Favorite lede you've ever written or read?

What's worse, finger nails on a chalk board or watching Hank Gathers shoot a free throw.

I wrote that to begin a feature on Gathers' free-throw shooting, which was ugly and painful. His elbow flew out, you never knew whether the ball would miss the rim or break the backboard. We used to joke that the referee should use the same signal as a football ref signaling a missed field goal. It was so bad he started shooting them left-handed, thus, Bo Kimble's left-handed free throws during the NCAA Tournament.

 

I'm recalling one (not mine) during the first season the Kings were in Sacramento and were annihiliated by the Bucks:

"You may want to read this one sitting down. Go ahead, grab that bottle of Scotch you keep around for such occasions."

 

In the cold, sober light of day, Cinderella doesn't look so hot.

That's my favorite that I've written. It came from the strangest high school football playoff game I've seen. The 14 seed (from my coverage area) was leading No. 3 early in the third quarter of their first-round game when a car accident a couple of miles away knocked out power to half the city. The two coaches found each other in the pitch black and agreed to finish the game early the next afternoon, and the No. 3 seed proceeded to whip Podunk up and down the field.

 

The great Lewis Grizzard wrote about it in one of his books:

By Norman Arey

"Chamblee's exciting come-from-behind 21-14 victory over Druid Hills was somewhat marred by the death of its coach."

(Coach collapsed on sideline as runner crossed the goal line on final play of the game and he was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital)

 

Best two from me:

1) High school playoff game, a pitcher named Derrick Bottoms threw a complete game one-hitter over, if I recall correclty, 11 innings. He was a very fit 6-foot-3 and about 180, but had been a pudgy kid and was thus nicknamed "Fat Daddy." He comes to bat in the bottom of the 11th and breaks a scoreless tie with walkoff solo home run.

My lede:

It ain't over til the Fat Daddy swings.

2) In 1998, the University of Alabama women's basketball team advanced to the Sweet 16 in the NCAA Tournament by beating UCLA on a long-inbound catch-and-shoot. There were .8 seconds left on the clock and there was a hesitation on getting it started, allowing the player to catch, turn and release her shot before the buzzer sounded.

UCLA protested. Pundits cried foul (And rightfully so, I might add.) I covered the game (we also had a nice headline: .8 is enough) and did a follow-up. When I went to do another follow-up after the NCAA ruled that the result would stand, the head coach, Rick Moody, said "I can't talk to you about it. Nobody on the team can talk about it." He handed me a fax from the NCAA that was sent to both schools ordering them to not comment on the situation anymore -- in other words, a gag order.

My lede:

The University of Alabama women's basketball team is officially Sweet 16 bound.
And gagged.


As far as I'm concerned, the best sports story lede ever written was by John Lardner in 1954 in True Magazine in his story about the death of middleweight boxing champ Stanley Ketchel, which occured in 1910:

Stanley Ketchel was 24 years old when he was fatally shot in the back by the common-law husband of the lady who was cooking his breakfast.

 

Fucking Dan Jenkins. Jesus, he could write about a fart and make you want to smell it.

 

This lede for a story on Toronto's Ryerson Rams hockey team never fails to make me laugh because I can just imagine how clever I must have thought I was at the time: http://theeyeopener.com/1998/10/concordia-swarms-rams-hockey-team/

"The Concordia University Stingers hockey team were more like angry wasps Saturday night, stinging the Ryerson Rams again and again.

In their 8-1 loss, the Rams were more like bees, which sting once, then die."

 

Classics.

Red Smith: "Now it is done. Now the story ends. And there is no way to tell it. The art of fiction is dead. Reality has strangled invention. Only the utterly impossible, the inexpressibly fantastic, can ever be plausible again."

Bob Considine
"Listen to this, buddy, for it comes from a guy whose palms are still wet, whose throat is still dry, and whose jaw is still agape from the utter shock of watching Joe Louis knock out Max Schmeling.
It was a shocking thing, that knockout – short, sharp, merciless, complete. Louis was like this: He was a big lean copper spring, tightened and retightened through weeks of training until he was one pregnant package of coiled venom."

 

The late Jimmy Bryan of the Birmingham News had a great one about the 1979 Alabama-Vanderbilt game, which Alabama won 66-3 while the country was in the midst of energy and financial crises.

His lede:

"Inflation killed Vanderbilt on Saturday. As soon as the football was inflated, the Commodores were dead."

 

Unfortunately, some of the really bad ones I've come across are just as memorable as the great ones.

The one I still laugh about occurred about 15 years ago. A stringer wrote a story on a high-school basketball game that was decided on a last-second shot and called it a "buzzard-beater." Nothing like a lead that mixes a cliche and a typo/fact error. Fortunately, it did not get in the paper.

 

Favorite to read, Shirley Povich's on Don Larsen's perfect game.

The million-to-one shot came in. Hell froze over. A month of Sundays hit the calendar. Don Larsen pitched a perfect game in the World Series at Yankee Stadium.

 

I really enjoyed this one from Minneapolis Star Tribune columnist Jim Souhan from December:

"It was Richard Pitino’s first big date with Williams Arena, and once he was in the right mood, he began taking off his clothes.

With about six minutes left in the Gophers’ game against Florida State on Tuesday night, Pitino ripped off his jacket, throwing it to the bench in what was almost certainly an unintentional homage to Clem Haskins’ wardrobe-shredding antics. With less than five minutes left, he ripped off his tie.

Thankfully for those in the expensive seats, the Gophers earned their most impressive victory of the season, beating the Seminoles 71-61, and Pitino remained mostly dressed."