My name is Dave Gaytan, and just as soon as I figure out how to get my name up in the masthead just below the title, I’ll put a permanent byline up there.
My first goal in life was to be a rock n’ roll disc jockey on the radio, but I have a lengthy love affair with sports. As my radio career turned out, I did much more with sports than with rock n’ roll.
Instead of making long stories short here, I’ll just save them for future posts. I wasn’t much of an athlete myself, but I tried. The best I managed was a JV letter on my high school’s tennis team in 1966. I think the coach was trying to be nice. Bob Uecker had a glorious athletic career compared to me.
I loved it when Ball Four by Jim Bouton came out in 1970. It opened up a whole new dimension to sports writing and over the long run, affected sports journalism and sports media itself. Do you think that we would have heard about Roger Clemens and that young country singer without Ball Four setting the early standard in 1970? I don’t think so. Before Jim Bouton’s book, something like this would have been covered up tighter than a CIA secret. Plenty of stories about Babe Ruth came out many years after his death. And the New York media knew damn well all about them. In some cases, they were part of the stories.
I always wanted to write like Jim Bouton, but few people are that good, and I’m not one of them. But I do feel that I have an esoteric, if not unique perspective on sports, and I hope that it’s worthy enough to share.
Let’s see what happens.
Tags: Humor, Sports, Sports Journalism, Sports Media, Writing
