Ethan Prater

I’m no fan of spectator sports, but I often like the writing they inspire.

And I love the following sentence, from John Updike’s 1960 New Yorker article about Ted Williams:

For me, Williams is the classic ballplayer of the game on a hot August weekday, before a small crowd, when the only thing at stake is the tissue-thin difference between a thing done well and a thing done ill.

The entire paragraph celebrates more about life than just the game it describes:

For me, Williams is the classic ballplayer of the game on a hot August weekday, before a small crowd, when the only thing at stake is the tissue-thin difference between a thing done well and a thing done ill. Baseball is a game of the long season, of relentless and gradual averaging-out. Irrelevance—since the reference point of most individual games is remote and statistical—always threatens its interest, which can be maintained not by the occasional heroics that sportswriters feed upon but by players who always care; who care, that is to say, about themselves and their art.

I don’t love baseball like Updike does, but in my own endeavors I still try to focus on that long trajectory, to take pleasure in good work for its own sake – regardless of who’s around to notice. To realize that both the highs and lows smooth over time – that just like in investing (or weight loss!), it’s the direction that matters, not the day-to-day changes. But that only by caring about how each little thing gets done will that trajectory improve.

In any case, Updike’s mastery of language here is almost as wonderful as Williams’ of baseball. Such a beautiful way to convey those multi-layered ideas.

• Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu, by John Updike (full text of 1960 article posted on Baseball Almanac)
• On Writing Well, by William Zinsser (superb book on nonfiction writing; I first encountered this sentence in an earlier edition – I think later editions omit it)