When It Comes to Sports, Women Have Write Stuff

So, read any good books lately? I have--four of them. The good news is, not one of them includes a ballad by Robert James Waller.

None of them involves Oprah Winfrey’s lunch.

None of them is “AA is for Aardvark,” which will be Sue Grafton’s 27th novel.

None of them is Michael Crichton’s new project about a sexually harassed dinosaur. And none of them is on Rush Limbaugh’s shelf beside books by Rush Limbaugh.

Coming soon to your local “Sports” aisle:

“A Kind of Grace: A Treasury of Sportswriting by Women,” edited by Ron Rapoport. (Zenobia Press, $14.95).

This edition of Femi-Tough is brought to you by Ron Rapoport, who is, even he cannot deny, a guy. Yet Ron recognizes, as do I, that women simply cannot write as well about sports as men can.

They write better.

Evidence exists to support this theory. Much of it can be found in this fine anthology, a cornucopia of women writing on women, on men vs. women, on men vs. men, on a variety of subjects from Lyle Alzado to Zola Budd.

Jocks galore, from 66 of the top women in the trade.

Some of these stories come from a woman’s specific perspective: Betty Cuniberti writing about Heather Farr’s breast cancer, having fought this battle herself; Sonja Steptoe viewing the arguments and verdict of the Mike Tyson rape case, from a woman’s vantage point as well as a journalist’s; J.E. Vader eyeballing the swimsuits of Sports Illustrated, after being exposed to the hidden motives of the magazine’s men with whom she once worked.

Rapoport, who writes insightful (for a man) columns for the Daily News of Los Angeles, came to this not-so-sudden realization: “The changes they have brought to the sports pages often reflect experiences and perceptions men cannot share.”

Then, too, women deliver the plain old, everyday who, what, when, where, why and by how much. My own newspaper, for example, presently employs three full-time professional hockey writers--all of them women.

Trust me, they don’t get to cover much women’s hockey.

My new friend Kristine from Newport Beach wants to become a sportswriter. Kristine is 13. She sent me a recent interview she did with goalie Robb Stauber of the Kings. The way I figure, around the year 2004, my friend Kristine will be covering the Kings for the L.A. Times.

Similarly recommended:

“Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend: Women Writers on Baseball,” edited by Elinor Nauen. (Faber & Faber, $22.95). Essays and excerpts from novels by exceptional non-sportswriters, among them Pulitzer Prize winners Edna Ferber, Anna Quindlen, Annie Dillard, Carolyn Kizer and Marianne Moore, plus my choice for one of the five funniest women alive, Merrill Markoe.

Too many poems, but otherwise, a hell of a good read.

“Around the World in 18 Holes,” by Tom Callahan and Dave Kindred. (Doubleday, $23).

Guys get hooked on golf, yes. They go too far. They play and replay their rounds, often exhausting those forced to listen.

Ah, but not brother Tom and brother Dave. The good news is, they did go too far. Together, two of America’s top sports raconteurs took the ultimate in busman’s holidays. They didn’t merely play a round. They played a round around the world.

A hole in Northern Ireland. A hole in Iceland. One in Scotland, in Sweden, in Bophuthatswana, in Nepal, in India, in Singapore, in Russia. Toss in Pebble Beach and Augusta and, man, that’s a round of golf.

Callahan, currently of U.S. News & World Report, and Kindred, found weekly in the Sporting News, played through sun, rain and alligators. I know no two guys who could have done such a golf-a-thon better. And there are fringe benefits, too. (Including Tom’s, uh, playing a round off-Broadway.)

This is everything you ever wanted in a Bophuthatswana golf book and more.

“Strike Zone,” by Jim Bouton and Eliot Asinof. (Viking, $21.95).

What a keystone combo. Bouton and Asinof, whose most famous works each dealt with scandalous baseball, have co-written a novel about a goofy Chicago Cub pitcher (this could be redundant) and a crooked umpire.

Bouton continues to do it all. He pitched in a World Series, wrote the best-selling “Ball Four,” played a louse in a Robert Altman film, dabbled in shredded bubblegum and vanity trading cards--in short, did everything I could have expected from somebody who went to my high school.

Asinof authored “Eight Men Out,” the definitive look at the 1919 “Black Sox” scandal. Shoeless Joe Jackson would have enjoyed this new book, if only he’d known how to read.