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The highs, lows of sports writing
All sportswriters both love and resent the old line
by the late American columnist Jimmy Cannon: "The best way to be a bum and
make a living is to write about sport."
They love it because an internal voice reminds them
how lucky they are to be paid to watch games their friends would kill to see.
They resent it because there is no god to repay them for the eight hours they
spent on a motorway for an interview that never saw the light of day, all the
school functions they missed or the liberal doses of contempt they have had to
swallow from millionaire footballers half their age. Cannon tickled the ribs
with his famous admission, but it's not possible to be good at any kind of
writing if you double up as a bum.
Monday in London, a cheque for £15,000 will be
handed to the author of the year's best sports book when the William Hill award
is announced at Waterstone's in London's Piccadilly. As one of the six judges,
I know the name of the winner, but the Marquis de Sade could not get me to
divulge which of the half-dozen on the shortlist crossed the line in front.
A personal opinion, which offers no clues about the
identity of the William Hill winner, is that the standard of sports books
dropped this year, maybe because publishers are channelling more and more of
their resources and energies into blockbusting autobiographies at the expense
of reportage, which is best defined as unblinking observation, the accumulation
of detail and the telling of a story that has yet to be properly told.
The best journalists, the best writers, velcro
themselves to a subject until it yields the killer insight, the one shaft of
light that enables the reader to see it as something more than another cargo of
words and pictures.
Those of us who have signed up to the ghost-writing
chain gang are hardly in a position to lament the growth of the co-written
autobiography, but we can still hope that the best emerging writers will fan
out to tackle the biggest and hardest subjects with nothing more to assist them
than a small advance, a notebook and a passion to write what they see.
As an aside, three of the great unwritten sports
books are the definitive account of Mike Tyson's life, the real story of David
Beckham Incorporated, and the Arsène Wenger chronicles, which every
British sportswriter dreams of being asked to set down in print - with
Wenger's full co-operation, of course. Often, what we see of this brilliant and
cerebral talent-spotter is a poker player who measures his every word and deed.
We cannot see his other dimensions but we can be sure they are there.
Neither of the two big trends in the sports
publishing market favour front-line reporting of the sort that has spawned so
many fine American sports reporters. The first is a mania for big names, big
personalities, throwing open the doors to their lives, and the other is a
growing fascination with extreme sports, extreme challenges, exhausting
obsessions, which may reflect our boredom with work-governed life, and our
secret desire to climb mountains and sail oceans rather than stand all the way
to London on a hot commuter train.
My own all-time favourite sports book is King of the
World, by David Remnick, the Pullitzer-prize winning editor of the New Yorker
magazine, who somehow manages to capture the essence of America in the
turbulent Sixties while also conveying the hypnotic charm of Muhammad Ali.
In Remnick's book, Cassius Clay, as he was then, has
just destroyed the Sonny Liston myth and wants his dues from the reporters who
thought Liston would put him in a hospital bed. Consider this short passage,
for the light it casts on the power of Ali.
"I'm gonna show you how great reporters
are," he [Ali] said. "Who's the greatest?" There was no reply.
"No justice. I don't get no justice. No one's
gonna give me justice. I'll give you one more chance. Who's the greatest?"
There was a pause. Then a few reporters muttered:
"You are."
The love-hate dynamic between athletes and the
journalists who report their exploits turns to mutual dependence when a
top-class writer elevates an autobiography to a literary standard it would not
otherwise achieve (as evidence, the books by Stan Collymore, Paul Gascoigne and
Paula Radcliffe). A tome, which failed to appear on the William Hill short
list, but is of the highest merit, is Steve McManaman's collaboration with
Sarah Edworthy, El Macca, which brings performer and writer together in perfect
unison. It is the year's most innovative offering, challenging the conventional
biographical form.
Martin Johnson, surely the best England captain in
any sport since Bobby Moore, saved a few quid and surrendered countless hours
by writing his own biography; and the result is an unsatisfying rummage through
his life, described in jockstrap language (the language of the copper-bottomed
good bloke).
This is Johnson's authentic voice: direct, honest,
anti-glamour, anti-waffle. But it provides nothing in the way of illumination
or insight. He is confirming what we already know, which is that 'Johnno' is to
self-analysis what Vlad the Impaler was to pacifism.
A personal hope is that the primacy of the writer,
the subject, is restored in publishing houses, over the sellability of the
face, or personality. The last three William Hill winners upheld the value of
journalism, of reportage. They were Seabiscuit, by Laura Hillenbrand (2001), In
Black & White, by Donald McRae (2001) and Tom Bower's Broken Dreams, 12
months ago. Be assured: the judging process, as I discovered this year, is rigorous,
fair and intolerant of bums.Contenders: the six books pictured have been
shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award. The winner will
be announced today.
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