I think there are more good sportswriters doing more good sportswriting than ever before. But I also believe that the one thing that's largely gone out is what made sport such fertile literary territory - the characters, the tales, the humor, the pain, what Hollywood calls 'the arc.'
Interpretation
Sportswriting is rich with characters and stories, but has lost its essence over time.
In this quote, Frank Deford reflects on the evolution of sportswriting, acknowledging that while there are many talented sportswriters producing work today, the depth and richness that once characterized sports stories—such as the intriguing characters and emotional narratives—have diminished. He emphasizes that the elements that made sports a compelling subject for writing, including humor and personal struggles, have largely been overshadowed, suggesting a need for a revival of these essential qualities.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of storytelling in journalism.
So much about big-time college sports is criticized. But the worst scandal is almost never mentioned: the academic fraud wherein the student-athletes, so-called, are admitted without even remotely adequate credentials and then aren't educated so much as they are just kept eligible.
Sport is an art: it has incredible appeal everywhere on this earth, and it fills so many human hearts with passion that it's impossible to dismiss.
My favorite literary heroine is Jo March. It is hard to overstate what she meant to a small, plain girl called Jo, who had a hot temper and a burning ambition to be a writer.
My last vivid boyhood fright from books came when I was 15; I was visiting my uncle and aunt in Greenwich, and, emboldened by my success with 'The Waste Land,' I opened their copy of 'Ulysses.' The whiff of death off those remorseless, closely written pages overpowered me. So: back to soluble mysteries, and jokes that were not cosmic.
Ultimately, my books are not about the politics, although the toil and the struggle and the wars in Afghanistan have a significant impact on the lives of my characters.
It had been startling and disappointing to me to find out that story books had been written by people, that books were not natural wonders, coming of themselves like grass.
In literature, you know only what you imagine
You may translate books of science exactly. ... The beauties of poetry cannot be preserved in any language except that in which it was originally written.
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