Comebacks that kill your story

Not a story about writing a gamer, but I remember that Monday Night Football game between the Redskins and the Cowboys in 2005.

The Cowboys were leading 13-0 and a lot of people in Redskins Nation went to bed discouraged. The Redskins seemingly couldn't rub two plays together. Like the pathetic fanboi looser loyal fan I am, I stayed up to watch that game to the bitter end, even though it's looking mighty bleak when the Redskins faced third and 27.

Then an aging Mark Brunell scrambles 25 yards, turning a fourth and desperate into a very makable fourth and two. The Redskins convert. They eventually got a fourth down touchdown strike from Brunell to Santana Moss that suddenly makes it a game: 13-7.

They hold Dallas, then Brunell unleashes a Mark-Rypien-during-the-Super-Bowl-year-worthy bomb to Moss. Bang! All of a sudden, it's 14-13 Redskins. When the game is about to go final with a 14-13 Redskins win, Gibbs gets the water bucket shower and the then-64-year-old coach jumped up and down like he was 44 again.

I know a lot of fans were pissed that they went to bed. I wonder how many journos had to scrap their stories. Anyway, my boss at the time (a fellow Redskins fan, I might add) said he pretty much only saw the fourth quarter. In other words, he got to see what most of Redskins Nation missed.

I'm glad I wasn't filing a "Redskins look dead" story...

 

Game stories are pretty easy to structure so this doesn't have too great an effect. Usually, I've got the bulk of it written late in the game, and if it looks like a comeback is afoot, I go ahead and write an alternate comeback lede. Easier to delete that than to write it on the once the game is over.

Columns or sidebars are a little more tricky, though.

 

There is nothing worse than a running sidebar with a substituted lead to account for the turnaround. Looks like a monkey's head on a giraffe's body. A column, at least you can fool with.

 

i really don't give a flying fuck, but wouldn't he have turned a third-and-desperate into a fourth-and-two? unless they got two fourth downs

 

I was writing obits for the Galilee Gazette one time, and it was Friday freaking afternoon, they nailed some guy to the cross. I had weekend plans, so I went ahead and wrote it up, and by the time the paper -- actually, it was a stone tablet, back then -- came out on Monday, well, ...

 

I think he meant had Brunell not scrambled like it was 1996 again, it would have been 4th-and-forever. instead, it was 4th-and-2.

And while we're talking about classic Monday Night Football comebacks, I would love to see some of the discarded ledes from the Jets-Dolphins "Meadowlands Miracle" game on the offday of the 2000 World Series. Jets, of course, were down 30-7 in the fourth and won, 40-37.

 

Game 2 of a high school baseball state championship series (best-of-three) 16 years ago.

There was plenty of drama going into Game 2, which had a 7 p.m. start. Earlier in the day, the state association ruled that game 1, played two days earlier, was a final having completed five innings of the regulation seven. The game was stopped in the sixth due to rain. The ruling handed the team I'm covering the win, giving it a chance at home to capture its first baseball state title.

Things didn't look good for the home team in Game 2, trailing 7-2 after five innings. Thinking the home team is beat, I begin writing the gamer on my laptop looking ahead to the third and final game at a neutral site.

The home team begins its comeback, scoring four runs in the bottom of the sixth to close within one. The visitors added one in the top of the seventh, and I thought my gamer lead was safe. Ha!

Home team opens the bottom of the seventh with an infield single, a hit batter and a walk to load the bases. Next batter drills a hard grounder just inside first base that rolls all the way to the right field corner, easily scoring the runners on third and second. The runner on first looks like he's dead meat when the throw is made to the plate. The ball, however, bounces to the catcher's right and the runner scores, giving the home team a 9-8 win and the championship.

Everything I wrote on the laptop stayed there. I rushed back to the office to rewrite the entire story in time for the first edition. I did a write-thru with quotes for the city edition. And it was hell getting those quotes, with home spectators storming the field and players and coaches were emotional wrecks after the game.

 

Denny Hamlin led 381 of the first 382 laps in a Saturday night race at his home track (and mine), the one he grew up 10 miles from. It was the most laps ever led at Richmond. Just fucking dominated. I've got 14 inches of GOLD. Hometown kid gets the victory he's wanted, family in the stands, won the night before in the Nationwide race, etc. etc. etc. Just no one was touching him.

Until his right front tire started going flat.

OK, scratch that 14 inches. Good, now Dale Earnhardt Jr. is leading. It's been two years since his last victory, also at RIR, so easy story to write. I get 5-6 inches into that beast, and Kyle Busch puts him in the wall.

Fuck.

So now there's a green-white-checkered restart, freaking Clint Bowyer wins, and I've got about 20 minutes to write a 14-inch lede for that run.

Fanfuckingtastic.

 

I covered various teams in the Cal League for more than a decade. As MileHigh, Buck Weaver, OTD, rpmmutant and some of the other SoCal members of SportsJournalists.com Nation can attest, this should stand on its own when it comes to ripped-up stories on deadline.

My favorite story of many dismantled gamers came in 1991. I was one of two writers covering the inaugural season of the High Desert Mavericks, which at that time, were the Padres' farm team. Bruce Bochy was the manager, Matt Mieske was the team and league MVP and they had I believe 5 players who made the majors.

The Mavs play in this absolute bandbox of a ballpark in this shithole town called Adelanto. The park sits in the middle of desert scrub on Highway 395. It also sits at 3,000 feet, so no lead is safe there.

That year, the Mavs had a "closer" named Ed Zinter, whose name became a synonym for "blown save" that season. I can't begin to describe how many leads he trashed that year: both on the field and on my Trash 80.

One night, the great Bill Gildea was at Maverick Stadium, coming through on his way back to/from Vegas (I can't remember). He stopped there to do a story on minor league baseball and I played tour guide for him, introducing him to the Mavs' staff and telling him about the players. He couldn't have been nicer.

Naturally, the Mavs -- a great team which went on to win the Cal League title -- took the lead. Naturally, they brought in Zinter. Naturally, I had most of my story written by the ninth inning -- a pretty good one -- when Bill said something along the lines of "You're in good shape tonight, Bird. You can get home early."

I told him, "Not hardly. I've got too good of a story tonight. And look who's coming in."

No sooner were the words out of my mouth than Zinter walked the leadoff batter, then gave up a two-run bomb. The Mavs would lose the game in extra innings and another good contribution from the muses went by the wayside.

All Bill could say was something like "You weren't kidding, Bird."

 

2004 NCAA semifinal, Duke vs. UConn.

Horrible deadline, Duke looks like it's going to with with less than two minutes to go, wrap up my running story with all but the final scorer and leading scorers.

UConn goes on a tear to close out the game, of course, and wins, causing me to completely scrap the top 10 or so inches of my gamer and scramble to re-write it.

Got it done, but definitely not my best work.

Fondest memory: I was sitting about 10 feet behind Coach K, and watching him stalk the refs afterward and hearing him scream 'YOU FUCKING KILLED US! YOU FUCKING KILLED US! YOU FUCKING KILLED US!'

 

I covered that game as the beat writer for the Chronicle. When I was asked to submit my lead, I declined. For the first and only time as a journalist, I actually felt really sorry for the team I covered and their fans. As great an idea as this was, I felt it only added to the fans' pain.

Perhaps for that one day I was not a good, objective reporter.

 

For practicality, I keep two files on my computer called WINLEAD AND LOSSLEAD. If my team is threatening to hock up a late lead, I go to LOSSLEAD and start writing the story as if they lost. I go back and forth between that story and the win story, polishing both as I go. It took me a lot of years of practice to get that down, but it works.

Fortunately, I have not ever sent the wrong story.