2011: My Year in Books

Here's a look at the books I read in 2011. It's my lowest total in years, but the Palin Diaries and the Fukuyama each seemed like they were 1,000+ pages long. Great books, but tough to lug around on subways and from deck chair to deck chair at the cottage...

As usual, I've divide the list into three categories - my favourite reads, the books I'm glad I read and the ones that weren't for me. The lists are sorted in my best attempt at alphabetization.

Favourites

And She Stood There Laughing, Stephen Foster

I may not know much about English football, but man, do I know what it is to cheer for a mediocre team.

This wonderful book covers a season when Stoke City Football Club was promoted to Division One. Like the Leafs, Stoke has suffered from long stretches of incompetence, misery, and failure all the while enjoying incredible fan support. One of the original football teams in the UK, they haven't won a single title since the League Cup in 1972. Unlike the Leafs, that failure has resulted in relegation to lower and lower divisions of football and some very surreal moves by owners and managers. The club's incompetence has to be read to be believed and the suffering it engenders in the author is the sort many a fan can sympathize with.

"I vividly recall, in the early 90s (when we had been dreadful, and more often pitiful, for over a decade) reading Fever Pitch, Nick Hornby's chronicle of the life and sorry times of an Arsenal fan. My knee jerk response to his book was, You lucky, lucky bastard. Wrapped in my own misery, I had never considered what people who follow genuinely successful teams might be like...I had to laugh as Hornby bemoaned his lot as the seasons turned bad and the Gunners just missed out on the Championship or only came runners up in the FA Cup Final one more time...for us, a bad season involves changing managers three times, losing to Port Vale both home and away, selling our top scorer to a team worse than ourselves, getting knocked out of the FA Cup before Bonfire Night, being rolled 6-0 by Swindon Town, and finishing up relegated to Second (old Third) Division. And to add to it, the bad season is the usual season...the bad season is the state of affairs that now comes to categorize and define my use of the word normal."

Foster wrote a follow-up book about Stoke's first season in the Premiership, which I have on order and cannot wait to read. I was hoping for more titles from this charming author, but was saddened to learn he passed away in June, 2011. He was only 48.

"There is no success without failure. This is why supporters of other teams hate Man United and their 'fans'. It is not that we envy their success,it is that we despise them their ignorance of real life and its burdens."

You can find it here.


Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, Peter Biskind

Last year I read Pictures at a Revolution, which looked at the five films nominated for the Best Picture Oscar in 1968. This book is an incredible companion piece, picking up where that one left off and providing a compelling look behind the scenes of Hollywood in the 1970s. Great profiles of Scorcese, Spielberg, Coppola, Lucas, Beatty and many others. If you like movies, movie making, Hollywood gossip and/or great writing, this is the book for you.

You can find it here.

Evel, Leigh Montville

This, my friends, is a fantastic piece of writing. Like its subject, Montville’s prose is kinetic, exciting, and on occasion, awe inspiring. Evel Kneivel was not a nice man and this bio does a wonderful job of capturing the good and bad of Kneivel. It also offers a fascinating look at the nascent pop culture and the media of the 1960s and 70s. A great read, I highly recommend it.

You can find it here.

The Haves and the Have Nots: A Brief and Idiosyncratic History of Global Inequality, Branko Milanovic

This is a very cool look at inequality. Milanovic, a researcher with the World Bank, assembles a series of essays that have little in common other than touching on the notions of inequality. From immigration policy to the net worth of Mr. Darcy to the cost of Anna Karenina falling in love and the payroll disparity of the teams in the English Premier League, these essays provide an illuminating look into the causes and impacts of inequality. Enjoyable and illuminating.

You can find it here.

Michael Palin, Diaries volumes I & II (1969-79, The Python Years; 1980-88 The Movie Years)

I used to keep a diary, but I have a feeling I wrote pretty much the same entry day after day. That’s not the case here, where Palin records the big and small events of his fascinating life. I thought the big draw would be seeing the creative process behind the making of Monty Python, but the big takeaways for me were:

1. How much culture Palin ingests. He is always reading a book, at a play, watching a movie, seeing a band, and on and on. A cultural life to envy.
2. Palin’s wonderful combination of sharp insight yet kindness as a critic. He has so many informed opinions on politics, art, writing, etc. but he expresses them wonderfully and without malice (a lesson I should learn).
3. The importance of his family. In volume I, his father’s health deteriorates, in Vol. II his sister struggles with mental illness. I often found these sections more riveting than the inside look at film making and celebrity

At about 2,000 pages, there’ s a lot of wonderful stuff captured here and, for me, it was very rewarding reading.

You can find the Palin Diaries here.


The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

You could buy this one for the pictures alone, but it’s the inside baseball that makes it such a great read. From the bad original script to the mis-adventures of filming Hoth in Finland Norway it’s amazing that this film was made at all. Lots of great insight into Carrie Fisher’s lifestyle, Harrison Ford’s cantankerous nature, Lucas’ financial troubles, an ever evolving script that was based primarily on paintings (I’m not making this up) and a few scenes that were assembled on set by the actors and directors. (Oh, and an attack on the Hoth Base by Wompas that they couldn’t pull off and had to cut from the film). If you’re a fan of Star Wars this book is worth tracking down.

You can find it here.

The Master Switch, Tim Wu

An engaging look at how our major communication systems were created, how they grew and how a few companies have come to control them. Wu looks at radio, movies and the telephone to see what lessons we can learn and what the future might hold for the world of the Internet. It’s amazing how much all of these sectors have in common and it’s staggering how many technological advances were buried due to greed and/or stupidity. The story of the man who invented FM radio is crushing.

You can find it here.

The Origins of Political Order, Francis Fukuyama

This is one dense tome of a book. Fukuyama goes back to the dawn of man in an effort to explain and understand political systems and political order. The big questions he tries to address are how do we create stable, representative societies and how do we sustain them? Despite giving me horrible flashbacks to my political philosophy courses in undergrad (Fukuyama’s takedown of Rosseau is fantastic) I loved the polymath approach to these basic questions and the complex answers that followed.

You can find it here.

Glad I Read Them


And So it Goes...Kurt Vonnegut: A Life - Charles Shields

Still in the midst of reading this one. It's very well researched and well written. Sometimes I wish I wouldn't read bios about artists I enjoy, Vonnegut is not the nicest guy or the best father. Always a bit of a disappointment when people who's work you admire turn out to be less than perfect, but as I said to someone complaining about Hitchens, if we expected authors to pass some sort of character test we'd all be left with nothing but colouring books to read.


The Battle for Gotham: New York in the Shadow of Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs, Roberta Brandes Gratz

Maybe I’ve just read too many versions of this story, but this account didn’t add much to the account of the urban planning battles of New York. Brandes Gratz has had some terrific articles in the Atlantic and at Planetizen, but this account of an oft-told tale just didn’t have the oomph I was hoping for.


Bill Peet an Autobiography, Bill Peet

When I was a kid, I loved the books of Bill Peet. My mum still has my boyhood copy of Chester the Worldly Pig and a few times a year I read it to my kids. About a year ago, I was watching 101 Dalmatians and I saw Bill Peet’s name in the credits. I wondered if it was the same guy and, in doing a quick search, found out he had written an autobiography. Well, in the spirit of Bill Peet, he didn’t just write a simple biography, he illustrated it too. Peet led a fascinating life, a depression era kid who found his way into the Disney factory system and managed to climb up and out to have a lead hand in Cinderella, 101 Dalmatians, and very successful career as children’s book author.


Call for the Dead, John Le Carré

I have no idea why I’ve waited so long to finally read Le Carré. I’ve watched the film adaptations, given his books as gifts, and been surrounded by people who are all big fans, yet I’ve never cracked one open. I’m glad I did. This is a well told, concise little book that has just enough going on below the surface to keep it humming. I’m looking forward to reading more Le Carré titles in 2012.


Cartographies of Time, Anthony Grafton

A pretty comprehensive collection of graphic representations of timelines – the graphic visualization of time. One HUGE complaint I had with this graphically gorgeous book – the layout was awful. The text almost always referred to images on previous or upcoming pages, causing the reader to constantly be out of sync with what they’re looking at. It’s a shame because this is one gorgeous book on a very cool topic.


Chop Suey: A Cultural History of Chinese Food in the United States, Andrew Coe

A bit uneven, but a fun read. The best parts were the early history of Western arrivals in China and the detailed re-telling of Nixon’s trip to China, complete with televised meals and advance men making the Whitehouse staff practice eating with chop sticks.


The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film

What a great concept for a book. Get two acclaimed professionals to sit down to talk, debate and discuss their work and print up the transcripts. I preferred the Murch content to that of Michael Ondaatje, but it’s a great read.


Everything is Obvious – Once you Know the Answer, Dunan Watts

A very fun read that takes on “common sense” and explores why using past outcomes often leads to poor predictions about the future.


Fire Season, Philip Connors

Some nice writing by a member of the US Park Service who spends his Spring, Summer and Fall perched in a fire lookout high up in the hills of New Mexico. If you like Norman Mclean you might dig this.


Fooling Some of the People All of the Time,

An inside look at the equity markets, specifically how firms make money shorting companies. In this particular tale, we follow two companies – the firm that’s being shorted and the firm that’s doing the shorting and their struggles as they both try to out maneuver one-another. As someone who works outside of the regulatory and financial sectors, it’s amazing to me how much leeway companies have in reporting their financial statements. As someone who works in communications, I was constantly fascinated by the relativistic approach to the “truth.” It’s a fun read on a rather esoteric subject.


Future Babble, Dan Gardner

My big take away from this: don’t try to predict the future and don’t believe those who do. Gardner looks at an exhaustive list of predictions from all sorts of experts across a myriad of fields and finds out the one thing they have in common is that when it comes to predicting the future, they’re almost always wrong. Why is it that experts rarely outperform the proverbial dart throwing chimp? It turns out most challenges are far more complex systems, with many more variables, than we initially believe.


Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America, Matt Taibi

Taibi is at his best when he’s disassembling a cause or an icon, usually with extreme vigor. His polemical style isn’t for everyone, but when he’s on his game there are few writers with as much energy and insight. I liked Griftopia a great deal, it’s a fresh and interesting take on an oft-discussed over-analyzed topic – the financial meltdown of 2008. His reporting on municipal debt issues (I often link to Chicago selling off their parking metres) and his final chapter on Goldman Sachs are must reads.


The Jazz Tradition, Martin T. Williams

Williams presents a series of compelling essays about an interesting assortment of jazz players from the early days to the 1980s. I was surprised at a few of the names he picked and completely ignorant about a few others. The best part might be Williams’ unique voice. He combines a scholarly approach with a great use of the vernacular and the occasional sting of a poison pen. Williams has a very sharp wit and a very keen ear. He’s not a man I’d want to debate.


Lego: A Love Story, Jonathan Bender

A 30-something journalist re-discovers his boyhood love of Lego. Wish I’d thought of this book first, as the author gets to go behind the scenes at Lego headquarters in Denmark, to all sorts of Lego conventions, galleries and museums. The book offers a nice look at the toy, the company and the culture.


Liar’s autobiography, Volume IV – Graham Chapman

A bit too uneven to make the best of section, but a fantastic read nonetheless. Chapman led a fascinating life from his training as a physician, to his horrific troubles with alcohol, to coming out in the 1970s (John Cleese’s reaction is something else) to his pivotal role in Monty Python. All of this is very well told. His story of a trip to a Hong Kong massage parlor made me laugh out loud and has stayed with me ever since (it put a smile on my face just thinking about it).


Mistakes Were Made (but not by me), Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson

More great insights on decision making theory, cognitive dissonance, cognitive biases, rationalization, irrational behavior and the issues and challenges of perception. A fun read with plenty of great examples.


The Most Human Human, Brian Christian

I first read this as a great magazine article on participating in the annual Turing Test. The book length treatment has fascinating asides on language, communication theory, the psychology and physiology of arguments (don’t argue in a luxury car, the smooth, sealed compartment offers no distractions to end an argument and no means of escape). If you’re curious about language, thought and technology, this is a wonderful read.


Punching Out, Paul Clemens

About 15 or 20 years ago, I read a book called Rivethead that described life inside one of Detroit’s countless automobile plants. This year, I read Punching Out, which describes the life inside one of Detroit’s countless empty automobile plants as it’s being disassembled into parts to be sold off to working plants in South America or to local scrap yards. These two titles provide a pretty tidy summation, and symbolic book ends, on the fate of the manufacturing sector in North America. This book is a worthwhile read.


Seamanship, Adam Nicolson

I don’t know about you, but I often daydream of buying a sea worthy ship and just taking off. (Living about one kilometer from Lake Ontario and countless yacht clubs, I also think this has to be one of the best Zombie Apocolypse survival strategies, but I digress...) This book tracks Nicholson as he returns to an earlier passion of sailing. Nicholson enlists the help of a friend, buys a larger boat, "The Auk" and writes of his journeys and trips around the coast of the UK. A great little book in that some parts made me envy his lifestyle while others made me think you’d be mad to ever get in a small ship and head out to sea.

Scorecasting, L. Jon Wertheim and Tobias J. Moskowitz

Given my love of sports writing, statistics and authors that do both well, this seemed like a book for me. I wanted to like this book more than I did, but it’s a bit hit and miss. The chapter on MLB umps, strike zones and the influence of the count was tremendous. The chapter on officiating was a big disappointment.


Stroll, Shawn Micallef

What a great book. Each chapter offers a stroll through a different part of Toronto with insights into the history, architecture and evolution of the neighbourhood. It also captures what I like best about Toronto – that it’s a walkable city made up of very different neighbourhoods and dozens of cultures. It’s also great to find a book about Toronto that goes into the neighbourhoods that we often just drive past or consider part of the concrete sprawl surrounding the ‘cool parts’ of town.

Sum: Forty Tales of the Afterlife, David Eagleman

I read a very cool article about Eagleman and his research into time. In essence, why is it when bad things happen, time seems to stretch out and take forever to pass? That article, which can be read here (and it’s really worth a read) led me to this slim book – forty short stories on what the afterlife might be like. Given his research area, one would have to think this is a bit of a nod to Einstein’s Dreams, but that’s certainly not a complaint. This Forty stories all offer an off-beat, yet often fascinating, take on what might await us in the hereafter – whether it’s a bureaucratic waiting room, a disengaged supreme being, or a shot at reincarnation where you want to make sure you don’t move down the evolutionary food chain. Quite enjoyed this.


Ted Williams: The Biography of an American Hero, Leigh Montville

A pretty solid bio. I’m not a fan of the BoSox or of Ted Williams, but Montville offers up a pretty compelling take on Williams’ life. Those who pine for the golden age of sports media should read this book to get a withering perspective on the sportswriters of the day.


Tender, Volume II – Nigel Slater

Slater is one of my favourite food writers. I love his columns in the Guardian and the Observer food monthly is always a great read. In Tender, we follow Slater’s big plans for converting the back lot of his London townhome into a vegetable patch and the recipes that follow. Great reading, great pictures and the recipes are solid too.


A World Lit Only by Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance, William Manchester

My total knowledge of medieval times is that it's likely a good place for young kids to have a birthday or for 20 somethings to go on an ironic bender. Ok, I kid. But I didn't know much about this time period until a client loaned me this book. It's a pretty good read about an absolutely unbelievable time period. Mass be-headings, tortures, very relaxed social and sexual mores...not quite what I was expecting to read about (and not quite sure what it says about the fine person who loaned it to me).


What if? Volume 1

I wrote a magazine article earlier this year where I aped the style of the great Marvel comics What if? series. Then I went out and picked up volume 1 to read with my son. The series isn’t as good as I remember it (Hulk vs. Wolverine was one of the most debated topics during my tween years) and it’s difficult to read out loud to a kid, but it’s a pretty cool premise and a few of the stories held up.


Zombies Spaceship Wasteland, Patton Oswalt

Highly uneven. Some essays in here are fantastic, others are not so great. Would have liked to see more content like his fantastic essay in Wired Magazine.


Zone One, Colson Whitehead

One of the reasons I so rarely read fiction is the challenge of finding a novel with an authentic voice. So often, mid-paragraph, characters think, say or feel things that are wholly outside of their experience, vocabulary and / or character. Now, I know these characters don’t really exist, that they are all the creation of the author, but the best authors (and the best stories) make us forget about this duality. The best authors (and the best stories) have an authenticity of voice. Maybe I’m uptight, maybe I expect too much, but each time the author’s voice steps too far into the story I want to walk away from what I’m reading.

This is the central dilemma of Zone One. Colson Whitehead tells a great zombie story, unfortunately his literary voice all too often gets in the way. By the mid-way point of the novel I’d find myself skimming his long paragraphs of literary prose. Sure it’s well written, beautiful language, but it often seemed to be there because the author liked it - a big glowing beacon proclaiming “LITERATURE ALERT!”

I mean, when the central character is a nondescript, suburban kid who’s made every effort in life to be that C+, indescribably middle of the road invisible person, maybe he shouldn’t use the word lachrymose. Maybe the text shouldn’t go on about languages and codes like a semiotics student rhapsodizing Pynchon.

I did finish the book and I did love the central story, but I didn’t love the literary aspirations and I didn’t need them either.

(**SPOILER ALERT** **SPOILER ALERT** I want Mythbusters to do an experiment to see if a mash of human bodies really could bring down a large perimeter security fence. I have my doubts. Also, how is it the survivors figured out serious supply chain issues and could manufacture high tech armored clothing, not to mention "food tubes", but they couldn’t find out the source of, nor eliminate, an additional wave of zombies? **SPOILER ALERT** **SPOILER ALERT**)


Books That Weren't For Me

Guns, Germs and Steel
I'm surprised humour wasn't the fifth word in the title. I got the feeling the slightest hint of it would kill the author.

Six memos for the next millennium, Italo Calvino
Meh. I don't know why I ever try to read Calvino. Not my cup.

Triumph of the City, Edward Glaeser
Pumped with factoids but lacking narrative structure/focus.

Winter, Adam Gopnik
Lots of good stuff here, unfortunately it's so wordy that large portions of it read as though Gopnik is leading a parliamentary filibuster rather than writing a book.

Five Thoughts on the Sale of the Leafs

The Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan (OTPP) selling their 80% stake of MLSE is certainly interesting, but it doesn’t strike me as much of a game changer in terms of on-ice product. That said, there are a few parts of this sale that I’m eager to find out about.

1. Larry Tanenbaum

Tanenbaum increases his ownership stake to 25% and, as I understand it, remains Chairman of the MSLE Board. I don’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing. Certainly, he’s a visible part of the community and a face for an often faceless organization. He also really wants this team to win and is passionate about sports. The downside to Tanenbaum’s increasing ownership is that he likes to meddle. Many people have pinned bad contract decisions on Tanenbaum (exhibit A:Tie Domi's last deal). I'm not saying his increased stake means increased meddling, but the impact of Tanenbaum on the culture of the organization is something to keep an eye on.

2. The myth of ownership structure = success

Single owners can be successful like Mike Ilitch in Detroit, they can be ruinous like the Fords of the Detroit Lions and Donald Sterling with the Clippers, or they can be highly comedic like Eugene Melnyk.

More complex ownership structures can be fantastic, Green Bay Packers come to mind; or they can be incompetent MLSE, Calgary Flames LP, and so on…

When it comes to ownership,there is no magic bullet or single way to success. Teams need competence, if not excellence, from all aspects of their organization. Committed owners with deep pockets, GMs with smarts, coaches who excel, and on-ice talent that’s skilled and deep. Take any one of those elements away and the odds of finding success become much longer.

This deal confirms that the Leafs will still have deep pocketed owners. What remains to be seen is if the new owners have a strong commitment to winning and whether they stay out of hockey operations.


3. Richard Peddie

Peddie, the man who gave Toronto John Ferguson Junior and Rob Babcock, was set to resign later this month. Peddie is like King Midas when it comes to making money and King Richard II when it comes to achieving any other sort of success.

I’m hopeful (hey, I’m a Leafs fan) that the incoming President is as skilled at producing on-ice results as Peddie was at wringing every last dollar out of the fans.

Whomever is hired as the new President of MLSE will be the first “tell” of the new ownership regime.

4. The Composition of the new board / Blame the fans

I’d like to think that Leaf fans take a lot of heat due to the lack of a visible, accountable owner. A faceless board means there’s nowhere else to channel the blame.

Rogers and Bell will likely each appoint two members to the MLSE board in 2012. I can’t wait to see who gets the appointments – will they be high profile, well-known people with ties to the companies or will it be more of the OTPPs low profile near invisible membership? More importantly, will a high profile posting slow down the "blame the fans" meme?

5. Does this deal mean the end of HNiC on CBC?

CBC’s NHL rights expire at the end of the 2013-14 season. CBC’s past-president said the network would likely be unable to retain the rights as the expected costs would be stratospheric.

With TSN and Sportsnet’s parent companies now owning 75% of MLSE, I have to conclude they’ll soon own all the Leafs’ broadcast rights.

Part of me is saddened that Saturday night hockey on CBC may be no more. It’s a Canadian institution and their production values are second to none. That said, the program has stagnated for years, the on-air “talent” is an embarrassment, and more often than not I watch the games on mute so I don’t have to hear Jim Hughson’s affectations and Glen Healy’s horrific combination of smug, snark and stupid.

If one of the outcomes of this deal is never hearing Glen Healy again, I’m fully 100% on board with the death of CBC's HNiC, a program the CBC actually killed years ago.

A Boy's First Leafs Game

As much as it pains me to say, my son is not much of a hockey guy.

He tried summer ball hockey, but hated the equipment and we pulled him out after his second season. He loves to skate, but doesn't want anything to do with pucks and sticks out on the ice.

He enjoys the occasional game of mini-sticks and sometimes he'll take shots out in the driveway, but he won't watch hockey on TV and he's not too happy about it when I do.

He loves to play soccer (and he'll happily cheer for Stoke when we watch streamed games on my computer) and he loves to ride his bike. He's all over gymnastics and swimming and says he wants a skateboard for Christmas.

But hockey? It's just not happening.

That's why I was so pleasantly surprised when I asked him if he wanted to go to a Leafs game with me tonight and he said yes.

Before the game, my son put on his Leafs sweater (something he never wears) and the two of us set off for what has to be a major milestone in any Torontonian's father-son relationship - a first Leafs game.

Rather than blather on about my boyhood memories, MLG, my dad, Keon, Palmateer and Kessel, I thought I'd let my son write up (or rather dictate) his thoughts on attending his first Leafs game...so here it is, straight from the 6 year old boy's mouth.

• When you asked me to go to the hockey game, I thought you were playing. I thought I'd get to watch you play. It's ok that you didn't play.
  
  
• I was really excited when we were walking up to the ACC. They had big lights like at the beginning of movies [ed note: he means the klieg lights of the 20th Century Fox logo] but I thought the rink would be outside.
  
  
• Everyone cheered for all the guys. One of them was from Whitby. My Papa Jim is from Whitby.
  
  
• I didn't like it when the players fought. I cheered, but then I thought they might get hurt. You can't fight at school. Not even in the yard.
  
  
• After the Leafs scored, I got to watch it again on the big TV.
  
  
• During the first break, I really liked the spinning stars that were on the ice.
  
  
• I got to have a second hot chocolate during the first break.
  
  
• In the second break, the game wasn't so good. The Leafs had one and the other team had two.
  
  
• It would be better if the rink was outside.
  
  
• They put people in inner tubes and shot them down the ice at bowling pins. How do the pins stay up on the ice?
  
  
• Why do people leave so early? Before the game is over?
  
  
• It shouldn't count if your team scores into your own net.
  
  
• I booed the white team at the end.
  
  
• My dad kept asking me what the best part of the game was. I told him there was no best part just a worst part, the Leafs losing.
  
  
• After the game we went for a falafel and a bubbly orange drink.

I declare thumb war

Roy MacGregor filed nearly 1,000 words in the Globe and Mail on the sad state of story telling in sports ("The Thumbing Down of Sportswriting"). I want to ignore it, but no matter how hard I try, I just can't.

I loved MacGregor's book The Last Season. He was very nice to me the one time I met him. I've heard great things about him from friends and colleagues, but this story, this 1,000 words of meandering, hand-wringing, pap. I couldn't resist...

It is the classic skit of sports: Abbott and Costello’s Who’s on First?

Today, however, sports is almost entirely about “Who’s first?” and while being first with information obviously matters in the business of sports journalism, the obsession with being first to shout out even the most arcane and meaningless “news” has so ballooned beyond reason that … well, it isn’t funny at all.

There may indeed be an obsession to be first, but it’s a meaningless pursuit and it's meaningless to rail against.

Never before has a scoop been less important.

Never before has source mattered less.

As Chuck Klosterman noted, "if something legitimately interesting happens…it’s immediately going to be linked to on 200 other sites…If something on The Big Lead gets linked to Deadspin, nobody who finds it on Deadspin gives a shit how it got here or where it came from originally. Following the link is no different (and no less efficient) than reading the original content in its original setting. The experience is identical…Networking is far more essential than writing or reporting…I will eventually get all that information without even trying. It aggregates itself."

Sports journalism – the well from which all great sports books have been drawn – has taken its eye off the ball.

I’m sorry, but did MacGregor say all sports books have been drawn from the well of journalism?

I'd submit that two of the best sports books ever written are The Game and Ball Four. Neither one was touched by a journalist. Salvage King Ya makes my top five of sports books and author Mark Anthony Jarman isn’t a sports journalist either.

I don’t mean to get all pedantic on this, but if MacGregor wants to build his case about writing, the words he picks have to matter…

The pendulum that swings between breaking news on minutiae – length of suspensions, minor trades, contract breakdowns, retirement of marginal players – and “storytelling” on the far side has been stuck for some time now on the picayune.

A pendulum is the wrong analogy here. It’s not a pendulum it’s a continuum. It’s not one or another, it’s a matter of degree.

All of the breaking news can be part of a larger narrative, an element of great storytelling. And great storytelling can exist despite a narrow band of editors, reporters or fans being stuck on the minutiae of sports.

Somebody used to read all that agate in the sports pages right?

Please understand, both sides are important to good sports coverage. Both sides feed off each other and complement each other, one doing the telling, the other the expanding and explaining, one the announcing, the other the introducing. In today’s sports journalism, however, the announcing has become so paramount that readers and viewers rarely get anything more of players they increasingly know less and less of.

I’m with MacGregor right up until the notion that “announcing has become so paramount.”

Readers have never had more choice. Never.

There is an incredible amount of information out there for sports fans.

When it comes to coverage, readers can get as deep as they like or stay as shallow as they want.

Into advanced stats and sabrmetrics? There are blogs, websites, and writers out there for you.

Like long form pieces? The internet doesn’t have word limits or the constraints of column inches.

Your favourite player is European? There are fans out there translating and posting the latest interviews, no matter the original language in which it was conducted.

Want just the facts, you can get those too.

This is a golden age for sports fans and we should be celebrating it.

This is not the raging of a Luddite contrarian. In 1983, I was The Toronto Star’s guinea pig for the Tandy TRS-80 (“Trash 80”) computer that transformed sports filing and had no small part to do in killing off afternoon newspapers. I love what the Internet makes possible, admire those who use social media effectively and even appreciate the power of Twitter.

Me too.

What this is, hopefully, is a cautionary flag being raised by someone who sees the sports world marching into a journalism trap where Gay Talese’s monumental study of Joe DiMaggio, the Esquire magazine feature The Silent Season of a Hero, would have to be delivered in 140 characters or less.

Whoa. Stop right there.

No.

There is so much wrong with that sentence I don’t know where to start.

Twitter has not replaced the long form story. It never will. Twitter is just another channel to promote your writing. To exchange quick ideas and share links.

Journalists continue to publish incredible long form work while (get ready for it) being on twitter.

Don’t believe me? Here are the 2009 Canadian National Magazine Award Winners and their twitter accounts.

Gold – Carol Shaben
Silver – Chris Nutall-Smith

Off the top of my head, here are five other magazine award winners working in long form who have twitter accounts (and manage to produce pieces longer than 140 characters):

Chris Jones
Michael Kinsley
James Fallows
Tom Chiarella

Scott Raab

Somehow these great storytellers are able to write compelling, award winning, long form pieces that manage to break free from a 140 character limit.

In fact, if long form journalism is your thing, there’s a twitter account that does nothing but promote it: Longreads (if you're on twitter, follow them).

What it means for the future of sports books – think of Roger Kahn, George Plimpton, Ken Dryden, Roger Angell, Earl McRae, A.J. Liebling et al. – is even more disturbing.

It is called, derogatorily, “BlackBerry Journalism.” Television, ironically, is the worst offender, with the most visual of tools reducing so much of sports journalism to talking heads reading off rumours or various crumbs of minutiae handed off to them by those in a position to control such information. Having a number of excellent “hockey insiders” is critical to good hockey reporting in this country – think of TSN’s Bob McKenzie and a small handful of others – but when every new hire is presented as a “hockey insider,” you dangerously approach a situation where when the sports establishment – in this case, the National Hockey League and the National Hockey League Players Association – controls the information, they also control the message.

Let’s start with the problematic list.

George Plimpton was a great writer. But he wasn’t a newspaper man. He didn’t cover a beat like MacGregor. He pursued larger, literary pieces.

Could twitter, blogs, social media have had an impact on Plimpton? Sure.

Would it have eliminated, constrained or been detrimental to his larger body of work? I doubt it.

Plimpton was known for, among other things, playing alongside professional athletes and writing about it. Looking back at Plimpton's incredible body of work, were he working today I would guess that he'd be just as accomplished AND a youtube sensation. Sid Finch would have gone viral on twitter in 45 seconds or less. The Paris Review would likely have launched, like Grantland, in a digital only form.

Ken Dryden is one verbose dude. Nobody’s going to put a limit on that guy.

Earl McRae may be beloved by other journalists, but putting him alongside Plimpton, Liebling and Angell is a HUGE stretch. HUGE.

As for TV, I agree with MacGregor that it is the worst medium for trying to exchange meaningful information, but I’d also wager this has been the case for at least 30 years.

As for the NHL and the NHLPA controlling the message, I don’t see it.

Thanks to centre ice and other digital packages, fans can watch the games for themselves - and grey market streams will circumvent the NHL’s bizarre geographic blackout rules. PVRs give fans the power of slow motion remote control on every single play in the game whenever they want it. The ubiquity of Youtube makes those replays accessible to fans around the world.

And who wants to hear from the NHL or the NHLPA anyways? When was the last time they made a meaningful, insightful or sincere statement?

What the national game needs is more “hockey outsiders” not beholden to the minutiae dispensers. And what all sports needs is more old-fashioned storytelling.

MacGregor and I are in full agreement on this thought, but where we differ is on the execution.

I'd argue that sportsfans have never had more or better access to outsiders who are telling great stories. That there's never been a time when more fans could get more information from such great writers with such ease and at so little cost. Often the best way to find this great content is through Twitter.

Where MacGregor and I also differ - I don’t think there’s a lack of old-fashioned story telling, I think there’s a lack of insightful storytelling.

Tell us about the players, please.

No. Don’t tell me about the players. I don’t care about the players. I don’t need to know that the goon has a heart of gold or the agitator is the baby of the family.

Tell us how the game is being played.

No. Don’t do this either.

I watch all 82 games. I can listen on the radio, stream it on my computer, catch the highlights on a 24 hour non-stop news cycle. If there’s any information out there that’s of lesser value than telling fans how the game is being played, I’m not aware of it.

Wait. I thought of one: hypothetical line combinations. These have lesser value.

We actually don’t care all that much about minor trades or whether the suspension is four games or six, or how the contract has an average cap hit of $X-million a year. A couple of good insiders can handle that role; it doesn’t take an entire network to chase.

Sure. But as a fan I want to know this stuff.

Today’s sports reporters are not to blame. The various “platforms” they work for treat them like hamsters stuck in an endless wheel, spinning nowhere. They must set up games, tweet from morning skates, transcribe tape, blog from the rink, upload video that no one watches, and file, file, file…

If these are the same sports reporters who file about teams not giving them adequate quotes or putting the best players into the scrums - they are to blame.

If these are the same sports writers that file stories about their travel itineraries - they are to blame.

If these are the same sports writers who will ascend the ranks and become sports editors demanding this type of content - they will be to blame.

The obsession with “content” has meant next to no time for substance. In far too many cases, tweeting and blogging have become a form of public masturbation, where size matters – as in number of hits or followers one can attract. Hits, newspapers will one day realize, are not circulation.

I dunno about this. Plenty of guys can do content and substance. James Mirtle sure does. Jonas Siegel has stepped it up since moving to 1050. Joe Posnaski is fantastic. Bruce Arthur is great. Rob Neyer is informative on twitter and files a pretty mean column. And so on…

In sports, however, storytelling has always mattered, greatly. It is not dead, just rather unwell these days. We still have excellent books appearing this fall by fine story-weavers (Gare Joyce, Al Strachan and Steve Simmons to mention three);

Whoa. What is it with MacGregor and these lists?

Gare Joyce does not deserve this company. Gare Joyce can write. I don’t know that I’ve enjoyed anything Strachan has ever written or said. Half the time I don’t know what Simmons is on about and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t either. If MacGregor is holding up Strachan and Simmons as what's missing in sports journalism, let's just stop right here.

we have a new publication, Sportsnet Magazine, that holds promise; and there are, importantly, a handful of television essayists who do much-appreciated work. Unfortunately, storytelling costs a lot more money than yet another panel discussion.

Wait. Is this is about the business model of modern media? Talk about backing into a lede.

It can't be though, there's so much great content out there for anyone willing to look. Great storytelling has never been cheaper, more accessible or less constrained.

I have spent the past few weeks rereading old sports classics such as Paul Gallico’s Farewell to Sport and Leonard Koppett’s The Rise and Fall of the Press Box. It wouldn’t be a bad idea if Canadian sports editors and TV producers had a look back themselves.

First off, Paul Gallico can write. That dude is a must read. Seriously, order some of his books from your library. Track his essays and interviews down on the net. It's good stuff.

That said, Gallico only became an author after his newspaper sportswriting gig came to an end. He retired from sportswriting in 1936 to dedicate his life full-time to writing larger pieces. (Like Talese, Angell, Plimpton, later-stages Liebling, Gallico did his best work when he wasn’t working on a beat or for a daily paper.)

Or maybe that's the point of all this? In order to get great storytelling in sports, sports writers are going to have to leave their day jobs and concentrate full time on writing.

To be frank, given what greets me when I open the paper or turn on the TV, I could get behind most of them quitting. I'd also set the over-under on the production of great long form essays resulting from such a sea change at 4.5.

Koppett, the brilliant New York Times and Oakland Tribune sportswriter who died shortly after his book appeared in 2003, was particularly prescient, seeing that the overload of media in dressing rooms was killing thoughtful exchange. He also believed that “excessive use of statistics, if not checked, may turn out to be a fatal malady.” It’s certainly getting close.

I’ve never been in a professional dressing room. I have no idea what is said between reporters and athletes, but I can probably count on two fingers the number of times an athlete has said something profound in a post-game scrum.

As for stats, I love them. I like transparency and the open exchange of information. If stats aren’t for you that’s totally cool. But a fatal malady? If anything is a fatal malady for narrative and sport it’s talking head professional athletes. It's the meaningless pre-game, mid-game, post game quote from the jocks who just want to give it their best shot and, the good Lord willing, it will all work out.

But Koppett also wrote, “The secret of good reporting is simply being around.” Hanging out, he said, is “how a writer learns to know what he needs, what and how to write about it, to evaluate relevance and fairness, and how to distinguish the important from the trivial.”

It’s a fine sentiment, sir, and we’d certainly be happy to try it if we didn’t have to tweet, blog, upload video, edit audio and continually check our BlackBerrys.

Gary Smith said the same thing (he's another must read for those who like long form sports writing).

But does anyone else see the irony in MacGregor burning 1,000 words bemoaning the lack of long form story telling instead of, you know, writing a 1,000 word good ol’ fashioned sports story?

No.

How about the fact that he tweeted about it?

Leafs, Cards, and enjoying the games

1. When I first started this blog, I often wrote entries pointing out errors, faulty thinking and other various shortcomings from the media who covered the Leafs. Four years later, these entries are far and few between. Not because the media has improved -1,000 monkeys at 1,000 typewriters could not keep up with the flow of crap generated by professionals sportswriters – rather, I no longer read the sports pages. Case in point: on Saturday morning I was at the barber’s and picked up The Star. Dave Feschuk had this to say about Clarke MacArthur:

Currently, with two points in six games, he’s on pace for a 27-point season, which would hardly justify more than tripling MacArthur’s 2010-11 salary of $1.1 million.

Dave Feschuk is paid to write about sports.

Dave Feschuk’s article was given prominent play on the front page of the most-read newspaper in Canada.

Dave Feschuk either doesn’t understand or doesn’t care about:
a. Small sample sizes
b. The average intelligence of the reader
c. His reputation
d. All of the above

2. Clarke MacArthur now has 6 points in 8 games, which by Feschuk's math, puts him on pace for a 62 point season. Funny how that works.

3. I’ve been a St. Louis Cardinals fan since I was about 9 years old. Had a very illuminating twitter exchange with Navin Vaswani prior to game seven of the World Series, in which he told me to enjoy the game. A simple enough comment, but something I hadn’t really thought about. I don’t know that I enjoyed many of the Cards’ playoff games. My mood has alternated between angst, horror and, when they won, post-game relief. But this was a great reminder – we are supposed to enjoy the games. It’s not often the teams we cheer for get a shot at winning it all. When they do, it’s a good to take a step back and try to enjoy the experience.

4. I didn’t really enjoy game 7 of the World Series. I tried. I thought of Navin and countless other Jays fans who haven’t had much to cheer about for a very long time. I did my best to step-back from the on-field action and just appreciate how far the Cards had come, but it was mostly an angst-filled night where I sighed a lot and hoped the Cards wouldn’t fall apart down the stretch.

5. The Cardinals winning the World Series was great. For some inexplicable reason, this was way better than in 2006. I think having access to Twitter and sharing the moment with so many other sports fans was a big part of making this year's win more memorable.

6. I own more Cards swag than I do Leafs gear and I cannot wait until the media thank me, as a fan, for the Cardinals success. If Leaf fans are to blame for MLSE’s failures, I can only presume Cardinal fans like me are to credit for that team’s success.

7. It was weird when the game was over and there was nowhere to go. No honking horns on the street, no people celebrating outside in T.O. A strange thing when the team you cheer for wins and their home base is 1,300 km away.

8. When Stoke lost in the FA Cup last year, the bar I was in was full of Manchester City fans. After injury time played out and the squad I was desperately cheering for lost, I quietly bought a round of beers for the tables around me, left them to celebrate and slipped out into the streets. Not a lot of Stoke fans in Kingston. I was the lone guy in red in the bar.

9. Back with the Leafs…how great was it to have Bob Cole call the Leafs – Pittsburgh game? He may have lost a gear (or two) but no matter how many names he gets wrong his voice is the sound of hockey to me.

10. The bonus to Bob Cole calling a Leaf game? No Jim Hughson.

11. If I was starting a new Leafs blog, I’d call it “To the line but not out”

12. Or, “Gustavsson would like that one back.”

13. The Leafs are still struggling on their special teams. On the PP, if you look at shots generated per 60 minutes of PP time, they’re 27th in the league. If they don’t start generating more shots and chances, their PP is only going to get worse. Anyone interested in why the PK is struggling should read this article at PPP on the Leafs strategy of “fronting” their D.

14. People keep asking me if I think the Leafs are for real. The short answer is no. They’ve played some pretty weak competition to date and there’s no way this is a 100+ point team. That's not to say I haven't enjoyed them putting up such a great record this early in the season, I just don't think we should expect this team to continue winning at this rate.

15. Of note, with the points the Leafs have put in the bank this early in the season, going .500 the rest of the way should be enough for 95 points – which would mean, dare I say it, playoffs.

Leafs: Where do NHLers come from part II

There's been a bit of gurgling lately over the fact that, for the first time ever, the Leafs don't have a player from the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) on their roster.

I don't see why this matters. John Gardner, president of the Greater Toronto Hockey League, isn't happy about it. He tells the Toronto Star he's bothered that the Leafs don't have great players from the GTA, such as Jeff Skinner, Tyler Seguin and John Tavares. Hey, me too Mr. Gardiner, but you might want to pick a few other names to lead with next time. Anyone who understands even the most basic fundamentals of professional sports franchises and draft rights shouldn't bemoan the fact that these kids play for other teams.

Matt Stajan and John Mitchell were the last GTA-born player on the Leafs.

I'll pause to let their loss to the organization sink in for a minute.

Mitchell is currently in the AHL and Stajan's biggest contribution to the organization was being part of a package traded for Dion Phaneuf.

If one does a smidge of research - say taking 10 minutes to look at the rosters of each NHL club - one will discover that the Leafs aren't alone in not having any local boys on their roster.

According to the rosters posted at NHL.com of the 30 teams in the NHL, only four - Buffalo, Montreal, Washington and Winnipeg - have a local kid playing for them (five if you count the Rangers Tim Erixon being from Port Chester).

The Leafs, just like their fellow Canadian teams Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver are without local representation - although somehow these facts didn't find there way into that article over the Star (that's a head scratcher).

When it comes to players, I don't care where they come from or where they end up. What matters is whether they contribute to the success of the Maple Leafs. With that perspective, I guess that's why I don't write filler over at the Toronto Star.

Where do NHLers come from - Toronto edition

Last night I caught a tweet by Toronto sports journalist Michael Grange (on twitter the eponymous @michaelgrange). He asked when was the last time the Leafs had a Toronto-born superstar on their roster.

To be honest, I thought it was a bit of a leading question and responded by asking when was the last time any NHL club had a Toronto-born star (then I wondered what the answer to that question is).

Hockey-reference (an amazing resource) has a database of NHL birthplaces. I pulled up the data for Ontario, dumped it into a spreadsheet and started to sort. I eliminated all the players who played before 1981 (thought 30 years was a nice round number for the data). That was the only exclusion I made.

I ended up with about 150 players in the last 30 years. Thanks to Grange and another twitter user @KeithTalent5000, I realized the data needed another go-round as the database separates out many of the constituent parts of Toronto – Willowdale, Mimico, Weston, North York, Scarborough, etc.

Factor in these constituent parts and the spreadsheet expands to 209 Toronto-born players in the NHL since 1981 (and I may have missed some others – I’m Toronto born and raised and I had to google Mimico to find out it’s part of the city).

Of those 209 Toronto-born NHLers:

• 132 managed a career of 40 games or more;
• 106 played more than 100 games; and
• Seven managed to score 0.80 ppg and of those only three scored at a point-per game clip over their career (Dale Hawerchuk, Adam Oates and Paul Coffey).

In looking at the spreadsheet, I don’t think the pertinent question here is who was the last Toronto-born star on the Leafs. I think the real question is, why isn’t the most populous city in the country producing more NHL caliber players? (Or, how does Toronto compare, on a per-capita basis with the other major centres in Canada?)

As for stars on the Leafs, I don’t claim to speak for most Leaf fans, but I don’t care if they hale from Moscow, Ontario or Moscow, Russia. I’ll take talent on this squad no matter where it comes from.


The spreadsheet is here.