It’s been a while since I cleared out my inbox of all of the best articles I’ve read. There’s so much good writing going on about sports and I love sharing it with people through Dear Sports Fan! The quality of sports journalism is one of those things that gets lost among the thousands of formulaic articles about games unless you’re a sports fan or have a highly curated newsfeed. Today, I though I’d share four amazing articles about people in sports who are heroic for one reason or another. Our first hero is a man who has persevered through a disease that cost him his hands and feet and (worse, in his mind, as you’ll find out) being cut from the Paralympic Rugby team. Our second hero is a deeply flawed man who has struggled throughout his life with psychological issues. He also just happens to be the best snooker player in the world. In the third article, we learn about a man whose behind-the-scenes contributions have been a big part of one of the most impressive streaks in modern sports history — the Detroit Red Wings streak of having gone to the playoffs for the last 23 seasons in a row. Our fourth and last heroic appearance is a writer, who through no fault of her own, was subjected to intense abuse — just for having had the temerity to voice an opinion about sports while simultaneously being female.
Take these broken wings
by Kim Cross for SB Nation
Don’t don’t call it inspiring but you can call it a come back. Delvin McMillian is attempting to make the U.S. Paralympic Rugby Team at the ripe old age of 35. Okay, fine, you can be inspired by this story if you choose — in fact, it’s hard to read it without being inspired, but it’s also got some great tips for how to think about athletes and other people with physical challenges.
“When you’ve had something in your life for so long, and the wind gets knocked out of you, you’ve got to pick yourself up. Because if you don’t, you begin to sink. And the further you sink into this hole, the further you have to climb out of it.”
I ask Delvin point-blank the question that has been burning in my mind ever since I realized he was a man whose greatest challenge is not what I assumed.
“When you look back at the things you’ve had to overcome—the psychological trauma of the team situation, the physical trauma of losing your limbs—what was harder?”
He doesn’t have to think long to answer.
“Probably being cut from the team.”
Follow the White Ball
by Sam Knight for the New Yorker
Snooker is a British game that’s a lot like pool on steroids. It’s played on a much larger table with more balls and smaller pockets. Like many games that most people play for fun, when played as a sport at the highest levels, it becomes a brutal psychologically challenging sport. That makes Snooker’s reigning champion, Ronnie O’Sullivan, an even more interesting figure.
When discussing O’Sullivan’s game, commentators and rivals often talk about his unusual sequencing—the way he links shots together around the table. Phil Yates, who was the snooker correspondent for the Times of London for twenty years, compares O’Sullivan to a savant, able to perceive mathematical solutions without knowing how or why. “I don’t think he can break down why he is as good as he is,” Yates said. “He just is.” According to Hirst, O’Sullivan often comes off the table in a fugue state: “I go, ‘What about that pink you potted?’ And he’ll go, ‘What pink?’ He’s blank. He’s totally startled. It’s like van Gogh. I go, ‘You did brilliantly there.’ And he goes, ‘Did I?’ ”
The Seeker: Scout Hakan Andersson a hero of the Red Wings’ playoff streak
by Michael Farber for Sports Illustrated
Sustained excellence in any pursuit is a curiosity worthy of investigation. How have the Red Wings kept being better than everyone else for more than 20 years? One of the answers certainly lies in Sweden, the country where the Red Wings have found more of their best players than any other team. This is the story of the man who found most of them.
At 5’ 10″ and 165 pounds, Holmström was barely a keeper when Andersson first saw him in 1991, at a training camp for 1973-born players. He was a clumsy 18-year-old winger who wasn’t the best skater but was dogged on the puck and eager to get to the net. Two years later Andersson asked a coaching friend in northern Sweden to name the best player in the area and was told it was Holmström, now two inches taller and 25 pounds heavier. Andersson remembered the aggressive teen and went to watch him again. “I mentioned him to our Czech scout, who’d seen him in a tournament there,” Andersson says. “The scout said, ‘I don’t know about that guy. His skating is pretty suspicious.’” On Andersson’s recommendation the Red Wings drafted Holmström in the 10th round in ’94. (There were 11 rounds then.) Holmström won four Stanley Cups, played in 1,026 regular-season games and scored 243 goals. He was known for screening goalies while getting whacked like a piñata and yapping in an incomprehensible linguistic blend that made him sound like a second cousin of the Muppets’ Swedish Chef. “That one,” Andersson says of the Holmström pick, “propelled my career.”
Women who write about sports, and the men who hate them
by Amy Bass for the Allrounder
Sports writers shouldn’t have to be heroes. There’s no logical reason why heroism should ever be part of the job description. Unfortunately there’s a bunch of hateful jerks who take it upon themselves to try to intimidate, abuse, and silence any woman who writes about sports. Luckily for all of us, most of those women identify what is happening to them and decide to add “hero” to their job descriptions instead of allowing themselves to be silenced. Amy Bass, the author of this article, is one of those women.
Women taking flack for opining on sports is part and parcel of how women have to live their lives every moment of every day. It is part of the same world in which women battle against domestic violence and sexual assault and the wage gap. It is part of the same machine that sees male politicians trying to legislate female bodies, corporations firing women for breastfeeding on the job, and male professors receiving better teaching evaluations than their female counterparts. I have earned my position in this world as an authority on sports. So to every single one of those commenters, I say: thank you for reading.