So almost a year ago, I got the idea that I ought to try to interview the writers who I read the most. I sent out a few e-mails to a few different writers, one of whom responded. That one was Ratto. (Just to be clear, then, what follows is an e-mail interview–I e-mailed questions, he e-mailed answers.)
Now, in my e-mail to Ratto, I said I would be posting the questions and answers here at freekraut.com. Why I have refrained from doing so till now is of no importance; the only reason I mention it at all is to note the fact that these questions and answers are now 9.5 months old; the interview took place in January of 2011.
Alright then. Without further ado …
1) Where’d you grow up? Â Brothers/sisters? Â Birth order? Â Where’d you go to high school?
R: Alameda, Ca. Older brother, two younger sisters. St. Joseph High School (now St. Joseph Notre Dame)
2) What sports did you play growing up? Â Any lasting memories from your athletic career. Â (Cue your self-deprecatory response)
R: Mostly park league baseball, a little hockey. I was the first person to fix a CYO event for gamblers.
3) Did you get good grades? Â Have a lot of friends? Â How was that, er, childhood?
R: I could memorize so I did fine, and I had my share of friends. Childhood was trouble-free and middle class — no great traumas to speak of.
4) Do you remember when you first became conscious of yourself as a writer? Â That is, your skill as a writer, your affinity for writing … The idea that it might be a vocation for you? Â What was that like?
R: Frankly, I’m not sure when that happened, if in fact it has. Maybe high school, but I wasn’t all that introspective. I knew I didn’t want to follow my dad into the garbage business, but I didn’t really think, “This writing thing’s a nice dodge, I should see if I can make some money off it” until college.
5) During that time, who were your influences? Â Who were some of your favorite writers, who you most wanted to emulate?
R: The usual suspects, since it was a lot harder to find writers in the stone tablet days. Jim Murray, Red Smith, Jerry Izenberg, Ed Linn, Ron Fimrite in his days at the SF Chronicle. All guys with a little bite and a sense of humor
6) Did you entertain other types of writing? Â Movies? Â Books? Â News (nonsports) reporting? Â Who did you look up to in these fields?
R: Not really. There was stuff I liked, but not to that extent.
7) Did your K-12 English teachers see you as a writer? Â In other words, writing would become your vocation, but was it ever useful to you in school? Â Which teachers made it useful and which didn’t?
R: They saw me a vicious little prick who needed to be crushed, thrown into the Army and then return a broken, shattered human being, living for my next fix and begging near freeway off-ramps.
No, I lie. I got lucky with teachers (helps being at a small school) who got to see kids’ gifts and nurture them as best they could. They didn’t drill grammar into me or edit my stuff, but they let me write and encouraged me to keep doing it. Mostly, though, they drilled the ideas of empathy, organization, compassion for the underdog and sass for the overlords, and seeing all points of view before shooting off my mouth into all of us. In short, they were good at teaching us how to think, as opposed to what to think. I owe them a lot, and if my life weren’t devoted to remorseless ingratitude, I’d pay them back in kind.
8) What were you like when you first started? Â Was it hard to break into the industry? Â What other career options did you consider?
R: Can’t really answer the first, because like I said, I didn’t spend a lot of time looking back at myself. I just did stuff. As for breaking into the industry, mine was the classic tale of going to SF State where a lot of the journalism teachers were also working at the two papers in town, and having one approach me one day and say, “We just fired a copy boy for calling in broke. You want his job?” Seriously — guy didn’t have 75 cents to pay the Bay Bridge toll (probably not his first excuse) and said he couldn’t come in. I had also majored in broadcasting thinking I could be the next Fred Allen, Mel Allen or Alan Freed, but I decided the first people to hire me would be stuck with me. And so it went.
9) What were your best qualities as a writer when you got started in this field? Â What were your worst qualities?
R: I could be funny, and I could develop a rapport with my subjects with the style and kinds of questions I asked.. I could also be needlessly wordy and prone to showing off with my typing, a curse I still hold near and dear today.
10) How did you feel about your first jobs in sports writing? Â Did you enjoy the experience or did it feel like work? Â Any big learning experiences you remember from early on in your earliest gigs?
R: My first job was making coffee, sharpening pencils, answering phones and typing prep scores. It kind of sucked, but the people at the Examiner, where I got my first gig, also let me write a few prep stories that they didn’t want to do, allowing me to get my name in the paper from time to time. Eventually that led to more stories, then to running the prep department for a bit when my predecessor left for bigger and better things, whatever those were. That’s when it got fun, and it stayed that way. Mostly what I learned was getting organized, staying organized and turning out copy quickly, the last skill of which is particularly useful in the Internet age.
Thank you both for sharing.
Cool! Enjoyed it.
Oh great. Now I know that when I grow up, I want to be Ray Ratto.
Roughly on point
Thanks for sharing this. A lot of A’s fans despise Ratto, but he’s been one of my favorites. He’s a talented writer. I’d love to read more of these.
I like Ray.
1. He always responds when I email him. His email’s always been out front, and he always responds to my knowledge. Admirable.
2. I think his writing is pretty good.
3. He’s always been as rough (if not rougher) on the Giants as he is on the A’s.
4. He ACTUALLY GOES TO THE GAMES/EVENTS (yes, I’m looking at you, Lowell). You see him everywhere in the Bay Area.
5. Susan has constantly maintained that he is a nice, wonderful, funny person.
7. The piece he wrote after the two guys jumped the fence at Comiskey and beat up the Royals first base coach is still one of the funniest things I’ve ever read.
8. Along with that, sometimes he REALLY makes me laugh.
9. Us fat guys gotta stick together. Screw you, twig.
#9, the two of you show go on Biggest Loser as partners. The two of you would make great TV.
bloom would have to regain the weight
pizza?
Up until this week, a spell on death row in Texas would have done it:
And the fucker didn’t touch it.
I believe he was trying to make some sort of moronic racist statement.
Pizza.
No. It’s poison to me.
Mmmm… Poison….
time travel sandwiches will have you back to fat in…no time!
Ooooh good call. You could grab past you to help you cheat.
Thanks mjd, this is great. You should be less of a stranger around here.
This.
This was really fascinating. Thanks for sharing.
10. Self-deprecating.
that’s funny!
LOL
Said it before, I’ll say it again: Ratto was born to tweet