Over the past 3-4 weeks, I’ve gone back in time. That’s what good books do for you. They grab your attention and share details that fire your imagination.
When you’ve lived through the years that a writer covers, the words on the page and the mental images that go along with it remind you of those times. You re-enter that period with your memories.
Both books I reread center on sports: “Behind the Mask” by Bill Freehan, and “Paper Lion” by George Plimpton. Plimpton’s penned his in 1966 and Freehan wrote his in 1969.
Given the baseball (Freehan) and football (Plimpton) subjects of the respective books, you wouldn’t think the memories they dredged up go far beyond the lines. But they do because like any good read, they make you pause and consider more than the action itself. Neither author started his project with that goal, I’m confident.
Instead, Freehan wanted to give his catcher’s view of the Detroit Tigers the year after they won the World Series and Denny McClain racked up 31 victories as a pitcher. Plimpton’s goal was odder: He chose to quarterback the Detroit Lions, probably first foray in modern (depending on how you now choose to define “modern”) history into experiential journalism. Today, you see imbedded journalists all over the world, and reporters taking on insider jobs and coming back to write about their experiences. But back in the 1960s, what Plimpton did was pure novelty, and he did it to find out what football felt like firsthand and relay it an audience.
Plimpton and Freehan both captured that rawness of their on-the-spot view of pro football and baseball. The warts, the statements players made with no worry about consequences, team camaraderie, race relations, the battle with between owners and players over wages all come to the forefront in both books. You feel the era and see the seeds being planted that led to the mega-media enterprise most professional sports now occupy in the eyes of much of the public.
It’s easy to say it was a simpler time in the 1960s. Reporters were not hanging over every word, cameras in the players’ faces, commentators waiting to turn the shortest statement or captured video into an “incident” that becomes news.
Instead, both books give you unconstrained behind-the-scenes quotes and some wild stuff that went on in the days before Twitter and Instagram. Players today probably still engage in similar behaviors, but the microscope is so heavily focused on their activities that the slightest deviation from what a player is “supposed” to do gets massive coverage, which in turns ratchets down some of the amusing and idiosyncratic behaviors that can be so fun to read about in sports. Just ask Johny Manziel. You get caught doing anything “different” and you have a ton of explaining to do.
We’ve lost something in the ensuing years, and it saddens me in many ways. You don’t hear about the joking or pranksters, the frank discussions that do occur between teammates, something that bonds them on and off the field. We don’t hear about guys like Alex Karras, who had an incredible sense of humor, and kept his teammates loose with goofy stuff he did.
I’m not sure pro athletes get to be themselves these days unless they keep a tremendously low profile. There’s nothing wrong with that, but the ice they skate on is much thinner in 2015 than 1969.
I wouldn’t trade my flat screen for a black and white 12-inch TV screen. But I would trade the non-stop chatter and useless banter for just being able to watch the guys play without distractions. We can’t go back.
When you’ve lived through the years that a writer covers, the words on the page and the mental images that go along with it remind you of those times. You re-enter that period with your memories.
Both books I reread center on sports: “Behind the Mask” by Bill Freehan, and “Paper Lion” by George Plimpton. Plimpton’s penned his in 1966 and Freehan wrote his in 1969.
Given the baseball (Freehan) and football (Plimpton) subjects of the respective books, you wouldn’t think the memories they dredged up go far beyond the lines. But they do because like any good read, they make you pause and consider more than the action itself. Neither author started his project with that goal, I’m confident.
Instead, Freehan wanted to give his catcher’s view of the Detroit Tigers the year after they won the World Series and Denny McClain racked up 31 victories as a pitcher. Plimpton’s goal was odder: He chose to quarterback the Detroit Lions, probably first foray in modern (depending on how you now choose to define “modern”) history into experiential journalism. Today, you see imbedded journalists all over the world, and reporters taking on insider jobs and coming back to write about their experiences. But back in the 1960s, what Plimpton did was pure novelty, and he did it to find out what football felt like firsthand and relay it an audience.
Plimpton and Freehan both captured that rawness of their on-the-spot view of pro football and baseball. The warts, the statements players made with no worry about consequences, team camaraderie, race relations, the battle with between owners and players over wages all come to the forefront in both books. You feel the era and see the seeds being planted that led to the mega-media enterprise most professional sports now occupy in the eyes of much of the public.
It’s easy to say it was a simpler time in the 1960s. Reporters were not hanging over every word, cameras in the players’ faces, commentators waiting to turn the shortest statement or captured video into an “incident” that becomes news.
Instead, both books give you unconstrained behind-the-scenes quotes and some wild stuff that went on in the days before Twitter and Instagram. Players today probably still engage in similar behaviors, but the microscope is so heavily focused on their activities that the slightest deviation from what a player is “supposed” to do gets massive coverage, which in turns ratchets down some of the amusing and idiosyncratic behaviors that can be so fun to read about in sports. Just ask Johny Manziel. You get caught doing anything “different” and you have a ton of explaining to do.
We’ve lost something in the ensuing years, and it saddens me in many ways. You don’t hear about the joking or pranksters, the frank discussions that do occur between teammates, something that bonds them on and off the field. We don’t hear about guys like Alex Karras, who had an incredible sense of humor, and kept his teammates loose with goofy stuff he did.
I’m not sure pro athletes get to be themselves these days unless they keep a tremendously low profile. There’s nothing wrong with that, but the ice they skate on is much thinner in 2015 than 1969.
I wouldn’t trade my flat screen for a black and white 12-inch TV screen. But I would trade the non-stop chatter and useless banter for just being able to watch the guys play without distractions. We can’t go back.