Suggestions for Writing

1. Rewrite “The Four Horsemen” using only eight hundred words, the typical word count of sports columns today.

   Question

   WvD/qlpt4lzzWb4zUwGWBQhKPjtDvqj8sRamu7J1DAyqPwYZ7lQ7Wr5WbEA=

   Chapter 9 - The Four Horsemen - Suggestions for Writing: Rewrite “The Four Horsemen” using only eight hundred words, the typical word count of sports columns today.
2. The nineteenth-century American poet Walt Whitman called baseball the “hurrah game!” and wrote this about it: “Well—it’s our game: that’s the chief fact in connection with it: America’s game: has the snap, go, fling, of the American atmosphere—belongs as much to our institutions, fits into them as significantly, as our constitutions, laws: is just as important in the sum total of our historic life.” Write an essay in which you show how Whitman may have influenced Grantland Rice’s style and outlook in “The Four Horsemen.”

   Question

   WvD/qlpt4lzzWb4zUwGWBQhKPjtDvqj8sRamu7J1DAyqPwYZ7lQ7Wr5WbEA=

   Chapter 9 - The Four Horsemen - Suggestions for Writing: The nineteenth-century American poet Walt Whitman called baseball the “hurrah game!” and wrote this about it: “Well—it’s our game: that’s the chief fact in connection with it: America’s game: has the snap, go, fling, of the American atmosphere—belongs as much to our institutions, fits into them as significantly, as our constitutions, laws: is just as important in the sum total of our historic life.” Write an essay in which you show how Whitman may have influenced Grantland Rice’s style and outlook in “The Four Horsemen.”
3. Simon Maxwell Apter, writing in Lapham’s Quarterly (2010), says, “It’s a minor-league mind that chooses to make sport of sports. Not that there aren’t major-league authors who do so, among them George Orwell (‘Serious sport is war minus the shooting’) and H.L. Mencken (‘It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf’).” Write an essay in which you support, challenge, or qualify Apter’s, Orwell’s, or Mencken’s assertion.

   Question

   WvD/qlpt4lzzWb4zUwGWBQhKPjtDvqj8sRamu7J1DAyqPwYZ7lQ7Wr5WbEA=

   Chapter 9 - The Four Horsemen - Suggestions for Writing: Simon Maxwell Apter, writing in Lapham’s Quarterly (2010), says, “It’s a minor-league mind that chooses to make sport of sports. Not that there aren’t major-league authors who do so, among them George Orwell (‘Serious sport is war minus the shooting’) and H.L. Mencken (‘It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf’).” Write an essay in which you support, challenge, or qualify Apter’s, Orwell’s, or Mencken’s assertion.
4. In his memoir, An Accidental Sportswriter (2011), Robert Lipsyte says the following about Grantland Rice:

   [T]he writer who likens a ballplayer to Hercules or Grendel’s mother is displaying the ultimate contempt—the ballplayer no longer exists as a person or a performer, but as an object, a piece of matter to be used, in this case, for the furtherance of the sportswriter’s career by pandering to the emotional titillation of the reader/fan. Rice populated the press boxes with lesser talents who insisted, like the old master, that they were just sunny fellows who loved kids’ games and the jolly apes who played them.

   Write an essay in which you agree or disagree with Lipsyte’s assessment of Rice’s style and portrayal of athletes.

   Question

   WvD/qlpt4lzzWb4zUwGWBQhKPjtDvqj8sRamu7J1DAyqPwYZ7lQ7Wr5WbEA=

   Chapter 9 - The Four Horsemen - Suggestions for Writing: In his memoir, An Accidental Sportswriter (2011), Robert Lipsyte says the following about Grantland Rice: [T]he writer who likens a ballplayer to Hercules or Grendel’s mother is displaying the ultimate contempt—the ballplayer no longer exists as a person or a performer, but as an object, a piece of matter to be used, in this case, for the furtherance of the sportswriter’s career by pandering to the emotional titillation of the reader/fan. Rice populated the press boxes with lesser talents who insisted, like the old master, that they were just sunny fellows who loved kids’ games and the jolly apes who played them. Write an essay in which you agree or disagree with Lipsyte’s assessment of Rice’s style and portrayal of athletes.