Sportswriting in Quarters

When it comes to sportswriting, I tend to subscribe to George Plimpton's small-ball theory: The smaller the ball, the better the writing about the sport. This has a lot to do with my own biases (I'm a baseball fan, not much interest in basketball or football), but it also seems borne out by the literature. And yet, if Bill Simmons is right, the whole notion of a ball theory (small or large) might turn out to be moot.