So you want to write about baseball.
Inside Oklahoma's 4-0 victory over Missouri, and all the ways to tell its story. Hint, it begins with watching closely, followed by writing things down.
Now for something completely different.
This first bit may not sound like anything I’ve written for 26 or 27 years. Yet, because it might be fun to explain how to first watch and then write about baseball, and kind of everything else because it translates to every sport, I thought we’d start here.
By Clay Horning
NORMAN — Getting a big day from starting pitcher Cameron Johnson and big enough days from a few of its bats, 14th-ranked Oklahoma shut out Missouri 4-0 Saturday evening.
The win was the Sooners’ (26-12, 9-8 SEC) second straight over the Tigers (20-19, 3-14), securing yet another conference series victory and their fourth straight over conference competition going back to last weekend at Vanderbilt.
The three-game set concludes with today’s 2 p.m. first pitch back at Kimrey Family Stadium.
Deiten LaChance’s second inning home run off Missouri starter Brady Kehlenbrink accounted for the only run the Sooners needed.
More impressive, though, was OU’s half of the third inning, when the first four Sooners up reached base.
Jason Walk, batting right-handed against Kehlenbrink, a lefty, sparked the frame by pushing a bunt single down the first baseline. Next, Jackson Willits walked and Trey Gamble singled to load the bases.
Brandan Brock followed with his own single, plating Walk, only to be followed by Camden Johnson’s sacrifice fly to center field, bringing home Willits.
Ah, the classic gamer.
You kind of have to know how to write it just to learn to get beyond it.
Like Jackson Pollock, presumably, could paint or draw a dog that looked like a dog before moving on to things that looked like nothing anybody’s ever seen.
If that story had continued, the next section would have been all about Cameron Johnson, who’s now 5-1 with a 3.43 earned run average despite a few horrendous starts.
Like last week at Vanderbilt, where he lasted a whole third of an inning after facing five batters, striking out one and walking the other four. Or three weeks prior, at LSU, where he lasted 1 1/3 innings, allowing five runs on a single hit, having walked six and hit a batter. Or the week before that, when over 2 1/3 innings against Texas A&M he allowed five runs after again yielding a single hit but walking seven.
You kind of know what you’re getting with him. A terrific outing or a terrible one because he can’t find the plate.
That’s why watching the game and keeping it on a steno pad exactly as I’ve done forever, I draw stars and jot descriptions there’s no space for in an actual scorebook.
Saturday’s first star?
The first batter Johnson faced.
Here’s what it looked like in my notepad:
Ward — K * swung at ball four
The “K” means strikeout swinging, the star is a reminder to return to that moment because it could be of great import or, at least, helpful later and “swung at ball four” is just what Missouri lead-off man Blaize Ward did.
What earned the star?
The count was full, so it’s a walk if Ward doesn’t swing at it, but more than that, it was the likely difference between Johnson suffering one of those impossibly bad starts I just described and doing what he wound up doing, allowing no runs and two hits over 5 1/3 innings, striking out five and walking only one.
Without the notation, I might have forgotten the detail entirely, but with it, my game story could begin like this instead.
By Clay Horning
NORMAN — All season long Cameron Johnson has vacillated between terrific and terrible with almost no room in between.
Saturday, facing Missouri lead-off man Blaize Ward, the count had been 2-0, 2-1 and 3-1, but now it was full.
Could Johnson retire Ward and be off to the races? Or would he walk him, threatening another outing like those suffered against Vanderbilt, LSU and Texas A&M, in which he cumulatively allowed 14 runs over four innings on two hits, because he walked 14 and hit a batter?
The delivery to Ward was a fastball, low and inside. Ward swung and missed.
That’s how Oklahoma’s 4-0 victory over Missouri began, Johnson giving the Sooners one of his best starts of the season.
Isn’t a story like that more fun?
It’s not an opinion piece.
It’s just what happened, accurately dramatized.
I finished the game with three other stars in my notebook.
LaChance’s home run was next.
Had it been a 1-0 game, the story might have been all about that home run, especially if Johnson didn’t go full before getting away with a pitch out of the strike zone Ward swung at.
LaChance’s shot was slightly opposite field, while most home runs are pulled. So a nice piece of hitting, going with the pitch.
But while that’s mentionable, the real story of it was LaChance was down in the count 0-2 after being surprised by the second strike, a breaking ball that appeared to finish low but was so pretty it was called a strike.
But after that, LaChance worked the count full by laying off two more pitches just like it, each an inch or two lower than that second strike.
So, great at bat, right?
The fifth pitch was an inside fastball and the next one left the park.
A very unlikely outcome given the way the at bat developed.
It was also his birthday.
By Clay Horning
Deiten LaChance, the man from Sherbrooke, Quebec, whose teammates call him the Great Mape, was down in the count and down on his luck his first trip to the plate on Saturday.
After fouling off a pitch to begin the at bat, he took the next one, a breaking ball finishing below his knees. Strike two, said home plate umpire Mark Winters.
Yet, from that humble beginning, LaChance, the second Sooner batter in the second inning, laid off two more pitches just like it, only lower and inches more out of the zone, before eventually finding a ball he liked.
Crushing it over the fence in right-center, LaChance secured the only run Oklahoma would score or need in a 1-0 victory over Missouri.
He also tripled.
Not bad for a birthday.
Of course, it wasn’t the game’s only run.
But had it been, the next line would be a quote from LaChance, with, “said LaChance, who turned 21 on Saturday,” between the commas.
The next star was next to Walk’s name for his third-inning bunt single.
One, bunting is a lost art, particularly for base hits. Two, just about everybody who bunts for base hits bunts left-handed because the lefty batter’s box is a step or two closer to first base. Three, Walk actually does bat left-handed, but only against right-handed pitchers.
I just love all that.
So, in the notebook, it looked like this:
Walk — bunt single * RH push bunt.
I have the detail if I want to use it, as I did in my first story example. I have more than that, too, as evidenced above. So, if I wanted to build a whole game story around it, or even a feature story, for later, I’ve got it.
By Clay Horning
NORMAN — Nobody in the SEC covers more ground in center field than Jason Walk.
Offensively, he can beat you on the bases, having stolen 13 in this, his third season on the Sooner roster.
Last Saturday, he proved something else.
He’s an expert practitioner of one of the game’s lost arts, leading off the bottom of the third inning against Missouri with a bunt single that sparked a two-run frame in Oklahoma’s 4-0 victory over the Tigers.
Not just any bunt either, but a push bunt out of the right-handed batter’s box.
After that come the quotes from him, his coach, maybe another player, updates on his season, etc. Heck, remember to ask those questions right after the game and you won’t have to return to the ballpark to get the story.
Or treat it as just another base hit and have none of those things to work with.
The last star?
It turned into nothing, but I had it in case.
In the fourth inning, Kehlenbrink struck out Walk on a pitch that might have been outside, but was clearly above his hands, which is a higher strike than anybody calls, including Winters — remember the home plate umpire? — when not making mistakes.
Walk couldn’t believe it, but all he could do was walk back to the dugout, challenging pitches having not yet made it to the college game.
The next guy up, Jaxon Willits, stroked a two-out double off the right field wall to score Kyle Branch, who plated the game’s final run.
But if OU had not scored that inning and lost by a run, that strikeout, the product of a bad call, would have been huge, and if I’d not scribbled “well high, above his hands” next to the backwards K for Walk striking out looking, I might have forgotten all about it.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this experiment — or simply humored me by making it this far — using Saturday’s Sooner victory to write about writing and write about the process that puts you in position to write about Saturday’s Sooner victory, and others, all in one very busy column.
When I began Oklahoma Columnist, I thought I’d write a lot more about the craft because it interests me to no end. Maybe I’ll do more of that, though it might demand some interaction.
Have any questions?
I’d love to talk shop.
Until next time.
I prefer your 'second' versions. If you start writing like those you could be approaching writing like Dan Jenkins or Herbert Warren Wind. They had a way of pulling you in and making you feel like you were there.