MEDIUM DAY
On Medium Day I Watched Mike Butler’s Talk on Sports Writing
He’s just an ordinary guy who loves sports.
The only time I’ve been published in a Medium publication was for a sports story.
The publication was Beyond the Scoreboard, with very generous editing help from Mike Butler, a former basketball player and 32-year English teacher who is now also a Medium writer and publication manager.
So on Medium Day, I was keenly interested in his half-hour Zoom lecture, “Keys to Writing a Good Sports Story.”
Here are my first impressions.
Mike doesn’t sit at a desk for his Zoom meeting. He sits in his living room, he’s on a comfortable couch, and it’s as if you’ve dropped in on him for a visit. You expect him to ask, “You want a lemonade?”
He looks like he just worked outside that morning and popped back in the house to entertain you before going out and doing something else.
This guy loves sports.
He sees sports as a microcosm of life.
It’s all there, the goals, the work to attainment, the victories, and the defeats.
He also loves people. I mean genuinely loves people. That’s the difference between news writers and sports writers. News writers seem to hate people. Sports writers love people.
Take note. The stories he wants for his publication need only have a smidgen of a sports element.
He wants the story behind the story.
“How did they get there?” Butler asked, waving a The Year’s Best Sports Writing 2023.
When I saw him waving that book to the camera, I felt an immediate affinity. I have a volume of Best Sports Writing from years ago. Love that book. It has a story about Secretariat that would make you cry. Secretariat was a racehorse. I didn’t cry when I read it, *sniff*, but you would.
The late Allan Fotheringham, a Canadian political writer, said all the best writers started as sports writers.
I kept notes as Mike spoke, and this is what he likes to see in story submissions to Beyond the Scoreboard.
- Emotion. He wants to read emotion in that story. Hit the feelings.
- The lede has to grab the reader by the collar.
- There should be a climax to the story in the middle.
- There should be a tug-at-the-heart ending.
“Sports is not the main focus,” Butler said. “Sports is a metaphor for life. Put the reader there.”
Also, he said he doesn’t get enough hockey stories.
So, if you can write sports, want to be published, and have a hockey story, there’s your opportunity!
That’s good for me to know. I must have written a dozen hockey stories on Medium.
Interestingly enough, I’ve only submitted to three publications in all the time I’ve been on Medium. Butler read one story I’d written- likely a hockey story- and invited me to write for Beyond the Scoreboard. Just like that. Out of the blue. So I wrote this story up and submitted it. That’s the background of how the story came to be. So you can’t fault Mike Butler’s dedication to Medium and developing sports writers.
Here’s my story in Beyond the Scoreboard:
