Sports Team

Most beginning sports writers look forward to the day when they can cover professional sports, whether that is major-league baseball, professional football or a PGA event. There's a certain appeal to covering pro sports. We grow up as sports fans, admiring athletes on our favorite teams, so we want to be a part of it all. Some of us even dreamed of playing professional sports. So this is our shot at joining the sports fraternity. In time, we learn we are part of another brotherhood (sports journalists) and we find that it is just as good. We work side by side with hard-working, dedicated, sharp editors and writers to win battles against deadlines, to cajole reticent sources, and to fully capture the essence of a game, person or event. Journalism is also a team sport. Eventually, we find we love it just as much. We no longer have an emptiness that drives us, or a need to hit the ball fields in the spring, our hands itching without a glove or bat in them. Instead, we are sated by kee...

We here at On Sports are throwing our support for Hunter Pence as National League rookie of the year. Why the rush? Part of this is parental gloating. After all, we discovered the Astros’ new phenom, as readers of this blog will recall (“ Nothing’s more joyful than spring training .”) Back in March, we watched Pence drill a double in extra innings that set up a game-winning single that helped the Astros defeat the Phillies in Osceola County Stadium. We liked how Pence pumped his fist as he crossed the plate with the winning run as if it were the final game of the World Series, not just a rest-the-veterans mid-March spring practice. We also pondered how great it would be to see young Pence doing the same thing in the Fall Classic, even though we are Yankees fans (and even though ‘we’ is really just ‘I,’ or ‘me.’) I’ve been reading about Pence more and more the past several weeks -- and tonight I watched him run back to snare a certain extra-base hit near the fence in San Francisco. ...

Scott Miller , senior writer for CBS Sportsline, writes a wonderful analysis piece on the state of hitting in the majors. This is the type of story that baseball fanatics (like myself) love, and a story that student-journalists should emulate. In the lead item for his Weekend Buzz, Miller tries to determine why hitters aren’t hitting this season. (It can’t just be a lack of steroids, right?) Scoring and batting averages are at their lowest since 1992, the usually prolific Cardinals can’t hit homers (going 93 innings without one before last Monday), and Darin Erstad is leading the White Sox in hitting at a paltry .258. Geez. That makes the accomplishments of hitters like Derek Lee , Derek Jeter and Jorge Posada all the more impressive. Miller breaks down these major-league hitting woes by citing both managers and hitting coaches, and by analyzing statistics. It’s a nice, short piece worth reading (and emulating).

John McPhee reveals much about the two protagonists in his book Levels of the Game . McPhee discloses their political beliefs, backgrounds, political opinions and fears. He also shows the reader how the main characters – Arthur Ashe and Chuck Graebner – play a game that has made them well known. But the game of tennis itself also reveals much about these two young players competing in the semifinals of the 1968 U.S. Open championships. McPhee writes that tennis, like any game, reflects an individual’s personality: “A person’s tennis game begins with his nature and background and comes out through his motor mechanisms into shot patterns and characteristics of play” (McPhee 6). In the course of describing the tennis match, McPhee diverges from game descriptions to offer anecdotes, stories and commentaries about these two men. Sometimes, the diversions roll along for many pages. At other times, they stray for just a few sentences. As illuminating as these digressions are, they pale be...

Just read through some of the essays on a website, where kids explained why their towns need money to build a new field -- or to fix one up. Coaches across the country are spending countless hours raking fields, putting in fences, and painting dugouts so some young kids can learn about sport (and themselves.) Wish they all could get money for their fields. My girls just helped inaugurate two softball fields in our east central Illinois town, something that took about 10 years to complete. Some city parents spent a great deal of time in raising the money, building fences, doing carpentry and electrical work, and painting. The first pitch this morning brought a tear to one of the fathers who started this work. His kids are out of school now, but he is excited that other kids will get the chance to play on this field. That's why I was out there raking the field between games -- and will go back and do some more later this afternoon. (To pay back those who spent much more time in makin...

Some nights, I really miss playing baseball. Like last Friday night when I sat along the third-base line, leaning on the fence and talking with some youth league coaches and parents about the pending game. A soft breeze blew over the freshly mown field in east central Illinois, whose sweet smell reminded me of days spent roaming across such fields back in New Jersey. I loved nights like this, as much for the beauty of the moment as for the competition. I miss the joy of playing. But on this night, I was able to see the next best thing – my daughters were set to play the first game of a weekend softball tournament for a travel team filled with small, thin but fast and determined young girls, a team that has improved dramatically since last fall. And they were set to play a powerhouse Shelbyville team, a squad that had just knocked off two of the best teams in the state of Illinois. Publicly, we told the girls any team is beatable. Privately, we hoped the game would just be close. As I w...

Joe DiMaggio stood alone in his restaurant, staring out a bay window at the San Francisco wharf where tourists watched the fishermen repair their nets. One pretty blue-eyed blonde brushed her hair back and took some photos. DiMaggio, holding a cigarette, followed her with his gaze as she walked down the street before returning to his table where he finished his tea. DiMaggio , at age fifty-one, no longer played before fifty-thousand fans at Yankee Stadium, but people still flocked to see him. Only DiMaggio never felt comfortable talking with people, least of all a writer who wanted to delve into his private life, something he guarded at all costs. DiMaggio sneaked into a back room when the writer entered the restaurant, spoiling any chance for an interview. Gay Talese never had a chance to interview DiMaggio, but that did not stop him from writing a profile that has set the standard for all others. In fact, “The Silent Season of a Hero,” was named the greatest sports article of the Tw...

Have a question about sports reporting (or sports coverage in general)? Send me a note. I'd be glad to help out. You can send them to jgisondi@gmail, which is also listed in my profile. As always, please post comments below my postings to add additional insights, ask questions or just start a dialogue with others. Hope you all are doing well with your summer sports assignments. -30-

Dale Earnhardt, Jr., is leaving DEI. No, not Directed Electronics Inc., which is the largest supplier of home theater loudspeakers and remote auto start systems. And not Design Engineering Inc., the self-proclaimed “proud supporter” of several auto-racing teams. NASCAR fans are shaking their heads, knowing Earnhardt is leaving his father’s auto racing team, aptly named ‘ Dale Earnhardt Inc. ’ after Dale’s dad who died in a car crash at Daytona about six years ago. Dale Jr. has worked to extend his father’s auto-racing legacy, but, apparently, he does not get along so well with his mother-in-law, Teresa, whom he blames for the team’s woes the past several years. I’ll leave the deeper analysis to the experts who cover auto racing. I’m more interested in why we love acronyms. ‘DEI’ was tossed around by broadcasters and analysts on ESPN’s SportsCenter and Pardon the Interruption (that’s ‘PTI’ to my street sports homeys) last night as easily as if they were saying ‘NFL’ or ‘NBA.’ Our job a...

Stats are just one means for evaluating a player's success. But they are interesting and compelling, nonetheless. Brad Schultz offers some great resources for finding and evaluating stats in baseball, football, hockey and basketball in a posting at the Journal of Sports Media . Disclosure (and shameless plug): As many of you might know I also blog for this site. I commented on some reasons stats are just one means for evaluating success -- a point my daughter drove home last week. Plus, Angela K. Renkoski discusses the death of Cardinals pitcher Josh Hancock and why these events matter to those more emotionally invested in sports. She writes: "We watch on the promise that we might see something we've never seen before, and sports delivers this just often enough to keep us satisfied." Check it out. -30-

Just picked up a book that every baseball writer should pack away in the satchel. Zack Hample ’s Watching Baseball Smarter does exactly that by teaching fans (and sports writers) how to better understand the game. You can learn how to calculate earned-run averages, on-base percentages, and fielding averages, among other things. You can also learn how a split-fingered fastball drops when it reaches the plate, why a knuckleball flutters, and how to grip a four-seam fastball. You’ll also learn more about pitch sequences. This book also includes some history, such as the fact balls caught on one-bounce were originally called outs, that the pitching mound was originally 50 feet from the plate until 1893, and that foul balls were not called strikes until 1901. The strength of this book is in its clear explanations of the game itself, such as a breakdown on how players field each defensive position, strategies for running (and stealing) bases, how umpires call games, and how to calculate a...

As we all know, it’s not over until the fat lady sings (humming won’t do). That’s why we need to follow the games intensely, leaving it all on the floor like the athletes we cover. Each time we head out to write another gamer, it’s a whole new ball game. Teams that lose always seem to be out of synch, lacking composure to get back on track and leaving them with a tough road to hoe (or even to rake). Even winning teams have some challenges since no lead is safe. (Just ask the Cubs.) These teams cannot afford to be lackadaisical; instead, they need to go for the jugular in order to blow the game wide open. Let’s face it: We get an awful lot of these clichéd comments from coaches and athletes. This is not lost on athletes, even fictional ones like Crash Davis, the veteran catcher in “ Bull Durham ,” who mentors Ebby Calvin LaLoosh on many things – including how to respond during interviews . Crash Davis: You're gonna have to learn your clichés. You're gonna have to study them, yo...