David Halberstam
David Halberstam
David Halberstamwas an American journalist and historian, known for his work on the Vietnam War, politics, history, the Civil Rights Movement, business, media, American culture, and later, sports journalism. He won a Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 1964. In 2007, while doing research for a book, Halberstam was killed in a car crash...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionJournalist
Date of Birth10 April 1934
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
The Best American Sports Writing of the Century.
Few sports has as great a disparity between the time committed in practice and time actually spent in game or race conditions.
Physically, rowing was remarkable resistant to the camera... the camera liked power exhibited more openly, and the power of the oarsmen [is] exhibited in far too controlled a setting. Besides, the camera liked to focus on individuals, and except for the single scull, crew was sport without faces.
There's a great quote by Julius Irving that went, 'Being a professional is doing the things you love to do, on the days you don't feel like doing them.'
In team sports the athletes were bonded by each other, there was an immense peer pressure to keep going. One dared not miss a practice for fear of letting his teammates down. Every time an athlete thought of getting back into bed in the morning he knew he would have to face the anger of his closest friends. But the sculler had to find motivation entirely within himself. No one else cared.
Rowing, particularly sculling, inflicts on the individual in every race a level of pain associated with few other sports. There was certainly pain in football during a head-on collision, pain in other sports on the occasion of a serious injury. That was more the threat of pain; in rowing there was the absolute guarantee of it every time.
There would be a very nice small book in it about another time and era in America, a kind of sweetness and friendship,
As if he were a man of a certain kind of secular faith,
I think I got very lucky on this, ... The Red Sox players of that team just were particularly pleasant. Ted Williams was larger than life and exuberant and contentious and cantankerous, but great fun to be with.
I think he was such a magical figure, so compelling a figure, he inevitably drew the interest of very talented writers.
What happened very quickly was a move away from the bravery of the kids fighting.
When Murrow goes after him, he's finished. That's when you know he's losing the public,
We had absolute military superiority but they had absolute political supremacy. That led to a stalemate - and that became the governing issue.
It was the first time in American history a war had been declared over by an anchorman.