The absence of Grantland has left a giant cosmic void of sports writing and sports news. It shut down in 2015. Something about the bespoke nature of the site is what made it novel. Whether by design or not, it didn’t feel corporate.
I’m not against any of the existing sports writing, but it all feels either too corporate, or too algorithmic. Outkick kind of filled that void for a hot minute, but the last time I visited the site it redirected to a subpage of Fox News. My heart sank. Nowadays anything remotely good eventually shuts down or gets gobbled up and spit out by some corporation. It turns to garbage.
Why can’t I get something a la The Free Press but for sports journalism?
In the meantime, for sports scores specifically, while not allowing myself to get drawn into the various platforms’ news feeds, I turned to The Score app several years ago. It’s as close to perfection for anything sports I would want. It’s also simple and if there’s one thing I admire is simplicity.
Discoverd by way of my friend, Brian D. O’Leary, who is over on Substack, some more wonderful sports app nuggets.
Now Taking the Field
Tom Stone’s The Baseball Buffet daily roundups are so refreshing. Just give me the scores, anything notable that happened. In fact he says it himself, “Think of it like what baseball fans of a certain age would look forward to in their morning newspaper’s sports section each day!“
As someone who remembers growing up, eagerly anticipating the following morning’s paper to digest the sports section, this certainly fits the bill.
https://nowtakingthefield.beehiiv.com
Plain Text Sports
Related. All I can say is, wow. This is one of the most elegant and simple apps, and I’m glad this guy built it. Just scores, in plain text, the way box scores used to feel in the newspaper.