I read to expand my awareness of things that passed me by while I was (And continue to) waste time not reading. You have done so much in this little effort of mine that I am unable to find words to convey my gratitude. What a cracker of a post to share with us. Every book saved, every article bookmarked. Richer by the time I finished it. Thank you!
'Sports pages are not, I learned over my time as a journalist, an indulgence. Rather, they are the building blocks of reportage: they teach writers how to write using voice, scene, character, and they teach readers how to read. A good sports story is not a box score in print but a frame within which to explore rivalry, history, consequence.'
I wish you could hear the squeal that came out of me when I read the above. Okay not a squeal but an equivalent of poorly copied 'shaaaaat!' that Geoff Boycott would say off mic and we would hear on TV.
Thank you. Embarrassingly fulsome praise, which actually is owed to the sports page, not one of its many chroniclers. (I mean, how can you not praise the fact that good sports writing still exists, despite the best efforts of various media houses to kill it off?)
I know what you mean Prem. I am sure the powers that be are not going to stop trying to kill whatever there is left of good sports writing. May they never succeed.
What is worse is when the real good pages get replaced with anodyne stuff. NYT shuttering its pages and handing sports over to The Athletic is an example.
Good one.Sport builds character and a good sports writer captures it best.
At the highest levels in Sport, it is the moment which really makes the winner, talent and skill being much the same. Therefore as rightly put, the loser needs attention away from the arclights where the Sports writer comes in.
I also agree that it is sports than Political writing that teaches us more on writing, because among other things sportsmen practise their profession with more sincerity and truthfulness than politicians and therefore writing on sport brings out the best even in the writer.
Thank you for this essay. Personally, I have a new respect for sports after the pandemic, during which I became painfully aware that basic honesty is respected in sports, but not always so in other fields. Case in point: a player who is sick or injured needs to stop playing and take time to recover, then take time to come back to contest level. Compare that with the notion that students' education could continue with so-called online learning.
And I never thought of sports writing in this way, though I always admired Nirmal Shekar's writing simply for his use of language.
By the way, you wrote about Tommie Smith and John Carlos giving the Black Power salute at the Mexico City Olympics. I think this essay may interest you:
Oh thank you -- this is brilliant, and I hadn't come across it. Actually, it is a great question to ask and answer: Who was the third guy in the photo? What was he thinking while Smith and Carlos were doing their thing? Did he agree with their stand?
My view of sports writing is probably colored by the fact that I never had any formal training in journalism, or even writing (if you ignore the school essays we all had to do). I taught myself, and pretty much everything I learned of the craft during my formative years was from reading sports stories. I suppose the essay I wrote was my way of not just mourning the loss of a great hub of sports writing, but equally my way of saying thanks to sports writers for all they taught me.
This post brings back so much from my childhood I'm going to find it hard to do justice to its beauty here.
When I think of Rohit Brijnath I think of Sportstar. A new issue would come out every Friday (?) and Rohit was one of those whose pieces I would wait for. Sometimes there would be a piece from Brian Glanville. There was no culture of football around me at the time I was growing up, but I became interested in it just before the 1994 fifa world cup thanks only to Brian's writing. As much as I loved Brazil, I was haunted by Roberto Baggio's penalty miss in the finals. But it makes me sad that I did most of my reading of sports writing from those like Rohit and Brian in stealth. The way I responded emotionally to their work was the earliest evidence of what I felt most at home doing. And I pushed it down, I hid my Sportstar.
It was many years later that I read John McPhee's Levels of the Game and the pieces of the puzzle fell into place for me. This is such a personal piece for me. You've written it, Prem, but it is for me.
Thanks, Satya -- that experience, of consuming Sportstar (and Sport and Pastime) is one that resonates with me as well, though my immersion began a bit earlier (1982 World Cup, and THAT Brazil team losing to Italy :-(.
Levels of the Game was genius (later, the same idea copied in the book Strokes of Genius on Federer-Rafa). It is one of the first books I recommend when someone asks me for a reading list to learn writing.
Yeah, that one hit particularly hard, Sree, cos it was the first real intimation (at least for me) that something so short-sighted could actually be done. And normalised.
I was nervous about wanting to know Liu Ying's fate and quickly checked wiki and found that she is/was fine and even participated in a subsequent Olympics. I was relieved that she didn't face some version of Pablo Escobar's (the Columbian footballer of the 1994 World Cup self-goal incident) fate. That is the impact of sports writing in general and good ones in particular. Such a moving piece, Prem.
:-) When I read the Talese memoir for the first time I had the same thought, and did the exact same thing you did. I was tempted to add that in the postscript, but it would merely dilute my point about the stories never told. (BTW, even the fact that she came back and had another Olympics is a great story -- what was that journey like, at which point did failure fuel determination to do better....)
I read to expand my awareness of things that passed me by while I was (And continue to) waste time not reading. You have done so much in this little effort of mine that I am unable to find words to convey my gratitude. What a cracker of a post to share with us. Every book saved, every article bookmarked. Richer by the time I finished it. Thank you!
'Sports pages are not, I learned over my time as a journalist, an indulgence. Rather, they are the building blocks of reportage: they teach writers how to write using voice, scene, character, and they teach readers how to read. A good sports story is not a box score in print but a frame within which to explore rivalry, history, consequence.'
I wish you could hear the squeal that came out of me when I read the above. Okay not a squeal but an equivalent of poorly copied 'shaaaaat!' that Geoff Boycott would say off mic and we would hear on TV.
Thank you for existing, Prem.
Thank you. Embarrassingly fulsome praise, which actually is owed to the sports page, not one of its many chroniclers. (I mean, how can you not praise the fact that good sports writing still exists, despite the best efforts of various media houses to kill it off?)
I know what you mean Prem. I am sure the powers that be are not going to stop trying to kill whatever there is left of good sports writing. May they never succeed.
What is worse is when the real good pages get replaced with anodyne stuff. NYT shuttering its pages and handing sports over to The Athletic is an example.
Absolutely. I am sure this was an MBA suggestion to buy athletic first and then ‘assimilate’ all into one. Terrible for readers
Good one.Sport builds character and a good sports writer captures it best.
At the highest levels in Sport, it is the moment which really makes the winner, talent and skill being much the same. Therefore as rightly put, the loser needs attention away from the arclights where the Sports writer comes in.
I also agree that it is sports than Political writing that teaches us more on writing, because among other things sportsmen practise their profession with more sincerity and truthfulness than politicians and therefore writing on sport brings out the best even in the writer.
Exactly this last bit.
Wow! Really made me think. Thank you
Oh thanks. No better accolade, really, than that a piece has an afterlife in the reader's mind
Thank you for this essay. Personally, I have a new respect for sports after the pandemic, during which I became painfully aware that basic honesty is respected in sports, but not always so in other fields. Case in point: a player who is sick or injured needs to stop playing and take time to recover, then take time to come back to contest level. Compare that with the notion that students' education could continue with so-called online learning.
And I never thought of sports writing in this way, though I always admired Nirmal Shekar's writing simply for his use of language.
By the way, you wrote about Tommie Smith and John Carlos giving the Black Power salute at the Mexico City Olympics. I think this essay may interest you:
https://onbeing.org/blog/the-white-man-in-that-iconic-olympics-photo/
Just what you wrote about, sports being a unique stage for a statement.
Oh thank you -- this is brilliant, and I hadn't come across it. Actually, it is a great question to ask and answer: Who was the third guy in the photo? What was he thinking while Smith and Carlos were doing their thing? Did he agree with their stand?
My view of sports writing is probably colored by the fact that I never had any formal training in journalism, or even writing (if you ignore the school essays we all had to do). I taught myself, and pretty much everything I learned of the craft during my formative years was from reading sports stories. I suppose the essay I wrote was my way of not just mourning the loss of a great hub of sports writing, but equally my way of saying thanks to sports writers for all they taught me.
This post brings back so much from my childhood I'm going to find it hard to do justice to its beauty here.
When I think of Rohit Brijnath I think of Sportstar. A new issue would come out every Friday (?) and Rohit was one of those whose pieces I would wait for. Sometimes there would be a piece from Brian Glanville. There was no culture of football around me at the time I was growing up, but I became interested in it just before the 1994 fifa world cup thanks only to Brian's writing. As much as I loved Brazil, I was haunted by Roberto Baggio's penalty miss in the finals. But it makes me sad that I did most of my reading of sports writing from those like Rohit and Brian in stealth. The way I responded emotionally to their work was the earliest evidence of what I felt most at home doing. And I pushed it down, I hid my Sportstar.
It was many years later that I read John McPhee's Levels of the Game and the pieces of the puzzle fell into place for me. This is such a personal piece for me. You've written it, Prem, but it is for me.
Thanks, Satya -- that experience, of consuming Sportstar (and Sport and Pastime) is one that resonates with me as well, though my immersion began a bit earlier (1982 World Cup, and THAT Brazil team losing to Italy :-(.
Levels of the Game was genius (later, the same idea copied in the book Strokes of Genius on Federer-Rafa). It is one of the first books I recommend when someone asks me for a reading list to learn writing.
We covered some of these excellent points when we said goodbye to the NYT sports desk a coupla years ago. Sigh.
https://www.digimentors.group/post/nytreadalong-celebration-of-the-new-york-times-sports-desk
Yeah, that one hit particularly hard, Sree, cos it was the first real intimation (at least for me) that something so short-sighted could actually be done. And normalised.
I was nervous about wanting to know Liu Ying's fate and quickly checked wiki and found that she is/was fine and even participated in a subsequent Olympics. I was relieved that she didn't face some version of Pablo Escobar's (the Columbian footballer of the 1994 World Cup self-goal incident) fate. That is the impact of sports writing in general and good ones in particular. Such a moving piece, Prem.
:-) When I read the Talese memoir for the first time I had the same thought, and did the exact same thing you did. I was tempted to add that in the postscript, but it would merely dilute my point about the stories never told. (BTW, even the fact that she came back and had another Olympics is a great story -- what was that journey like, at which point did failure fuel determination to do better....)
Great read. There’s a small typo in the piece: it should be the 1968 Mexico Olympics, not “1969 Mexico Olympics.”
Oh no!! Sorry, will correct