Some time last winter, I ran into Dan Steinberg at a Wizards Fan Happy Hour event in Adams Morgan. There had been some turnover in the Washington Post sports section and he came right out with it: “You should write for Sports. Seriously. You certainly care about it a lot more than most people.” At the time I thought, “Don’t be ridiculous, Clinton. That section is nationally recognized as one of the best in the country, and you don’t just get to walk in there because you think you have lukewarm takes.”
But after a while, I said, why not? What was supposed to be a two-week trial turned into a month. A month turned into three months, and then suddenly, it was my job. I was a sports writer again, something I hadn’t technically done since college. It felt odd. Things I normally would just tell my friends or talk about on the radio quickly became things I got to flesh out and genuinely present to an audience, which, in a sports context, was a tad intimidating.
Sports fans, by and large, are completely insane. They take the smallest of things the most seriously, typically care about certain portions of the athletic endeavor sphere in ways that only people who have spent most of their lives watching people play games can understand. I, too, am one of those people. This was part of the reason I never wanted to write about sports professionally. I was scared I’d go crazy.
But something else happened. I started looking at games differently, caring far less about results and way more about the psychologies and characters of the humans involved. Not that I hadn’t before, but now, it was with far more depth that I tried to understand how difficult it actually is to play a sport as your job (and that includes college athletes) in the every day world. Sure, it’s not coal mining or brain surgery, but it comes with a unique set of circumstances like anything else.
All that is to say that, also, I got to see some things in a way I hadn’t. I was given the opportunity to tell stories about my life as a sports fan, experience new things and meet people in totally different ways. In short, it was fun. And I got way more hate-mail writing about sports than I ever did for columnizing about city issues, which always made me laugh. Oh, yeah, and food. Writing about food is awesome.
I got to write about silly stuff. Waffle cone chicken. Pennsylvania license plates. Twenty-year-old video games. Tremendous R&B music. Terrifying rally car races. EDM parties. Crying in bathroom stalls. Racing with comedians. Children in turkey outfits. Ridiculous Vines. My sister’s fashion opinions. The list goes on. Ultimately, the most rewarding was writing about things that were important to me. Eliminating Chuck Brown from Nats Park. The Women’s World Cup. The Charleston massacre. Police brutality. Outfit shaming. Black lives matter.
But my three favorite stories I ever wrote were all completely different.
The first was about hockey. The Islanders were playing the Capitals in the playoffs, and it was the first time the two had faced off that late since the darkest moment in franchise history. I got to talk to two people that were not only in the building, but directly involved with the hit that Dale Hunter put on Pierre Turgeon in 1993 and it was an extremely sobering experience. Listening to people talk about something they’ll never forget always tends to be that way.
The second was about baseball. Max Scherzer had nearly thrown a perfect game and D.C. baseball fans were so up in arms about the fact that they’d been denied such a rarity that they failed to witness the actual beauty of what had just happened. A pinch hitter came in cold on the road and put together one of the best at-bats of his career against a guy completely in his prime. The whole thing was amazing, so I wrote as much. Let’s just say that people were not happy.
Lastly, though, is a story about doing anything but playing sports. This summer, I went to the Pacific Northwest to see then-Washington Wizards guard Martell Webster launch his music career. It was his first time performing in front of a crowd and he takes his label and creative outlets very seriously. Seeing him finally show that to the world in a public forum was a great reminder of what I was doing there in the first place: finding a new voice.
Thanks all. I’ll miss this place.
