After years of sobriety, columnist returns to the bars

SCeditor,
Any idea on the title of Burger's column on sports writing? I'd love to check it out, but their website archive returned something like 1,300 results for his byline.

 

Somebody else PM'd me about it. I've got it taped to my wall and it's tattered from various moves (see the shortest jobs thread), but I've got an e-mail out to a friend in hopes of having it e-mailed to me. When I do, I'll post it. It's from the late 1990s. I remember reading it on a Sunday afternoon when I was in high school fishing with my dad. Mr. Burger e-mailed it to me a few years later, but I'd hate to e-mail him again about it. As soon as my friend can get her hands on it, I'll post it. If not, I'll retype it and post it when I find some time.

 

Are you kidding me? We don't think about drinking during March Madness? Give me a break.

The connection between basketball and drinking at this time of year can't be avoided. Turn on your TV. You see the Miller Lite rock-paper-scissors commercial practically every break. There are all kind of basketball decorations in the beer aisle at the store. This isn't a topic that hasn't been addressed, a million times over.

You know what would have been a more memorable column? How about if the columnist would have volunteered to drive someone home from the sports bar? He'd be putting his hard-earned personal lesson to use in a positive way. As far as I know, he wouldn't violate any journalistic covenants, either. The whole thing just seemed gratuitous.

 

Disregard my last post. I shelled out the $3.95 and bought it off the archive.

Remember, sports writer is two words
By Ken Burger
I am often approached by wide-eyed youngsters who think being a sports writer would be the most wonderful job in the whole wide world. Going to sporting events for a living. Meeting famous athletes. Traveling far and wide in search of a good story.
I am always the first to admit that this is a great job. I have been doing it for a long time now and never wake up and wish I were doing something else for a living.
But whenever I am asked by Generation Next about becoming a sports writer, I always ask them why they would choose this particular line of work as a vocation.
"Because I just love sports," they always say. "I live and breathe sports. It's the only thing I'm really interested in."
That is when I always ask them this question: Which do you like best, the sports or the writing? And they always look back at me with a puzzled expression. They are not sure of the right answer.
The answer, of course, is simple.
I always tell aspirants to this lofty profession that they should remember that sports writer is two words. Sports is merely what you cover. Writing is what you do. Eventually, you'll get tired of the games. So the writing has to be the part you love the most.
No cheering, please
My advice to those who think this job is God's gift to any sports fan is for them to actually consider what we do for a living. Yes, we go to a lot of games. And yes, we get in free on a working press pass. But the key word here is working.
We do not tailgate before the game. We do not drink during the game. We do not cheer. We do not get up and go home when the game is over. We never get to leave early.
My father, in fact, thought I had landed a pretty soft job out of college when I was a young sports writer covering college football for a Columbia newspaper. Then one day, I took him to a game and let him sit in the press box.
The elevator to the press area impressed him. So did the pregame meal and the seat right on the 50-yard line. But once the game got under way, I constantly had to reach over and politely calm my father down, because he was a fan of the game and constantly felt the need to applaud or show his emotions in some manner.
As strange as it seems to normal people, we don't do that. Every working press box in America, college or pro, has a standing rule - no cheering.
My father never asked me to take him to a game again.
Pull for the story
Personally, I've never had a problem with that aspect of the job because I've never been a fan.
I grew up liking to play sports, but never became a fan of any particular team or favored one sport over another. I was always a casual observer, which turned out to be helpful in my line of work.
The bottom line of my job is that I really don't care who wins or loses any particular game. I have no allegiances to clutter my view of the event. When people inevitably ask me who I pull for, I always answer the same way: "I pull for the story."
The way I watch a game is different from the way you watch a game. Instead of worrying about who wins or loses, I am always tuned into why somebody wins or loses, what personalities or circumstances led to that result, what does it mean in perspective to the big picture, or any number of small subplots that might run through the story that might shed light on the outcome.
My theory is, somebody wins, somebody loses, but I've still got a column to write before I can go home. And since I'm getting paid to do it, I might as well enjoy it and write something interesting.

 

What we do
There are times when this can be the most exciting job in the world and times when it can be a real bore. It has its moments of euphoria and it has its unrelenting deadlines.
But that's why they call it a job.
And while there is a lot of travel and a lot of time spent watching games and interviewing coaches and players, what it all boils down to is the writing.
Personally, that is my favorite part. There are people in this business who love the games and the players and the lifestyle but hate the writing part. They got in this business because they thought all they had to do was watch football or baseball or basketball for a living. They thought writing about it was just the price of admission. They soon learned they were in the wrong business. They should be sitting in the stands with the fans. And, eventually, that's where they end up.
Once I took my son, Brent, into a busy press room after a college basketball game to show him what I did for a living. When I asked him later what he thought, he was unimpressed.
"Just a bunch of guys typing," he said with a shrug.
Indeed, that's exactly what we do. When the game is over and the cheers are just an echo and the fans are partying in the parking lot and the stadium is dark, you are left sitting in a press box with a head full of facts and figures and opinions and quotes and fragments of fractured literature and a blank computer screen and a clock ticking inside your head and an editor screaming over the phone for live copy in 20 minutes and you finally get a chance to do the thing you love the most - write.
So you write and you sweat and you watch the clock and you write some more and you check a fact and you wonder if you've got enough to fill the hole and then wonder if you've got too much and then you have to hit the button and send it in before you even have a chance to read it and you walk away into the night wondering if you could have done it better.
Then, by the time that paper hits the street the next morning, you're on your way to the next game and another chance to make the words sing and dance, no matter who wins or loses.
It's who we are. It's what we do.
And in the end, it's not about sports, it's about writing.
(Ken Burger is executive sports editor of The Post and Courier. He can be reached by phone at 937-5598 or by e-mail at kburger@postandcourier.com)

 

Hey SCE, you beat me by about two minutes and $4 ... except I didn't have to pay for mine ... but it's the first time I've read it. Thanks for posting it.

 

Ken has put out some really great stuff.
Let's hope it continues for a very long time.

 

Indeed. Today's column is about him finding out he has prostate cancer. He's in my prayers.

 

Kudos, SC. Thanks for posting that.

 

Didn't get a chance to see it, but I was wondering when that was going to come out.

 

I like Burger's stuff and I think their other columnist, Sapakoff, is good, too. I didn't especially like this column, however. We can't disagree without being a "jackal?"

I love Charleston and we love to vacation there. I think their sports section is pretty good, but the paper pissed me off so badly when we were there during the 2004 Democratic Convention. They did such a bush-league sucky job that I had to buy The State from Columbia every day. I almost wrote to the editor, but I figured he'd just dismiss me as a liberal Yankee douchebag.

 

We're the state that essentially elected a gay-bashing guy to the Senate. Your liberalism is not allowed here. However, we'll take your tourist dollars.

You're right, Sapakoff is good. He's a guy that could have gone elsewhere a long time ago (I think he was voted College Basketball Writer of the Year by the CBWA when he covered Clemson men's hoops), but his love for the area has kept him hitting behind Burger all these years. He's the funnier of the two, but he's another guy who doesn't live on just opinions (which, like I said before, I think is a good thing).

Next time you're in Charleston, PM me Frank. I'll buy ya a beer.