One of the most enjoyable aspects of my 22 years as a newspaper reporter and editor, primarily at the Carthage Press and Lamar Democrat, was the chance to cover sports and meet some incredible people along the way.
For about 14 years of that time, I augmented my game coverage with a series of feature columns, Sports Talk, that focused more on the athletes than the games and on storytelling about those athletes.
Thirty-five of those columns have been collected in book form for the first time and for one more day, that e-book, The Best of Sports Talk, is available as a free Amazon Kindle download.
The book's Amazon page includes this description of some of the features that are included in the book:
-A football coach meets an eight-year-old girl who is permanently in a wheelchair because of a drunk driver
-A cheerleader talks about her aunt, Nancy Cruzan, and the right-to-die case that went to the U. S. Supreme Court
-A mother watches her daughter play her final high school volleyball match
-The high school coach who murdered his wife and then committed suicide
-A football legend returns to his home town after 25 years to be honored
-The baseball great who fanned five Hall-of-Famers in a row
-The high school girl who received her first kiss in front of 1,500 fans
-A high school basketball player teaches Haitian children how to play the sport
-A town tries to cope with the suicide of a football player
-He played in one of the greatest Cotton Bowl games of all time, but this legend is stirred more by a high school rivalry
-Family and friends help a basketball player whose house burns to the ground
-On the day she was expected to lead her team to the state volleyball championship, funeral services are held for a star athlete
-After an ACLU threat bans a pre-game prayer over the public address system, a community gathers in the end zone to pray
-A football player overcomes a near-fatal accident to receive a college scholarship.
The Best of Sports Talk relives the joys and sorrows of sports and of the people who participate in them.
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