Why I Don't Root

When people find out I'm a sportswriter, they often respond by saying how lucky I am to get paid to watch sports. They're right, but what they usually don't understand is how doing this for a living changes your perspective. For most folks, sports offer a diversion from their responsibilities, a chance to unwind after a hard day of work. For me, the game is the job.

Baseball writer Joel Sherman addressed the different perspectives of a fan and a sportswriter in his New York Post column yesterday. He was writing in response to Mets fans who complain he preferred the Yankees, and Yankees fans who complains he favored the Mets. "I root for two things," Sherman explains. "Short games and interesting story lines."

Even when I'm working on an encyclopedia or covering historical events, I have to do it with a certain detachment. Because at the end of the day, being a sportswriter is first and foremost about being a writer, not about being a fan.

I don't know Joel Sherman, but he and I have covered some of the same ground and suffered some of the same heartburn in the waning minutes of a game. Here's how Sherman describes his seven years as a Yankee beat writer.

Among the deadlines at this paper, one is at about 11 p.m. Which means you have to write as the game is going on. When I was the beat guy I cannot even quantify how many times I had a story complete, and watched as Dave Righetti or Steve Farr or John Wetteland coughed it up and made me totally re-write hundreds and hundreds of words with essentially no time left on the clock to do it. There was a time, when I was younger, that I would be mentally begging for that not to happen. And then you realize -- when it does happen several dozen times -- that it is just wasted energy.

When Mariano Rivera blew the ninth-inning save in Game 7 of the 2001 World Series against the Diamondbacks, you could either sob about the wonderful column you think you have in front of you trumpeting the Yankees' fourth straight World Series championship or flip instantly into re-write mode and be a pro. There is often just not time to care or root. I like Mariano Rivera as much as any athlete I have ever covered because I find him so excellent on the field and dignified off of it. But in that moment when several hundred words must be redone, who cares? A fan cares that's who. As for me, my allegiance is to the column.

Just in Time for Spring Training

Just a quick plug for the new ESPN Baseball Encyclopedia, which should be arriving in stores any day now. It's the fourth edition of this series, updated through the end of the 2006 season with more stats and history than you'll know what to do with.

I'm a contributor to this edition, not an editor, but it marks the seventh time my name has appeared on the title page of a baseball encyclopedia.

There's still a foot of snow on the ground here. Can it really be time for pitchers and catchers to report?

So How's the Book Coming?

I've spent almost two years working on a major project, a historical football book that's scheduled to be published this summer. I'm dreadfully behind and working night and day to get the manuscript finished and turned in.The book is called the Historical Football Abstract, and it's modeled on one that Bill James wrote in 1985 called the Historical Baseball Abstract.

In the late seventies, James began writing an annual book he called "The Baseball Abstract," reflecting on the previous season and offering analysis, not just of the teams and players but of more fundamental issues. James examined subjects such as the impact of ballpark dimensions, the value of a stolen base, and the usefulness of minor league statistics as a predictor of major league performance.

James self published the first five editions, and after a favorable mention by Daniel Okrent in Sports Illustrated, he signed a deal with Ballantine Books for future editions. By 1984, the book was selling 150,000 copies a year, pushing as high as #4 on the New York Times Best Seller List. He has often been described as a statistician, but James approached the number as a means to an end. He asked basic questions about the game and used the scientific method to try and find answers. Although James is not a household name, his work has shaped an entire generation of sportswriters. In 2006, Time Magazine named him to their list of the 100 most influential people in the world.

In 1985, James wanted to take the tools and methods he had developed for analyzing current players and apply them to players from earlier eras. And that's the same path that I'm following. Having written pro football annuals and covered the current game for five years. I was anxious to turn my attention to historical subjects, and that's what I've been doing for the past two years.

I'm eager to finish, not just because I've been working on it for so long, but because I think the book is turning out pretty well.

Finding Herb Scharfman

After reading my article on the mystery boxing photographer, several readers wrote in to offer leads. Rock Hoffman told me that the man was featured in a 2002 HBO documentary called "Picture Perfect: The Stories Behind the Greatest Photos in Sports." That was enough information to crack the case, and I quickly learned that the photographer who appeared ringside in those two legendary boxing photos was the late Herb Scharfman.

As Neil Leifer tells it, Sports Illustrated often sent two photographers to cover boxing matches. At the Ali - Liston rematch, the two men assigned were Leifer and Scharfman. "He was one of the greats," Leifer said in an NPR interview, "but on that night, he was in the wrong seat." In his autobiography, Leifer expanded on those thoughts.

It didn’t make a difference how good he was that night. He was obviously in the wrong seat. What the good sports photographer does is when it happens and you’re in the right place, you don’t miss. Whether that’s instinctual or whether it’s just luck, I don't know.

Scharfman -- who died in 1998 -- began his career in 1939 as a motorcycle messenger for International News Photos in New York. In need of a photographer to cover a Brooklyn Dodgers game one afternoon, the photo editor called on Scharfman because he happened to own a camera. The shots must have turned out alright, because he continued taking photographs for the next 44 years. According to his obituary in the New York Times, he became friends with many New York baseball players, including Jackie Robinson, Joe DiMaggio, Sandy Koufax and Ralph Branca.

He continued to shoot for International News Photos until they went out of business, at which point he joined the staff of Sports Illustrated. Among his body of work are two iconic sports photographs. The one that is perhaps most well known is his image of Roger Maris (at right) immediately after hitting his 61st home run in 1961. Scharfman spent that season following Maris as he chased Babe Ruth's single-season home run record, producing a number of classic photographs that not only chronicled the events on the field, but the crushing burden that Maris faced off the field. Sports Illustrated re-published some of this pictures in an online gallery in 1998, when Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa were engaged in their own quest for a new home run record.

The other unforgettable picture Scharfmann took was of a punch delivered by a young boxer named Rocky Marciano in 1952 (at left). It was snapped at the instant that Marciano's glove impacted the jaw of Jersey Joe Walcott, the world heavyweight champion. The force of Marciano's blow is captured on Walcott's face, as a wave of energy appears to visibly distort the shape of his face. For twelve rounds, the champ had his way with Marciano, but that all changed with one punch. Walcott fell slowly to the canvas, and after the referee's ten count, Marciano was crowned as the new champion. Scharfman's perfectly timed photo captured the startling punch.

Between 1963 and 1972, Scharfman's pictures appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated fourteen times. His subjects included Muhammad Ali, Curt Flood, and Tom Matte.

Eyewitness to History

One of the great sports photographs ever taken is this shot above. It was taken by Sports Illustrated's Neil Leifer at the second fight between Muhammad Ali and Sonny Liston in Lewiston, Maine in 1965. After knocking him down in the first round, the 23-year old Ali stood over his vanquished opponent yelling "get up!"

I've had a print of the famous photo hanging in my office for years, and one of the elements that has always captured my attention is the photographer standing at ringside. He appears in this shot just between Ali's legs. The faces of the other ringside photographers are hidden because their cameras are in front of their faces. But not the balding gentlemen in glasses. At one of the biggest moments in sports history, he's just watching while his colleagues are snapping away.

I don't know who this gentleman is, and I've never made any particular effort to find out, but I think about him every time I see the photo.

Yesterday (January 17) was Ali's 65th birthday, and as part of their coverage, the folks at Sports Illustrated published a gallery of photographs from his fights at their website. As I was browsing through it, I came across the mystery photographer again in this photo.


I'm pretty sure it's the same guy at ringside again. This shot is from a fight eleven years later, the third meeting between Ali and Ken Norton. And once again, while all of his colleagues are shooting away, his camera is idle as he watches.


So now I'm intrigued, and I've started looking at both still photos and DVDs of bouts from the era to find more examples of the mystery man. Like Forrest Gump, he was an idle spectator at great moments in history. Who was he? More importantly, did he ever take any pictures?