Slang can easily be
overdone,--much more easily than one would suppose,--with the result
that an otherwise good story is choked with near humorous, foggy jargon.
Better no slang than a story cloyed with it.[25]

[25] It is the belief of the author that the sporting page has
not yet reached its highest level of language and that the
younger of us will live to see as pure English used on the
sporting page as in the other news columns. The purpose of
this volume, however, is not to present the work of the
reporter as it ought to be, but as it is--a fact which
accounts for the above paragraph and its recommendation of
the use of slang in sporting news stories.

=231. Four Kinds.=--An examination of sporting news stories shows four
kinds: (1) those dealing with athletic events before their occurrence;
(2) those reporting the events; (3) those analyzing and explaining the
events and their results; and (4) those dealing with the sport in
general. The second of these, the story reporting an athletic event, is
not unlike the types of news stories examined in the two preceding
chapters and may be discussed first, reserving for later analysis the
other three because of their divergence from the normal type of news
article.

=232. The Lead.=--The lead to a story reporting an athletic event
follows with few exceptions the same general principles as the leads
already examined. Unlike those studied in the preceding chapters,
however, the lead to such a story often is written last, because of the
necessity of writing a running account of the game as it progresses, yet
of giving final results in the lead. The feature most frequently played
up is the final result, with additional mention of the causes of victory
or defeat, the equality or inequality of the opposing players, and any
important incidents. Always too, of course, the names of the teams, the
time, and the place are given. But the score is regularly the
feature,--so much so that if one is in doubt about what to feature in an
athletic contest, one can always play a trump card by featuring the
results. Thus:

|One hit and one score was all the Senators could |
|make off the Yankees at Washington this afternoon, |
|but that was enough. Joe Gedeon made the hit, a |
|three bagger, and Milan passed him home when he |
|dropped Nunamacher's high fly to center. |

|A