Other people's accomplishments

[WaylonJennings]

Do you ever feel like that's what you spend your life documenting as a sports writer?

Or am I overanalyzing?

Obviously there are other stories to pursue - just look at the work the Ann Arbor news did this week. Or anything about the intersection of sports and business or sports and education.

But on a day to day basis, sometimes it feels like, "****, I'm tired of writing about Johnny Football and his 78 catches as a junior. I'd like to be the one doing phenomenal things with my life, not the one writing about other people doing so."

I imagine preps writers with ambition may feel this more than most. While others, I know, feel very content spending their life bringing attention to the accomplishments of others.

 

[e4]

yes, yes, yes ... spending days watching people play -- it ain't work, but it ain't playing either. not that you want to be in uniform, but can't remember the last i spent a weekend with friends hitting the beach or whatever

 

[Small Town Guy]

But I'd imagine writers in any area could feel the same thing. You write about politicians, but feel you could contribute something as a city councilman. You're a business writer, but think you have a great idea for a new business of your own. If it's about frustration over sports, you could become a coach. I know a guy who quit the newspaper world, got his teaching degree and became a coach because he missed the action.

 

[Joe Williams]

To me, this is a very natural feeling and one that, if considered carefully and over time, can lead to a very rational decision to get out of this business. (Never mind all the blaring sirens and flashing lights coming from the death-spiraling revenues/circulation numbers that demand immediate donning of parachutes and life jackets!!!)

Not only do we spend our lives chronicling the accomplishments of other people, we chronicle accomplishments -- sports -- that mean virtually nothing anyway. Forever writing about an endless line of 17-year-old quarterbacks or 20-year-old shooting guards or 31-year-old middle relievers is not a professional life well spent, if you really want to make a difference in your one go-round on the planet.

If you're concerned primarily with earning money and providing for a family and avoiding a cubicle and a suit-and-tie, then what the hell, things could be worse. Although the money part and the providing part will be somewhat limited by the people who hire you and pay you (before they eventually lay you off).

Yes, it is true, we entertain some readers with our little feature stories and even touch their (ugh) hearts with the occasional melodramatic column about some jock's sick mom or dead dog. But that still leaves a whole world full of injustices and not-covered-yet-important stories that we never bother with while immersing ourselves in games. Let's remember as well that stuff like the Ann Arbor coverage is made necessary because we keep feeding the beast and encouraging academic institutions to dwell on bigger, better, faster!

Sorry for what seems like self-loathing, but do we really like sports and games and athletes so much that we will spend our entire working lives typing up tales of their exploits? For 20, 30 or 40 years? How many of us has written about a chess champ or a science teacher's tips for engaging problem students or a local pastor's quiet little charity work?

Go back and read some of your stories from two or three years ago. How many of them matter one bit today? Had they never been written, the world would be no worse off.

Or am I overanalyzing, too?

 

[WaylonJennings]

But I'd imagine writers in any area could feel the same thing. You write about politicians, but feel you could contribute something as a city councilman. You're a business writer, but think you have a great idea for a new business of your own. If it's about frustration over sports, you could become a coach. I know a guy who quit the newspaper world, got his teaching degree and became a coach because he missed the action.

Yeah, I was thinking more like JD/MBA and try to get into front-office work.

But to get back to your point, yeah, I don't know if people who cover politics feel the same way. Or people who cover education. Or cops. Obviously, there's room for investigative work, etc., and I'd imagine that people at the New York Times or the Washington Post don't feel like they're spending their professional lives documenting "other people's accomplishments." But if you cover sports, especially amateur sports, or cover community/local news, it just starts to feel like that after a while.

It's like, ****, I'm as altruistic as the next guy. But not sure I want to spend 30 or 40 years filling other people's scrapbooks when I feel like I have much more to offer than that.

That said, I'm glad I've spent a decade or so doing it. It's been a great ride and allowed me access to and illuminated areas most people only dream of.

 

[Walter Burns]

Sure, there is a vicarious thrill involved, and sometimes that can be fun, and it can be just as fun to be able to say, "I was there."
But y'know what? I can't dunk a basketball. I can't catch a 60-yard touchdown pass or hit a curveball.
But I bet there's a lot of those athletes who can't do what I do, either.

 

[huntsie]

I enjoy the stories. Not the games so much -- I remember very few particulars of games I've covered for very long afterward. But I enjoy talking to the athletes and finding out something interesting about them and telling that story.
I enjoy having a front row seat to athleticism and exhilaration and emotion, and putting it down. I enjoy the pressure of doing it well and doing it on time.
I enjoy being able to do it in a way that people enjoy reading...it's a gift not everyone has and one I don't take for granted.
Does it make a difference in the world? Not in the grand scheme of things, no.
But when someone flips through that scrapbook, and shows it to their son or daughter -- or they don't, and they find it among their belongings after they're gone -- I enjoy that feeling. I enjoy hearing that people tucked that clip away, or hung it on their fridge or carried it in their wallet.
It makes a difference to someone. Not every day. But enough.

 

[RossLT]

Sure, there is a vicarious thrill involved, and sometimes that can be fun, and it can be just as fun to be able to say, "I was there."
But y'know what? I can't dunk a basketball. I can't catch a 60-yard touchdown pass or hit a curveball.
But I bet there's a lot of those athletes who can't do what I do, either.

I can't do any of those either, but the problem is I bet anyone can do my job.

 

[deviljets7]

Sure, there is a vicarious thrill involved, and sometimes that can be fun, and it can be just as fun to be able to say, "I was there."
But y'know what? I can't dunk a basketball. I can't catch a 60-yard touchdown pass or hit a curveball.
But I bet there's a lot of those athletes who can't do what I do, either.

I can't do any of those either, but the problem is I bet anyone can do my job.

Now you're comparing "doing a job" to "doing a job well," unless of course you think you're bad at your job (which I doubt is the case).

Just because I can throw a baseball doesn't mean I can do Johan Santana's job, just like writing a few sentences on a high school baseball game doesn't mean you can do Peter Gammons' job.

 

[Dessens71]

At the very least, you're entertaining people. I can think of many less noble things to do for a living.

 

[cranberry]

To me, this is a very natural feeling and one that, if considered carefully and over time, can lead to a very rational decision to get out of this business. (Never mind all the blaring sirens and flashing lights coming from the death-spiraling revenues/circulation numbers that demand immediate donning of parachutes and life jackets!!!)

Not only do we spend our lives chronicling the accomplishments of other people, we chronicle accomplishments -- sports -- that mean virtually nothing anyway. Forever writing about an endless line of 17-year-old quarterbacks or 20-year-old shooting guards or 31-year-old middle relievers is not a professional life well spent, if you really want to make a difference in your one go-round on the planet.

If you're concerned primarily with earning money and providing for a family and avoiding a cubicle and a suit-and-tie, then what the hell, things could be worse. Although the money part and the providing part will be somewhat limited by the people who hire you and pay you (before they eventually lay you off).

Yes, it is true, we entertain some readers with our little feature stories and even touch their (ugh) hearts with the occasional melodramatic column about some jock's sick mom or dead dog. But that still leaves a whole world full of injustices and not-covered-yet-important stories that we never bother with while immersing ourselves in games. Let's remember as well that stuff like the Ann Arbor coverage is made necessary because we keep feeding the beast and encouraging academic institutions to dwell on bigger, better, faster!

Sorry for what seems like self-loathing, but do we really like sports and games and athletes so much that we will spend our entire working lives typing up tales of their exploits? For 20, 30 or 40 years? How many of us has written about a chess champ or a science teacher's tips for engaging problem students or a local pastor's quiet little charity work?

Go back and read some of your stories from two or three years ago. How many of them matter one bit today? Had they never been written, the world would be no worse off.

Or am I overanalyzing, too?

Post this on the depression thread and half of the sportswriting industry calls in sick tonight.

 

[lono]

Is what we're doing on a par with curing cancer?

Of course not. Not even close.

Is it a lot more fun than painting houses, working in a factory, selling cars, being a call center rep, flipping burgers, doing landscaping, digging ditches, middle management, selling subscriptions, parking cars or literally dozens of other jobs?

Uh, yeah.

 

[WaylonJennings]

Is what we're doing on a par with curing cancer?

Of course not. Not even close.

Is it a lot more fun than painting houses, working in a factory, selling cars, being a call center rep, flipping burgers, doing landscaping, digging ditches, middle management, selling subscriptions, parking cars or literally dozens of other jobs?

Uh, yeah.

OK, I get all of that. I think that some of you are mistaking this thread for one of the many existential crisis threads that have appeared on here. And maybe it is in a way.

But this is different than, "I'm not changing the world. What am I doing with my life?"

This is a very specific thought that is tugging at me - I write about what other people accomplish every day. My prose celebrates their accomplishments. And, yes, sometimes that even feels silly for me.

But in the end, it's almost like I'm more motivated or inspired by seeing the people I cover do such things than I am depressed by it. Like, as much as I love journalism and nonfiction and think they are probably the most worthy pursuits placed into the Constitution, it's giving me an itch to go out and force the issue a little bit. Run a business. ****, start a business even.

 

[forever_town]

Is it a lot more fun than painting houses, working in a factory, selling cars, being a call center rep, flipping burgers, doing landscaping, digging ditches, middle management, selling subscriptions, parking cars or literally dozens of other jobs?

Considering the fact that I've done three of the above jobs, I'd agree with you.

The most odious job of that list that I've had was when I was a call center rep. Answering the phone over 100 times a day is not fun. Especially when some of them are irate customers.

 

[Joe Williams]

To me, this is a very natural feeling and one that, if considered carefully and over time, can lead to a very rational decision to get out of this business. (Never mind all the blaring sirens and flashing lights coming from the death-spiraling revenues/circulation numbers that demand immediate donning of parachutes and life jackets!!!)

Not only do we spend our lives chronicling the accomplishments of other people, we chronicle accomplishments -- sports -- that mean virtually nothing anyway. Forever writing about an endless line of 17-year-old quarterbacks or 20-year-old shooting guards or 31-year-old middle relievers is not a professional life well spent, if you really want to make a difference in your one go-round on the planet.

If you're concerned primarily with earning money and providing for a family and avoiding a cubicle and a suit-and-tie, then what the hell, things could be worse. Although the money part and the providing part will be somewhat limited by the people who hire you and pay you (before they eventually lay you off).

Yes, it is true, we entertain some readers with our little feature stories and even touch their (ugh) hearts with the occasional melodramatic column about some jock's sick mom or dead dog. But that still leaves a whole world full of injustices and not-covered-yet-important stories that we never bother with while immersing ourselves in games. Let's remember as well that stuff like the Ann Arbor coverage is made necessary because we keep feeding the beast and encouraging academic institutions to dwell on bigger, better, faster!

Sorry for what seems like self-loathing, but do we really like sports and games and athletes so much that we will spend our entire working lives typing up tales of their exploits? For 20, 30 or 40 years? How many of us has written about a chess champ or a science teacher's tips for engaging problem students or a local pastor's quiet little charity work?

Go back and read some of your stories from two or three years ago. How many of them matter one bit today? Had they never been written, the world would be no worse off.

Or am I overanalyzing, too?

Post this on the depression thread and half of the sportswriting industry calls in sick tonight.

There is a depression thread? Really? And I didn't know about it?

That bums me out. ;D

 

[Blue_Water]

There are absolutely times when I feel like I'm on the outside looking in. I feel like I've taken the safer route rather than being in the middle of the action.

Another element of the equation is that I sometimes think it would be more rewarding to be judged in terms of something black and white, like wins and losses, as opposed to the subjectivity that writers face.

 

[Joe Williams]

Is what we're doing on a par with curing cancer?

Of course not. Not even close.

Is it a lot more fun than painting houses, working in a factory, selling cars, being a call center rep, flipping burgers, doing landscaping, digging ditches, middle management, selling subscriptions, parking cars or literally dozens of other jobs?

Uh, yeah.

OK, I get all of that. I think that some of you are mistaking this thread for one of the many existential crisis threads that have appeared on here. And maybe it is in a way.

But this is different than, "I'm not changing the world. What am I doing with my life?"

This is a very specific thought that is tugging at me - I write about what other people accomplish every day. My prose celebrates their accomplishments. And, yes, sometimes that even feels silly for me.

But in the end, it's almost like I'm more motivated or inspired by seeing the people I cover do such things than I am depressed by it. Like, as much as I love journalism and nonfiction and think they are probably the most worthy pursuits placed into the Constitution, it's giving me an itch to go out and force the issue a little bit. Run a business. ****, start a business even.

I think it's one of those "five stages of death" things, Waylon. In my case it is, anyway.

First I get depressed (sort of, I guess) over the realization that while I'm chronicling the deeds of others, they're actually doing things. Then I get a little annoyed at myself for continuing to do that, out of job security (huh? what?) or a knack for cranking out the stories without breaking too much of a sweat.

But then I notice weeks, months and years going by, and see how many more are stacking up behind me than remain in front of me. That becomes motivating. I like the idea of some day saying, "I was a sportswriter AND I did (fill in the blank)" in my career. Taught, ran my own business, wrote two or three books, fought a few corporate goons from within by infiltrating their ranks, whatever. I get intrigued by the idea of having more than one role in my working years: Twenty-five years as a newspaper man, say, but then 10 more as X and another five as Y. (Then I'll have earned a lot of Zzzzzz's.)

Noticing, as you have, that we are spectators and chroniclers of life's achievements is what will propel me to end this "career" and move into the next. Bully to those who stay, from Senior Week to senior status. I just want to know what else I've got in me, work-wise, whether I chased a degree in it or not.

 

[jgmacg]

In brief defense of what we do...

It is the condition of writing, all writing, since the beginning of time, that we describe other people doing things. That's our job. That's what we do. That's what Aristotle did, and Cervantes and Shakespeare and Dickens and Joyce and Montaigne and Virginia Wolff and Red Smith. If you're a writer, it's what you do, too.

Fiction, nonfiction, journalism, poetry, cavepainting, hieroglyph or blog - it is the natural state of the writer to observe and record the glorious accomplishments and miserable failures of others in this world. And to try to wring meaning from what they've done.

In the great scheme of things it doesn't really matter whether you're observing Little Johnny Touchdown at the Apple Barrel Classic or the installation of a Pope, there is an important human story to be found in both those moments.

By disposition and training I've always had one foot in and one foot out of life. By which I mean this: There's always been a part of me removed from life as it goes on around me. A part of me that's only observing and then commenting on those observations. As a simple matter of personality and character, this would be happening in my head whether I later organized it into written form or not.

So, happily and selfishly for me, I find in writing the lucky meeting of my natural habit of dispassionate observation and the means to express myself and earn a living.

But I understand that this is not the case for everyone.

And to you, I say this: We are the only organism anywhere with the means and the need to record our common history. To make sense of ourselves. To bind the world in words and map our shared experiences.

As a writer, this is what you do. You create order out of chaos. Meaning out of nothingness. You are the engineers of our remembrance.

And your achievement, your accomplishment, lies not just in how earnestly and well you do it, but in the honor of having done it for the rest of us at all.

 

[lono]

In brief defense of what we do...

It is the condition of writing, all writing, since the beginning of time, that we describe other people doing things. That's our job. That's what we do. That's what Aristotle did, and Cervantes and Shakespeare and Dickens and Joyce and Montaigne and Virginia Wolff and Red Smith. If you're a writer, it's what you do, too.

Fiction, nonfiction, journalism, poetry, cavepainting, hieroglyph or blog - it is the natural state of the writer to observe and record the glorious accomplishments and miserable failures of others in this world. And to try to wring meaning from what they've done.

In the great scheme of things it doesn't really matter whether you're observing Little Johnny Touchdown at the Apple Barrel Classic or the installation of a Pope, there is an important human story to be found in both those moments.

By disposition and training I've always had one foot in and one foot out of life. By which I mean this: There's always been a part of me removed from life as it goes on around me. A part of me that's only observing and then commenting on those observations. As a simple matter of personality and character, this would be happening in my head whether I later organized it into written form or not.

So, happily and selfishly for me, I find in writing the lucky meeting of my natural habit of dispassionate observation and the means to express myself and earn a living.

But I understand that this is not the case for everyone.

And to you, I say this: We are the only organism anywhere with the means and the need to record our common history. To make sense of ourselves. To bind the world in words and map our shared experiences.

As a writer, this is what you do. You create order out of chaos. Meaning out of nothingness. You are the engineers of our remembrance.

And your achievement, your accomplishment, lies not just in how earnestly and well you do it, but in the honor of having done it for the rest of us at all.

We do all that?

Damn.

We do all that, we should be getting a lot more cooter.

 

[Double Down]

I can't quite say this with the art and grace that Mr. jgmacg did, but it helps me to look at it this way:

I never look at it like I'm filling scrapbooks. I'm chronicling life. It's not just about of the athletes who participate, but about all of us, about our pursuit of perfection, our hubris, our disappointments, our heartbreak and our glory. You can scoff or roll your eyes at that sentiment, but I think that's the way you have to look at it. We're all participating in the great experiment we call community, or society, and sports is really just a backdrop, or a stage, for life's big play. There are metaphors and deeper truths that play out every day on fields, on diamonds, and in gymnasiums, that resonate with people who will never be able to truly grasp what it feels like to turn on an inside fastball traveling 93 mph. We all feel the need to belong to something bigger than ourselves -- whether it's family, religion, community, region, country, or even something simple as the internet community of SportsJournalists.com -- and by telling people's stories, we help foster some of that understanding. We can express that, through competition, it does not matter if we are black, white, Asian, poor, rich, young, old; we have more in common, as a people, than we realize.

I don't know that anyone has ever expressed this sentiment better than Roger Angell, writing about Fisk's home run off the pole in 1975.

"It is foolish and childish, on the face of it, to affiliate ourselves with anything so insignificant and patently contrived and commercially exploitive as a professional sports team, and the amused superiority and icy scorn that the non-fan directs at the sports nut (I know this look -- I know it by heart) is understandable and almost unanswerable. Almost. What is left out of this calculation, it seems to me, is the business of caring -- caring deeply and passionately, really caring -- which is a capacity or an emotion that has almost gone out of our lives. And so it seems possible that we have come to a time when it no longer matters so much what the caring is about, how frail or foolish is the object of that concern, as long as the feeling itself can be saved. Naivete -- the infantile and ignoble joy that sends a grown man or woman to dancing and shouting with joy in the middle of the night over the haphazardous flight of a distant ball -- seems a small price to pay for such a gift."

Every person has a story that is a thread in the big tapestry of life. Some are more interesting than others, but those stories matter, and it's our job to observe, to coax them out of people, and to understand if there is some larger meaning behind them. When Gay Talese was writing about DiMaggio and Sinatra, he wasn't just writing about two famous people. He was writing about lonliness and love and the difficulty of holding onto who you are when your physical talent betrays you. Those themes exist in all of us, even the high school wide receiver or the small college 2-guard. Perhaps they're not as obvious, but then, none of us are Talese. Don't mean you can't aspire to do that kind of storytelling.

More later...