffs' claims against the three physicians went to trial in 2005 in . On July 1, 2005, after nine days of deliberations, a jury found that all three physicians had been negligent, but also found that the negligence of only one of the physicians had caused Schaap's death. That physician was a cardiologist whom the plaintiffs had contended was negligent by not looking at the pre-operative chest X-ray. The jury awarded the plaintiffs a total of $1.95 million in damages. [7] [8] [9] Bobby Fischer. Around 1955, Schaap befriended Bobby Fischer, who was at the time a twelve-year-old chess prodigy, and would later become a world chess champion. During 2005, prompted by questions posed by Schaap's son, Jeremy Schaap, Fischer acknowledged that the relationship was significant and that the elder Schaap had been a "father figure" to him. [10] Fischer was still resentful that Dick Schaap had later written, among many other comments, that Fischer "did not have a sane bone left in his body". [11] Honors. The Sports Emmy division of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences renamed their writing category "The Dick Schaap Outstanding Writing Award." [12] The 2005 Emmy Awards in this category was won by Jeremy for a SportsCenter piece called “Finding Bobby Fischer.” During 2002, Schaap was honored posthumously by the Associated Press Sports Editors with the Award. Also during 2002, he was inducted into the Nassau County Sports Hall of Fame, which created a Dick Schaap Award for Outstanding Journalism. Best American Sports Writing 2020. Two Times pieces, one by Andrew Keh and one by Kurt Streeter, were selected to appear in the volume. Works by Andrew Keh and Kurt Streeter were selected to be featured in the latest edition of “The Best American Sports Writing.” The 2020 volume will be released this fall. The Times pieces that will appear in the volume are: Andrew’s moving article “The Champion Who Picked a Date to Die,” which chronicled the Paralympic athlete Marieke Vervoort’s journey as she and her parents wrestled with her decision to die by euthanasia. Kurt’s essay “Which Way, Richmond? Which Way, America?,” which examined Richmond’s move to rename a major thoroughfare after Arthur Ashe and the blowback to that decision. Congratulations to Andrew and Kurt. Explore Further. Randy Archibold Named Sports Editor. Elena Bergeron Joins Sports as Assistant Editor. Your Tracker Settings. We use cookies and similar methods to recognize visitors and remember their preferences. To learn more about these methods, including how to disable them, view our Cookie Policy. By clicking ‘‘I accept,’’ you consent to the processing of your data by us and third parties using the above methods. You can always change your tracker preferences by visiting our Cookie Policy. Best American Sports Writing, 1991. The Best American series is the premier annual showcase for the country's finest short fiction and nonfiction. Each volume's series editor selects notable works from hundreds of magazines, journals, and websites. A special guest editor, a leading writer in the field, then chooses the best twenty or so pieces to publish. This unique system has made the Best American series the most respected-and most popular-of its kind. A superb collection. The Best American Sports Writing 1991 captures the majesty, humor, tragedy, and ultimate humanity found in the games we play. The Best American Sports Writing 2000 by Dick Schaap. Web posted on: Monday, June 07, 1999 12:05:23 PM EDT. By Jamie Allen CNN Interactive Senior Writer. (CNN) -- David Halberstam remembers it well. It was 1966. He was 32 and working in Paris for when he read a piece of journalism that would change his life. The article was an Esquire magazine feature on Joe DiMaggio, written by Gay Talese. But it was more than just an insightful observation by Talese of a man who once was king of New York. It was evidence of a new kind of journalism in blossom -- a narrative process that read like a book and gave a reader the feeling that he or she knew the subject personally. "I read that piece and thought, 'I'm getting out of here,'" Halberstam recalls. "I'm getting out of daily journalism because this is a level way above what I and everybody I know has been doing, and I want to try to do something like this. It's a very influential piece." Halberstam has since gone on to become one of the most respected observers of our time, penning sports books including "The Summer of '49" (reissued in 1997) as well as political jewels like "The Best and the Brightest" (1973, and a 20th-anniversary edition in 1993). Now he's paying tribute to some of the top sports reporting ever put on paper. His most recent project was to serve as guest editor of "The Best American Sports Writing of the Century" (Houghton Mifflin), part of an annual series edited by Glenn Stout. This latest installment, published in May, covers the century, an encompassing look at the development of sports writing that parallels the burgeoning popularity of sport in a large part of American consciousness. 'He was such a magical figure' Collections of writings by different authors seem to be growing in popularity. Witness the onslaught of "Best" books -- short stories, poetry, erotica. It's easy to assume our fast-food culture breeds a growing audience for brevity. MULTIMEDIA. Halberstam on Muhammed Ali [165k MPEG-3] or [325k WAV] Halberstam says he believes bite-size offerings are one strength of "The Best American Sports Writing of the Century." "You take a nibble at it and put it down and then come back a couple days later. You don't have to read it all at once," he says. In "The Best American Sports Writing of the Century," Talese's "The Silent Season of the Hero" is the first piece exhibited by Stout and Halberstam. It's followed by 57 articles spanning from Heywood Broun's "Sports for Art's Sake" (The New York World, 1921), to J.R. Moehringer's "Resurrecting the Champ" (The Magazine, 1997). 'If you read this book I think you'll get a sense of change in the society.' -- David Halberstam. The articles focus on legendary sports personalities -- Red Grange, , Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Dick Butkus, Walter Hagen, Secretariat and Tiger Woods. The book also includes a special section of six stories written about boxing's self-proclaimed "Greatest," Muhammad Ali. "I think he was such a magical figure, so compelling a figure, he inevitably drew the interest of very talented writers," Halberstam offers as the reason for the special Ali material. The writers are an equally impressive bunch, the list including Red Smith, Bill Heinz, Norman Mailer, John Updike, Tom Wolfe, , Dick Schaap, George Plimpton, , David Remnick, John Krakauer, Hunter S. Thompson and Jimmy Breslin. 'A window on society' Halberstam says the book is more than a sports fan's guide to the century; it's a reflection of ourselves as we grew as a nation through racial and political upheaval, the birth and influence of television and the never-ending quest for money, money and more money. "(Sport) is a great window on society," Halberstam says. "People ask, 'Is it a metaphor for society?' and I say, 'No.' But it's a terrific window. Most of the things you're arguing about in sports, sooner or later the politics of the society will reflect it. "Take the piece by Bill Heinz on Red Grange, all sweetness and modesty, and fast-forward to David Remnick writing about Reggie Jackson and the monstrous kind of ego. If you read this book I think you'll get a sense of change in the society. I mean, it's about sports, but the coming of bigger money, greater fame, more black athletes, all those things are blended in there." Readers are treated to some memorable, if not the most memorable, victories and defeats in the history of sport, including: The list goes on. When you put together a book like this, one that claims to offer perspective on where we've been and where we're headed, critics will be quick to note the lack of material on women in sport, or the fact that Michael Jordan -- this generation's greatest athlete and the subject of Halberstam's own new book "Playing for Keeps" -- is left out of this compendium. Halberstam maintains that he and Stout focused on the writing, not the subjects, save Ali. "I think what we tried to do is get a reflection of all the forces that are at play, of the best writing," Halberstam says. "In the end, we ended up with something that was a pretty good reflection of the changes in society as well."