Getting involved was easy enough. I contacted some people at the paper, was introduced to the photography editors, and was handed a camera the first time I entered the newspaper’s building. To start writing, I emailed the sports editors. They told me to write a sample column; if it was good, the paper would run it.

I worked hard on that column. After all, it was my one shot, I thought, to start writing for the paper. I spent a day or two on it, and sent it to the sports editors. They called me into the building that night to edit it. It would run the next day.

Everything went from there. I made staff as a photographer, wrote a weekly sports column for the rest of the year, and found myself unexpectedly the paper’s opinion editor a year later. By the time I became an editor, I didn’t look back at my old columns or even think about them often.

So an email I received last January came out of deep left field:

Hi Pete,

Bedford/St. Martin’s, a textbook publisher in Boston, Mass., is hoping to reprint your piece, “Even More Than the Game, Drugs Destroy Athletes,” (Yale Daily News 9/25/2007) in our new edition of The Bedford Reader. The Bedford Reader is a collection of excellent writing by both student and well-known writers and includes such names as Maya Angelou, David Sedaris, and John Updike. “Even More Than the Game” would go in the argument and persuasion chapter of this book.

We’ll send you an official permissions request to use this piece soon, but assuming you’d be willing to grant us permission to use the piece, I was wondering if I could bother you for a couple of things:

1)       Some biographical information for the headnote (nothing fancy, just where you were born, where you grew up, what you do/study at Yale, any writing accomplishments)

2)       A paragraph or two for our “writers on writing” feature. These run the gamut, but basically we’re looking for something about your writing process, what inspired you to write this particular piece, what frustrates you about writing, anything. I can send you some example pieces by other authors if you’d like. We’re looking for probably 200-600 words.

Let me know if you’d be willing to do those for us! And feel free to e-mail or call if you have any questions at all. My contact info is below.

Thanks,

Allie [X]

Of course, more than anything, I was flattered and excited. But I was also confused. Not only was this entirely unsolicited; I also didn’t remember the column they asked about. It took a quick search back through my YDN author page to remind me which column they wanted to include: my very first, my “sample” column.

Permission wasn’t mine to give, but I knew who to ask. The editor-in-chief at the time sent me the YDN’s permission form. In exchange for $75, the YDN would happily let Bedford-St. Martin reprint the column. It was a go.

The Bedford Reader is a composition textbook used in college writing classes, and in many high schools. I was excited to be published, sure, but I was doubly excited because of a coincidence: The Bedford Reader was the textbook I used in my Advanced Placement Logic and Composition class in high school, which I took my senior year with the incomparable Dr. Herbert. Along with the possibility that a piece of mine would be published in that book came visions of future generations of Hunter students flipping through their Bedford Readers to the piece written by the alum—and prefaced with an author bio prominently mentioning Hunter College High School.

Allie and I exchanged emails over a few months. (I never found out whether she was an intern or a senior editor.) I wrote that author bio, she edited it down, I approved it.  I also wrote my “writers on writing” essay, which she returned comments on. She asked to change the title of the piece, shortening the eight-word headline to a one-word title: “Destroyed.” It was a bit dramatic for my taste, but I didn’t mind. Who was I to complain?

Then eight months went by. I hadn’t been in a hurry, since I knew that publishing a book takes time. But I remembered The Bedford Reader this January, a year after Allie first contacted me, and I thought it made sense to get in touch again. So I shot her a quick email asking about the status of the book and, as politely as I could, requesting a free “author’s” copy when the book came out. Two days later she wrote back to say the book should be released that month, and that of course she’s send me a copy.

The book arrived at my parents’ apartment in March. I didn’t get to see the physical product until my mom came to visit me last month. But to let me enjoy it before then, my dad scanned some pages and sent them to me.

I’m happy now to share those with everyone (at risk of violating Bedford-St. Martin’s copyright; I hope they won’t mind my reproducing my contribution to “friends and family”). By clicking here, you can download a medium-quality PDF of my piece, including the column, my bio, my “writers on writing” essay, and the endlessly amusing response questions the Bedford-St. Martin’s editors wrote about the column. And by clicking here, you can see the book’s table of contents, which proves what I still can’t believe: I’ve now been published in a collection with such giants of journalism, literature, and history as David Sedaris, Joan Didion, John Updike, Maya Angelou, David Foster Wallace, Dave Barry, Joyce Carol Oates, Amy Tan, Annie Dillard, Anna Quindlen, Michael Pollan, Barbara Ehrenreich, Francine Prose, Barbara Kingsolver, Katha Pollitt, Shirley Jackson, George Orwell, Edward Said, Martin Luther King, E.B. White, and Jonathan Swift.

To all my past writing teachers (including friends and family members), to all the authors I have read, to my editors at the YDN and the Globalist and elsewhere, and to Allie at Bedford-St. Martin, thanks for making this small pleasure a reality. It truly is small, but it is still a delightful first step on the road to, I hope, more such pleasures.

Thanks to the Times, we learn that skateboarders in California are newly responsible for some great civic contributions. This winter they’ve been cleaning out the abandoned swimming pools of foreclosed houses, refusing to add graffiti or trash while they’re trespassing, and they even only skate for short periods during the day to avoid disturbing neighbors. How considerate!

But here’s the real story, revealed in the third paragraph:

Across the nation, the ultimate symbol of suburban success has become one more reminder of the economic meltdown, with builders going under, pools going to seed and skaters finding a surplus of deserted pools in which to perfect their acrobatic aerials.

Unfortunately for thrill-seeking readers, most of the article is about that stuff, or actually even more boring stuff. We learn about pool builders in Phoenix and fines for homeowners who leave standing water in their pools — things related neither to skateboarding nor the economic meltdown, as if people are reading the article because they just love pools.

The article’s kind of cool overall, and it’s helped out by some choice quotes – “God bless Greenspan,” the post [on skateandannoy.com] read, “patron saint of pool skatin’.” — but it drifts from the good stuff. It should focus on the skateboarders, both because they’re the most fun part of the article and because simply recording the color of their hobby right now will tell the economic story most vividly. Strengths and weaknesses aside, this article also highlights the inherent limitations of print journalism and written storytelling. This isn’t a story to be written; although the article is accompanied by a slide show, we need to see action and panoramas. We need video: we need to see the skateboarders moving, not just through pools but among them, hitting pool after pool and wandering newly abandoned neighborhoods. Let’s see those foreclosed homes, not just read about them. New media, where are you?

2.

The Post tells us that Virginia Senator Jim Webb is set to introduce legislation to “reform” our prison system. As a citizen long interested in the subject, and as a current employee (sort of — well, not really, but more on this later) of the correctional system of the State of Connecticut, I’m personally invested in this topic. Too bad for interested readers, the article doesn’t hint at how Webb envisions this reform, or even whether he’s gotten that far. What we get instead is that Webb thinks we have too many people in prison (as everyone agrees) and quote after quote from people skeptical to critical of his forthcoming effort, rebutted only by assertions of Webb’s fortitude and maverickyness. Get ready for a showdown! But don’t hold your breath for meaningful reform. If there’s any on the way, this article won’t help shed light on it.

3.

Popular sportswriting often approaches oxymoron territory: it’s writing only in the technical sense of involving letters, words, and sentences in a single language. The “writers” for MLB.com and its daughter sites devoted to the individual teams are as guilty as any others of this butchery. But I was positively struck by this lede in an article today:

Whatever interest the Mets might have had in diminished center fielder Andruw Jones had a rather short shelf life.

The “rather” could have gone, but the sentence is informative, descriptive, and even poignant. It evokes some humanity deeper than that commonly found in front offices. Just from this sentence, I feel for Jones and even the Mets, though I don’t know why. I could be alone on this.

4.

Yeah, I always saw the Fall of Bush this way. Cool to know I agree with him and his people on something. Plus those are some sweet quotes. Props to Vanity Fair.

5.

This is now a week old, and, like Josh Marshall, I’m hesitant to cite Tom Friedman positively in the blogosphere, but give credit where credit’s due. Or at least acknowledge that which you dig. And I dig this recent column. I think Friedman’s right on the money. Don’t expect me to say that again soon.

NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) — Nine-year-old Jericho Scott is a good baseball player — too good, it turns out.

The right-hander has a fastball that tops out at about 40 mph. He throws so hard that the Youth Baseball League of New Haven told his coach that the boy could not pitch any more. When Jericho took the mound anyway last week, the opposing team forfeited the game, packed its gear and left, his coach said.

[HT: Mom.]

2. Those of us near the top of the medal count don’t think about how awesome it is when just one person from a country wins something. Man, they go crazy. (I hope we would, too.)

3. Shouldn’t every competition have different ways to measure success for the different fan bases? That way, everyone wins. It might sound problematic at first, but think about it–everyone actually comes away thinking they’ve won.

Update 8/22/08: A friend objected to my implication that Selig was pushing instant replay on the league, reminding me that the commissioner was opposed to the plan until the owners voted in favor of it. Nevertheless, Selig is now a proponent, and it will therefore happen.

Update 8/28/08: And it’s here.

Article 1: Some athletes are more than superstars. They carry whole nations on their backs. Their nations have 1.3 billion people and get to host the Olympics. And they are responsible for exposing a whole continent to a sport. Actually, that’s just one (huge) guy.

Article 2: And elsewhere, it’s a victory when your athletes come home at all. See, a lot of the time they don’t, since your country is so poor. (HT: DGP)

That I am a New Yorker is probably not the source of my love for hot dogs. That I love baseball might better explain why I crave plastic-encased mystery meat. Regardless, I love baseball, New York, and — of course — hot dogs.

So it’s no surprise I loved the op-ed piece in today’s New York Times by a former hot dog vendor at Ebbets Field, the storied home of the Brooklyn Dodgers, about the old days of ballpark hot dogs.