The Art of Sports Writing, Part III
Just because you haven't done it yet, doesn't mean you can't.
NOTE: This is the third in a four-part series of essays on the beauty and importance of sports writing. I got my start covering sports, and even though I’ve moved on, I care deeply about the medium and wish sports journalism would get back to what it once was. Each installment will post on Thursday. Read part 1 here and part 2 here.
There’s a sports media trope I’d love to see done away with.
The “superstar who fails in the big moment” narrative.
For one thing, this ignores the reality of team sports (and make no mistake, the vast majority of America’s most visible and popular sports are team sports). Why do we blame the quarterback for a loss when his defense gives up 40 points?
Peyton Manning can’t tackle.
I get that we reserve this trope for athletes said to be the best. The ones who make the most money. We get it in our heads that if a guy’s making enough money to set up his great grandkids for life, he should be able to singlehandedly win whatever fancy trophy his sport gives out.
But that’s not how this works. Not every failure is the result of ineptitude. People forget that when we get to this level, every athlete involved is a professional. Everyone’s talented, everyone’s good. Sometimes, you can do everything in your power, and still, you get beat.
That’s sports. That’s life.
Think back to 2018, when the Washington Capitals finally won the Stanley Cup. What was largely expected to be the next chapter in the “Alex Ovechkin is overrated and wilts in the playoffs” saga.
There was the first-round series against Columbus, where the Capitals lost the first two games, and the general consensus was, “Oh, here we go again; another postseason collapse and failure for the Capitals.” Yet they won the third game in double overtime and went on to win the series. If there’s one thing sports fans can’t get enough of, it’s redemption stories. Battling back against sure defeat to emerge triumphant.
Still, this was just the first round. And in the next round, the Pittsburgh Penguins awaited.
The dreaded, hated Penguins. Pittsburgh was more than simple rival. They were the team against which Washington had suffered so many of its playoff failures. Sidney Crosby was the Moby Dick to Ovechkin’s Ahab. If the Capitals were flaming out of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, chances were, those damn black and yellow flightless birds were the reason.
But a funny thing happened this time around: Evgeny Kuznetsov scored on an overtime breakaway in Game 6 (in Pittsburgh, no less!) to clinch the series for the Capitals and finally vanquish the Penguins.
The monster had been slain. Washington finally got over the proverbial hump.
It wasn’t quite like when the Boston Red Sox overcame an 0-3 deficit in 2004 to defeat the hated New York Yankees and advance to the World Series, but still.
Washington then dispatched the Tampa Bay Lightning in seven games, before advancing to the Stanley Cup Final (sports snobbery alert: there’s no ‘s’ in Final there) to take on the upstart Las Vegas Golden Knights.
Vegas was its own fascinating story, an expansion franchise that was fighting for the Stanley Cup in the team’s first year of existence. Most of the time, expansion teams suck beyond sucking, but the Knights were damn good, and had a chance to do the unthinkable (another favorite sports story: doing the thing no one thinks you can do). Had Vegas been taking on literally any other team in the Final, I would’ve likely been rooting for them.
Vegas won Game 1, but in Game 2, things…changed.
For the better.
Things never changed for the better for the Capitals in the postseason. That was kind of their thing. There was a reason someone made a Facebook meme of Ovechkin hoisting golf clubs over his head, the way one would normally hoist the Stanley Cup (see above).
Even I have to admit the meme was funny, but it’s damn nice to know it’s no longer relevant. Because in five games, the Capitals vanquished not only the Golden Knights, but also all those previous failures. Ovechkin, widely regarded as one of the two or three best players in the NHL at the time, finally threw that monkey off his back. The superstar who couldn’t win the big game finally won the big game. He accomplished the one thing all the critics and naysayers said he never would.
Was the narrative a bit unfair? Sure (because spoiler alert: hockey is a team sport, and outside of maybe the goalie, one person cannot solely dictate his team’s fate in the playoffs). Plus, while I’m loathe to quote perpetual gasbag Jim Rome (who’s as responsible for the state of sports media today as anyone else), he does have one saying I’ve long kept in mind when it comes to the “superstar who fails when it matters” trope:
Just because you haven’t done it yet, that doesn’t mean you can’t do it.