Hi Everyone —
Happy Labor Day! Is that a thing people say? I love September. Pennant races! College football! Pro football! Tennis at midnight! The weather starts to cool! And this year, for the third year in a row, I have book coming out in September — OK, admittedly it’s already out here in the states but WHY WE LOVE AMERICAN FOOTBALL comes out in the UK tomorrow!
I have so many questions about the cover. Like: Why is the field blue? Is this to honor Boise State? I do write about Boise State in the book, so maybe yes! But, probably no! Anyway, it’s so exciting to have my second book published in the UK.
Even more exciting, back here at home (as I’ve been teasing nonstop for months), I will be announcing my new book on September 10. Mike and I have already recorded a very special PosCast where he interviews me about it; I’m bursting to tell you all about it. Surprises galore! I can tell you now the book will be coming out May 19.
To celebrate the book announcement, I’m doing a couple of things:
(1) I’ll be counting down the 10 greatest sports books each day leading up to September 10. I’ll also be counting down 10 of my favorite fountain pens because, hey, why not?
(2) We’ve added some new PosCast merch in the JoeBlogs Store! And we’re now shipping internationally! Lots of fun stuff going on over there. And to celebrate, I’m offering 10% off everything in the JoeBlogs Store through September 10. Just enter PENNANT10 at checkout.
There are lots and lots and lots and lots of greatest ever sports books lists out there in the wild. And yet, here I am, putting together my own list of ten, one every day leading up to my own big book announcement. What could I possibly add?
Answer: I don’t know that I can add anything. But I do have a twist.
These are not necessarily my 10 favorite sports books … or even the 10 sports books I think are best. No. These are, based on a careful examination, the 10 most dog-eared and worn-down sports books in my collection. Some of the pages are torn. Some of the covers have been lost. Some have food stains. In other words, I’m not randomly choosing books. I’m picking the books that I have gone back to again and again … and you can see that love in the books themselves.
This list will likely surprise you. It’s surprised me. Some all-time classics are missing. But every book in here is absolutely wonderful.
And, as a bonus for no one except myself, I am also including one of my favorite fountain pens in the photo of each book. I’ll write up something about each pen. I won’t blame you if you skip it.
No. 10: Levels of the Game
Author: John McPhee
Signs of wear: Bent corner on the cover. Some kind of food stain (chocolate?) on page 94.
Just beat out: Open, by Andre Agassi
Agassi’s Open is one of the best sports autobiographies ever written — thanks in large part to the brilliant J.R. Moehringer, who I imagine did much of the writing. David Foster Wallace’s collection of tennis essays, String Music, contains my favorite ever tennis essays, and it’s NOT Federer as Religious Experience, though I did love that at the time it was written.* No, my favorite is How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart where DFW tried to figure out why he was so haunted by Austin’s autobiography Beyond Center Court.
*Alas, several people have gone back to look at the Fed highlights that DFW so lovingly recreated … and found it difficult to reconcile the video with the description. It’s forgivable, I suppose, because Federer as Religious Experience is a love story and this was how DFW saw those moments. Still, it’s disappointing for those of us who desperately try (and often fail) to try and describe moments precisely as they happened.
Precision is at the very heart of John McPhee’s writing in general … and it’s at the heart of Levels of the Game, his gripping 150-page account of a single tennis match between Arthur Ashe and Clark Graebner at Forest Hills in 1968. When I re-read these top ten sports books, I don’t just read them for pleasure — though all of them are fun to read — I also read them to understand the magic of the words.
Here’s how McPhee opens Levels:
Arthur Ashe, his feet apart, his knees slightly bent, lifts a tennis ball in the air. The toss is high and forward. If the ball were allowed to drop, it would, in Ashe’s words, “make a parabola and drop to the grass three feet in front of the baseline.” He has practiced tossing a tennis ball just so thousands of times. But he is going to hit this one.
So simple. So exact. So concise. As a young writer, the temptation is to try to write your way to the sky, to flood the page with emotion, and music and beauty. I picked up my copy of Levels when I was in my young 20s at a used bookstore. I didn’t know anything about John McPhee — I was drawn in by the green tennis court and the fact that it was about Arthur Ashe. In my memory, I read it all in one sitting.
Here’s the impact it had on me: Before I started, I wanted to be one kind of writer.
After I finished, I wanted to be a whole different kind of writer.
I pick it up a couple of times every year to remind myself of that feeling.
By the way, page 94, the food stain appears in the middle of this amazing section about Graebner’s temper and general rage on the court.
Apparently he believes he can accurately assign blame outside himself for almost ever shot he misses, every point he loses. He glowers at his wife. He mutters at other people in the crowd. Airplanes drive him crazy. Bad bounces are personal affronts. He glares at linesmen. He carps at linesmen. He intimidates ball boys. He throws his racquet from time to time, and now and then he takes hold of the fence around a court and shakes it violently, his lips curling. He seems to be caged.
I’ve read this section so many times. It’s utterly perfect. Every word in there, every one, you probably knew by the time you were in the sixth grade, if not earlier. And yet, the way McPhee arranges them, they turn into poetry.
I want you to think about this remarkable section when watching the U.S. Open this year. It’s more than half a century after John McPhee wrote those words. No matter who is playing, you will find that the words ring as true as they did then.
The Fountain Pen: The Pineider Avatatar (in military green)
There’s a store in Greenville, South Carolina called Truphae, and I have a special subscription with them where every three months they send me something called ‘The Inkredible Box,” which is a box filled with surprises, including a surprise fountain pen. The box, actually has been hit and miss, but the Pineider Avatar was an Aaron Judge home run. It is so cool, the band featured the skyline of Florence, the magnetic cap is so satisfying, and it writes like a dream. It’s one of my absolute favorites. I’m matching it up with Levels of the Game because they both look so simple and yet they both contain multitudes.
