“Follow-up to that question you got last week about having to drop everything when a news story breaks. Do you ever draft stories ahead of time? For example it seemed Mike Lafleur was a probable candidate for the head coaching job. Did you prepare a LaFleur story? It makes me wonder if there’s are these unposted stories you’ve deleted over the years: Peyton signs with the Cardinals, new coach Andy Reid, Daryl Washington returns! It’s like when they have to burn the Super Bowl merch of the losing team.”
Burn? No way. That merch of a team winning when they don’t ends up with needy people in foreign countries. You knew that. As far as stories? Yes, I write some ahead of time. I actually had stories written for about five coaching candidates just in case. It helps when it breaks, say, on a Sunday and you aren’t expecting to have to write. (Sounds familiar.) Never wrote a Manning story ahead of time, or Reid. Definitely not D-Wash. Have written a couple of free agent stories of guys I thought we coming but were not (we won’t name names.)
But the biggest example of that comes from my newspaper days. In 1999, the East Valley Tribune sent me to Houston to cover a couple of games between the Cincinnati Reds and Astros. The Diamondbacks were going to play one or the other in the playoffs, so we needed stuff for a special section. I went there and came back and wrote four stories — an overview of each team, and then a feature on Reds first baseman Sean Casey and Astros closer Billy Wagner. Good work, if I say so myself.
The Braves then had a hella September, knocking the Mets to the wild card and into a series with the D-Backs. The Reds won 96 games and missed the postseason, the Astros got a division title (in the N.L. Central in those days.)
None of my work saw the light of day.