Skip to footer

9 sports books you may have missed in 2014

Check out these sports titles you may have overlooked earlier this year.

3. 'The Closer: My Story,' by Mariano Rivera with Wayne Coffey

  • By Ross Atkin

Mariano Rivera, who retired after the 2013 season, spent 19 years with the New York Yankees. A Panamanian who had never heard of Babe Ruth when the Yankees discovered him, Rivera went on to become the premier relief pitcher of his era and the greatest “closer” of all time, with a record number of saves. 

“For me, putting on the Yankee uniform every day is a process full of rapture. You hear guys who get traded to, or sign with, the Yankees talk about how great it feels to be putting on the pinstripes. For me, the thrill never wears off. It is about the history of the uniform, the dignity and the championships, the way it stands for something enduring, for excellence. Maybe it’s because I’m from a fishing village that is one stop from the end of the earth that wearing a Yankee uniform means so much. I just know I never take it for granted, for even one day. It’s so easy to get caught up in the problems and complications and sadness that life can confront us with, but by opening my heart to the Lord, I am filled with lightness, with appreciation for the gifts He has given me, with the ability to pay attention to what is good and not what is not good.”

3 of 9
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.