What got you started?

[huntsie]

Can you point to a time or an event or a piece of writing that made you decide "I want to do this for a living?"
For me, it was Allen Abel in the Globe and Mail -- the guy was a genius with the written word. I remember a column he wrote in which the whole premise of the piece was that, if Tony Esposito had stopped Jacques Lemaire's long shot in Game 6 of the Stanley Cup final in 1971, the entire face of hockey would be different.

The Hawks would have won the Cup. Bobby Hull wouldn't have jumped to the WHA. The WHA would never have gotten off the ground....and so on.
I thought...Man I wish I could write like that guy and do it every day...
I can't mind you. But I get to do it every day...

 

[Mizzougrad96]

I was dropped on my head as a child...

 

[kingcreole]

After seeing my first byline, I was hooked.

 

[Mizzougrad96]

After seeing my first byline, I was hooked.

After seeing your first paycheck, not so much...

 

[slappy4428]

I blame soccer.

 

[PeteyPirate]

Someone offered me some at a party.

 

[slappy4428]

Someone offered me some at a party.

Did you inhale?

 

[Mizzougrad96]

Friends don't let friends major in journalism...

 

[Moderator1]

Reading coverage of the Senators in the Washington Post.

 

[Football_Bat]

I could write better than anyone at my hometown weekly. And I found I knew more than anyone at the 13K county daily down the road.

]This is immediately after 4+ years of watching Bundesliga Fußball. Except the Krauts wrote better English.

 

[Hammer Pants]

Wasn't sure whether I preferred radio or print when I got to college. I tried the newspaper first, and one of my first few assignments was a feature on the university's star pole-vaulter, who had Division I's leading mark of that season and was a national championship contender. Plus, he looked like an eccentric character with his crazy hair and slit eyebrows and quirky personality.

I went to interview him without knowing much about his background (hey, I was a cub reporter), and it turned out he had your typical from-the-ghetto-to-athletic-stardom-and-first-college-degree-in-his-family story. I wrote the feature, got a clip and never looked back (though I, like many of us, do some radio stuff on the side).

My love for sports came from following State U. during the school year and the Cubs in the summer. I'd play ball or swim with my buddies all day every summer ... except when the Cubs were on TV.

 

[kingcreole]

After seeing my first byline, I was hooked.

After seeing your first paycheck, not so much...

Actually, it was my high school paper. No paycheck, no nothing. They don't tell you what kind of paycheck to expect in high school. Bastards.

 

[novelist_wannabe]

Got fired from my first job -- non-journalism, though it involved a lot of writing -- and the nearest weekly rag had a sports editor who had been retiring for the past five years. A friend of mine was the courts/cops/county government reporter and, knowing that any warm body would do, recommended me for the job. Damn her. My first thought was, well, I can write. My second, I **** you not, was "and hey, I get to go to games ..." The craving for legitimacy kept me going long after the thrill of getting in free faded. At some point, I'll actually get there ...

 

[andyouare?]

I needed money for drugs, and those $40 stringer checks paid for enough black tar heroine to get me through the summer. After that, I was hooked.

 

[beardpuller]

I was stringing high school games for my hometown metro while in school. The university where I was a junior made a stunning run to the Final Four. The paper used me to do some featurey stories I wouldn't have gotten to do otherwise, including a first-person account of an all-night bus ride to an early-round game at Indiana.
I learned then that sports is magic; that spring transformed our school and how my friends and I thought of ourselves. I figured being a part of the magic-making process would be just about the best way to make a living there ever could be.
Much later, I learned that the magic of sports is ephemeral ... my school hasn't gotten a whiff of NCAA success in the 30-plus years since, the guy who might have been the most talented player on that team eventually died of AIDS. And our business, obviously, has a bunch of problems I didn't quite foresee.
But that was how I got into this.

 

[KYSportsWriter]

I started writing for my hometown weekly while I was still in high school.

And I was the guy everyone in the school came to with a sports question.

One of the coaches at the school said I would be a great writer and encouraged me to pursue that avenue since I wasn't all that great at anything else.

Soon after graduating, the daily about 12 minutes from my house had a part-time position open up and I applied for it and got it.

 

[imjustagirl]

I got a D in Chem 105, ending my shot at physical therapy. I wrote letters to the college paper all the time, pointing out how stupid their liberal columnist and cartoonist was and how awesome the conservative one was, and pointing out all the errors. I kept getting responses from the EIC saying "You're more than welcome to come down and help us improve."

Eventually I did, and realized I'm too stupid and untalented to do anything else.

 

[Bubbler]

My dad's college roommate was, and still is, a sportswriter in Wisconsin. That was my inspiration.

It was part the idea of covering games, part the idea of knowing the real truth about athletes and teams (which started as child-like stuff like, "I wonder if so-and-so is cool?"), and part the idea that I knew at an early age I wanted to do something I enjoyed in life.

I think I talked myself into enjoying writing around middle school. Funny thing is I still enjoy the games, but I found I love writing nearly as much. I'm a gamer guy, I still get juiced when I get a gamer just right. Same for breaking news.

 

[ink-stained wretch]

Crawled out from underneath a house, covered in years of human waste after staring down a cottonmouth and decided plumbing no longer held the attraction it once had (feeding my family). Sports editor of the local weekly had just left for bigger things. I walked in, got the job and the rest is history.

Still don't make as much as a plumber, but I smell a whole lot better. Plus the only snakes I have to deal with walk rather than slither and are seldom armed.