The Best American Sports Writing 2003

Since its inception in 1915, the Best American series has become the premier annual showcase for the country’s finest short fiction and nonfiction. For each volume, a series editor reads pieces from hundreds of periodicals, then selects between fifty and a hundred outstanding works. That selection is pared down to the twenty or so very best pieces by a guest editor who is widely recognized as a leading writer in his or her field. This unique system has helped make the Best American series the most respected — and most popular — of its kind.

Buzz Bissinger selects the very best writing on a vast variety of competitive endeavors, from baseball to weightlifting, skating to demolition derby. Herein today’s foremost journalists — among them Gary Smith, Elizabeth Gilbert, Bill Plaschke, and Rebecca Mead — throw revealing light on a pantheon of stars: Shaquille O’Neal, Bobby Fischer, Mike Tyson, the San Diego Chicken, and more.