(EDITOR’S NOTE: Before I get doxxed by every Brewers fan on earth, please know I love the Brewers, I want them to make it to the World Series, I want to take my Dad to a World Series game at Am Fam field and I want them to win it all. I love this team and I think everyone on it is great. This is about the writing, not the catch.)
One of the bad things about getting older is that I don’t have the late-night stamina I used to, so when Game 4 of the Brewers/Padres series was reaching past 11 p.m., I fell asleep before the end. When I woke up, I not only found out they won, but I was greeted by an alert to this story that captured a key moment I missed:
For five and two-hundredths of a second, from bat to glove, Petco Park waited in nervous, loud anticipation as the ball soared off of Machado’s bat in the bottom of the eighth, seemingly ticketed toward the few rows of seats beyond the right-center field wall for what would have been the latest October right-hook to the jaw of the Milwaukee Brewers.
Then Garrett Mitchell stole it.
The Brewers center fielder made one of the greatest defensive plays in franchise history given the moment, vaulting the Crew to the National League Championship Series with his breathtaking snag to preserve a 3-1 win over the San Diego Padres Game 4 of the National League Division Series.
I immediately flipped to YouTube to see this glorious, amazing, miraculous, breathtaking snag, fully expecting something like this:
Or this:
Hell, based on that description, I was even thinking about this one:
What I got was this:
One of the good things about getting older is that I have historical perspective. It also helps being a journalist who understands that you can’t make everything go to 11 if you ever want your readers to take you seriously.
To be fair to Mitchell, it was a good catch.
It was an important catch.
However, it wasn’t what the sportswriter sold me in that description.
It wasn’t even the best centerfield catch in the series:
And then there was this one, which Brewers manager Pat Murphy clearly had an opinion:
(And this, kids, is the risk of doing a live shot…)
The point isn’t that the catch wasn’t good or that it didn’t matter. I love Garrett Mitchell and he’s one hell of a centerfielder. The point is for writers, because when you over-hype the hell out of everything, you desensitize your audience even as you attempt to come up with bigger, better and more hyped language for whatever comes next.
This leads to the throwback post today, where I’m pleading for better writing that doesn’t turn everything into the second coming of Christ.
Don’t Believe the Hype
A group of my sports writing students were asked to write a story about a football game between two fictional college rivals, in which one comes back from a huge deficit to win on the last play of the fourth quarter. A good number of them attempted to hype the story rather than tell it, especially in the lead:
Thanks to an unbelievable fourth quarter capped by a 28-0 run, (WINNERS) came back to defeat (LOSERS), 31-28.
It seemed like (LOSERS)had the game wrapped up going into the fourth quarter, but in football, you must play all four quarters to the best of your ability if you want to win the game, no matter what level you’re playing at.
In Wild and Wonderful fashion, (WINNER) roars back to score 31 unanswered as they knock off (LOSER) in the closing seconds of regulation.
The (GAME) ended in extraordinary fashion with a last second touchdown.
Others wrote about it being “incredible,” “super,” “amazing” and so forth. And, yes, according to the information they received it was the largest comeback in conference history, so it might well have been all of those things.
However, your job is to show the readers what is going on by presenting factual information, not trying to sell them something by hyping it up. If you do the former, you’ll notice that your readers will come to the conclusion you want them to all by themselves. If you do the latter, you’ll find that the readers will resist your efforts to get them to see the situation in the way you want them to.
Don’t believe me? Consider the Joke Theory.
My wife and I laugh about how we’re always so competitive. But I know I always laugh more.
OK, that’s a lame joke, but I was hamstrung a bit by trying not to insult men, women, college students, professors, animals, trees and some frat kid named Chad’s little brother. That said, a few of you might have laughed at that. I at least had a chance.
Now consider if I started it this way instead:
I’m going to tell you a really funny joke. It’s probably one of the best jokes you’re ever going to hear. You’re going to be laughing so hard, you’ll cry. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if you retell it to everyone you know. OK, here we go…
The hype kills the hope that I’m getting a laugh, just like the hype undercuts your position with your readers. Don’t tell them something is funny, amazing or whatever else. Show them the thing as it is and let them come to that conclusion.
Here’s an example of how this works:
Read this version of a story about a man caught breaking into a couple’s home, eating their food, wearing the wife’s Christmas “onesie” and dressing his cat, named Spaghetti, in a cashmere sweater he stole. What drives this story is the straight-up fact-based reporting that has you wondering, “What the heck is wrong with this guy?” (Well that and quotes like this: “No one leaves a dressed cat in a crawl space unless they’re coming back or they’re still here,” Smith told the paper. “So I got out and shut the door.”)
Now, if the writer, instead of doing this, had started commenting on this throughout the story, here’s what you might get:
“In the most bizarre case of burglary and home invasion ever known, a 38-year-old man was arrested Sunday night.
The odd fellow, who named his cat Spaghetti, which makes no sense, was caught in a crawl space in the home. A creepy crawler, indeed!
The weirdo put on the wife’s “onesie” night dress, which the woman obviously said she didn’t want the police to bring back for her. He also dressed Spaghetti in a cashmere outlet the couple had for one of its Chihuahuas, just adding to the weirdness of the night.”
Which version does the job better? Clearly the first one.
The point is that you need to have faith in your readers that they’ll see what you see when you write, without having to poke or prod them via commentary or hype. You also need to have faith in your own writing that you’ll get your point across well enough without having to use hype as a crutch to do the job.
