Sports is best enjoyed live. I’m sorry to disappoint avid readers, but that’s just a fact.
For example, there is nothing better than to hear 6 000 Slovaks cheer and yell and play their drums and horns and whistles creating a noise that makes your ears pop, and the hair on your arms to stand up and salute – only to welcome their hockey team onto the ice. Because the noise they make when their team scores a goal can’t be called better. Just more.
The problem with live is that it’s live. Here now, gone … now.
But a good sports magazine can make those moments last, put the memorable moments into a bigger framework, and tell legends that last from generation to generation.
Unfortunately, those sports magazines are far and apart these days. Even the mighty Sports Illustrated has redesigned itself, and created a style that’s more mainstream, and more Web-like, with shorter texts.
(And yes, the swimsuit issue is another story. I don’t even claim to buy that one for the articles.)
But Sports Illustrated still has its moments. So does ESPN The Magazine. And those moments are when the writer somehow gets close to the subject, without disturbing. When they dig deep, and they truly connect with the people they portray, and they come back to tell the story. When sports becomes so much more than just a matter of running fast, jumping high, and kicking the ball between the posts.
That’s when even the people who thought they knew everything, learn something. When the reader laughs, and cries and is taken on a journey that he first doesn’t want to end, and when it does, his friends will never hear the end of it.
And when does that happen?
When the writer cares. Even when the writer is critical, he’s critical out of love. He kids because he cares.
I’ve read fishing stories in Sports Illustrated. And I don’t fish. Don’t even think it’s a sport.
That’s also the secret of a great sports magazine: No matter what the story is about, you won’t regret picking the magazine up, and reading it. In fact, you’ll want to just pick it up, and be surprised. Because it’s always good.
This column ran in the December 2008 issue of Papergram.