Notes from The Show May 24, 2009
Posted by Matt Brown in Sports, Stories and observations.Tags: Baseball, Ohio State, Reporting, Sports, The Big Ten, The Show, Writing
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Yeah, I was in the show. I was in the show for 21 days once – the 21 greatest days of my life. You know, you never handle your luggage in the show, somebody else carries your bags. It was great. You hit white balls for batting practice, the ballparks are like cathedrals, the hotels all have room service, and the women all have long legs and brains.-Crash Davis, Bull Durham.
Davis was talking about the difference between minor league baseball, and “The Show”, the Majors. This past weekend, I finally got called up to the show myself.
In addition to writing snarky notes on politics and whatnot on a very sporadic basis, I sometimes do actual journalist things. During the fall, I covered high school football, and since then, I’ve done some reporting on other events, from the Presidential Inauguration, to little kid swim meets. All of those experiences, no matter how small the event, were fun and worthwhile…but they weren’t The Show.
On Friday though, I finally got called up. My friend Chris Webb runs The Buckeye Nine, a (really good) sports blog that covers the Ohio State Baseball team. The Big Ten Tournament was being held downtown at Huntington Park (home of the AAA Columbus Clippers), and he thought he needed an extra hand to cover all the games. He also managed to get ahold of (and this is important), *two press credentials*. The decision was easy. I was going to spend as much time at the ballpark as possible that weekend.
Huntington Park is brand spanking new, and right in the middle of the Arena District downtown. I don’t know how many of you have gotten the chance to check the place out yet, but if you like baseball, I strongly encourage it. It is one of the best ballparks I have ever been to, Majors or Minors. Remember how Cooper Stadium’s backdrop was a graveyard, and some highways? Now we have the skyline of scenic downtown Columbus. They added seats in the outfield, luxury boxes, leg room…words don’t do it justice. It is just a great place to spend a summer afternoon.
And all of that is for you guys who bought tickets, and didn’t have one of those yellow cards hanging around your neck that said PRESS. This was my Willy Wonka Golden Ticket…and the third level of the stadium, which has the press boxes and the luxury suites, might as well have been the Chocolate factory to me.
You have to understand the conditions I toiled under before. My old paper didn’t give me a press pass, so I sometimes had to pay for my own ticket if the lady working the window didn’t believe I was a reporter (No, I drove all the way from Columbus , in a tie, just to watch Centerburg today). High School press boxes are usually small, can give you splinters, obscure your view, and almost NEVER have free food. After you take into account me buying food, my gas money and sometimes buying a ticket, I would almost lose money covering some games. That doesn’t mean I didn’t like doing it, because I did…just that it wasn’t the show.
You also had to do everything yourself. Keep your own stats, transcribe your own quotes, know your own background information, etc. If you were lucky, there might be a guy in there who hasn’t left his press box seat in 30 years and can tell you some background stuff, but other than that, you are totally on your own.
At Huntington Park, they have a staff that does *those things for you*. When I first stepped into that air conditioned press box, I thought I had died and gone to journalist heaven. They had rosters, media guides, box scores, statistical information and more all neatly on a table. They had media relations and conference officials ready to answer every question.
AND THERE WAS FOOD. All the pretzels I could eat, and a catered meal at the 7:00 game…which was better than most of the food I make myself at home. Plus, the luxury boxes were almost totally empty, but still stocked with food…so I might have borrowed some fruit from there.
Basically, all I had to do was sit down in the sun with my laptop, watch baseball games, and write. What could be better than that?
The baseball games themselves were a little boring (most were massive blowouts. Indiana won every game by at least ten runs to win the tournament. Ohio State was 3rd), but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t excitement at the ballpark.
For example, I’d say there is at least a 35% chance the Columbus Dispatch stole from us.
During a slower part of one of the games, me and Chris began to discuss the finer points of interviewing coaches and athletes. Sadly, a lot of sports interviews end up like the one in Bull Durham.
Crash Davis: It’s time to work on your interviews.
Ebby Calvin LaLoosh: My interviews? What do I gotta do?
Crash Davis: You’re gonna have to learn your clichés. You’re gonna have to study them, you’re gonna have to know them. They’re your friends. Write this down: “We gotta play it one day at a time.”
Ebby Calvin LaLoosh: Got to play… it’s pretty boring.
Crash Davis: ‘Course it’s boring, that’s the point. Write it down.
We decided that perhaps the most egregious sports interview cliché is the line “It is what it is”. What the crap does that mean? Coach! Why did your pitchers suck today? “Well…you know, it is what it is.”. That’s a little useful for meeting a hard word count, but we learn absolutely nothing. We loudly joked about it, and made several references to that line in our live blog of the game that night.
Bob Hunter, the reporter there from the Columbus Dispatch, wasn’t seated very far away from us, and could have heard the whole thing. We open the Dispatch the next day, and whats his lead?
Big Ten Baseball. It is what it is.
As they say at Wikipedia, Citation Needed.
( Note: I’m not seriously accusing the Dispatch of ripping me off here, but the coincidence is pretty crazy)
The other thing I’m going to really remember is that I got a vote for MVP, and the All Tournament team. I guess this shouldn’t have surprised me, because the media typically votes on those things, and I was in fact, part of the media, but I was still shocked.
So me and Chris pour over all the box scores, and I frantically google to make sure I have everybody’s name spelled correctly. It occurred to me that we were probably two of the few media members who saw virtually every game. We ended up calling a little more than half of the team correctly, but I can’t help but shake the feeling that a lot of guys were just voting for the people playing in the title game, or in the one or two games they saw. In college football, people complain all the time about media members voting teams based on name, because they don’t watch all the games. I buy into that theory a little more now.
All in all, it was some of the most fun I’ve ever had as a writer. I have a newfound appreciation for college baseball, and am busily trying to find ways to help take this blog (or others) to the next level. Writing about sports (or anything really) is wonderful work if you can get it, but once you taste the show, you don’t want to go back to the minors.
Poems are one of the good things about America April 12, 2009
Posted by Matt Brown in Uncategorized.Tags: America, Patriotism, Poems, Politics, Stories, Writing
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Easter weekend typically means a mass exodus from campus. By the time I awoke this morning, my roommate, most of my friends, and my girlfriend were all out of town…and my family was still very much scattered across the country. It looked like I was going to be in charge of my own fun tonight.
I went strolling down high street in the afternoon, and stumbled across a bookstore/coffeeshop place that I had been meaning to check out. On a lark, I walked inside, poked around for a bit, bought a book (How Soccer Explains the World for 6 bucks. I both enjoy soccer *and* the world, so I figured it was a pretty solid investment), read for a little bit on one of their comfy couches, and then decided to head back home. On my way out, I noticed a poster on the door, advertising the release party for a book called “The Good Things About America”. I had never been to any kind of poetry or prose reading event before, and my alternative plans for the evening involved drinking all the Gatoraid in my fridge and playing NBA Live 08 all night…so I decided I’d come back in a few hours and check it out.
I have to admit, I was a little apprehensive about the whole thing. Despite being a writer, I’m not really the most “literary” figure in my family (that title goes to my younger sister, who is rapidly becoming a renowned poet in Madison, Wisconsin). I write mostly political commentary, non-fiction and sportswriting. I haven’t really attempted a poem since 8th grade (I wrote a 3 page epic poem called The Great Panda Problem, detailing a group of Panda’s escape from the Zoo, and subsequent takeover of the world. It won “best poem” that year. I decided to retire at the top of my game). Am I even allowed to go to things like this?
My feelings of nervousness didn’t really go away when I first walked in to the coffeeshop. People were wearing fedoras, chuck taylors and double breasted shirts. I looked down to see what I was wearing. I had a blue t-shirt that said COLLEGE (a la Animal House), and brown flip flops. I had gotten my hair cut that day, and still had the gel in my hair. I stuck out like a white guy at Live at the Apollo. What killed me is that I actually own a fedora. I wanted to shout “No, this isn’t what it looks like. I’m really one of you people! Let me get my hat and we can talk about books!”
But was I?
The room quickly filled up, and I found myself sitting in a group of hipsters. The reading began with a few songs from a stripped down rock band. People were in the crowd were laughing and chatting with each other during the songs. I got the impression that most people here knew each other from somewhere else…somewhere else in this scene, which made me feel a little more self conscious. I vaguely entertained thoughts of leaving, but I would have had to crawl over 20 people to get to the door, and dammit, I walked all this way to hear some poems about America.
After a few songs, the band left the makeshift stage, and a tall fellow stepped up the mic. He introduced himself as the editor of the book. He told us that in his travels, he’d hear lots of poets writing about America, but usually in the context of America sucking. Our president is stupid, our foreign policy is unjust, we’re killing the planet, blah blah blah. Quite frankly, it was starting to bring him down. Sure, America has lots of problems, but why do we only have to write about the bad stuff? He called up some of his fellow poets from across the country, asked them to write about the *good* things, and published the book.
As somebody who writes about politics regularly, and also hangs out in a fairly left-leaning crowd most of the time, I think its critical to read stuff like this sometimes. Writing about politics (or even paying attention to politics) can be a major drag sometimes…people can be self-serving and corrupt….it can bring out the most banal and disappointing aspects of our personalities. It can be scary and hateful and sad and make you question why you even bother.
And then you remember…its because I Really Like America. I would even go so far as to say America kicks ass.
Many of the poets featured in the book journeyed to Columbus for the reading…some from Boston, New York, Oklahoma, and others. They talked about families, love, their hometowns,Elections and Heroes, their favorite cities, and the American Experience. My heart filled with pride.
Many of the poems (and the poets) were exceptionally witty and smart, and I found myself laughing and joking with my seatmates. I felt myself becoming a little more comfortable after every poem, after every story, and after every mutually enjoyed pun. One poet, after reading, crumpled up his manuscript into a ball, and tossed it into the crowd. Audience members fought for it like fans might jostle for a foul ball at a baseball game. I couldn’t help but smile. Maybe these are my people after all. I left the reading without any shred of self-consciousness.
The readers were far more diverse than my initial “poet” stereotype had allowed for. There was an older gentleman from southern ohio who read stories from his dark (but also oddly hilarious) book about a fictional town in Ross County. There was a woman who lived in ultra-conservative Oklahoma, whose mother kept a cardboard cutout of Barack Obama in her kitchen (after the last 8 years…I just need to see his face every morning she said. Apparently she hasn’t been able to find a cardboard Michelle yet). Folks from all over the country, from all different backgrounds and with different life experiences read and shared.
I ended up buying the book, making it the first poetry book to grace my bookshelf. I walked out of the reading feeling completely refreshed and rejuvenated. I am prob. not able to write like they can. My writing is like bread, and their poems, like an expensive wine. Its perfectly fine to write bread….after all, everybody eats bread. But Jesus was on to something when he said that man cannot live on bread alone. Sometimes you need a sip of something more complicated to refresh your pallet.
