THE BEST AMERICAN SPORTS WRITING 2004

This entertaining 14th installment in the annual series is as varied as its predecessors: the usual suspects (baseball, football, basketball) share space with less popular pursuits (fishing, running, bicycling) and downright peculiar ones (taxidermy). Yet most of the pieces share a particular focus. As in past editions, the editors look beyond actual sport—the games, the scores, the strategies—and instead home in on the personalities: athletes and their families, fans, coaches and, in one memorable column, groupies. "It makes good sense to me that how a person is —the conditions of his or her larger life—explains, or at least illuminates, how that person plays and competes," says Cramer (How Israel Lost ; Joe DiMaggio ; etc.) in his introduction. Standout entries include Steve Friedman's masterful "The Race of Truth," about an obsessive Scot's pursuit of cycling's little-known grail, the Hour Record; Michael Leahy's refreshingly honest portrait of Michael Jordan's last days with the Wizards; and three frank, gripping and completely distinct accounts of athletes (two of whom are lesser-known) and their families: Paul Solotaroff's "Growing Up Mantle," Peter De Jonge's "The Leap of His Life" and Rick Telander's "Playing Against the Clock." Though some of the shorter columns suffer in comparison to the weightier magazine pieces, this edition is reliably compelling and surprisingly addictive, much like sport itself. (Oct. 14)