By Jean Godden
When I grow up, I'd like to be a sportswriter. Sportswriting is the best job on a newspaper. It gives you freedom that reporters who cover city hall or state government never have.
The city hall reporter has to post a standard lede (opening paragraph) with details spelled out using the Five Double U's: who, what, when, where and why. Check out this recent city hall lede: "The Seattle city council today adopted a $6.5 billion spending plan for 2021, but decided to trim an additional $2 million from the police budget."
Just the fact, folks. Interesting, but dull. And look at the luke-warm verbs: "adopted," "decided." Not the least bit colorful.
Meanwhile, on local sports pages, things are far different. Covering the post-Thanksgiving Day Utah-Washington game, Seattle Times sportswriter Mike Vorel hooked his readers with his story-book lede: "The Washington Huskies landed a second half haymaker. As well as a parade of punches. They needed every last one of them to win."
Vorel dismissed the Husky's lousy first-half defense (an ugly 21-0 rout), saying, "The Huskies tackled as if afflicted with contagious arthritis." But then, suddenly, there's more to the story.
Instilled with confidence by their coaches at half time, the Husky team emerged again ready to "absorb the enemy artillery." Vorel thrilled at how a transformed Husky team "landed punches," they "plummeted into the end-zone," they "set up a field goal" and, "with never a flinch," won the 24-21 game with a winning catch, scored in the final 44 seconds.
Lordy, what an account. What use of metaphor, simile and allegory. You could even question if you were reading about a football game, a prize-fighting championship, a morality tale or an updated version of "The Little Engine that Could."
Oh to be a sportswriter! To be someone who could employ such strong verbs, stir such emotions and produce such poetry. Who said men weren't the emotional ones?
Many is the time after achieving my childhood goal to become a reporter that I found myself envying the newspaper's sportswriters. Become one? I never dared dream; I knew how impossible that was.
In years past, sports writing was a no-girls-allowed, male province. Those few brave women who knocked on the door at the newspaper's sports departments were rejected, even laughed at. One talented woman friend was told to go off and "marry Prince Charming and have babies."
Sports? Women? Seldom happen. If there was the rare exception, it was when the sports editor hired a female temp when all the regulars were felled by flu. Or perhaps to cover some women's contest, say tennis or swimming.
Sports writing was the entry step young men took in the news world. They'd get a one-time assignment covering the local high school contest. It was their pathway into the main newsroom, to becoming the papers' investigative reporter, the star who got to write the election-night lede, who interviewed governors and presidents and became a regular columnist.
For young women who foolishly aspired to regular news beats, their career path never began in sports, seldom could they migrate from the old women's section to do more than write about the occasional charity dinner or fancy-dress soiree.
Today things at long last are getting better. We're seeing many minorities and a few superior women with sports bylines, women covering newspaper and TV assignments. It thrills me that there are trailblazers.
But I'm human enough to say I'm sorry I never had license to write words like those that sportswriter Vorel wrote after the epic Utah-Husky game: "Comparing UW's play in the first half to the second half is like comparing a doodle to a piece of art hanging in the Louvre." As Husky coach Jimmy Lake said: "We'll be talking about this game years from now." We'll be re-reading the stirring words of a sportswriter.
