Gloves Off by Lowell Cohn

Author:Lowell Cohn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Roundtree Press
Published: 2020-07-02T16:00:00+00:00

26

WHY SPORTS WRITERS

ARE “YOU GUYS”

IT WAS IN BASEBALL THAT I LEARNED to love the third person.

In my life “BB,” before baseball, I was accustomed to people referring to themselves as “I.” Strictly first person. Strictly boring. As in, “I need to phone you back because they’re going into Final Jeopardy!”

First person was a fairly standard grammatical form, one I never thought twice about. Until I started covering major league sports. Pretty soon, I interviewed players referring to themselves in the third person. It was a life-changer.

My first exposure to third-person diction was with that great second baseman Joe Morgan when he played for the San Francisco Giants. Morgan is— or was—a third-person talker, although I can’t credit him with inventing this mode of speaking. I admit, with one thing and another occupying my time, I haven’t fully researched the topic. For all I know, Achilles referred to himself in the third person, said things like, “Achilles plans to kick Hector’s ass,” as he chased poor Hector around the walls of Troy.

But Morgan, as I recall, would say things like, “Joe Morgan has to do what’s best for Joe Morgan.” As if he was referring to somebody else. I would look around the room for this other Joe Morgan. But there was no other Joe Morgan. It was just Joe and me.

Pretty soon, other players began calling themselves by their names, like they were corporations: IBM. General Motors. Amazon.

“Walmart has to do what’s best for Walmart.”

I began to think, if third person is good enough for ballplayers, it’s good enough for me. I imagined coming down for breakfast. My wife is at the stove. I say, “Lowell Cohn will have scrambled eggs with linguica this morning.” I say, “Lowell Cohn wants an onion bagel lightly toasted and schmeared with cream cheese.” I say, “Lowell Cohn desires cream and two sugars in his coffee and will read the sports section while he waits.”

I know what my wife would say: “If Lowell Cohn wants scrambled eggs with linguica and an onion bagel lightly toasted and schmeared with cream cheese and coffee with cream and two sugars and the sports section, Lowell Cohn can bloody well get them himself.”

*****

It was in sports that I became “you guys.”

Before covering sports, I was Lowell. Just Lowell, a fairly unusual name. I know. In my whole life I’ve met two or three other Lowells. We could form a very small club called Lowells of America. My parents gave me that very New England first name so I could feel American, could be part of the prevailing social fabric. Lowell as opposed to Moishe or Boaz or Jacob.

But when I wrote sports I wasn’t Lowell anymore. I was “you guys.” So was every other sports writer, even the women. They were “you guys,” too. We were all “you guys.”

It was a form of collective address from athletes and coaches, and it was not said with respect. More like, “What kind of crowd is this I’m subjected to? What

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