Brought up in the post-Watergate world of hard-hitting but shoddy investigative journalism, the youth of America are conditioned to say as little as possible to the media. If they do say anything, the media often twists it anyway. A cat that sits on a hot stove will never do so again, but it won't sit on a cold one either.
Vicki Goetze, a 20-year-old phenom on the LPGA tour, is being touted as the next great star. But you know what? She'll never make it. Oh, she can play, but an LPGA golfer needs exposure to become famous, and Goetze is a fountain of cliches so mundane people throw up their hands in disgust. Someday, Goetze will figure it out. She'll start showing some emotion and humor, and one year after that she'll be a household name. Writers are always happy to interview an interesting person.
Sportswriters these days are conditioned to deal with the insipid. We can fashion a story from the most routine "just happy to be here" lines. But to hear an athlete like Harvard football's Monte Giese '93 step up and say, "I hate Yale. I hate that team and I hate their fans"? What passion! Drama! Excitement! Clarkson University once printed up dinner napkins calling the Harvard men's hockey team "dumb, incestuous masturbators." But would anyone here ever call them a bunch of perverted finks? (Which, with all due respect, they are?)
It's left to the writers to create the color, and we try hard. Sometimes too hard, which is why many athletes will probably sympathize with this definition of the word "quote": That which a player says immediately after the game but is sure he didn't say when it appears in print the next day.
The surest way to get those quotes right? Say what you mean--in your own words, not the words of the millions who have gone before you. We'll remember that.
Because the dirtiest little secret of sportswriting is this: say interesting things, and you will get in the paper. Correctly. Guaranteed.
What's more, you'll make friends for life down here.
John B. Trainer is a Crimson staff writer. He takes it one column at a time.