Sports Writing is Some of the Best Writing Around
The more I read about sports – a relatively new pasttime for me – the more I’m beginning to think it’s some of the best writing around.
Take this article by Bill Conlin of the Philly Daily News. Conlin begins by talking about the falling dollar, and how gold is becoming increasingly attractive to investors.
What a time to own gold. What a time to own the NFL’s “Gold standard franchise,” in the opinion of owner Jeffrey Lurie, pro football’s Ben Bernanke. The Eagles fell on the Detroit Lions like an armored car filled with gold bars yesterday, officially ending the municipal suicide watch with a prolific, 56-21 flogging…
Armored car… Municipal suicide watch… Flogging… All these images add up to a fun read. He then segues into Philadelphia Eagles’ throwback colors of “hideous melted-butter yellow and cathouse ceiling blue,” an apt description of the Birds’ fagtastic uniforms if there ever was one. He goes on to weave the images together perfectly in a single sentence, “With the spot price of gold at $731.50 an ounce Friday, Goldflinger – Donovan McNabb – shed the perceived tarnish of last week’s HBO airing of his racial angst and ensuing fallout with a 22-karat performance.”
Reading Conlin is fun. It’s easy on the eyes, yet vivid storytelling at its finest. And the thing is, I’m seeing it more and more in the genre of sports writing. Perhaps the audience, one that demands good writing and story telling from writers, has made the writing shine. After all a sportwriter has to fight for his eyeballs; the reader will turn the page the moment he makes an obtuse comment like Dennis Miller (whom I also admire and like, by the way).
Since I never read sports until this year, I now realize that I’ve missed an entire genre of good, vivid writing – the kind that Mr. Mansfield SJ tried to inspire out of me my sophomore year of high school. It makes me almost wish I had spent more time hanging out with the jocks than the burnouts and punks.
Almost…
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