The ancient art of sportswriting

Dan Barry of the New York Times picked up an award recently for a stunning in-depth study of a boxer’s struggles, but if I’d been on that jury, a different venture would have won him that particular gong, writes Michael Moynihan.

A few months ago, Barry covered a run of the mill baseball game in a particular way — as though it were 1908. He adopted the idiom of a century ago to give a flavour of sportswriting back then — when the purpler it was, the better (sample: The “mighty Californian” who “smote a home run for the Mets”).

Yours truly thought, if it’s good enough for Dan, and with apologies to bards of long ago, this was yesterday . . .