After all this time, I’m truly only certain of one thing about the morass your author created for himself way back in my early sports writing days. Hunter Thompson would have laughed.
As a young journalist, learning the ropes as Sports Editor of the Nashua (N.H.) Telegraph, I was reading everything. Since editors then - and probably now - do such a generally rotten job of giving useful feedback to their writers, most criticism/encouragement fell on the writers themselves.
Which I think was what my friend and colleague Ken Chutchian had in mind when he insisted that I needed to start reading Hunter Thompson in Rolling Stone. At that time, I was so disgusted with national politics after Watergate, I hadn’t really read him in Rolling Stone. Ken knew me, he knew my sense of humor. He INSISTED.
So I did. And he was right, Hunter was HILARIOUS, outrageous, daring, exciting, a flamethrower in print, somebody who’d leave the keys of the computer on fire when he was done with a story.
I mention this now because it was with a belly full of Hunter, that I drove out to Hollis High School for an afternoon baseball game with rival Wilton, early in my run as Sports Editor for the Nashua Telegraph, long ago. A day I still remember.
Since both schools were outliers in our sports coverage area, it would be a huge deal to both schools to have the Telegraph there to photograph and cover their game.
Sure enough, the minute I approached each coach for their lineup, you could see the kids nudging each other. They were going to BE IN THE PAPER. Exciting stuff!
However, I soon found out there were extenuating circumstances that I hadn’t counted on. That nobody would have expected. The Wilton team not only didn’t have a home field, they hadn’t they won a single game in a decade or more. Nobody, no player, no coach, no parent, could even remember the last time they won a game. If ever. I asked.
Watching the Wilton kids warm up, watching the Hollis kids watching them warm up was like watching one of those David Attenborough-narrated specials where the starving animals were already zeroing in on that day’s unsuspecting prey.
Once the “game” started, it was clear that not only was this not going to be a contest, it was going to be much worse. For example, the Wilton catcher wore glasses under his mask and after the first batter walked on the game’s first four pitches, the fifth pitch eluded the catcher and the runner took off.
Like he had seen in countless major-league games, the catcher whipped his mask off before retrieving the ball. Unfortunately, the glasses stayed with the mask, which went flying. Meanwhile, the near-sighted catcher was on his knees in the high grass behind home, searching for the ball as the runner zipped all the way around the bases. And it went from there. It was 21-0 after two innings.
Your horrified correspondent, snapping photos, trying to document what was actually happening in my messy scorebook, was suddenly struck with the realization that WHATEVER he wrote – if he told the truth – would be horribly insulting.
And the thought struck me. “WWHD.” What Would Hunter Do? I felt I had to cover the game and my job was to describe precisely what happened. But if I did, wouldn’t I be exposing the Wilton player’s foibles on the diamond. Which wasn’t going to go well. And it wasn’t like I could leave. They’d all seen me, talked to me, were all excited I was there.
So, somehow, I came up with this plan. I thought it was a better idea to plug in the names of famous New York Yankee greats instead of each of the Wilton players. DiMaggio, Berra, Rizzuto. Yup. Maybe people will see that I was trying to protect them, have a laugh. I mean, it was 21-0 in the second inning!
Now, if THAT decision wasn’t bad enough, I also had the Hunteresque idea of putting a “Dragnet”-styled “Editor’s Note” on top of the story, thinking that might actually help things, set a tone. It set a tone alright.
This is what ran in the Nashua Telegraph under my byline.
“Editor’s Note: The story you’re about to read is true. The names of Wilton players have been changed to protect the innocent.
HOLLIS – It is not difficult to understand how the Wilton Warriors are 0-12. With starting pitcher Babe Ruth beginning the game pitching from the stretch (talk about confidence,) shortstop Phil Rizzuto fielding ground balls with an extended glove hand so that he looks as if he were reaching under a couch, left fielder Joe DiMaggio catching fly balls by waiting them to safely land before going after them, it is a wonder they aren’t worse.
Yesterday afternoon, they were detonated by the Hollis Cavaliers. 29-2. That’s right, 29-2. Hollis scored 13 runs in the second inning.”
OK. Take a breath. Pretty rough, right? Then I tried to justify that savagery with my clever next paragraph.
“Generally, it is not good practice to severely criticize high school athletes. Competing in sports is difficult, baseball, particularly so. Yet even a wholly unbiased report on yesterday’s 29-2 debacle is so damning, putting the real names in of the Warriors would be almost as cruel as making them relive the two-hour humiliation they suffered here yesterday afternoon…”
Hey kids, ready for some play-by-play? So I started writing…
“Wilton got three of the first four men on as Ruth walked. Rizzuto fanned, Mickey Mantle walked and Lou Gehrig was hit by a pitch. DiMaggio was up next and though striking out, he ended the inning with a double play. As he swung and missed, Hollis catcher John DeSilva couldn't hang onto Randy Farwell's pitch.
“Ignoring home plate umpire Jack Smith’s call that he was out, DiMaggio started running towards first on the missed strike. As he did. Ruth started running towards home and Mantle started towards third. There were so many possibilities. DeSilva wasn’t sure where to throw the ball. Finally, left fielder Rick "Bennie” Fischer raced in, covered third, DeSilva threw him the ball and Hollis was out of the inning with a routine 1-2-7 double play.”
Yeah. It’s funny to me NOW. The next day, the only phone call I got all morning was from the home plate umpire, Jack Smith. When an ump is calling to make you feel better, well…
“John, I just read your story,” he said. “And I was there and what happened was exactly what you said happened. But you’re going to hear about this one.”
Did I. In what I believe was a record-setting performance, the Telegraph, likely to the delight of Executive Editor Jon Breen, who hated me even worse than Wilton parents, ran a total of thirteen – 13 – THIRTEEN “Letters To The Editor” ripping me in so many ways, it’s a wonder my jeans stayed up.
The Telegraph had NEVER to my knowledge – and I looked – run 13 “Letters To The Editor” on a single topic in the history of the newspaper. Overkill? Ya think?
Breen also banished me from writing my weekly “Sports Scene” column for several months. My only good fortune was that I wasn’t in Salem, Massachusetts where they still had public stocks. I wasn’t even allowed to apologize. “You’ve said enough,” Breen said. Which, I had to admit, was probably true.
A few months later, two school kids from Bishop Guertin, Timmy Paiva and Peter Paladino, Nashua’s Catholic High School, wrote their own “Letter To The Editor” asking Breen to relent and let me go back to writing my column. And he did run their letter - must have been a slow day - and let me resume my column. A bit scarred, I went back to covering high school sports a little more wary.
Now it’s entirely possible that I might have come up with that goofball idea on my own without ever reading Hunter Thompson. But having read him, where he seemed to not particularly care what anybody thought about what he wrote, he just sat at the keyboard and let it go.
That was a big swing and miss on my part. Well, I thought, people will get it, they’ll see I wasn’t trying to embarrass the kids, just sort of laugh about the whole thing. I mean, it was 29-2. It wasn’t like Hollis showed the Wilton kids any mercy.
But somebody should have. And that should have been me.