The Public Intellectual

What is a public intellectual? Better yet, who is a public intellectual? Is it a man or woman who graduated from Harvard with a law degree and then went to graduate school at Princeton? Maybe. Oh wait, maybe it’s the law professor who has written ten novels and received a Pulitzer Prize. Or just maybe it’s the science nerd who sat next to you in high school biology who has now won two Nobel Prizes.

It can be argued for years as to what a public intellectual is and who qualifies as a public intellectual. Stephen Mack put it perfectly in his essay The Decline of Public Intellectuals, when saying that “we need to be more concerned with the work public intellectuals must do, irrespective of who happens to be doing it.”

Now, you may be wondering why I decided to bring up that particular sentence from Mack’s essay. The reason is simple. I am a die-hard sports fan and I wanted to look into this large world of sports to see if there were any public intellectuals. Honestly, I am sick and tired about hearing how great all these philosophers and novelists are, while sports writers are getting absolutely no credit besides for inside the sports world. This is why I found a sports writer who put his heart and soul into his work.

George Plimpton is not your common household name, but then again what sports writer is? Plimpton passed away in 2003, but not before he put together a miraculous career. He was one of the most influential sports journalists because of his unique and insightful commentary about the sports world.

Plimpton spent most of his career as a writer for Sports Illustrated. However, he wasn’t just a writer who would simply report his observations from sporting events. Plimpton wanted to understand the sports he reported about, so he decided to start playing every sport he could. The journalist played football, baseball, boxing, and golf so that he could understand the psychological mindset that the athletes were experiencing, giving readers an intimate look into the world of professional sports.

One of the first books that Plimpton wrote was called Out of My League. This book was published in 1961 and talked about Plimpton pitching in an exhibition game prior to the 1960 All-Star game. Plimpton was so out of shape that he couldn’t even finish an inning; his goal was to face both lineups, but he was only able to face the National League.

Even though it may seem like he failed, he was able to experience the pressure, physical strength, and mental awareness it requires to be a professional baseball player. Many sports journalists spend their careers criticizing the abilities of athletes. If Kobe Bryant has a bad game, it is automatically assumed that he gave up and purposely performed poorly. So even though Plimpton may not have been able to finish an inning, he accomplished something that not many other people have ever done: experienced what it was like to be a major league pitcher. He did something that the common journalist could not do, and because of that I am thoroughly impressed.

After reading Out of My League, Ernest Hemingway said it was “beautifully observed and incredibly conceived, his account of a self-imposed ordeal that has the chilling quality of a true nightmare. It is the dark side of the moon of Walter Mitty.''

Wait. Did Ernest Hemingway actually comment on a sports novel? What in the world is going on? I thought poets and other so-called public intellectuals were supposed to be separated from the “boring sports writer.” Well, it turns out that the two knew each other because Plimpton interviewed Hemingway while he was writing for the Paris Review. This definitely builds on Mack’s point that it’s not who does the work, but what the work actually is, because although Plimpton wasn’t well known in the world of the elites, he still did work worthy of commentary from those intellectual elites. Plimpton was a smart man who not only wrote books but was also a managing editor of one of the most prestigious magazines in the world, the Paris Review. Public Intellectual anyone?

The book that Plimpton is most famous for is entitled Paper Lion. In Paper Lion, Plimpton does something that I have never seen any sportswriter do; he attempts to join a professional team. He tried out to be the third-string quarterback for the Detroit Lions. He didn’t make the team, but he did play in a scrimmage in 1963 where he lost about 30 yards.

Plimpton tried his hand at many other sports whether it was getting beat by Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus in a round of golf, being a goalie for the Boston Bruins for part of a game or getting a bloody nose in the boxing ring courtesy of Archie Moore.

The point is that Plimpton didn’t just write about sports. He experienced sports. He was not just reporting, but instead he was going much deeper. He was actually getting involved. I guarantee you that you can count on one hand the number of sportswriters that actually stepped onto the playing field to learn about the sport, so they knew what the hell they were talking about. Plimpton’s decision to go deeper than just writing about a sport and actually experiencing it is one reason why I believe he is a public intellectual.

Now, the question might arise that asks whether a journalist should or should not be involved in the story he or she is writing about. This is a very valid question, because one would think that becoming physically involved in a story would create bias and not give the full picture.

I can make a case for both sides. In the case of George Plimpton, he successfully battled the best in almost every major professional sport (one has to wonder why he didn’t try to play Wilt Chamberlain in a game of H-O-R-S-E). It’s not the fact that Plimpton played these sports, it’s that he actually wrote about these experiences in numerous amounts of books. He was able to share his newfound knowledge with the public and he did it in a completely non-biased way.

He wrote about the challenges he faced and he made the reader want to know more and wish he or she was there with him while he was in the hockey rink or on the baseball field. This is true journalism: getting the reader engaged and interested.

Now there are definitely reasons why journalists shouldn’t be involved in the story they are covering. The main reason of course is bias. To give a modern example, you just have to look at Lou Holtz of ESPN. Every word out of the guy’s mouth is about how good Notre Dame football is. The reason why he is so biased towards Notre Dame is because he was a coach there. Just go to 2:50 in this clip and you will understand what I am talking about. By the way, Notre Dame ended up with a 3-9 record and the worst scoring offense in the nation. This year, Lou Holtz believes the Fighting Irish have 11 winnable games and could get into a BCS game. Ha, now that’s a funny joke. The point is: Lou Holtz should not be allowed to talk about Notre Dame football because he is biased and doesn’t give the full picture.

One article that Plimpton will always be remembered for is the one he wrote for the April 1, 1985 edition of Sports Illustrated. Plimpton was asked to write an article for the April Fool’s edition and he created a fictional story about a pitcher named Sidd Finch, who threw a 168 mile per hour fastball. Readers loved the article, and due to popular demand, Plimpton wrote a book based upon Sidd Finch.

I started off this essay questioning what it takes to be a public intellectual and the truth of the matter is that all of those people that I listed can probably have a case made for them to be a public intellectual. However, the true lesson that should be learned is that while the Nobel Prize winner or the Pulitzer Prize winner might be a more popular choice to be classified as a public intellectual, there are others out there that are working their asses off to do something that goes above and beyond the norm. It’s about time we start acknowledging those who are public intellectuals and aren’t given credit for being one.