Sports Journals

One of the genres of writing that I read the most is sports writing - mostly hockey, baseball and CFL football. I'm not talking about the straight reporting of games.  It is the writing about the personalities involved and the relationship that athletes and coaches have with Montreal that brings life to sport for me.  Montreal has had some great sports writers.   Red Fisher on hockey makes the sport come alive any time of year.  And some incredible sports personalities.   With Felipe Alou being in Montreal for 10 years he imparted more than just baseball smarts, he had a perspective on life and baseball that was altogether his.

When I came back to Montreal in 1993 and started working in French, it was the sports pages of La Presse and their rabid coverage of Les Canadiens (Les Glorieux, La Sainte-flannelle, les tri-couleurs) and, in baseball Les Expos (Nos Z'amours) that helped me learned both the colloquial language and a very large part of the Quebecois culture.  Some people denigrate sports writing - I would never do that.  Since sport is a metaphor for life, sports writing at its best helps me live better.

As I find good examples of sports writing of this sort I'll post links here.  As well, I'll post links to anything "sports-related" that I write (maybe even sports chat stuff for your extreme edification).  In this final year of big money baseball in Montreal we have a unique opportunity to contemplate the importance of sports here.  I expect someone will write something poignant on that sometime this summer.  Also, we are happy to be back in the playoffs this year (first time in 4 years) riding on the back of the number 60 jersey (above).  We're hoping to get a Leafs - Habs match-up somewhere along the line and that should generate a lot of ink.

The illustrations for these journals will be (as above) tickets that I have kept from my years here.  Some of the games I can still remember by looking at the ticket.  Did I ever tell you about the year when the Expos were chasing the Phillies for the NL East pennant and the Phillies brought in Mitch Williams to pitch in extra innings to Marquis Grissom...

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