Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Writing, a foundation for Dan Le Batard

I found I have something in common with Dan Le Batard, a weekly sports columnist for the Miami Herald and also host of his own show on ESPN, "Dan Le Batard is Highly Questionable."

He knew what he wanted to do right away, which was to write. In high school, he wanted to write about his friends playing sports. It was a way for him to stay young. He was also a paper boy.

Minus the paper boy, I enjoyed writing and reading about sports during high school. I'd go to our school library during lunch, open the Chicago Sun-Times and scroll through the prep scores, seeing results of other schools in my conference. 

I loved reading about my friends and friends from other schools in the paper. I could see myself writing for a newspaper and knew right away I wanted to go into sports journalism in college. 

Same with Dan, he said he just wanted to write as we went into the University of Miami.

In a cramped conference room with laptops and power cords stretched across the floor, my fellow SJI classmates and I had a conference phone call with Dan. (Note: Don't call him 'Sir.' That's his dad's name.) 

It was odd at first. We had just finished watching his half-hour show on a projector in class, and now we had him on speaker. 

The guy we watched on the screen talked about his dad taking off his shirt in front of his girlfriend, furious that the Heat had just dropped Game 4 to the Celtics. Dan joked and painted the image of his dad being "hairy, sweaty and disoriented" in front his his girlfriend.

It was difficult for me to picture Dan being serious. But the guy who I thought was too goofy on TV, discussing non-analytical sports topics seemed to have an alter-ego -- a more down-to-earth personality. 

He went from print to radio to TV and without any schooling in radio or TV. 

How'd he do it?

"Writing prepared me very well," Dan said.

It "sculpted" him. 

"Read as much as you can from as many places as you can," he added. 

Very reassuring words.

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