There is of course still sports writing but it is briefer, and not reliably present every day. Sports of the Times was always in the lower left of the first sports page. I remember where I was sitting on the Flushing train on my way to work when I read what as Red Smith's last column. The wording struck me as a little odd. It lacked the usual polish and focus. And when it turned out to be his last column, it was understandable. He wasn't feeling well.
Now, photos dominate. HUGE photos in place of words. Things have changed. The scores and game details are available from many online sources. You no longer need to open the paper to know who won. You've already checked your phone.
My contention would be we as people are reading less, but watching more. It's a visual conveyance of news. Telecasts and highlight reels. Controlling cost, the paper doesn't even cover the local home games of New York teams on a regular basis. There are no beat reporters assigned to follow a team throughout the season.
There are of course still good sports writers. Tyler Kepner is someone I will always read, even though I'm not a die-hard baseball person. Horse racing is barely covered these days, but when it is Joe Drape does a great job. At a book signing of his at Saratoga Springs several years ago when he had just finished his book on American Pharoah, the first Triple Crown winner in 37 years, Joe mentioned that he was going to be the paper's last racing writing. He's not even old enough to start thinking about full-time retirement, but he knows the end is near for the craft in the paper.
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There is absolute joy at seeing a piece of information you divined from the arcane values found in the Daily Racing Form lead you to a 20-1 shot who barrels down the stretch and nips the leaders right at the wire. It is even better if you bet on it.
--Anonymous, July 6, 2002
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At a baseball dinner some years ago, Ted Williams kept squinting at his notes as he spoke, but at the lectern now, Joe DiMaggio put on glasses.
“That’s what I needed,” Williams said. “My glasses.”
“I never thought you’d need glasses,” DiMaggio said.
Those eyes hit .406 in 1941. Those eyes batted .344 over his 19 seasons as the Red Sox left fielder. Those eyes could supposedly read a license plate 100 yards away. Those eyes landed a flaming Marine Panther jet fighter in South Korea during his second year of duty as a pilot. Those eyes flashed when he spit at the Fenway Park fans and sportswriters.
Those eyes narrowed before his first spring training when Bobby Doerr suggested, “Wait until you see this guy Jimmie Foxx hit,”
“Wait until Foxx sees me hit,” he snapped.
But now, Ted Williams’s eyes are closed.
--Dave Anderson, NYT, July 6, 2002
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Mr. Christopher Lavery was bound for the edge of the broad Pacific, to lie in the sun and let the girls see what they didn’t necessarily have to go on missing.
--Raymond Chandler, The Lady in the Lake
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I have a great future behind me.
--Kris Kristofferson
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Duke Dejan, who as head of the Olympia Brass Brand perpetuated a swinging, exuberant tradition from the earliest years of new Orleans jazz, died on July 5 in new Orleans. He was 93.
“Everything is Lovely” was both the Olympia’s theme song and Mr. Dejan’s answer to most questions.
--Douglas Martin, NYT Obituary, August 12, 2002
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A person who sees and bets with confidence a $54 exacta possibility in a four horse field will most likely never be cited as a dictionary’s definition of an artist, but that is only because its editors have probably lead sheltered lives that have never brought them into an off-track betting parlor to be seated next to someone who does this sort of thing. And to know them personally.
And, after sitting next to such a person for better parts of a day, the only thing left to do in life is to get up and go home richer.
--John DeMetropolis, excerpt from Fourstardave, August 2002
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Professor Strunk was a positive man...”Omit needless words!” cries the author on page 23, and into that imperative Will Strunk really put his heart and soul. In the days when I was siting in his class, he omitted so many needless words, and omitted them so forcibly and with such eagerness and obvious relish, that he often seemed in the position of having shortchanged himself—a man left with nothing more to say yet with time to fill, a radio prophet who had outdistanced the clock. Will Strunk got out of this predicament by a simple trick: he uttered every sentence three times. When he delivered his oration on brevity to the class, he leaned forward over his desk, grasped his coat lapels in his hands, and, in a husky, conspiratorial voice said, “Rule Seventeen. Omit needless words! Omit needless words! Omit needless words!”
--E. B. White, Introduction to The Elements of Style
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In the hospital of the orphanage—the boys’ division at St. Cloud’s, Maine—two nurses were in charge of naming the new babies and checking that their little penises were healing from their obligatory circumcision. In those days (in 192__), all boys born at St. Cloud’s were circumcised because the orphanage physician had experienced some difficulty in treating uncircumcised soldiers, for this, and for that, in World War I. The doctor, who was also the director of the boys’ division, was not a religious man; circumcision was not a rite with him—it was a strictly medical act, performed for hygienic reasons. His name was Wilbur Larch, which except for the scent of ether that always accompanied him, reminded one of the nurses of the tough, durable wood of the coniferous tree of that name. She hated, however, the ridiculous name of Wilbur, and took offense at the silliness of combining a word like Wilbur with something as substantial as a tree.
--John Irving, opening to The Cider House Rules
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Homer exhibited no mistrust, and certainly no fear, of the Winkles. He felt for them only a detached wariness—he was sure they weren’t dangerous but they were of a slightly altered species. He fell asleep confusing the Winkles, in his child’s mind, with moose. In the morning he woke up to the sound of what he was sure were moose—only the discover that it was the Winkles in the tent next to his.
The Winkles appeared to greet the morning vigorously. Although Homer had never heard human beings make love, or moose mate, he knew perfectly well that the Winkles were mating. If Dr. Larch had been present, he might have drawn new conclusions concerning the Winkles’ inability to produce offspring. He would have concluded that the violent athleticism of their coupling simply destroyed, or scared to death, every available sperm or egg.
--John Irving, excerpt, Chapter 1, The Cider House Rules
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How can you consider pregnancy a disability? It’s a self-inflicted injury.
--William N. O’Keefe, to a pregnant co-worker, 1978
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John S. Wilson, the first critic to write regularly about jazz and popular music in
The New York Times, died yesterday at a nursing home in Princeton, N.J. He was 89 and lived in Princeton.
Through his decades with The Times Mr. Wilson remained a free-lance. He said that he turned down offers of a staff position because it would mean having to attend meetings.
--Jon Pareles, NYT Obituary, August 28, 2002
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I don’t want to go home early. If I go home early I might have to go to the store.
I don’t want to go to the store. I don’t know where anything is.
--Anonymous
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http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com
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