The Great American Sports Page: A Century of Classic Columns from Ring Lardner to Sally Jenkins

Praise

“To read the book is to be astonished, again and again, by the ingenuity and flair of the writers who thrived in this medium. Stories written in two hours for the next day’s newspaper shouldn’t hold up decades later, but the best work here is indelible, even when it describes the heroism of long-forgotten racehorses and prizefighters.” — John Swansburg, The New York Times Book Review

“Thrilling. . . . The surprise and delight of The Great American Sports Page, John Schulian’s selections from a century’s worth of newspaper columns about baseball, boxing, football, gymnastics, and (in one case) swimming the English Channel, is how often it happens—how often the writers connect, how often the prose approaches the condition of flat-out poetry.”  —James Parker, The Atlantic

“The entries from the first 50 or 60 years exhibit the boisterous hyperbole, epic mood, circumlocution, simile and metaphor that once made sports writing a sport in itself. . . . This is the kind of book that makes you a social nuisance and sleeve plucker, a persistent spouter of quotation: Just one more, you keep saying.”  — Katherine A. Powers, The Wall Street Journal

“Outstanding, powerful and poetic. . . .  Most of the work in the book was written under intense deadline pressure — no time for primping and polishing — which makes the power of the prose all the more remarkable.” — Rick Kogan, The Chicago Tribune

“The Great American Sports Page, an anthology of the best sports columns by the best sports columnists, and it belongs in your den next to the television remote. Think of it as a highlight film in hardback. There isn’t a loser between its bound covers.” —Los Angeles Times

“Who better than John Schulian–columnist, novelist, critic, screenwriter, and the recipient of the PEN ESPN Lifetime Achievement Award for Literary Sports Writing–to appreciate great sportswriters? Going back to the early twentieth century, The Great American Sports Page gives us the sportswriters who had no greater aspiration than to write the best they could about something they loved and valued in the columns of their daily newspapers. An unforgettable line-up of heavy-hitting writers delivers a collection that deserves a standing ovation from sports fans.” –Pat Jordan, sportswriter and author of A False Spring