Sports Team

There is only one week left before the application deadline for the Sports Institute at Boston University. This is a great opportunity to dive in more intensely into the craft of sports journalism. The Sports Institute also hosts interviews with professional journalists at the Sports Media Guide . You can contact Frank Shorr, the director of the institute, at fshorr@bu.edu for more information. If you go, send me a note on your experience. -30-

Softball is not just baseball played with a bigger ball. There are more than a few differences. Obviously, the ball is much larger. As a result, the field dimensions are also significantly different. The outfield fences are not as deep since a larger ball does not carry as far, and the bases are 60 feet apart, thirty feet closer than for a baseball field. The game is also played much more quickly than the three-plus hour games featured in the major leagues. Softball games go two fewer innings, ending after seven in college and international competition. Plus, the game moves at a faster pace. Pitchers do not spend time worrying about runners who cannot leave a base until the ball leaves the hand of the pitcher. So pitchers can just concentrate on batters. Bunting is used much more frequently in softball. Unlike in baseball, where designated hitters and aluminum bats lead to high-scoring games and big innings, softball teams typically try to score a run at a time. Check out how often a t...

Sports to me mean much more than who wins and who loses. Sports are my connection to my roots, to my family – and, most of all, to my father, a man who bestowed on me a love for games. Unfortunately, I can no longer speak with him. He died two years ago today. I can no longer call him when the Yankees play poorly, as they have the past five days, and discuss which bums need to be traded away. And I can no longer ask him for advice about coaching. Sports are a natural connection between fathers and sons – and, more and more, they are an important connection between dads, moms and daughters. That’s true for me and my girls. My father taught me many lessons about life – and a few more important ones like how to lay down a great drag bunt or how to roll my wrists when I made contact. Those days spent playing with my father were some of the finest in my life. So let’s not forget why we love sports – for the enjoyment of the game and for the time spent with those we care about. I recently co...

David Halberstam, one of America’s best writers, died earlier this evening in a car accident near San Francisco. He was in California working on his 22nd book, this one on NFL hall of famer Y.A. Tittle who now lives in that area. Halberstam , 73, won a Pulitzer for international reporting in 1964, when he covered the Vietnam War for the New York Times . A few years later, he quit full-time journalism to write books on a variety of topics. His 2002 book, "War in a Time of Peace," nearly earned a second Pulitzer (it was runner-up for non-fiction.) "I think that he was the nation's premier journalist," said John Seigenthaler, Tennessean chairman emeritus and a friend in an article in the Nashville Tennessean . I know Halberstam best for his sports books that includes “Teammates,” which is about several Boston Red Sox teammates driving to Florida to see Ted Williams before he died. A few weeks ago, I finished "The Education of a Coach," a book that ever...

When Sports Illustrated ’s Jon Wertheim covers a tennis match, he goes old school, breaking out pen and paper to take notes midst the aisles of laptops. He divides the page into two vertical halves. On the left side, he scribbles about on-court actions, writing notes like “lots of double faults,” “lost four straight after streaker cross the court,” “looks heavier than normal. On the right side of the page, Wertheim writes what he calls ‘atmospheric jottings’ that include anything from the words on a fan's banner to the weather to the music played on the public address system during breaks in the action. Says Wertheim: “Basically, anything you wouldn’t necessarily pick up watching at home on TV.” But once he starts developing the game story, Wertheim is clearly not stuck in the past. He does not merely offer play-by-play. Instead, he focuses on themes, trends, and news, something he does exceptionally well. Wertheim’s work has been featured in The Best American Sports Writing anth...

I have been invited to blog for the Journal of Sports Media , which focuses on sports media issues. The JSM is an academic journal published annually by the University of Nebraska Press and the University of Mississippi Department of Journalism. The Journal also publishes academic research that "adds to the understanding of sports media in terms of their practice, value and effect on the culture as a whole." I just posted some commentary on the role of sports when a tragedy, like the shootings at Virginia Tech, strikes. You can check it out by clicking here . Here is the beginning: On a day like this, it is difficult to think about sports. Nothing much matters when you hear 31 people have been massacred on a college campus. Nothing matters except taking care of family and connecting with friends. So your school softball team wins 3-2, or the local high school takes the conference title. That doesn’t mean much on a day like this. Instead of worrying about pitch counts or golf ...

Talk about a tenacious, aggressive defense. Oklahoma’s basketball players used their feet to cut off angles and their hands to knock passes away to limit Marquette to a single free throw in the final four minutes of a recent NCAA tournament game. The 10-1 run enabled the Sooners to complete a 78-47 rout and reach the Sweet Sixteen for the fifth time. How did the Oklahoma women’s team do it? "I would like to play man-to-man defense the whole game and just dog teams,” said head coach Sherri Coale, “but you can't always do that." Some would argue her team could never do that. How can women play man-to-man defense? That’s a question worth investigating. A college journalism adviser recently asked me a similar question. How can we call infielders first, second and third basemen when they are clearly female? She suggested several options, including citing players in this manner: “Jane Smith, first base, hit a home run.” This could create more confusion than clarity. We have ch...

There’s an interesting poll set to kick off next football season, one where college students determine the rankings. The founders of this poll seem like spirited fans who want to do something for the fun of it. Isn’t that what sports are all about? Polls used to be a way to debate the best football teams in the country, prompting fun-loving discussions in bars and dorm rooms – until these polls were co-opted to determine who would play in the Bowl Championship Series. Everybody else then scrambles to find the highest-paying bowl game instead of working toward earning a national title. The BCS is fueled by the greed of major sports conferences. So now two former students – Igor Khayet and Daniel Singer – have started a poll run exclusively by college students. Studentwriterpoll.com might add some fun back into the college football debates. But do not take it too seriously. Despite what the founders believe, this poll will not be more informed than those run by the Associated Press, USA...

Track and field is not a major beat in the United States; instead, it’s a sport that garners more interest in the years preceding and following an Olympics. Otherwise, it is relegated to second-tier, or fringe status, by most editors and writers even though it an exciting sport to cover. Covering a track meet is like reporting on 14 (or more) little stories. It’s just a matter of which events to focus on – the 100 meters, 1,500 meters, the long jump? Most of these choices are made before the meet begins. Fewer readers understand the rules or know the athletes in a sport like track. That means a reporter needs to find a human interest angle that even non-track fans can enjoy. “When you cover track and field and swimming, maybe two out of a hundred readers are really devoted to the sport,” says New York Times sportswriter Frank Litsky. “You can’t write for two people. You have to pull in the others by focusing on people. Like the swimmer with the defibrillator or runner recovering from ...

In case you haven’t heard, the Wisconsin women’s college hockey team won its second consecutive NCAA title. Badgers goalie Jessie Vetter stopped 32 shots for a 3-0 victory over Minnesota in the championship game. Sadly, most sports fans did not know this. As I mentioned last month, women’s sports are merely a second thought to most sports editors ( see “Frozen Four gets frigid reception in most sports departments” under commentary on this blog ). That became even clearer this weekend when another Big Ten team (Michigan State) won the men’s college hockey title in St. Louis. CBSsportsline.com, ESPN.com and USAToday.com devoted considerably more space to the Spartans winning their second title in 21 years than they had to Wisconsin’s winning its second title in a row last month. The Badgers posted the better record (36-1-4), but Michigan State (29-11-2) scored more coverage from national media outlets. We’ll see how much space USA Today devotes in tomorrow’s editions, but bet on more th...

Research. Observe. Interview. That’s how journalists learn about any topic, whether it’s a story on the university’s budget or if it’s a story on a baseball game. Too many young reporters fail to realize this. I recently judged two state contests – for high school and college sports journalists. The biggest problem: a lack of sources. I read profile stories that relied on a single source , usually the athlete or coach profiled. Many columns did not have any original reporting. And most game stories included quotes only from the home team. As a result, these sports stories were uniformed and under-reported. But that’s what we do – report. That means we need to fully prepare for assignments. Before covering a game, sports reporters should research team rosters, stats, and recent performance by speaking with coaches and by reading previously published stories. For columns, reporters should hang out at practices, attend games, and speak with experts to get a more informed opinion. In addi...

Just found a great site that features interviews with sports writers, journalists who cover everything from high school to professional sports in print and television. Sports Media Guide features interviews with Joe Posnanski (right), Harvey Araton and Bob Ley, among others. You'll learn much about the business and craft of sports reporting in these interviews. For instance, what's it like to cover sports? "People wonder what it's like to be a sportswriter and I tell them it's not what they think – they think we're out tailgating," says Ken Burger, columnist for the Charleston (S.C.) Post & Courier. "It's like being the designated driver at happy hour – you're the guy working when everybody else is partying. You see fans at their worst or best, inebriated and their passion runneth over. I pick on'em a lot because they're fun to pick on." Bookmark this web site. I have (on the right side of this blog). Like me, I suspect you...

Over lunch, a colleague of mine tried to explain what he taught over in English, something that both intrigued and scared me. He called it creative non-fiction. I’d read uncreative fiction and creative journalism, but this seemed more like an excuse for a journalist to make up information and publish it as fact. He promised that was not the case. Rather, the genre is a combination of many approaches that cross over several subject areas, like Gonzo and Literary Journalism. I learned I had, in fact, read several examples of creative non-fiction that included Tom Wolfe’s From Bauhaus To Our House , an investigation of modern architecture, and The Painted Word , a book that similarly comments on modern art, among other things. I’d also read many essayists he cited, among them Montaigne, Bacon, Hazlitt, Thoreau, and E.B. White. I was intrigued, but not yet compelled to take on the form itself. I read a few more essays but soon lost interest. I returned to my comfort zone by writing several...

Now that the Florida Gators have repeated as NCAA basketball champions, a nation can turn its tired eyes to the next big sports title game. (That is after tonight’s exciting women’s basketball match-up between Rutgers and Tennessee.) Just over an hour down the road from Gainesville, eight teams will compete for the National Collegiate Women's Bowling Championship at Brunswick Wekiva Lanes in Apopka. Yup. Bowling is an NCAA sport, not that you’d know from the coverage in most daily and college newspapers. A search of women’s bowling scored only a few hits on Lexis Nexis and Google searches. Nobody is covering bowling. Like lacrosse, field hockey and cross country, bowling is not a sport that attracts much attention – certainly not at a time of the year when you have March Madness, Opening Day, and the Masters, among other spring sports extravaganzas. I am probably more fond of bowling than most. The sport gave me my start, sort of. I was the bowling columnist at the Fort Myers News-...

( The video is a time lapse of last year's Opening Day at Busch Stadium, home of the St. Louis Cardinals .) Grab your scorebook, pull out a pencil, and get ready for the most exciting day in sports. Nah, not the NCAA basketball championship. We’re talking Opening Day, a day where every baseball fan has dreams, not nightmares – and a day where we reconnect with our past, recounting days spent playing catch with our dads or of afternoons spent running around a freshly mown baseball field. The sweetly cut grass overcome only by the more nostalgic smell of a leather glove, still glistening and soft and forgiving on this first day of the season. (Excuse me while I grab a glove from the closet, where I keep one used by my father when he played in the 1930s and 1940s. The MacGregor Gold Smith (G114) is barely bigger than my hand, but it caught many a baseball when my father was playing in Hoboken and Jersey City, N.J., dreaming of being the next Joe DiMaggio. It was oiled last winter in a...