Journalist’s Tradeassume you have a lawyer, you musthave a lawyer, get your lawyer!” All ofthis was shouted at him by one of themost famous and most admired men inAmerica. It is the reader as well as thewriter who feels buffeted and beatenup at this point, the reader who, likethe writer, has dropped in on a muchadmired hero, ready to like him evenmore but finds that he is a very ordinaryand not particularly likeable man;it is the reader who has his face slappedin the piece. The particulars seem toflow from that first scene, DiMaggioangrily handing back the letter he hadwritten about an interview they hadagreed on, the letter still unopened.Talese, it should be noted, did notbend under DiMaggio’s assault. Hemanaged to ask for permission to hangout with Lefty O’Doul, an old DiMaggiopal and the most independent of themen around him. DiMaggio assented,and through O’Doul, Talese finallybegan to connect to DiMaggio and hisinner group. What we end up with is anevocative portrait of a great ballplayerlong after his last game is over, and wehave a powerful sense of his lonelinessand his essential separation from almosteveryone around him….…I still believe this is the best magazinepiece I ever have read….Talese’s…impact on his contemporarieswas simply stunning, and here Ispeak not merely for my generationbut for myself. I can remember distinctlyreading the DiMaggio piece—itwas the spring of 1966 and I was stillworking in the Paris bureau of TheNew York Times after being expelledfrom Eastern Europe—I simply devouredit. By the time I finished readingit I had decided to get out of dailyjournalism. That one piece, it struckme, was worth everything I had writtenin the past year. Within a year I had leftthe Times to become a contract magazinereporter for Willie Morris atHarper’s, an editor who was trying toemulate what Harold Hayes and a numberof other editors were then doingwith what had been up until then arather stodgy magazine.It strikes me that the Talese piecereflects a number of things that weretaking place in American journalism atthe time—some twenty years after theend of World War II. The first thing isthat the level of education was goingup significantly, both among writersand among readers. That mandatedbetter, more concise writing. It alsomeant that because of a burgeoningand growing paperback market, theeconomics of the profession were gettingbetter: self-employed writers weredoing better financially and could takemore time to stake out a piece. In theprevious era, a freelance writer had toscrounge harder to make a living, fightingconstantly against the limits of time,more often than not writing pieces heor she did not particularly want towrite in order to subsidize the one ortwo pieces the writer did want to do….The DiMaggio piece took some sixweeks of legwork. By contrast some ofhis lineal successors picked up the formbut not the substance of what he did;they did not put in the man hours, andas such their work was always notablythinner, and seemed to lack the densityand thus the grace of his work. ■From the book “The Best AmericanSports Writing of the Century,” editedby David Halberstam, serieseditor Glenn Stout. Introduction© 1999 by David Halberstam. Reprintedby permission of HoughtonMifflin Company. All rights reserved.Restricting a Photojournalist’s AccessThe Red Sox tried to stop pictures of Fenway Park from being published.By Stan GrossfeldFenway Park, the oldest ballparkin the major leagues, is borderedby five Boston streets, and onecould make a case that the ball clubthinks of its house as the Pentagon ofBoston sports. Perhaps that is why thosewho own the team—the Red Sox—thatplays inside its walls were so protectiveof it, to the point of taking away accesswe normally have as journalists.“Fenway—A Biography in Words andPictures” initially was conceived as anarticle for The Boston Globe’s SundayMagazine. Under those conditions, theRed Sox granted considerable accessso that with my camera I could recordunique views. However, when theproject became a book for HoughtonMifflin, Red Sox management decidedthat they were uncomfortable with an“unauthorized” biography of theirhome and asked the publisher not topublish the book. They argued that thecommercial sale of images of the parkbelong to them. And they didn’t wantany sentimental reminder of Fenwayaround at the time they announcedplans for a new ballpark.To its credit, Houghton Mifflin—aFenway Park luxury box client of theRed Sox—went ahead with the project.This meant that I had to figure out waysto take photographs despite restrictionsput on my ability to take picturesinside the park.Upon publication, the Red Sox refusedto allow any book interviews totake place inside the ballpark. Even ifwe couldn’t talk about the book atFenway Park, the Sox management did.The Red Sox use an excerpt from ourbook in their official pamphlet to promotetheir proposal for a new ballparkto replace Fenway Park. Red Sox CEOJohn Harrington also quoted from the<strong>Nieman</strong> Reports / Fall 1999 45
Journalist’s Tradebook when addressing the nationalmedia at an All Star press conference atFenway Park. This event took place onthe day his public relations staff told“CBS Morning News” that its reportersand cameras would not be allowed inFenway for a book interview.Although the Red Sox objected to aphotograph of catcher Scott Hattebergusing the ancient urinal in the runwaybetween the dugout and the clubhouse,and at least one star player wonderedwhy he didn’t receive money for havinghis picture in the book, the Red Soxmanagement purchased copies andgave them out as gifts.■Photographer Stan Grossfeld andsportswriter Dan Shaughnessy bothwork at The Boston Globe and arethe authors of “Fenway—A Biographyin Words and Pictures,”Houghton Mifflin, 1999. Grossfeld isa 1992 <strong>Nieman</strong> Fellow.Photos by Stan Grossfeldfrom“Fenway—A Biographyin Words and Pictures.”46 <strong>Nieman</strong> Reports / Fall 1999
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