Why we’re all jealous of Smarty Jones

There’s a great quote from from Ben Yagoda, journalist and Delaware writing professor, that goes something like: “Now that journalists have been given license to write like novelists, it is curious how many of them turn out to write like bad novelists.”

Now, please, trust me, I’ve written like a bad novelist far more than I’d ever like to admit, especially in overwritten leads. (Sometimes you’ll see this spelled “ledes” on this site. I’d like to make this standard, but, eh. They both mean the opening of a story.)

Anyway, I’m a big fan of leads, especially good ones, but especially ones that are just a little too serious. The best part of these — as opposed to just a regular, boring lead — is that they are usually well-crafted intros to stories, they just read like something written on the battlefield at Guadalcanal, rather than something written at a zoning meeting. They’re often from good writers.

With that, I’d like to chronicle some of them this year, and maybe we can have a contest next December choosing the most overwritten lead of the year, and give that journalist a prize before he or she punches me in the face.

Where were we? Oh, right. Leads. Today brings news of the first foal of one Smarty Jones, horse extraordinaire of 2004 (before he blew it on the final stretch like any good Philadelphia athlete). And Dick Jerardi — a very nice guy and a good writer — begins his story in the Daily News thusly:

Each New Year brings new hope in Kentucky. More than anything, Smarty Jones was about hope. The Pennsylvania bred emerged from the shadows of Philadelphia Park to give people hope in the spring of 2004, hope that anything was possible.

Okay, Dick. Maybe, maybe, maybe if this was Afleet Alex’s first foal, since that horse raised money for Alex’s Lemonade Stand. And not that I don’t like Smarty Jones, or the whole story, et cetera, but, come on: a horse boinked another horse. And he has ninety-one other baby horses on the way.

This story isn’t so much about hope as it is about how great it is to be Smarty Jones.

Smarty Jones sires first foal [DN]
Alex’s Lemonade Stand