Yes, these sporting events happened a few years ago. Yes, most of them – cricket matches, Olympique de Marseille soccer matches – will fly over readers’ heads. And yes, reading about a man playing catch with his son is boring.

But I don’t care. S.L. Price’s latest book ‘Far Afield: A Sportswriting Odyssey’ is still a fresh read – an enlightening book that delves in the complexities of sportswriting, family life and Europe’s opinion of America.

Price, a senior writer for Sports Illustrated, leveraged a job offer from The Chicago Tribune into a year of covering Europe’s kooky sporting spectacles throughout 2004. He heads off to the south of France with his family. That’s where the book begins.

Europe at the time is a perfect storm for Price, the best writer at SI not named Gary Smith.

The Olympics are returning to their birthplace, Athens, an area awash in chaos as planners struggle to prepare the city for the games. Dislike for Americans appears to be at its highest, with the Iraq War providing fodder for critics. Plus, Price just had a newborn child.

Hence the subtitle, ‘A Sportswriting Odyssey.’ While Price doesn’t travel too far literally – stops in Pakistan and Serbia are as exotic as he gets – he still traverses a good deal of ground. He takes readers back in time to his days as a newspaper scribe for The Miami

Herald, The Sacramento Bee, even The Memphis Press-Scimitar.

Here the book can slow a bit for some, as Price explains his transformation as a writer. While other writers might find interesting nuggets in Price’s metamorphosis, most would be better suited reading about his encounters with stars like Ted Williams or Lance Armstrong – who was wearing only a towel when answering Price’s knocks at his hotel door.

It’s the anecdotes that carry this and the subtle ways that Price explains character. His take on Athenian cabdrivers is tremendous – an excellent metaphor for the city’s inherent paranoia.

He delves into the difficulty of fame and the toll it has taken on Michael Jordan, along with the toll that Jordan could exert on reporter.

Price, a North Carolina State University graduate, is able to freely converse with fellow Tar Heel Jordan despite the star’s hatred of SI (a 1994 story mocking Jordan’s turn at baseball soured His Airness to the mag, and he hasn’t given them an interview since).

Now that’s interesting.

There’s more besides that – far too much with his family and their culture shock in fact. But Price funnels enough topics to keep a decently sized group of readers interested, from politicos to sports fans.

Published on November 6, 2007 at 12:00 pm