Читать книгу Field Guide to Covering Sports - Joe Gisondi - Страница 27

Describe or cite key plays that change the outcome of a game, highlight key drives, illustrate a trend, describe how a strategy succeeded or failed, and show how a player made a difference. Sometimes these events are not obvious—such as a slide into second base that broke up a double play and allowed a run to score in the third inning of a 2–1 game. Sometimes the big hit is not really so big, as the following story shows:

PHILADELPHIA—There could be a lot of empty pews in Philadelphia churches on Sunday morning. The prayers of the Phillies’ fans were answered at 1:47 A.M., with a slow chopper up the third-base line that gave the Phillies the victory in Game 3 of the World Series.

Carlos Ruiz, who had homered in the second inning, drove in the game-winning run in the bottom of the ninth with a ball that traveled only about 40 feet. It brought home Eric Bruntlett to lift the Phillies over the Tampa Bay Rays, 5–4, at wild and water-logged Citizens Bank Park. The Phillies lead the series, two games to one.

“It was a great night for me,” Ruiz said. “I’ll remember it for the rest of my life.”¹⁰

The Boston Globe’s Fluto Shinzawa focuses on an early goal here that sparked a later rally:

In the second period, Thornton, as the third man high in the offensive zone, winged a shot on goal. Yelle, positioned in front of goalie Johan Hedberg (28 saves), positioned his stick and deflected the puck into the net at 3:37, giving the Bruins the life they needed. Then, at 5:57, Lucic scored the first of his three to tie the score at 2.¹¹

In football, teams win and lose based on their ability to both score quickly and produce lengthy drives that keep the other team off the field. Sometimes, a winning drive happens at the end of a big game like the Super Bowl, when the New York Giants rallied to defeat the previously unbeaten New England Patriots during an improbable and bizarre finish. Sometimes a team wins because it put together a drive that did not yield a single point but did run five or eight minutes off the game clock.

Or maybe the most significant drive is one that put the game out of reach, such as the following one that enabled the Florida Gators to secure a second national championship in three years:

The Sooners couldn’t finish. So the Gators finished them off. The joy culminated Thursday with an impeccable 76-yard drive and a 4-yard pass from Tebow to receiver David Nelson in the middle of the end zone with five minutes to go. Tebow created third-down conversion after conversion on that drive to finish with 231 passing yards and two touchdowns to match his 109 yards rushing.¹²