Wright Thompson!

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/eticket/story?page=mink

This is my favourite kind of journalism. Take a story that everyone "knows," only doesn't, because the untruth or half-truth does something for us emotionally, and to complicate things would make them less fun...then go complicate things, take the air out of the mythballoon. Great read.

 

Love the topic; could have been a couple of thousand words shorter with the same impact.

 

Yeah, quite possibly. And there could've been less "I." Still, I salute the effort.

 

I think because this is such a newspaper hangout, people get too caught up about the "I" in stories a lot of the time. I don't think writers in longer form narratives do it to inject themselves, but instead as a way to anchor the story to a particular point of view.

I have a feeling it's even encouraged. Read some New Yorker features from time to time. You'll find that the writer often writes in the first person about his/her experience. It has the effect of taking you on the narrator's route of discovery. Some people see it as arrogance by the writer. I see it the opposite - a tacit admission that the narrator is NOT omniscient, but just a person finding things out like you are.

I think we've just been so trained in newspapers to "stay out of the way" that the adverse reaction to first person is almost reflexive by now.

 

Agreed. Well said.

 

The "I's" didn't bother me. Being the same length as 'The Arms of Krupp" did. Again.

 

That was a very good read.
Thanks for posting it.

Question: What did everyone else think of the situation at Lees College?
I tend to believe Mink was not expelled and left the team. I could see being kicked off the team or punished, but expelled from college for that?
I don't think Wright, who had little more than he said-he said for evidence and the hazy memories of some old men, is also unsure.
I don't know that the question was answered.

Good read. Good read.

 

Only way to know for sure is if the old man confesses and says it was a fabricated story. Even then, you still can't be sure. Dude's a little out there.

I enjoyed the story. Despite its length, it read a lot quicker than I thought it might.

 

It reminds me of two classic stories: Gary Smith's on George O'Leary and Dave Kindred's on the woman who made all of those holes-in-one.

 

How much you want to bet Wright was initially sent out to do a quick piece when this guy had his 15 minutes, called his editor and said, 'Uh, this is what we think it is.' Kudos to Wright for doing this story right, and for his editors to let him go for it.

 

That sucker is nearly 7,800 words long.

Well done, but it could have been done as well -- just different -- in half the length.

No offense to the writer, but the subject is too squirrelly to devote that, as a reader, that much of my time to. (And yet, strangely, I did. Just wish I hadn't.)

 

I liked it. The length was fine and the first-person interjections were fine.

Good stuff.