The world of HS track gets pissed off

This I agree with. I don't think "play-by-play" should be confused with a "linear account of the game." Yes, that is lazy journalism.

I've had too many HS football games to count where so many different significant things happened. By the time I get quotes and finish adding stats, all I'm left with for time and space is literally enough for THE winning play. In my earlier days I tried way too hard to stuff in as many details as I could from, say, a wild 41-38 thriller.

Now, I think it makes a much better gamer just to write the whole gamer on the winning play(s). You have a box score, besides, and you can always follow up in the next day or two if you feel the need to describe more of the game.

 

Also agree with this. There was a beat writer for the MLB team nearest to me that used to do this shit all the time.

"As the late afternoon sun dipped below the top level of the stadium, left fielder Joe Bigbat could only reminisce about the fifth inning when he'd fouled off that change-up he thought he should've driven to a gap somewhere, long before that sun started to dip....."

Fucking God, tell me who won already! There's 162 of these, let's not try way too painfully and obviously hard to write each one like it's the damn Ice Bowl. Drove me nuts. I remember some of his gamers not having a score until after the jump. He was an editor's pet, though, so he got away with it.

 

When I had a full-time gig, since I was also slamming out pages, I found I needed to write a couple of hundred words at halftime just so I could get the pages out. But YMMV.

Last fall, the paper I was stringing for had a 10 p.m. deadline for print, so I'd send in a quick story as soon as the game ended ("Johnny Jockstrap scored three touchdowns as part of a 300-yard night rushing as Springfield defeated Shelbyville 26-10 Friday night ...), then head down to the field for some quotes and send in a writethru by 11:15 for the web.

 

I can't fucking stand assholes who write like that. Sometimes, I just want to know who fucking won and how. I don't give a shit if you got a damn PhD from Harvard, tell me the damn score!

 

Okay, since my post above seemed to generate a whole new discussion of the merits of play-by-play in gamers, let me give an example of what I was referring to. This is the start of a basketball gamer my shop ran this winter.

The Podunk Bees knocked off the Loserville Lakers 80-63 Thursday night.
The Bees opened up a 20-12 lead in the first six minutes of the game. Podunk’s Anna Johnson had eight early points to lead the way.
The Lakers crawled back into the game with buckets by Sally Parker and Erin Stewart. They cut the lead to 23-20 with seven minutes to go until half.
However, the Bees responded. A jumper by Mackenzie Jones and a 3-pointer by Madison Howard helped the Bees build a 16-point lead.
Parker hit a half-court shot at the buzzer to trim the lead to 38-25 at the half.

This was a 17-point win, not a close game. If I can avoid it, I rarely have first-half play-by-play because I feel it has little to do with the outcome. If I was proofing this, I'd chop the second and third paragraphs. This would be my lede:

The Loserville Lakers trailed the Podunk Bees by just three points with seven minutes remaining in the first half, but they wouldn't get any closer as the Bees defeated the Lakers 80-63 on Thursday night.

Probably not the strongest example, but it's enough to get the picture.

 

Actually, the Lakers hanging around three points down with seven minutes left in the first half of a game they lost isn't the way I'd go. See what I mean?

 

What if the Lakers were the only area team? Shouldn't the focus of the lede still be on the team you cover? Pretty sure more readers would care that the Lakers lost than care that the Bees won.

Sure, the down 3 with 7 minutes in the first half is probably a meaningless reference point, but I was just going with the info that was in those five graphs in my rewrite.

 

It's a decent reference point since they went from down three to down 13 in those last seven minutes and never seemed to get back in it. Needs to be framed a lot better, though. Like reference the 15-2 run the Bees went on after that, since it was the decisive point in the game. Even lead with the half-court shot that ended the half as a pyrrhic victory kind of thing. They got a memorable highlight, but it came at the end of a game-deciding run and was part of an ass-kicking. That sort of thing.
That's an example of a place where a little showmanship can liven up a boring as hell game.

Sally Parker dribbled the ball near the center court stripe with the clock winding down in the first half Thursday. Just before the buzzer sounded, she let the basketball fly toward the goal with nothing more than hope and a steady hand guiding it.
The ball swished through the net, the buzzer sounded, and Parker celebrated with her teammates the shot of a lifetime.
It was a moment of joy in an otherwise down night for the Podunk Bees. The Loserville Lakers had gone on a 15-2 run before that to open up a big lead they never relinquished, and handed the Bees an 80-63 loss.
The Bees trailed by just three points with seven minutes left in the first half, but the Lakers' big run gave them a 38-25 lead after Parker's half court heave.

Mix in some game stats, the mechanics of the 15-2 run (really the only part of the game that seems to have mattered), a quick overview of the big picture in terms of the season, a couple of quotes and you've got yourself a decent 400-500 word gamer that reads a lot better than a dry recitation of play-by-play.
Gamers can be formulaic as hell without necessarily sucking.

 

Wouldn't get closer? No. The DIDN'T get closer. It already happened.

That one drives me so nuts.

Edit: Couldn't works there, too. But not wouldn't.

 

I've bookmarked this thread to remind myself when I may be taking small things way too seriously.

(This is in reference to the reaction from the track community, not to the gamer discussion, which is a bunch of professionals talking shop.)

 

It wouldn't have been quite so bad if the backlash had come from Gross' own community. But the lion's share of those comments came from people who have never been in the vicinity. Just track geeks who got stirred up by a track columnist.

 

Noted.