Flashing Before My Eyes

The Barnes & Noble Review It's almost 30 years ago now, but I remember it like it happened yesterday. (This is what happens when you get old: Stuff that happened 30 years ago you remember like it happened yesterday. But stuff that happened yesterday, you can't remember at all.)I was covering tennis for Newsday, on Long Island, and in advance of the U.S. Open I went to Newport, Rhode Island, for a tune-up tournament the top women were playing. The focus of my story was about how women's tennis had suddenly become as big a draw as men's tennis. While I was in Newport, I interviewed Billie Jean King, Margaret Court, Evonne Goolagong, and the phenom, Chrissie Evert. The story ran long, close to 4,000 words. (All my stories ran long. When I was at The New York Times, the executive editor Abe Rosenthal once remarked, "When he leaves we're going to retire his number: 3,500." You'll note this story is supposed to be about Dick Schaap, and I haven't mentioned his name yet.)Anyway, a few days after my piece ran in Newsday I got a phone call from Dick Schaap, who was then editing Sport magazine, telling me he'd read it, he'd liked it, and wondered if I would be interested in "rewriting" it for Sport. He'd pay me!First of all, I was thrilled that Dick Schaap had called at all. He was a big star to me. I'd seen him doing sports on television; he was the most literate sportscaster I ever saw. I knew his print work at The Herald-Tribune, and I'd read Instant Replay, a breakthrough book, one of the first sports books to make The New York Times bestseller list. Getting a call from Schaap was like getting a call from God.Dick reassured me that he liked the piece as written. But he said for a national magazine like Sport, it needed more of a national focus. (I had written it with a Long Island audience in mind; my references were local.) I told Dick I'd be honored to rewrite it for Sport; I'd cut out the magazine's photos of athletes and hung them on the walls of my room when I was growing up. And now Sport was going to run one of my pieces! I told Dick he didn't even have to pay me. (And that was the last time I ever said that.)Well, I sat down to rewrite, and I realized I had no idea how to do it. I sat over my typewriter for hours at time, days on end. And...nothing. You see, I had already written the piece the best way I could. I couldn't fathom how to rewrite it. I took a few halfhearted swipes at it; I omitted local restaurant and street names, recasting the start of the piece by emphasizing the Newport scene. Then I mailed it to Dick with an apologetic note suggesting perhaps he'd be better at rewriting me than I was.I didn't hear from him again for a month or so, which got me tremendously discouraged. I thought I had failed; not only wouldn't I see my byline in Sport, but this might be the end of my freelance career completely.Then I got an envelope with an advance copy of Sport. There was a paper slip marking the page where my story began, and a note from Dick thanking me for my hard work, and saying he hoped we could work together again.I flipped to my story. The byline was mine: Tony Kornheiser. There were cameo photos of the four women tennis players I'd profiled under a headline that said: "They've Come a Long Way, Baby." I read every single word on that front page, all 500 of them.Not one of them was mine!By the time I recognized a word I'd written, I was on "continued on page 64."Dick had rewritten the top 1,000 words. Rewritten them beautifully, I might add. He had recast the story so that it put women's tennis into a broader context than just these four players. He had enlarged the perspective from micro to macro. And he'd added anecdotes about the players that he culled from his own interviews with them. I hate to say this, because no writer likes to speak well of an editor, but Dick Schaap made my work better.Oh, and he sent a check, too.I called Dick to thank him, explaining that I didn't really understand how to rewrite my own work. But having seen what he'd done, I now understood better what rewriting entailed. Dick said he probably shouldn't have asked me to rewrite my own work. But he had great confidence in my ability, and he wondered if I would try rewriting other writers' pieces?I said I'd try.Within 72 hours Dick mailed me two pieces with a note that said, "Make 'em sing, kid."Tony Kornheiser is a sports columnist for The Washington Post and hosts a nationally syndicated radio program. He also regularly appears on ESPN's The Sports Reporters, mediated by his friend and former editor, Dick Schaap.