This week, we lost a good friend: Grantland.
Yes, ESPN’s sportswriting and pop culture site, the brainchild of Bill Simmons, was shut down. We are not here, however to talk about how it died, but rather how it lived, by sharing some of the best baseball writing- and writing in general- from the dearly departed. Some of them are personal favorites, others are well-respected ones that I found elsewhere.
Here they are:
The Best Baseball Writing From Grantland:
Rocked: Brian Curtis and Patricia Lee’s oral history of the 1989 World Series and the Loma Prieta Earthquake.
The Art of Pitch Framing: Ben Lindbergh’s first piece at Grantland was one of his best.
Grantland Dictionary: Baseball Edition: Jonah Keri’s hilarious roundup of baseball terms, which inspired my own “Devil’s Baseball Dictionary”.
“Yankees Suck! Yankees Suck!”: Perhaps Grantland’s last truly great article, at least about baseball, Amos Barshad tells the tale of how some hardcore punks created the “Yankees Suck!” t-shirt. It is a tale of violence, drugs, and many swear words. I still want this to be a movie.
The Website MLB Couldn’t Buy: There are three dot-coms with baseball team names that MLB and its teams do not own. One of them (Giants.com) is owned by a NFL team, another (Rays.com) is owned by an iconic Seattle boathouse restaurant, and the third (Twins.com)…is owned by a real set of Twins who are Twins fans. This is the story of that last one.
Pain Demands to Be Felt: As I write this, the Kansas City Royals stand one win away from winning their first World Series since 1985. Perhaps by the time you are reading this, they will have done it. Still, as good a time as any to read Rany Jazayerli’s article about the Royals- his lifelong team- from the end of the 2014 series.
The Steroid Hunt: By Bryan Curtis – “We know what MLB players were doing during the steroid era. Here’s what baseball writers did.”
Grand Theft Baseball: Jonah Keri, Coco Crisp, and stealing bases.
Saber Rattler: Hua Hsu on Mike Gimbel, a forgotten part of the Sabermetric revolution.
The Best Non-Baseball Writing from Grantland:
The Plunge: The tale of Shavarsh Karapetyan, a Soviet finswimmer who was out for a run with his brother in 1976 when he saw a trolley-car full of people plunge into a lake. Carl Schreck’s great piece is about what he did next: he jumped in to try and save as many as he could.
The Sea of Crises: Brian Phillips’ tale of sumo and suicide, which was nominated for a magazine writing award.
Scooper Hero: Alex Pappademas on Umberto Gonzalez, AKA “El Mayimbe”, who’s made a name for himself getting scoops on superhero and other big film franchises.
Three-Man Weave: Chuck Klosterman on the basketball team that won a game when they were down to three players.
The Malice At The Palace: Jonathan Abrams’ oral history of the infamous basketball brawl.
The Front Lines Of Ferguson: Rembert Browne’s 48 hours in Ferguson in the aftermath of the death of Michael Brown.
The Greatest Paper That Ever Died: Alex French and Howie Kahn on The National, a short-lived newspaper that was focused only on sports.
Together We Make Football: Louisa Thomas’ article about the NFL and domestic violence.
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These were just a sampler of some of the fine work that Grantland did. Let us hope that, although Grantland no longer is around, its legacy will live on.
Come back next week for my look at the 2015 MLB Season in review.
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