{"id":11816,"date":"2017-05-30T11:37:00","date_gmt":"2017-05-30T19:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/associatednews.info\/content\/the-best-of-frank-deford-according-to-frank-deford\/"},"modified":"2017-05-30T11:37:00","modified_gmt":"2017-05-30T19:37:00","slug":"the-best-of-frank-deford-according-to-frank-deford","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/associatednews.info\/content\/the-best-of-frank-deford-according-to-frank-deford\/","title":{"rendered":"The 'Best Of' Frank Deford, According To Frank Deford"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Tanya Ballard Brown<\/a><\/span> <\/p>\n

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\n Frank Deford in 1991, holding a dummy copy of the final edition of The National Sports Daily<\/em>, which he edited and published. It’s hard to distill 37 years of Deford’s sports commentaries down to a few “best of” pieces. But, before he retired, he shared some of his favorites with us.<\/p>\n

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Susan Ragan\/AP<\/p>\n

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Susan Ragan\/AP<\/p>\n

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Renowned sports writer and commentator Frank Deford, 78, died on Sunday, just a few weeks after his last piece aired<\/a> on Morning Edition<\/em>. He had recorded 1,656 commentaries for NPR over nearly 40 years.<\/p>\n

<\/strong>Deford left everything on the field when choosing topics for his commentaries. One of his early 1980 pieces argued that losing teams didn’t deserve support, and later that year he opined that the Heisman Trophy was “the second stupidest award given in sports.” In 1992, he told us “television coverage of football is abysmal. It stinks.” A few years later, he weighed in on then-rookie NBA player Jason Williams’ nickname, “White Chocolate.”<\/a><\/p>\n

But Deford wasn’t always the sports curmudgeon<\/a>, as Jon Wertheim, executive editor for Sports<\/em>Illustrated<\/em>, told Morning Edition<\/em>. <\/em><\/p>\n

“I think there was a real versatility to him,” said Wertheim, who knew Deford for more than 20 years. Many sports writers, Wertheim said, got into the business because of Deford.<\/p>\n

“He could write with empathy, compassion, and sweetness. He could take stands \u2014 as NPR listeners know there were certainly, there were dimensions to sport that bothered him. There was a level of moral outrage,” Wertheim said. “And then he could come back the next week and write about something with real sweetness and tenderness. And he did the same thing in his prose. And he is just an absolute giant in the field.”<\/p>\n