Author Bio & Stories

Lang Whitaker

Lang Whitaker is a staffer at The Classical. He is an editor-at-large for SLAM magazine. Follow him on Twitter @langwhitaker.

  • May 25, 2012
    Uncanny Valley Fever

    Last season, Lang Whitaker retired as a baseball fan. After two decades of watching pretty much every Braves game of the Bobby Cox era, and then writing a book about the experience, he was a bit burned out on the Bravos. But thanks to a video game, he's been drawn back into (pixelated) fandom.

  • March 29, 2012
    The Josh Smith Question

    If Allen Iverson was The Answer, perhaps Josh Smith is The Question, at least among NBA fans. What kind of player is he? What kind of player should he be? What kind of player will he become?

  • March 26, 2012
    Without Chipper

    For two decades, Chipper Jones has been great in a way that has been perplexingly easy to forget, underrate or overlook. But with his last big league season looming, fans are left to confront the strangeness of baseball without Chipper.

  • February 16, 2012
    Throw Some Dunks on It

    The dunk contest has given us its share of iconic moments—some from Hall of Famers, some from role players. Each year, we tune in expecting to see history made. The secret? That was never really the point. 

  • December 16, 2011
    The Young Man and the Sea

    I am as surprised as anyone that I have become an avid fisherman. As I sit on my couch and write these words, I can look out the window to my left and see a long slice of the Hudson River, as gray and motionless as the cement that spans the distance between it and me. In theory, I suppose I could fish the Hudson, though I also suppose I’d be as likely to catch a box of hypodermic needles as I would a fish worth crowing about. 

  • December 3, 2011
    The Fight in the Dawg

    This year’s SEC Championship game will not involve the two best teams in the SEC, arguably the two best in the nation. This may seem counterintuitive, but logic is something that is frequently overlooked in the world of college football.

  • November 11, 2011
    The Accidental Emotion of NBA 2K12

    For many years there were two NBA video games that battled for supremacy each fall: the NBA 2K series from 2K Sports, and the NBA Live series from EA Sports. Each franchise had fans, but there was no clear winner — no Madden, as it were. This proved healthy: both publishers were driven to innovate in an attempt to capture whatever unclaimed market share existed.