Best Canadian Sports Writing

38 pieces that will be remembered for seasons to come For 25 years, sports journalists south of the border have been collected in best-of anthologies. With Best Canadian Sports Writing, editors Stacey May Fowles and Pasha Malla offer a long overdue rejoinder from the North, showcasing top literary sports writing from diverse homegrown talent. This extraordinary anthology of recent writing mixes columns and long-form journalism, profiles and reportage, new voices and well-known favourites such as Stephen Brunt, Rachel Giese, Eric Koreen, Morgan Campbell, and Cathal Kelly. The assembled pieces offer polished prose, unusual perspectives, and rare insight into their subjects, whether itÕs a Filipino basketball league in the Yukon, the rise and fall of ski ballet, or a field trip to the Mexican hometown of the JaysÕ Roberto Osuna. With its many voices and approaches, Best Canadian Sports Writing expands the genre into more democratic and conversational territory, celebrating the perspectives of both fans and experts alike. These remarkable pieces offer lasting insight that, like sport itself, excites, inspires, and never fails to reveal the truth about ourselves.

In the first ever anthology of its kind, Canada’s premier sportswriter — Globe and Mail columnist and author of the internationally acclaimed bestseller Facing Ali — brings together the best writing on sport in this country, with a strong contemporary flavour. It’s all here: classic reports on Canada’s great sporting triumphs, from Joe Carter’s World Series–winning home run for the Toronto Blue Jays in 1993 to the excitement of the back-to-back men’s and women’s hockey gold medals in Salt Lake City. Stephen Brunt gives an entire section to writers who, unlike those covering other beats, must work tightly by the clock, submitting their stories just as soon as the action for the day is over. But he has also chosen our best writers’ more thoughtful pieces on our national obsessions — such as Ed Willes on the WHA’s seven tumultuous years and Wayne Johnston on the Original Six — and a good sampling of the great sportswriters such as Trent Frayne, Peter Gzowski and Milt Dunnell. The net effect is an examination of the deep role sport plays in our lives and imaginations, in our sense of self and nationhood. Stephen Brunt has cast his net widely. He includes superb stories of lower profile Canadian sports such as wrestling and horse racing, even Monster Truck battles, and allows space for his own unequalled and unforgettable profiles of Muhammad Ali and Mike Tyson, as well as his post-mortem on Ben Johnson’s fall from grace. Full of triumph and heartbreak, great writing and great passions — and a few wonderful surprises — this book will be essential reading for every serious sports fan. Including: • Ian Brown on the stud-horse business • Christie Blatchford on the 2003 Women’s Olympic Hockey Gold • Rosie DiManno on the Men’s • James Christie on Ben Johnson’s 1988 Olympic triumph in Seoul • Michael Faber on Pat Burns • Red Fisher on Lemieux and Gretzky at the 1987 Canada Cup • Trent Frayne on Canadian Open golf champ Ken Green deciding to play Sun City during apartheid • Bruce Grierson on Canada’s best squash player • Peter Gzowski on the Oilers with Gretzky • Tom Hawthorn on John Brophy’s last brawl • Brian Hutchinson on Owen Hart’s widow’s revenge • Wayne Johnston on the Montreal Canadiens • Guy Lawson on curling • Allan Maki on the 1989 Hamilton–Saskatchewan Grey Cup • Dave Perkins on the biggest home run in World Series history • Mordecai Richler on snooker’s Cliff Thorburn • Steve Simmons on Donovan Bailey • Mike Ulmer on Cujo’s charm and more…

The latest addition to the acclaimed series showcasing the best sports writing from the past year

Join Rob Simpson on a dozen once-in-a-lifetime adventures in the world of international media Though he’s now known to hockey fans across North America for his NHL commentary and as co-host of the Stellick and Simmer SiriusXM radio show, Rob Simpson didn’t start his radio and TV career rinkside: his media background has taken him around the world and into uniquely unexpected situations. In No Heavy Lifting, Simpson recounts some of his wildest adventures from stints as a TV weatherman in Hawaii, a hockey reporter at the Torino Olympics, a skydiver in Idaho, and a marathoner in New York, to immigrating north of the border. Take ten grand a year out of your bank account, for ten years, and gamble it away? Check. Take a humanitarian trip to the Serengeti with a beloved NHL player whose brain damage may have led to his death? Check. Alienate and scandalize the most powerful man in Hawaiian politics? Check. Climb Mount Kilimanjaro wearing someone else’s boots and clothes? Checkmate. Featuring stories about NBA legends Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson, “Dr. J” Julius Erving, and Larry Bird, and NHL superstars Zdeno Chara, Joe Thornton, Steve Montador, Scott Gomez, Domenic Moore, and Nicklas Lidström, this episodic memoir is told with Simpson’s arch sense of humor.

A must-read collection featuring the best in sports journalism Richard Deitsch, a media reporter at The Athletic and a former Sports Illustrated writer, has curated an essential anthology showcasing incredible feats and diverse perspectives across the world of sports. Selected from a wide range of newspapers, magazines, and digital publications during the previous year, these stories capture enduring moments while celebrating the craft of writing at its most sublime.This extraordinary collection reveals the fascinating stories behind the sports we love, the competitors who push their boundaries, and the cultures they are ultimately embedded in.

Canadian sports were turned on their head during the years between the world wars. The middle-class amateur men's organizations which dominated Canadian sports since the mid-nineteenth century steadily lost ground, swamped by the rise of consumer culture and badly battered and split by the depression. In The Struggle for Canadian Sport Bruce Kidd illuminates the complex and fractious process that produced the familiar contours of Canadian sport today -- the hegemony of continental cartels like the NHL, the enormous ideological power of the media, the shadowed participation of women in sports, and the strong nationalism of the amateur Olympic sports bodies. Kidd focuses on four major Canadian organizations of the interwar period: the Amateur Athletic Union, the Women's Amateur Athletic Federation, the Workers' Sport Association, and the National Hockey League. Each of these organizations became focal points of debate and political activity, and they often struggled with each other - each had a radically different agenda: The AAU sought `the making of men' and the strengthening of English-Canadian nationalism; the WAAF promoted the health and well-being of sportswomen; the WSA was a vehicle for socialism; and the NHL was concerned with lucrative spectacles. These national organizations stimulated and steered many of the resources available for sport and contributed significantly to the expansion of opportunities. They enjoyed far more power than other Canadian cultural organizations of the period, and they attempted to manipulate both the direction and philosophy of Canadian athletics. Through their control of the rules and prestigious events and their countless interventions in the mass media, they shaped the dominant practices and coined the very language with which Canadians discussed what sports should mean. The success and outcome of each group, as well as their confrontations with one another were crucial in shaping modern Canadian sports. The Struggle for Canadian Sport adds to our understanding of the material and social conditions under which people created and elaborated sports and the contested ideological terrain on which sports were played and interpreted. Winner of the North American Society for Sports History (NASSH) 1997 book award

A must-read collection featuring the best in sports journalism J.A. Adande, ESPN personality and Director of Sports Journalism at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, has curated an essential anthology showcasing incredible feats and diverse perspectives across the world of sports. Selected from a wide range of newspapers, magazines, and digital publications during the previous year, these stories capture enduring moments while celebrating the craft of writing at its most sublime. This extraordinary collection reveals the fascinating stories behind the sports we love, the competitors who push their boundaries, and the cultures they are ultimately embedded in.