How I Learned the Craft of Sports Writing
An experienced sports writer became my mentor.
One day as I glanced through the classified ads of the local newspaper one ad caught my eye, “Needed Sports Minded Individuals.” My high school playing days were clearly behind me, but I was still an avid sports fan so I answered the ad. The next afternoon Gene Conard, the Frankfort Times sports editor, interviewed me and offered me an opportunity that led to over 30 years of writing sports coverage and special features.
In high school, I enjoyed writing term papers and compositions and eventually scored high enough on my college essay to test out of the dreaded freshman comp class at Indiana University. Nevertheless, Conard became my mentor and was the one who really taught me how to write.
My writing experience started during football season that fall. Gene took me with him to a few games. He showed me how to keep my own statistics, and how to meet and interview coaches. I watched his every move. Conard was very outgoing and extremely self-confident. His questions skillfully probed each coach to evoke a precious quote, which he could use in the game story.
After the game we drove back to the Times office where Gene would put on a pot of coffee. In those days, I typed my double-spaced drafts on blank sheets of newsprint using a manual typewriter. When I finished Gene would take out his pencil and begin marking up my copy. He would cross out some words and insert others. He explained why variety is so important to the reader. He said there were at least a dozen ways to say that a player had scored a touchdown. I began to read some of his stories to see the words he chose. Since the Times was an afternoon paper, we would often work until the wee hours of the morning working on my stories.
After a few weeks, Conard felt comfortable sending me to games on my own. I was officially a stringer and felt a great sense of pride to see my by line appear in the paper each week, but it was even more gratifying to see the number of his pencil marks, additions, and deletions gradually disappear from my drafts. I was learning by doing under the watchful eye of one who had mastered the craft. During my tenure in Frankfort, I also covered basketball and baseball games in the area.
A few years later, I moved to Kokomo and my friendship with Gene provided a new opportunity to write for the Kokomo Tribune. The Tribune was a much bigger operation and things moved at a much quicker pace. The K/T was a morning publication so a tight 12:00 midnight deadline was strictly enforced. As a result, I had to figure my stats, do interviews after games quickly and then drive hurriedly back to the office. After arriving at the Tribune, I typed my drafts directly into one of its desktop computers that made writing and editing much easier.
I still remember the horror I felt one night when I had almost finished my story and deleted it by mistake. I am sure other reporters have shared that gut wrenching empty feeling of shooting one of their gems into space. Fortunately, I was able to recall most of my key sentences and recreate the article just shy of the midnight deadline.
Occasionally the early deadline made it impossible to make it back to the office to complete the story. One night I was covering a football game in Delphi when an electrical storm delayed the game for nearly an hour. After that game, I compiled my stats, finished the postgame interview and sat in the comfort of my car writing the game story on my legal pad. Once I finished writing, my wife drove me to the nearest telephone booth. I had to call the Tribune and dictate my story to someone at the office who then entered the story into the computer. That was well before the invention of cell phones.
While writing for the Tribune I occasionally covered wrestling, swimming, track and cross-country meets along with my usual assignments of football, basketball and baseball.
Conard had always wanted to start his own paper so in the mid-eighties he founded The Sports Page, a weekly publication in Howard County. Gene’s concept was to focus on feature articles about teams beyond typical game coverage and include interesting stories about people and their leisure pursuits in Howard County.
One of those interesting features was about a middle-aged couple who rode a Honda Gold Wing motor cycle. They told me about some of their trips, but even more interesting was their kinship with Harley-Davidson riders along the way. The couple often stopped and shared stories and drinks with riders who wouldn’t normally fit their social circle, but a mutual love for bikes provided common ground for many friendly conversations.
At first, Conard raised support for the paper through ads and subscriptions, but it did not take long for the new concept to catch the attention of Gary Williams. The local investor poured a huge amount of his own money into the paper, making everyone very proud of the look and feel of the weekly.
Gene brought me on board and my career as a professional writer began to flourish, but my pay remained a meager $25 per story. However, it provided opportunities for me to sit in the press box a few times at I.U, Purdue, and Colts’ football games. A writer can become easily spoiled covering sports at the college and professional level. Attendants brought the game stats and refreshments to my table while I watched the game. Also, it afforded me the opportunity to do one-on-one interviews with Purdue’s Leon Burtnett and Indiana’s Bill Mallory in their offices.
After these games, I attended press conferences in meeting rooms where I was able to rub shoulders with some of the most famous sports writers in the business. I remember one time sitting in the pressroom when writers were interviewing Bob Knight after an IU basketball game. The writers asked Knight all kinds of questions, some pointed and some completely ridiculous. Afterwards, he walked up to his friend, Bob Hammel, long time sports writer for the Bloomington Herald-Times, and said, “Great questions, Bob!” Bob had not asked a single question!
My favorite assignment almost started on the wrong foot. I sat comfortably on the plane about to leave for Arizona. It was a dream come true. I would be traveling to Mesa to spend a whole week all expenses paid covering the Chicago Cubs’ spring training. Suddenly, the flight attendant’s voice summoned me back to reality when I heard my name. “Jerry Harshman, your wife needs your keys! “ Fortunately, my wife had discovered that I had inadvertently boarded the plane with the only keys to our car that she needed to drive herself and our two children back home. I felt silly, but was thankful for the necessary embarrassment.
During Spring Training, I had access to Hohokam Park and the Cubs’ clubhouse. I watched workouts, interviewed players and former players, but an unexpected thrill was a one-on-one interview with Harry Carey at his restaurant in Mesa. He told me the story about how as a brash young kid he wormed his way into the broadcast booth in St. Louis. Growing up in St. Louis, he listened to Cardinals’ games while attending and wondered if the announcers were watching the same game he was. The final thrill was a few weeks later when he held up the paper during one of his telecasts in Chicago. Of course, the paper had his picture on the front cover but inside were all the stories I had written during that memorable week.
As a writer, I joined the mile high club, but not as you might expect. I popped open my heavy-duty manual typewriter and typed stories to my heart’s content during the flight back to Indianapolis. This assignment became a life experience that I will never forget.
I had another opportunity to write sports when my family moved to Marion. I became a stringer for the Marion-Chronicle Tribune. It did not take long to realize how the game had changed. Technology had made the job much easier in many ways. The days of dictating from a phone booth or racing back to the office had long since passed. Instead, I carried my laptop on assignments out of town. Occasionally, I would find the nearest McDonald’s after the game, get a large cup of coffee, open my laptop and write the night’s game story. When finished I simply emailed the story to the editor and then drove leisurely home. For home games, I simply returned to my office at home, wrote the story, emailed it to the paper and tumbled under my sheets.
Since my real passion is baseball, a few years ago I started my own publication, Grant County Baseball. I began by covering the two colleges and five high school programs in the area. I began to advertise on Facebook, created an email list, and solicited advertisers.
After a few seasons, a person who was trying to start a new weekly newspaper approached me. He had seen my work and offered me an opportunity to write a weekly column for The Sports Herald. Sadly, as the paper grew, another person bought it, but was not interested in the type of in depth coverage I offered so I gracefully exited the scene.
I have considered a return to writing for various newspapers, but most of the demand is for coverage on weekends. Since I retired about ten years ago and my wife is due to retire in a few weeks, we want the freedom to travel whenever we want. That is why I have taken the opportunity to try my hand at freelance writing. This allows me to tell my stories and give my opinions from any place at any time. It may not be financially rewarding, but it certainly has been enjoyable to do what I enjoy.
