Two versions of the best sportswriting of 2011

Quickish founder Dan Shanoff writes that the site, which launched in January, has curated “10,000-plus pieces of great sportswriting” this year, and in a post last week, he listed the best of them.

Deadspin is the only outfit that placed two pieces on the Quickish “11 for 11,” Katie Baker’s “The Confessions of a Former Adolescent Puck Tease” aka “I was teenage hockey message board jailbait,” and Luke O’Brien’s “Stay Soft, Dirk Nowitzki.”

Also on the list are Why you should care about cricket by ESPN’s Wright Thompson, who offered writing advice to readers of this blog in May, and historian Taylor Branch’s epic takedown, The Shame of College Sports in the Atlantic.

The top 11 and a list of stories “also receiving votes” make up enough quality reading to tide you over on even a painfully long family holiday visit.

And if it doesn’t, try Erik Malinowski’s 2011 Year in Review, Sports Media Edition, in which the former Wired.com sports editor briefly reviews the year in sports media—Rob Neyer going from ESPN to SBNation gets a mention, me going from Salon to B/R does not; hmph!—and lists eight sportswriters to watch and the 10 best long reads of 2011, with some overlap to Quickish’s list.

Remember Jonah Keri’s advice for writers in this space: Read, read … READ.

What great pieces of sportswriting from 2011 are missing from these two lists?