The heartbreak of Sports Illustrated
Plus: DOGLAND blurbs!
To start off today, I wanted to share some blurbs for DOGLAND! Blurbs are a tricky and contentious thing in the writing world. Nobody really knows if they work, but everybody feels the need to get them anyway. I’d love to hear from you Shedheads in the comments about whether a blurb ever nudges you to buy a book (or not buy one, for that matter).
Having said all that, I am proud and thrilled at the blurbs for DOGLAND. This is quite a lineup of some of my favorite writers and people.
“I wanted to make a dog pun here, something clever to celebrate Tommy’s accomplishment, but instead I’m left speechless from this tale of love, humor, obsession, loneliness and devotion.”
—Wright Thompson, author of Pappyland
“I love this book! I learned history and science I didn’t know, laughed out loud every few pages, and came away even more grateful that we get to share this world with dogs.”
—Anna Sale, host of Death, Sex & Money and author of Let’s Talk About Hard Things
“You should only read Tommy Tomlinson’s Dogland if you want to find joy. In a time when we are surrounded by so much stress and rage and unease, this book is a big ol’ slobbering smooch of optimism, laughter, and happiness.”
—Joe Posnanski, author of Why We Love Baseball
“As hilarious and heartwarming as a basket of puppies, the story of Dogland hangs on the competition for best-in-show perfection. There’s plenty here on show dogs’ breeding and training, the physical traits that judges demand, and the offbeat characters that populate this world. But, at its heart, Dogland is about our relationships with these loving, faithful animals, and how they change us as people. As Tomlinson puts it, “the leash pulls on both ends.”
—Ted Allen, host of Food Network’s Chopped
“Those of us who have ever had our hearts and guts torn out from the loss of our dog like to say we’ll never let that happen to us again. This great story, told with a kind of beauty, reminds us why it was worth it, every stinking second, to be in their company.”
—Rick Bragg, author of All Over but the Shoutin’ and The Speckled Beauty
I mean, come on.
If those quotes compel you to preorder a copy of DOGLAND (and how could they not?), you can get a signed and inscribed copy through my friends at Park Road Books. You can also order through your favorite indie store or pretty much anywhere else.
We’re a little less than three months from pub day (April 23) and things are moving fast. I sent in the last full round of edits to the manuscript this week … that should be it unless we spot something major we need to change last-minute. We’re finishing the work on the jacket for the hardcover. And we also got a look at one of the first reviews, which I hope I can share next week. It’s a good one.
I’m also getting to play Johnny Appleseed this week and put advance copies in the hands of a few people who played key roles in putting DOGLAND together. I can’t wait for the rest of you to get your hands on it, too.
You might have already read several obituaries for Sports Illustrated over the past week … my friend Joe, who used to work there, wrote my favorite. The magazine that meant so much to so many of us is in total limbo, most of the staff laid off, and it’s not clear whether it will continue to exist. It has been a troubled place for years. The website is a mess. We still subscribe to the print edition, but it seems to arrive at our house at random times. It always feels a little sad when it shows up, like a broke cousin begging for money.
It used to be treasure. Every Thursday it arrived in the mail with the definitive recaps of the past week’s big events. As I saw somebody say online this week, the big game wasn’t officially over until you read what SI wrote about it. The magazine was worth the price just for those stories. But then there were the bonus pieces, the big profiles in the back, crafted by so many brilliant writers but especially Gary Smith, who made me see what a story could be.
If you scroll back up to the photo at the top of this post, you might be able to see my name in small type in the bottom right corner. I got to write one of those bonus pieces back in 2011, about the Alabama fan who poisoned the beloved Toomer’s Oaks at Auburn. It was my first big break into the magazine world. It launched me into a different phase in my career, and for that I’ll always be grateful. But more than anything … it was my name, on the cover of Sports Illustrated. Something I would have never even dared to dream back when I spent hours every week reading every word of every issue.
Another avalanche of layoffs and buyouts hit the journalism business over the past week—not just SI, but the L.A. Times and Business Insider and Pitchfork, the often-brilliant music site. Some days it feels like that scene in TOY STORY 3 where they’re all sliding toward the incinerator and it would take a miracle to survive. (Man, does Disney love to scare the hell out of little kids.)
Sports Illustrated felt like an institution that had always been around and would always be around. It’s still astonishing to think that it might just go away.
The funny thing is, when I think about SI, I don’t think first about the covers, or all the great stories they published, or even the story of mine they published. I think about the sweatshirt.
It was at least 20 years ago and I needed to renew my SI subscription. They were running one of those deals where they offered a gift with the subscription—this was back in the days of stuff like the Football Phone. One of the gifts was an SI quarter-zip sweatshirt. My wife needed a sweatshirt and she was an SI fan, too. So I got the sweatshirt in her size, navy blue.
Twenty-some years later, she still wears it.
The zipper broke a while ago, and she wore holes in the elbows that required patches. But the fabric hasn’t shrunk and the color hasn’t faded. It might outlive both of us and the magazine it was made for.
That sweatshirt always reminds me that in those days, at Sports Illustrated, even the little things were built to last.
10 things I wanted to share this week:
In case you missed my bonus newsletter last week: Galleys of DOGLAND are in! And there’s an unboxing video.
My weekly for WFAE was on our new series at the station called Finding Joy.
Speaking of the Finding Joy series, my colleague Nick de la Canal has a great story on VanVan, who is definitely the best 5-year-old rapper I’ve ever heard.
My friend Michael Kruse, the best political reporter in America, profiles a New Hampshire voter who is rooting not just for Trump but for the breakage of our whole political system. Nobody ever needs to do one of those “what are Trump voters thinking” pieces ever again. (Politico)
DOG NEWS: From now until DOGLAND comes out, I’m devoting this slot to dog stories. This week: In case you want to set your calendar for Westminster 2024, here’s the schedule.
Stepping to the front of the line of People I Would Like To Slap is Thomas Cruz, who brags about exploiting poor people in Section 8 housing and raking in big bucks from the government. (The Assembly)
My bud Michael Graff was a Domino’s driver in a previous life. In a DoorDash world, we’re gonna miss the pizza guy. (The Atlantic)
I mentioned earlier about the upheaval at Pitchfork … here’s a good piece by Nick Sylvester about what the site means and meant to music lovers. (smartdumb)
The cicadas are coming, y’all, in a way that hasn’t happened in 221 years. (NBC News)
Really enjoyed this video by The Smile, an offshoot of Radiohead. I’d love to see a series of videos of bands trying (and sometimes failing) to impress a group of schoolkids. The Tiny Tot Concerts!
Have a great week, everybody.
Blurbs do influence me to buy books, especially if they are from writers I admire.
Great stuff on Sports Illustrated. Like most sports fans I knew growing up in the 70s and 80s, I subscribed to SI for many, many years. As a kid (and thereafter), I eagerly anticipated receiving the magazine in the mail, trying to guess who was going to be on the cover, devouring the articles, marveling at the amazing photography. Beyond that, I have a personal connection to the magazine, since I was the in-house litigator for 15 years at Time Inc., which owned and published SI until recently. As a result, I defended the magazine in a number of lawsuits and was lucky enough to meet a lot of great writers and editors.
And indeed, SI had terrific writers - many of whom were simply the best and most articulate about the particular sports they covered: Paul Zimmerman and then Peter King on football, Jon Wertheim on tennis, Tom Verducci and Peter Gammons and Joe Posnanski and Leigh Montville etc. on baseball, Grant Wahl on soccer, Kenny Moore on track and field, Jack McCallum on basketball. But maybe even better were the generalists who wrote amazing profiles of interesting athletes: Gary Smith, Frank Deford, S.L. Price, Dan Jenkins and Sally Jenkins, Rick Reilly, Ron Fimrite, George Plimpton (who authored the Sid Finch hoax story), Alexander Wolff.
The demise of SI was inevitable in an age where no one has the interest to read, let alone pay for, long form journalism and just wants the trade rumors, the fantasy stats and the betting odds. We are poorer for it.