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The Thread to Discuss - and Learn From - Good Writing

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by Double Down, Mar 14, 2007.

  1. BYH

    BYH Active Member

    That's very interesting. Minor league playoff games mean almost nothing in the grand scheme of things. Yeah, winning it all is a great feeling regardless of the level. But the organization is about development, not winning. So teams won't squeeze an extra start out of a stud pitcher and won't empty the bullpen to try to win the game. Executives are getting fired if a minor league team wins a championship at the expense of a hot young prospect. Fans are there for the between innings entertainment. The players are typically either tired of being at the lower level, eager to get home, already planning for Instructional League/winter ball or some combination of the three.

    Maybe way down the road a minor league championship is looked back upon fondly. but in the heat of the moment, it's really not that big a deal.

    As for why the D-Rays provided so much access for this story...DD, I think we have to remember when this occured. It was the summer of 1999 and the D-Rays were two years old. They were all about a bright young future, and what better way to whet the appetites of their 16 fans than to allow the big local paper to chronicle the top draft pick's first summer of pro ball? Plus, on the surface, there was nothing to indicate the Hamilton story was anything other than a Norman Rockwell painting come to life: Kid eats, breathes and sleeps baseball, never gets in trouble and loves his mom and dad. Chroncling the Hamilton story probably looked like a no-lose proposition to the Rays.

    Somehow, I think the Rays would have been more reluctant to approve a summer in the life of Carl Crawford, who wanted to get laid and had never read a boxscore. And if the Rays had drafted Josh Beckett instead...well, you can be SURE Beckett's rough edges would not have made for DRays-friendly copy.

    Today, I doubt this story would happen. Even if a team had a seemingly perfect no. 1 pick, it would be reluctant to allow a newspaper to paint him as such for fear he'd go off the deep end years later, a la Hamilton, and make the team look bad.
     
  2. Double Down

    Double Down Well-Known Member

    I let this thread putter out from what I assumed was lack of interest, but I thought I might give it a bump again and see if anyone was interested in contributing stories they liked.

    Read this piece recently, an excerpt from Bill Nack's autobiography/biography of Ruffian. It's about his life-long love affair with horse racing, his vivid memories about some beautiful iconic animals, and it has some wonderful scenes. The stuff about Barbaro at the beginning is breathtaking, and full of rich detail. But I really enjoyed the part about keeping the laminated picture of Swaps in his wallet for all those years until is was stolen.

    http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=nack/070502

    Nack's sentences have always had a great rhythm to them. His story about Secretariat's final days and eventual death is something every writer, regardless of how little they care about horse racing, should read.
     
  3. MartinEnigmatica

    MartinEnigmatica Active Member

    DD, thanks for posting that, I really enjoyed it. I'm struck by a few things, one of which is Nack's tone. I can't exactly describe it, but it's almost calming in effect. He's at once poetic, classical in influence, with sentences like this:
    "I have thought of Ruffian so often over the years that today she flits around like a ghost in all the mustier rooms of my reveries, a boarder who has had a run of the place the last two years..."
    I'd love to be able to get away with that in a newspaper piece. Then again, I'd love to be able to even WRITE that.
    I also think there's something about horse racing that lends itself to a voice/tone like this, I don't know why.
     
  4. ChmDogg

    ChmDogg Member

    I'm a huge, huge fan of this thread. Thanks for posting it, DD. Not sure how I missed it earlier.

    I already picked up a few interesting things that you highlighted from the Hamilton piece and the deaf football piece.

    Keep it up, thanks.

    And, just to keep things moving -- although I'm sure this has been posted before -- I'll post the link to Jim Sheeler's "Final Salute" from the Rocky Mountain News. Still one of the most emotionally moving pieces of writing I've ever read. The opening scene is unreal.

    IF you have NOT read this yet, I would highly recommend it! Not sports, but worth every second.

    http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/news/article/0,1299,DRMN_3_4224657,00.html
     
  5. STLIrish

    STLIrish Active Member

    That is an amazing story (from the RMN). I'd forgotten how great the opening scene was.

    And while we're on some Anne Hull lovin', she is indeed one of the very best. Here's a good one of hers from a few years back, about when a Whole Foods opens in a D.C. 'hood.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A2272-2001Mar27&notFound=true
     
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