- November 27, 2024
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My Sperry Topsiders were soaked. As I traversed the muddy grasses behind a field at the Ormond Beach Sports Complex, hoping to make it in time for the first pitch of Seabreeze's senior night, I realized why I’m a sports writer — as if it were that easy.
In all honesty, I started thinking about how an epiphany would make for a good lede to this column. You know, how standing on my tippy toes atop a wooden board in the Sandcrabs' bullpen so I could shoot photos over the fence top would be an apt descriptor of my dedication to the craft of sports writing. A narrative arc began to whirl in my head. I could talk about how I make half as much as all my friends who work soul-sucking office jobs in D.C., about how I view myself in the same ilk as those monacled, romantic scribes who noted Francis Ouimet’s every twitch on the links in 1913.
Speaking of golf, I hope everyone enjoyed the Masters. Between my move to Palm Coast, the transition to the grind of a full-time gig, and just an overall feeling of being overwhelmed, I didn’t remember it was on until last Saturday. While jogging on a treadmill at the Planet Fitness off Old Kings Road, I saw a piece on Rickie Fowler light up one of the mounted televisions.
I have a special affinity for the 25 year-old Oklahoma State grad who dresses like a bottle of Fanta. Instead of being cool and going to beach week following my senior year of high school in 2009, I accompanied my dad to the U.S. Open at Bethpage. That Thursday, we woke up early, bartered with a Long Islander who rented us temporary parking in his driveway (a cool $50 was the going rate), and walked the rest of the way to the black course. We crowded the first tee just in time to watch Fowler (just 19 at the time), hit the first shot of our nation’s championship. He blocked it out way, way left into some thick grass.
But returning to why I’m a sports writer. I do love it. I’m willing to sacrifice opportunity cost to churn out finicky, florid stories about games and those who play them.
The day after my high school baseball career ended, I roamed the halls of C.D. Hylton High School looking like someone had just kicked my dog. That was until my coach informed me that the newspaper one town over had written two paragraphs about me in the loss. That afternoon, I drove down and picked up a copy. Call me vain, but I’ve read the clip a gazillion times.
“First baseman Joey LaMonaco (yeah, misspelled) singled and doubled for the Bulldogs. His single in the fourth trimmed the Stafford lead to 5-3.”
I want the kids I write about, the Zach Ballas’s, Jasmine Hadley’s, and A.J. McFarland’s of the world to experience that feeling — that off-white, black-ink proof that win or lose, they sprung to life as a character in their community’s only written history of that game.
And to me, that’s worth a dry-rotted pair of loafers.
