Grantland

[ursus arctos]

I haven't seen any evidence of this story making it over the pond, but the launch of Grantland, Bill Simmons' new sportswriting site backed by ESPN has been THE "inside baseball" story in that very insular community in North America for the last six months or so.

We've "done" Simmons on here before, and all agree that there are large portions of his "persona" that are completely detestable, but he has always been able to write, and (at least for me) proves that again with his opening piece.

This could be great, or it could be just another step down into his descent into market-driven self-parody and irrelevancy.

It will be interesting to watch either way.

[Reed John]

Grantland

"Detestable" is a bit strong. Unappealing or annoying, perhaps.

I generally like him. I like that his approach is to try to write about the experience of being a fan, not just bullshit about whether Dirk "needs this for his legacy" or any of the other 900 false issues that sports columnists talk about nor does he pretend to be a journalist when he's not.

[ursus arctos]

Grantland

OK, I see where you are coming from.

Personally, I find the whole Swingers/Kimmel/"Bro" culture stuff to be below contempt, but I understand that to be a minority view.

It would have been fairer to either delete "large" or dial back the detestable, as you suggest.

[Renart]

Grantland

This site has "tremendous upside potential."

I saw it referred to somewhere as "Simmons' Internet Tendency," but the idea of a McSweeny's-esque sports site is actually somewhat appealing to me. If it's just a vehicle for Simmons to write longer pieces and use bad words, it won't amount to much. If he actually gets interesting writers to write for him (and given the probable budget, I don't see why he shouldn't be able to), it could be very good.

I like the way the footnotes are put to the side, rather than the bottom, of the article. Not much else there yet to go on, though.

[Renart]

Grantland

Also, the choice of name is interesting. From what I know of it, Grantland Rice's writing was the opposite of Simmons's; it treated sports as serious, epic battles among the gods. Simmons's success has come in large part through abandoning (and often mocking) that approach and treating sports as part of the pop culture/entertainment industry, something more akin to a reality TV show than The Iliad.

[ursus arctos]

Grantland

But does it also demonstrate "athleticism"?

I tend to doubt it.

Eggers is of course a contributor, as are Klosterman, Gladwell, and a host of less boldface names with arguably more talent (and certainly more hunger).

Rice does have to a lot to do with the hagiographic school of sportswriting, but he also knew how to turn a phrase. Just because his most famouse lede is as purple as hell doesn't mean that it isn't beautiful, too:

Outlined against a blue-gray October sky the Four Horsemen rode again. In dramatic lore they are known as famine, pestilence, destruction and death. These are only aliases. Their real names are: Stuhldreher, Miller, Crowley and Layden. They formed the crest of the South Bend cyclone before which another fighting Army team was swept over the precipice at the Polo Grounds this afternoon as 55,000 spectators peered down upon the bewildering panorama spread out upon the green plain below.

[Renart]

Grantland

I don't mean to put down Rice. I just think it's interesting Simmons picked him as the site's namesake since their approaches are so different. Simmons's mockery of the heroic sportswriting style is directed at Rice's lazy imitators (and especially TV commentators who clumsily ape the style without even knowing what they're doing), not the man himself, who passed away in the fifties. (Of course now you have lazy TV commentators and pundits imitating Simmons, pretending they're having a beer and cracking jokes with you in your living room, which is equally obnoxious, if not more so.) I guess I'm just wondering what, if anything, the choice of name signals in terms of editorial direction.

Also, I know a lot of people hate him, but Eggers can be a very good writer sometimes, especially when he's writing more straightforward, reporting-based nonfiction. Zeitoun is a good book, and if he brought the same approach/sensibility to a sports story, I'd be eager to read it.

[mafu]

Grantland

If it hasn't been brought up already somewhere this is as good a thread as any to mention the SportsFeat site - @sportsfeat on twitter - which is doing a pretty good job of digging out mostly good sportswriting from past and present. Mostly American stuff but not exclusively.

[jason voorhees]

Grantland

I'll always love him for what he said about Miami Vice.

The bit about enjoying the Celtics championship with his father was also one of my favorite reads ever.

[ursus arctos]

Grantland

Tommy Craggs channels Renart on Rice.

Grantland Rice was everything his namesake website should aspire not to be. He was a pandering mythmaker who wrote verse and prose the way Thomas Kinkade paints carriage lanes ("The Hills of Fame still beckon where the Paths of Glory lead …"). Reading him today is not unlike looking at your maiden aunt's collection of Precious Moments figurines. Moths come flying off every word. He was responsible for a lot of the worst pathologies of sportswriting today, and the fact that a major web site now unironically carries his name tells me we've done to Rice what Rice did to so many ballplayers over the years. We've godded up the godmaker.

Craggs had accepted an offer from Simmons to join Grantland only to find it rescinded by the ESPN suits after Craggs had engaged in some typical Deadspin Bristol-bashing.

[Renart]

Grantland

Ha, that's much more vicious than me!

I do tend not to like that sort of sentimental, worshipful take on sports, however: Field of Dreams, The Legend of Bagger Vance, etc. I grew up a Raiders fan in the seventies and the first baseball movie I saw and loved was The Bad News Bears, so what can you expect?

I'm not totally immune, however. The closing passage in Ball Four and the Bart Giamatti essay about how baseball is designed to break your heart move me.

Most of the time, the style seems manipulative and cynical, like when NBC profiles athletes during the Olympics and you get the feeling the producers gave each other high fives when they found out the American luger's mother just died from cancer, or when columnists go on about Paul O'Neill or Derek Jeter being "warriors." Give me a break.

[Reed John]

Grantland

I don't mean to put down Rice. I just think it's interesting Simmons picked him as the site's namesake since their approaches are so different.

According to the piece on this in the NYT, Simmons didn't pick the name and doesn't like it. He also expressed some ambivalence about being part of ESPN. Obviously, if you're a sportswriter and you want people to read you, ESPN.com is the place to be, but if you're writing about sports as pop culture, it's hard to do it with much integrity and not at least occasionally make fun of ESPN. He understands that, but I guess he's content that the check clears.

[Renart]

Grantland

It is a weird name to have chosen, and not just for the reasons I've mentioned. I can't imagine most people know who Grantland Rice was, and if I didn't know anything about the site at all I'd think it had something to do with government grants or some such.

It is weird, too, that Simmons seems to have started the site to escape ESPN strictures, but has ended up with a site that still has many of them in place.

[Reed John]

Grantland

Renart wrote:

I do tend not to like that sort of sentimental, worshipful take on sports, however: Field of Dreams, The Legend of Bagger Vance, etc. I grew up a Raiders fan in the seventies and the first baseball movie I saw and loved was The Bad News Bears, so what can you expect?

Legend of Bagger Vance's problem isn't it's worshipful take on sports, but it's deployment of the "Magical Negroe" cliche.

I love Field of Dreams. It's really more about a guy's relationship with his dad. Or guys' relationships with the past in general. My dad and I are not estranged and he doesn't care too much about sports - although my brother and I do, but I still can relate.

I'm not totally immune, however. The closing passage in Ball Four and the Bart Giamatti essay about how baseball is designed to break your heart move me.

I haven't read that. I should. I find the cruelty of the game one of it's appeals, oddly. I feel the same way about soccer.

Most of the time, the style seems manipulative and cynical, like when NBC profiles athletes during the Olympics and you get the feeling the producers gave each other high fives when they found out the American luger's mother just died from cancer

That image is going to be stuck in my head in all future olympics. "His sister died! Fuck yeah!!"

or when columnists go on about Paul O'Neill or Derek Jeter being "warriors." Give me a break.

The only pro athletes that should ever be described as warriors are boxers and MMA guys. Maybe.
Oh, and the Golden State Warriors.

[ursus arctos]

Grantland

The Giamatti piece.

It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops. Today, October 2, a Sunday of rain and broken branches and leaf-clogged drains and slick streets, it stopped, and summer was gone.

I still tear up.

[Renart]

Grantland

I'm possibly being unfair to Field of Dreams. I haven't seen it since it came out, which was when I was deep in my high school knee-jerk cynic phase. Some members of the cult of Field of Dreams—much like the cult of The Shawshank Redemption, of which Simmons is a high priest—get under my skin, though.

That Giamatti essay is great. I read it at the end of almost every baseball season. (Forgot to last year, however, because it was the rare season that didn't actually break my heart.)

[Reed John]

Grantland

I have read that bit before. I dont really relate because I rarely see the end of summer as something to lament.

[The Exploding Vole]

Grantland

ursus arctos wrote:

The Giamatti piece.

It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops. Today, October 2, a Sunday of rain and broken branches and leaf-clogged drains and slick streets, it stopped, and summer was gone.

I still tear up.

That's wonderful.

[XXXXXX]

Grantland

Nick Jackson at the Atlantic is with Ursus.

I like Bill Simmons in small doses. Obviously his Boston shtick upsets a lot of people. I have bookmarked this to make sure to see how it progresses or doesn't. I am a fan of the longer essays meself.

[ursus arctos]

Grantland

Eggers on Wrigley.

More that a bit too much "hipster ironic" detachment for my taste, but still worth reading.

[Reed John]

Grantland

I really enjoyed Klosterman's piece on a junior college basketball game 25 years ago where a tribal college won despite being down to three players in the waning minutes.

[XXXXXX]

Grantland

It's hip to not be part of the winners circle. I meet a lot of Cubs fans around campus bars and they revel in being losers. Sox fans didn't revel in being losers (except Shaughnessy and his mates), it was all angst, because the Yankees are just down the road and were all too ready to remind them of their failings. Cubs fans I meet (I can't speak for Ursus) actually prefer the losing status, as if winning it all has become sullied. Or I could be misreading them and this is all bollocks and only applies to hipster Cubbies.

[Reed John]

Grantland

I think it mainly just applies to faux-Cubs' fans and hipster Cubbies, who are legion, no doubt, but not all Cubs' fans by any stretch. I know a guy who grew up on the North Side, went to Northwestern and lives in North Chicago with his lovely wife and two children and I'm pretty sure he'd give away almost all of that to see the Cubs win a world series.

[ursus arctos]

Grantland

He'd have to get through me first.

[Incandenza]

Grantland

I couldn't stand more than two paragraphs of Simmons' intro piece, but his story on LeBron was good. I always find myself in a quandary--I can't stand Simmons, but he's one of the most prominent sportswriters in America, and he loves the NBA more than just about anyone.

The teaser pieces that ran a few months back were not promising at all, especially Molly Lambert's summer movie preview. That was downright embarrassing.

This blog post was a hilariously over-the-top takedown of Simmons and the two preview pieces. Whoever the writer is was smashing ants with a sledgehammer:

For years, readers have speculated that Simmons would walk away from his ESPN contract and put his money where his mouth is and toward his own unique creation, but those people mistook the nature of the relationship between the two. ESPN and Simmons exist to make each other look edgy — ESPN by having Simmons write risky and scandalous things like "I hate [sports player]," and Simmons by having ESPN's editorial policy to blame for not writing anything more risky and scandalous than, "I hate [sports player]."

If at any moment either entity had walked away from their relationship, it would have given the lie to ESPN's claims to print things more subversive than "SportsCenter You Can Read" and Simmons' claims that he had any ideas to be held back in the first place. Thus the need to create something like Grantland, which allows ESPN to pretend it's breaking new ground by printing Gawker content from 2005, while Simmons gets to play the bad-boy who replaced his short woven corporate dog leash with the open-road freedom of one of those really long clicky-handled corporate dog leashes.
...
But Simmons is insecure. (He ends friendships at what seems like the mildest of criticism and scrubs references to the offending persons from his work like an overzealous Soviet records department removing all images of a heterodox party member from pictures Stalin was in.) Like many successful insecure people, he needs to replace fortune with determinism, and it's this worldview that seems to have informed his attitude toward later projects, assuming success with little ostensible thought for presentation, reaction or outcomes.

Like: phoning in columns while working for the atrocious first season of Jimmy Kimmel Live, then thinking that his everyman schtick still worked while telling tales of Hollywood nights. Or assuming that readers would like to watch a brutally amateurish cartoon series about his life, his wife and his friends, while thinking that his everyman schtick still worked despite a vanity cartoon series. Or writing about one-on-one encounters with celebrity athletes that were less hard-hitting than a punch thrown by a polio-crippled pre-teen castrato, then thinking that his everyman schtick still worked while playing Tiger Woods' golf video game against Tiger Woods, going to the club with Manny Ramirez or sitting in a luxury box at a venue to which ESPN flew him.

Bill Simmons has a perspective problem, and yet another vanity project like Grantland seems only to add to the evidence of it. A good argument against that conclusion could be made if the site had any kind of purposeful coherence. Allegedly it's a serious sports website maintained by a man whose critical rigorousness about sports can often be measured by going to the IMDB "memorable quotes" page for a movie and trying to apply it to some random category like "interceptions made by New England Patriots, 2001-2010." Allegedly it's a serious cultural website maintained by a man whose cultural mind looks like one of those spooky MRIs of "ecstasy brains," with all the black dead spots, and a bit where someone burned "SWEEP THE LEG" into it with a laser scalpel. Its celebrity contributors list reads like a Who's Who of people whose only metric for understanding the human experience is the singular preciousness of themselves or the nauseating insipidity of corporate-retreat science. Then there's the preposterousness of the name. Bill Simmons is to Grantland Rice what Tucker Max is to Hunter Thompson.