“Or, so it seemed.”
If only I’d read the tip from a wiser scribe than myself, you my ostensibly loyal readers might have read something here about the Louisville Cardinal Nine’s loss on Saturday.
But . . . well . . . I didn’t hear the advice . . . and you didn’t get a gamecap. Which you probably wouldn’t have read anyway, because the Cards lost, which generally is the proximate cause of fewer views among the fan base.
So here as Paul Harvey would intone is the rest of the story.
For some inexplicable reason, I wrote a lede to my planned Saturday game recap in advance. In which I used the term “CWS-bound Cards” even though the game had not been played yet.
It is something I’ve only done once before about a U of L game in any sport. And frankly felt seriously trepidatious then until the contest had concluded and the good guys had prevailed.
Why I chose to flaunt superstition Saturday makes no sense. I can’t provide a legitimate reason.
So, I lived with a cloud of guilt through the tenseness of Sunday’s clincher until Brennyn Cutts induced the final fly out, at which point the climate morphed all sunny and cumulus.
The lede after the Cards bound for Omaha sonata was essentially what I’d written earlier, because it was still germane. That the loss to Pitt in the ACC tourney might have been more a harbinger of good things to come than it appeared at the time.
So, what about that phrase at the top?
At theathletic.com which remains the place to go if you want to read marvelously crafted and incisive writing about sports — it’s truly like SI in its Frank Defordian heyday — there was a piece in which various sportswriters shared some specific experiences. About being on deadline and having to change the entire tenor of a game story when there were last second developments and the whole story shifted.
Like the Pacers comeback in Game One and Tyrese Halliburton’s winning jumper.
The cautionary tale ends with the simple savior for a lede that no longer fits.
The next paragraph, “Or so it seemed.”
So, yeah.
I am comforted by a belief that, it being Saturday night Date Night and all, not many of my readers would have come here anyway. Still. I could have gone with that.
But lesson learned.
My promise: I shan’t be prewriting any U of L game stories anymore which presuppose victory.
— c d kaplan
I was definitely looking for that gamecap Sunday morning. I needed it to better watch the Sunday game, but we all got through it just fine. You are right about the Athletic, although for some reason I don’t have time to read all they put out. That was not the case back in the SI hey day. Age, I suppose.
or maybe you were just “manifesting”… Putting it out to the universe” is a metaphorical phrase used to describe the act of manifesting or expressing desires with the hope that they will be realized. It’s not a literal act of sending something into space, but rather a symbolic way of aligning with the universe’s energy and setting intentions for a desired outcome. This practice is often associated with the Law of Attraction, which suggests that your thoughts and beliefs influence the experiences you attract.
Well, maybe, but that doesn’t excuse that it was bad form as an erstwhile “journalist” and seriously bad karma for a superstitious Cardinal fan.
Wtf are you talking about?
Duuuuude, have you come down with a case of frodopolosis? Before Saturday’s loss, I had already written a lede to my game story, assuming they would win. Which they didn’t. If I’d have known about that phrase after game, I could have thrown it in, and written about the game. Instead, I just bagged it. Which is lots of explanation, especially since you probably were just giving me shit, and understood that all along.
Well, you did an excellent job of explaining it in many less words. Kudos!! 👏
Read it, thought for a second I had misheard the score, then realized what you had done, then refused to say anything. Either way, dog you for years, or preferably hope you take us all the way with it!