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Issue 59, Winter 2007

The Sports Issue

“How smart are Southern college-football coaches? Your fall sanity relies on their analysis, decision-making, and roughly hewn moral code. Not since the Iraq War have so many men of potentially unsound intelligence been entrusted with our complete faith.” — Clay Travis, “An I.Q. Test for College Coaches”

With stories on horseracing, baseball, hunting dogs, fishing, and much more. Essays by John Updike, Ron Rosh, Jill McCorkle, and others.

Additional contributors include M.O. Walsh, Mary Miller, Mark Edmundson, David Payne, Belle Goggs, Taylor Bruce, John T. Edge, and more.

Columns & Departments

Publisher’s Note
by Ray Wittenberg

Editor’s Box
by Marc Smirnoff

Gone Off Up North
South Carolina native Kirby Higbe played for the Brooklyn Dodgers, hung out with Hemingway, and opposed the hiring of Jackie Robinson.
by Roy Blount, Jr.

Local Fare
Do you need to be a rocket scientist to enjoy good food?
by John T. Edge

Dealer’s Choice
There are worse things than sports scandals happening in this country, aren’t there?
by Hal Crowther

People
A profile of a fierce competitor for Civil War relics.
by Belle Boggs

Essay
Sober, divorced, and middle-aged, he wanted to channel his inner athlete.
by Michael Parker

People
Brian Pope may be the fastest and most enigmatic man in the South—or at least in Oxford, Mississippi.
by Farrell Evans

Crime
The mysterious death of a baseball player from Georgia.
by Taylor Bruce

Writing on Writing
Why are Northern writers “national” and Southern writers “regional”? On economics, media bias, and literary status.
by David Payne

Writing on Writing
How you, too, can become a millionaire writer!
by George Singleton

Southern Scenes
photograph by William Eggleston

Features

15 SECONDS
On the powerful compulsion to drive more than 500 miles and sleep on floors for three nights just to join 150,000 people in watching a two-minute horse race.
by Kane Webb

LEAK
Her world seems to be coming apart, starting with the hole in her ceiling.
a story by Mary Miller

PINS
This is how you play the game: Start with a lover you’ve never met.
a story by M.O. Walsh

ONE LIFE
What happens when you take a strange, 300-pound janitor up on his invitation to come over to his trailer for dinner?
a story by Mark Edmundson

SENSE OF PLACE
James Perry Walker’s 1970’s-‘80s photographs from Mississippi and Tennessee.

The Sports Section

Dog Show
by Mike Powell

Badminton
by Pia Z. Ehrhardt

Mississippi Knockout
by Jim Ruland

Talk Radio
by Melissa King

College Town
by Beth Ann Fennelly

Bareback Riding
by Marianne Gingher

Rainout
by Robert Parham

Fly Fishing
by Ron Rash

Coach Quiz
by Clay Travis

New Orleans Chessman
by William Caverlee

Underdogs
by Any Selsberg

Hunting Dogs
by Jill McCorkle

Arkansas Hogs
by Rainer Sabin

Godly Grub
by Wright Thompson

Quarterbacks
by Brooks Haxton

Cockfight House
by J. David Stevens

Baseball
by John Updike