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Welcome to StrongSide, D Magazine’s New Sports Section

D's daily sports coverage has officially begun.
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Matthew Emmons-USA TODAY Sports

Why, hello there.

I hope you remember me from a month and a half ago when D announced me as its first/new/only sports editor via an enormous photo of my face. We promised that D’s first/new/only sports section, which we’re calling StrongSide, would arrive at some undetermined moment in the summer.

My friends, that moment has arrived.

I wrote broadly in July about what this all might look like, and I suppose I could write more of the same today now with a more defined lens. But why do that when I could just show you?

StrongSide is my profile of Dale Hansen, who was gracious enough to let me shadow him for the final day of his illustrious broadcast career—and spoke with me plenty leading up to it. We talked about his triumphs, his insecurities, his regrets, and his hopes heading into the next phase of his life, a phase he’s still coming to terms with. Dale was honest and vulnerable with me, and so were the people who know him best. It was an honor to tell his story, and my hope is you’ll walk away with a better understanding of one of the most complicated, significant personalities in Dallas.

StrongSide is Roberto José Andrade Franco, one of the best sportswriters in the country, doing the first of what will be weekly Cowboys dispatches during the season. We’ll give you the skinny of what to expect on the field later this week, but the power of the first week of the season lies in the possibilities: good, bad, in between. Roberto captures that fragility as we all prepare to torture ourselves for the next 18 weeks.

StrongSide is Jamey Newberg, our Texas Rangers columnist, writing about the club’s cruelest summer in a generation and how we should feel about that disappointment. If you love reading about this team—including at its worst—then you probably love reading Jamey, because nobody has done it so comprehensively and so artfully for so long. After this week, he’ll be here Wednesdays. There is nobody else I’d rather have writing about the team, and I bet you’ll feel the same way.

StrongSide is many more names and many more things, as you’ll come to find out. Over the next two weeks, we’ll also be rewinding back to the 10 greatest sports stories we’ve published prior to today, as a reminder that our sports coverage does, in fact, span decades. We begin in 1988 with Skip Hollandsworth’s devastating account of the rise and fall of the Von Erich family, among the greatest tragedies in both Dallas sports and professional wrestling history.

But if I had to provide you with a snapshot about what we’re going to about, well, today’s an ideal one. We’re going to tell great stories, and we’re going to deliver fresh, smart, stylish writing on the sports topics you care about. We’re going to have fun—even when it concerns 100-loss baseball teams—and we’re going to make you think. We’re going to reacquaint you with names you know, and we’re going to introduce you to ones you wish you’d seen sooner. In short, we’re going to cover sports differently—and, we hope, better—than anyone else in town.

Consider this an official welcome aboard. I look forward to our journey together.

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