If there is one thing that I have learned in my time of writing sports, it’s this:
Sports writing is underrated.
It is comparable to any other skill in life, but as we all know, there are some people who just do it better.
There are thousands of really good sports writers in the country but only a few dozen truly great ones.
During the weekend, I was proud to be part of a workshop dedicated to the life of one the best sportswriters in history: Jim Murray.
Before Thursday, I had never heard of Jim Murray — mainly because of generational differences and partly because my paper didn’t run his syndicated column. By Saturday, I was wishing that my introduction could have been sooner.
Murray was one of those writers that people both hated and admired for the skill and ease by which he so easily took a prominent sports figure and showed him as a neighbor, a friend, a normal human being — much like people hate and love the awe-inspiring skills of some of the greatest athletes.
“Sandy’s fastball was so fast some batters would start to swing as he was on his way to the mound,” Jim Murray wrote in a 1961 column about Dodger pitcher Sandy Koufax. “His curveball disappeared like a long putt going in a hole … Even if he does rout the record book, you will never know by looking at him. He will be the nice young man with the gentle brown eyes standing in the corner looking as though he had come in for autographs.”
Or:
“His vicinity is anywhere between the foul lines,” Murray wrote in a 1962 column about Willie Mays. “Sometimes the left fielder is instructed to go after only foul balls to keep out of Mays’ way.”
It’s hard not to want to be able to write like that, but as young writers, we’re given a temporary poetic license to borrow from great writers of the past. After all, we don’t really know what our voices are yet. The only voices we know are those that we have grown up reading.
The point being that sooner rather than later, we take what we can learn and go off in search of that unique, singular “way with words.”
Remember: Borrow, don’t steal.
Great athletes are known when they can be discussed daily in class, on the bus or as the genesis of spontaneous conversations with
total strangers.
Conversely, great sports writers can be identified when the athlete is the most prominent part of the story instead of the writer’s sterling grammar or snappy prose.
Great sports writers are able to define their era, bringing out both the best and worst aspects and treating them both with equal grace and scrutiny.
And with different eras come different athletes with different stories.
I never covered Pete Rose.
I was never able to watch the rare ability of Koufax to win a game by just showing up on the lineup card.
I never got to see Dr. J or Henry Aaron, listen to Howard Cosell, interview Joe DiMaggio or skip school to see Bob Gibson and Don Drysdale go head to head.
And even though it may be considered one of the greatest eras in sports, the years of these players’ reigns have come and gone, and now it is time for a new era of sports and sports writers to make their mark, to build their Great Pyramids.
I get to watch Tiger Woods try to become the best golfer ever.
I get to watch the New England
Patriots, those damn Yankees and the daytime talk show that is the Los
Angeles Lakers.
But in turn, I am in an era where more and more athletes want to
be treated like entertainers, without the responsibility of being role
models (there are definitely exceptions). If that is the case, then fine, prepare to be written about using those guidelines.
More of the stories are now about what happens off the field instead of on, and in most cases the two cannot be separated.
For instance, we have BALCO, Lance Armstrong, business deals instead of team needs and sensational court cases along with sensational championships.
This is my era. It is my fodder,
my inspiration, my frustration and my passion.
The trick is to find the hidden stories and the things that transcend the game.
“What Jim did better than anyone, and what made him connect with athletes and fans alike, was to tell the personal stories of the competitors involved in the events: Their hopes, motivations, styles, dreams and foibles,” former Los Angeles Times senior assistant sports editor Mike James wrote. “In sum, their lives as human beings, not just athletes.”
I just wish I had half the talent Jim Murray did.

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