Long Reads.

Sports and Politics.

1. A couple of weeks ago, News Items featured some “Long Reads” from the world of sports, or the “Wide World of Sports” as the late great Roone Arledge called it. A day or so later, a number of readers emailed to say that I had missed some great ones, beginning with Gay Talese’s classic, “The Silent Season of a Hero.” The subject of Talese’s piece was J…