Brady Quinn’s new hazing-induced haircut isn’t the only piece of titillating news on sports fans’ minds in my hometown. Clevelanders are all aflutter about the return of legendary area sportswriter Terry Pluto to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, years after his defection to the Akron Beacon Journal (hometown paper of LeBron James.)
The Plain Dealer has taken out huge in-house ads to advertise a countdown to the appearance of Pluto’s columns, articles have been written about his return and the paper plans to host live web-chats offering fans an outlet to talk with Terry. We sure do love our TP.
It is at this point that some would venture to insert the clever (cough, cough) and oh-so-original observation that Cleveland must not have much else going on if it is making such a fuss over a balding, middle age man. Those people would be woefully ignorant of Terry’s skill in naming his books amusingly (“Loose Balls: The Short, Wild Life of the American Basketball Association”) and of his trailblazing work highlighting one of Cleveland’s most famous sports superstitions in “The Curse of Rocky Colavito.” Colavito, the heart-throb outfielder for the Indians (winning the affections of all the ladies in town, from school-girls to Little Sisters of the Poor) was traded to the Tigers in 1960. The story goes that because of this woeful managerial mishap, Cleveland would never win a World Series again. Boston doesn’t have a monopoly on the whole “loveable losers” thing.
Pluto is beloved in Cleveland because he makes us see sports within the greater context. He understands that the lore of a team is what sticks in fans’ minds, and that athletics are more about “that rush” than the facts and figures of box scores.
Rick Reilly, the back-page constant in Sports Illustrated for years, exerts the same hold over the national public as Pluto does in Cleveland. Every week, beneath his glamour shot picture, Reilly’s words capture the latest sentiments in sports, in a sometimes sentimental way, which sports fans, surprisingly, love. I read a letter from a reader who said they were too embarrassed to read his column in public because it made them cry. For more cathartic tears (or not), Reilly fans can now tune into his animated cartoon “Riffs of Reilly” on si.com. A cartoon. For a columnist.
And then, of course, there is Frank Deford of NPR fame, who gives the educated echelon of America their sporting news in prose that they can mull and savor like the imported Italian coffee they sip whilst listening to his musings. Deford always manages to intertwine sports and culture, recognizing that the games we play are part of our national fabric. The fact that he taught American Studies at Princeton might explain some of his insights.
The most influential sports writer in my life has been Mike Shannon, whose “Tales from the Dugout: The Greatest True Baseball Stories Ever Told” captured my 10-year-old imagination. I can vividly remember my wide-eyed amazement at the stories of ball-players who ate live canaries and opened beer bottles with their eye sockets. I think for a while I watched games with the fervent hope that the right fielder might pull out a brew-ski and give the fans a show.
Now that’s a writer.
