The most consistently difficult task to perform in my line of work is writing a headline. Newspaper readers bag on headlines all the time. They mock them. They deride them. They call up enraged, like any idiot can write a headline. They're wrong. You have to be a semi-idiot to write a headline. It is no easy task to write a few words that make sense together, that is accurate enough to sum up the copy below, that is interesting enough to get someone to read the story, AND that all can be crammed into the proper amount of space, using the properly sized letters in the proper font. I struggle with it daily. Some people have a talent for it. I don't. So usually I produce a workmanlike headline and move on. I count the clever headlines that I've written on one hand. When Miami and Virginia Tech announced they were leaving for the Atlantic Coast Conference, I wrote: "They ACC-ept." When a referee called a basketball player for a controversial traveling c
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