Introducing: The Cost of These Dreams

From one of America's most beloved sportswriters, a collection of true stories about the dream of greatness and its cost in the world of sports.

There is only one Wright Thompson. His work includes the most read articles in the history of ESPN and has been anthologised in The Best American Sports Writing books ten times. But to say his pieces are about sports, while true as far as it goes, is like saying Larry McMurty's Lonesome Dove is a book about a cattle drive. Wright Thompson figures people out. Whether it be Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods or Tony Harris or Ted Williams, he strips away the self-serving myths and fantasies to fully reveal his characters, and what drives them, in a way that few others can.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
There. So I'm gonna sure, dude. Yeah, man, I'm and
let's just do it step by steps. This is perfect.
There's this guy. His name is Right Thompson. He's from Mississippi.
You know, I get I do a bunch of voiceovers.
He and I we're laughing. I was like, we need

(00:20):
a moratorium on voiceovers. That sounds like I just licked
the barbecue sauce off my fingers. Can we just not
do that. He's a writer and he writes stories about sports.
Sometimes I love a sports hot take. I think Major
League Baseball umpires or a travesty. Do you know what
I mean? You know? And so, But right stories are
not like the sports articles you might be used to seeing.

(00:43):
His writing doesn't seem to get caught up in stat
lines or draft stock. Instead, Right wants to talk about
what makes these sports figures human. What if I told
you a sports story or what happens on the field
is the least interesting part of the tale, that's right Thompson.
I think there's a long tradition of these kind of stories,
especially these kinds of sports stories. This is a very

(01:05):
particular American tradition. You know, I have the license to
follow it all the way down to the bottom, and
there a couple of stories. I'm in an n Right
and I'm Megan Adolski. This is the Cost of These Dreams,
a podcast about sports stories from Right Thompson. The best
stories are universal. The only story that a reader will
really remember is one that's about them. They should be

(01:29):
about everybody. Each episode's a different story. You'll hear about
the world's greatest hitter who lives on in a freezer
in Scottsdale, Arizona. I love poking around at the idea
of free will. There's a story about a professional golfer
who's chasing one dream just to fill the whole left
by another. If the person is that visible and yet

(01:49):
they don't feel seen what's going on. You'll hear a
story about a college football team that's really about the
legacy of the Civil War. We do it to them,
and they do it to themselves without really understanding exactly
what it is they're doing. Listen to the Cost of
These Dreams on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts. M