Why It's Easier to Succeed With sportswriter Than You Might Think

One reason that many great writing about sports is nonfiction is that you can't compete with all the drama of this facts. I sat with Roger Angell of The New Yorker and Peter Gammons in the Shea Stadium press box for the ending of the World Series between the Mets and the Red Sox. I was 23 paying attention not just to those two, but also to the games. Mr. Gammons was the relentless private investigator probing a public realm, an obsessive who, during his years at The Boston Globe, opened up the game to readers by covering vast pages of the Sunday paper with sprees of information, speculation, gossip and discourse. Mr. Angell formed belles-lettres from ballplayers; his prose was a martini hauled across the page -- smooth and tasteful, with juniper wit and distilled insights that created something that you already liked much more complicated in its tastes. That October evening, it was 68 years because the Red Sox last won baseball's championship, during that time they had become the sport fatigables. Year after year they crept near success, only to drop again in fashion. Here they had been the closest yet, ahead three games 5 to 3, and now winning, since the bottom of the inning began. The press box was located high over the area, requiring a trip to accomplish the level that was clubhouse. Throngs of all sportswriters were climbing round the elevator to find that the Red Sox as they came inside to celebrate the long-awaited triumph. Mr. Angell and Mr. Gammons, however, didn't move, so neither did I. When the infamous ground ball rolled Bill Buckner's legs giving the match I had the feeling that we were the only three left up to see. It's as if they knew. -- before announcing"no shorthand could communicate the vast, encompassing, supplicating sounds of that night, or the feeling of encroaching threat on the field." Much like Mr. Angell, most sportswriters are impassioned lovers, but of course writing about games requires space. A powerful figure in American press boxes during my Sports Illustrated years was Jerome Holtzman of The Chicago Tribune. Mr. Holtzman wore sharp suits to the ballpark, and had eyebrows so thick they seemed like a pair of nesting voles. (The current unmasking of Joe Paterno makes his point about the"Godding up" of athletic figures.) Somewhere between the contentious fashion of Dick Young of routine multimillion-dollar contracts and The New York Daily News, matters swung the other way and sportswriters began to be perceived not as giddy lovers but as antagonists from the athletes they Get more information cover. There is some truth for their complaints. Where it's acceptable to insult your subjects I can not think of many forms of journalism. "It's just like a sex columnist who hates sex," is the way a young N.F.L. trainer I understand thinks about those covering his group.