The Best Of Frank Deford
After nearly 40 years in the trenches,Frank Deford'sniche  in the pantheon of modern sportswriters is secure, making the subtitle--I'm  Just Getting Started--of his latest collection (tongue-in-)cheekily  optimistic. Irony has always been one of Deford's best weapons; by putting his  award-winning magazine work fromSports Illustrated,Newsweek, andVanity Fairbeside his award-winning commentaries from National Public  Radio,The Best of...shows how adeptly he's wielded it in two very  separate mediums. Still, reading the recent magazine work along with selections  from two decades of radio broadcasts--Deford insists the latter are really  nothing more than written columns read aloud--makes for an odd coupling that has  you wishing for a lot more of the printed Deford. Not that there's anything  wrong with the radio version. Deford's commentaries are timely, pithy, clever,  opinionated, and insightful, but they're ultimately as ephemeral as the airwaves  they were delivered on. His magazine journalism, on the other hand, is anything  but ephemeral. It is work that is rarely less than elegant, and often just plain  exquisite.His long looks at Bobby Knight, Bill Russell, and a former Connecticut high  school football star who commits suicide at 24 are breathtaking. So is his  exploration of University of Arkansas basketball coach Nolan Richardson, spun  out by Deford as a play in four acts. His intertwined profile of Roger  Bannister--the first four-minute miler--and Sir Edmund Hillary--the first to  climb Everest--is a tour de force, as is his personal journey into the world of  bowling. These are all pieces to be savored again and again for their  expansiveness, circumspection, reportage, heart, style, and wit. They remind you  what isBestabout a writer of Deford's caliber in ways the constraints  of radio can't pull in quite as clearly.--Jeff Silverman