The Best American Sports Writing 2017

by Glenn Stout

  And after 18 years in prison, Pro Lerner finally won.

  His former mentor, Red Kelley, was now acknowledging that he had embellished his testimony during the murder trial in 1970. Do not get him wrong. Things went down just as he had described, except for a few details, including that part about how he had met with Patriarca to discuss plans for the Marfeo-Melei hit. Never happened, he admitted. A corrupt FBI agent, who would later die in prison while awaiting trial on murder charges, had put him up to it.

  This nettlesome matter of perjury finally persuaded the Rhode Island Supreme Court to overturn Lerner’s murder conviction. So, a few days before Christmas in 1988, the old ballplayer and hit man pleaded no contest to murder and conspiracy charges, received credit for time served, and walked unshackled into the cold Providence day.

  He was 53.

  Lerner and his wife quickly left Rhode Island for California and then for Las Vegas—as if to get as much distance as possible from the past. Patriarca was dead and now so was a part of Lerner. He had no desire to reconnect with his former cronies, no interest in being compensated for keeping his mouth shut. He just wanted out.

  “He walked away from any reminder of that life,” his son, Glen, says.

  By this point, both his children had attended Duke University, and his son, the soccer star, had played on Duke’s 1986 national championship team and gone on to law school at Tulane. A photo from Glen’s law school graduation shows his smiling parents arm in arm, his father wearing a goofy striped sweater, looking down.

  A bittersweet image. A few years later, Arrene, the loyal wife who had kept the family together, died of cancer at the age of 56. Her husband was devastated.

  Lerner never remarried. He continued to live in Las Vegas, where he helped out at his son’s personal-injury law firm, and found some modest action at a local sports betting operation. Sometimes he took his young granddaughter for drives around Sin City, singing along with Sinatra and Ella.

  Now and then, Glen Lerner would try to engage his father in a discussion about his past; more specifically, how to get out from under that past. “Why can’t you forgive yourself?” the son would ask of a father who was famous for holding grudges against others—and, it seemed, himself. Even now, he wouldn’t talk.

  “I could look in his face, and I could see the regret,” Glen says, adding: “There may have been things he did that he didn’t get in trouble for.”

  The former athlete who once sprang so gracefully from the batter’s box, bat in hand, and from a sedan, shotgun in hand, could not dodge time. A few years ago, dementia set in. He fell and broke a hip. When death came in 2013, at age 77, he left a son, a daughter, grandchildren, and so many questions.

  “It’s a whodunit,” Glen says. “You know who did it, but why? Why?”

  Maybe Lerner had gravitated toward father figures who had led him astray, his son says, sounding wishful. Maybe he was looking for someone to look up to. Maybe.

  “He was very sweet at the end,” Glen says. “He lost a lot of his edge.”

  But Maury Lerner never lost his sense of belonging to the professional baseball fraternity. Among its members, he was not known for being anything other than a loyal teammate who could hit like hell. A real pro.

  In the years after prison, Lerner began calling former teammates and opponents around the country—people now in their seventies and eighties, who knew him before. He enjoyed reminiscing about the old days, the times spent in baseball’s ports of call: Erie and Boise, Macon and Raleigh, Yakima and Managua.

  “He called me,” the former major leaguer Frank Kostro recalls. “And I says, ‘Maury, where you been?’ ”

  The old ballplayer explained as best he could.

  LOUISA THOMAS

  Serena Williams, Andy Murray, and a Political Wimbledon

  from the new yorker

  Serena Williams has become so synonymous with dominance that it can be hard not to take her for granted, her power so obvious that it can be strangely hard to see. She is called a force of nature, or considered superhuman, or accorded the divine right of queens. I have done this myself; I have talked about her as if she were a Greek goddess.

  On Saturday, when she faced Angelique Kerber in the women’s final at Wimbledon, I was tempted to do it again. It was a riveting match, a contest of contrasting styles. Kerber has become one of the few players who can take Williams’s shots and turn on them. In the Australian Open final, in January, Kerber had beaten Williams by using her speed to reach balls that would have been winners against other players, and her superior strength to redirect Williams’s pace and angles. In the Wimbledon final, Kerber played another brilliant match, bending backhands around the net post, hitting flat, reactive shots that skimmed the tape of the net, and minimizing her errors. (She finished with only nine for the match.) She challenged Williams throughout—but only once did she test her. At 3–3 in the second set, Kerber earned her first break point of the match. With a relaxed motion and gentle toss, Williams struck an ace out wide. On the next point, Williams began with an identical movement and hit the toss in an identical spot—but this time her serve sped down the T, another ace. Kerber swung her arms in an exaggerated shrug of frustration. Up the advantage, Williams controlled the next point, pulling the lefty Kerber out wide to her forehand, repeatedly putting the ball behind her, and then changing directions with a backhand down the line. Kerber couldn’t dig it out. From there, the match was more or less over—and the result had never really been in doubt.

  Williams’s 7–5, 6–3 victory earned her her 22nd major title, tying her with Steffi Graf for most in the Open era. It is her ninth Grand Slam since she turned 30, nearly five years ago. Lately, though, I have been thinking of her losses, and how we shortchange her in forgetting them. There is nothing routine about winning a major, after all—nothing automatic about an ace. As Carl Bialik wrote on FiveThirtyEight, “She earned it, and it was never guaranteed.” As Williams herself put it, she is not just lucky. What is most incredible about that incredible serve of hers is not its flawless technique, or its weight or speed or spin. It’s that she’s more likely to hit an ace on significant points. It gets better when she’s down.

  What she has done has not come easy. And it is all the harder, and more extraordinary, because she is required to bear the weight of so much hope and hate, the weight of so much history.

  On the morning of Andy Murray’s final against Milos Raonic, the cover of the Observer read, “Weather Terrible, Sterling Tumbling, Politics Dismal, Euro Flops (Not Wales), Brexit Coming, Recession Looming”—and then, in giant letters, “ANDY PLEASE CHEER US UP.”

  Murray is a curious kind of cheerleader for the English—irascible and anti-elitist, scruffy and Scottish. Off the court, he has at times resisted the position that winning thrust him into, wary of a ravenous media and aware that he and his family would never quite be accepted in tennis’s lingering culture of snobbery (nor did they want to be). On the court, he has at times gone to pieces.

  But he is a marvelous tennis player, unquestionably the second best in the world right now and arguably one of the best in history. Without the overshadowing presence of Novak Djokovic—or Roger Federer or Rafael Nadal in the final—it was all the more apparent. His play throughout the tournament was steady and often spectacular; against Raonic, a 25-year-old Canadian, on Sunday, it was nearly flawless. Only three weeks ago, Raonic had raced to a set and a break lead over Murray in the final at the Queen’s Club before crumbling, and, after his five-set win over Federer in the semifinals, it seemed as if the next generation might have finally arrived. (No player born in the nineties has yet to win a major.) But Murray, who turned 29 in May, showed how far the distance still is. He used his quickness to turn first-strike drives into rallies, sending up deep, high defensive lobs to prolong points. He exploited Raonic’s weaker backhand with his own wicked one. And, when Raonic came to the net, Murray hit vicious, dipping passing shots. Most significantly, he had little trouble with
Raonic’s powerful, unreadable serve, which had, until then, carried the Canadian through the tournament. On one point, Raonic hit a 147-mile-per-hour serve into Murray’s body—and lost the point. Murray not only managed to block the ball back but, with a compact swing, hit through it for a solid return. When Raonic charged the net, Murray hit a sharply angled cross-court passing shot to win the point.

  After his 6–4, 7–6 (3), 7–6 (2) win, Murray broke down in tears, and for several minutes the sobbing wouldn’t stop. It was, he would say, a far happier moment than his original Wimbledon win, in 2013, when he felt first the relief of so much pressure. No British man had won Wimbledon for 77 years. But he knows that he will never be able to escape the position that the public has put him in, the stage on which he must live. Cheer us up.

  Yesterday, he did. Murray will be remembered first for his tennis. But his greater legacy may be what he has done with his platform, his willingness to speak out on social issues, especially women’s rights—working with a female coach, supporting equal pay, calling himself a feminist. Sports may be an escape from politics, but there is an inescapable political dimension to sports too.

  It was impossible to avoid thinking of politics at times during Wimbledon. Not during a tournament taking place outside London, just weeks after the U.K.’s vote to leave the European Union. Not when Murray acknowledged the presence of the departing prime minister, David Cameron, during his on-court interview after the match—a mention that elicited the crowd’s boos. Not when Williams tweeted about the shooting of Philando Castile and was asked about the shootings in Dallas, nor when she spoke up about respect for women in sport and society. And not when the finalists included a Canadian born in Yugoslavia whose parents had fled during the Balkan conflicts.

  After the women’s final, the BBC played a montage of Williams reading Maya Angelou’s poem “Still I Rise”: “Out of the huts of history’s shame / I rise . . .” She never asked for this, not for the pain or hate or chance to redeem history. But, at this Wimbledon, she has owned not only her greatness but her role as a transcendent figure in society. Still, she rises. She generates her own context. I thought of that at the end of her match, as she and Kerber lingered at the net in a long, tight hug. The picture—an African American and a blond German of Polish descent, their arms intertwined—stayed with me. There was nothing political meant by that embrace, of course. It was a gesture of admiration, affection, and respect. It was no more a political act than an ace. And yet there was something powerful to it. We sometimes project our problems onto sports. But sports can also be, in some small but real ways, where we start to work them out.

  ROGER ANGELL

  Almost There

  from the new yorker

  Yes. The Cubs won, 3–2, avoiding extinction, and there will be more baseball. Thank you, everybody. Thanks for letting it happen, all you Cubs down there—Kris Bryant, David Ross, Jon Lester, Aroldis Chapman, etc. And back there—Ernie Banks, Hank Sauer, Charlie Grimm. And thanks to all you Indians present and past—Rajai Davis, Andrew Miller, CoCo Crisp, Sandy Alomar Jr., Earl Averill, Nap Lajoie. The Cubs, trailing three games to one in this Series, were facing winter, but now will have a day off and a sixth game, and maybe even a glorious seventh. Baseball does this for us again and again, extending its pleasures fractionally before it glimmers and goes, but, let’s face it, this time a happy prolonging has less to do with baseball than ever before. This particular October handful has served to take our minds off a squalid and nearly endless and embarrassing election—three hours of floodlit opium or fentanyl that can almost erase all thoughts of Donald Trump’s angry slurs or Hillary Clinton’s long travails. If I could do it, I would make this World Series a best eight out of 15.

  Watching the home Wrigley fans through the two soul-chilling previous evenings was close to unbearable, as their guys put up nothing but zeroes in their 1–0 Game 3 loss, and then a lone pair in the 7–2 loss on Saturday. The mass silence, the gloved hands in prayer position, the averted gazes, the mouths slack in disbelief, the silly rally caps, and the rest made you want to put off thoughts of the silent late trips home afterward. For me, the familiar autumn pains almost did away with the suffocating local history—the 108-year wait since the last Cubs championship, or the 71 years since the last home Series. I was listing toward the Indians, my father’s home team, but by mid-innings last night wanted only a Cubs win, to avoid the pain and gloom of a five-game dismissal. But, as we know, everything shifts when a Series goes to a sixth or seventh game. Both teams have done themselves proud, and left all their fans with important things to talk about and think about until spring, such as: why can’t Jon Lester ever, ever throw to first base to hold a runner? And this sustaining glow may even take us intact to Election Day as well.

  The players, to be sure, actually enjoy themselves. In the top of the third last night, the Indians starter Trevor Bauer lifted a fly ball up the foul line to right, which was somehow grabbed out there by the Cubs right fielder Jason Heyward while he hung by one arm on the wall in foul ground; Bauer gave him a sudden smile and clapped his hands in appreciation. When Aroldis Chapman, the lithe and extraordinary Cubs closer, had to bat, in the bottom of the eighth, in order to sustain his two-and-two-thirds-inning saving stint, he managed a wry, suave smile as he came up the steps with a bat in his hand for the third at-bat of his seven-year career. He put some good swings on the ball, but struck out.

  There was some restitution for the Cubs home fans along the way. Kris Bryant, the National League’s almost-assured MVP winner this year, had committed two ghastly errors in the same inning on the previous evening, but this time mashed a homer in the fourth inning for the Cubs’ second lead in the Series. Bryant, at 24 years old, is part of the wonderful Kiddy Korps on view this fall, along with his teammates Anthony Rizzo, Carl Edwards Jr., Kyle Schwarber, and Javier Báez, and the Indians’ Tyler Naquin, José Ramírez, and 22-year-old shortstop Francisco Lindor. He helps give one the impression that this is Locust Valley versus Smithtown, or Santurce versus Carolina, on an April afternoon. Báez and Lindor were in fact childhood rivals in Puerto Rico. I can’t remember a more athletic infielder than Báez, who more than once threw himself at an oncoming base runner or base stealer to cut him off yards from the bag, and I was made miserable by his struggles at the plate in these latter games, when all that verve and desire demolished his swing and repeatedly sent him disconsolate back to the dugout. Lindor has been a joy, and I have him by heart now—the slinky mustache, the ready grin, the necklace, the terrier delight of it all. Terry Francona, the Indians’ manager, has him batting third, and Lindor’s .421 to date tops all comers. But here we must make note of those sweet swerves that only baseball provides. David Ross, the Cubs’ catcher last night, drove in the third and deciding run in the fourth inning, and amputated Lindor’s attempted steal in the sixth with a burning throw to the corner of the bag at second. He is 39 years old and will retire when this Series is over, so all this happened in his final game at Wrigley Field. These newer firsts and lasts seemed to brush aside the historic bits of news the announcers kept dropping on us before all this. Carlos Santana’s home run in Game 4 was the first World Series round-tripper at Wrigley since Hank Greenberg’s, in 1945, and back in Game 3 the roving camera picked out retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens in the stands, who at the age of 12 had witnessed Babe Ruth’s called-shot home run against Charlie Root, in 1932.

  There were more familiar phizzes as well—Lester, the Cubs’ obdurate lefty and a longtime Red Sox regular, and the Indians’ first baseman Mike Napoli, from the same Fenway bunch. Also the Cubs left fielder Ben Zobrist, a veteran of the Kansas City Royals, the Oakland A’s, and the Tampa Bay Rays, a lefty hitter whose intense, bearded face when he’s at the plate rests like a marble bust on the mantel of his front shoulder. Also the comforting, dadlike managers—Francona, always popping something in his mouth while he keeps his placid gaze on things, and Joe Maddon, in his horn-rims and ridiculous pom-pommed
and pulled-down knitted wool winter hat. I can’t see Joe Torre or Connie Mack in this eccentric-uncle getup, but I don’t mind at all.

  More to come. As stated, I think the Indians will win, but baseball has won already, and we’re the better for it.

  Contributors’ Notes

  The New Yorker’s ROGER ANGELL, a senior editor and staff writer, has contributed to the magazine since 1944 and became the fiction editor in 1956. Since 1962, he has written more than 100 “Sporting Scene” pieces. Author of numerous books, Angell is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in 2011 he was the inaugural winner of the PEN/ESPN Lifetime Achievement Award for Literary Sports Writing. In 2014, Angell received the J. G. Taylor Spink Award from the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. In 2015, he won the National Magazine Award for Essays and Criticism for his piece “This Old Man.”

  DAN BARRY is a columnist and reporter for the New York Times. He has reported from all 50 states, and his awards include a share of a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting. He is the author of four books: a memoir; a collection of his “About New York” columns; Bottom of the 33rd: Hope, Redemption, and Baseball’s Longest Game, which received the 2012 PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing; and The Boys in the Bunkhouse: Servitude and Salvation in the Heartland.

  JON BILLMAN lives in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. His work has appeared in, among other publications, Esquire, the Paris Review, and Runner’s World. He is the author of the story collection When We Were Wolves, and is a contributing writer at Outside.

  JOHN BRANCH is a sports reporter for the New York Times. His work has been part of this anthology twice before. He was awarded the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in feature writing for “Snow Fall,” about a deadly avalanche. Branch lives near San Francisco.