Fast Digs: Harry A. Williams and the Art of Reporting

"Charley Keppen has done more to brutalize bicycle racing than any other one man in the history of the game." Keppen had arrived at the downtown stadium track in Los Angeles (March 1921) wearing a flowered bathrobe and pearl fedora. "Pressing the pedals with his powerful hoofs [Keppen gave De Palma] "a fine view of his twinkling heels. Then all of a sudden those heels went up and twinkled far above the rider's head, and the swishy sound of an athlete being peeled alive fell amid the sudden hush." 

As far as I know Harry A. Williams, who wrote that quote above, never mashed the pedals in competition, nor even sat a racing bicycle. Never-the-less, he contributed much to celebrate the efforts of those who did. Williams, you see, was a newspaper reporter, one who had a knack for linking words together, and turning a phrase, adding color to what was otherwise just black letters on a white paper background. Williams began his career in Los Angeles journalism in 1909 at the Los Angeles Evening Express, where he wrote both feature stories and a column titled Fandom Fact and Fancy. Though heavily skewed toward the game of baseball, the column covered other sports as well (though he did not seem to cover bicycle racing until 1921). In 1912, Williams moved over to the Los Angeles Times where he again wrote features, as well as a column with the baseball-specific title Hits and Runs. When World War I broke out in Europe, Williams took on the role of special correspondent for the Times. In that capacity he, along with Larry MacPhail, devised a plan to capture Kaiser Wilhelm and turn him over to the Allied forces. The plot never gained traction, but his time in Europe provided opportunity to fine-tune his writing. When the war ended Williams stayed on in France as the New York Herald's Paris edition sports editor, before returning to the United States and, briefly, filling in as a baseball reporter at the New York Globe.

In 1921 Williams came back to Los Angeles where he took up with the Los Angeles Times again. This seems to be when he began writing about bicycle racing (while continuing to cover baseball as well), which is probably due to the renewed interest in the sport following construction of the downtown stadium track that same year. In 1924, Williams left the Times to become president of baseball's Pacific Coast League. From that point, until his death in 1953, Williams served the League variously as president and secretary. 

None of this is to say that there were not good journalists before Williams came along, men who could report on races with a high degree of sterile efficiency, but very few could add the zing and pepper capable of elevating a report into a story, one that could capture the emotion and excitement of a day at the track.

Williams continued with his story of the John De Palma / Charlie Keppen race: "Coming up the last bank, and within a few jumps of the tape, Keppen was leading De Palma by about four lengths, when he seemed to forget that the track was circular. [Keppen] seemed in the act of riding right off into space at the highest part of the track when he providentially hit the guard rail. One arm flew over this, but the rest of him couldn't make it. His ribs rattled against the side of the rail for several yards, and then he hit the boards of the track... he had been a long time in falling. He kept falling part at a time, but not until his heels struck, was he able to fall all in one piece and call it a day's work. Experts estimated that he fell an eighth of a lap... Charley made the track safer for others by gathering most of the splinters unto himself. He was so full of timber that many feared the friction of his knees in the second heat would cause him to catch fire in the joints..."

There is more, of course, and you can read all of it (and more) when Fast Digs volume two is published early next year.