Joe Posnanski, Steve Sabol, and a story about a storyteller

As a teenager I bought many CDs that I view today with a certain degree of embarrassment.

This was not one of them.

I was (and maybe still am, though I have no idea where it is buried) the proud owner of The Power and the Glory: The Music of NFL Films. I listened to the cinematic compositions of Sam Spence and the booming voice of John Facenda without knowing either man’s name. I immersed myself guilt-free into a world where the NFL consisted of gladiators battling for glory, a task that is far more difficult in my adult years. I played the album over and over, often as a Sunday adrenaline-builder before watching my hometown New York Jets.

And I think, on some level, I knew who was responsible for this jewel of an album.

Steve Sabol.

I knew Sabol as the voice and face of NFL Films; he popped up as the host of ESPN’s Super Bowl Memories, which would play during the playoffs every January. Even before his passing last year at the age of 69, I thought of him as a nostalgic figure of my childhood, someone who played an integral role in making the NFL my favorite sport. In my eyes, he was a two-dimensional figure.

That is no longer the case.

And the man responsible for that is Joe Posnanski.

The respected longtime baseball writer and current NBCSports.com columnist unveiled this masterpiece earlier this month. Posnanski gives a thorough biography of Sabol, done through the umbrella of a tribute event to Sabol held this past February. The best storytellers pique your interest in things you never thought you wanted to know, and Posnanski comes equipped with a truckload of anecdotes that describe a driven entrepreneur with a pop-art mind and a salesman’s savvy.

Consider this anecdote: An unspectacular college football player himself, Sabol still convinced Sports Illustrated to write 2,500 words about him. And that wasn’t all, writes Posnanski:

“He called himself ‘Sudden Death Sabol’ and he bought newspaper advertisements for himself (complete with photos of himself at age 10 playing pee wee football) and wrote and distributed his own press releases and had T-shirts and other merchandise made featuring his self-written scouting report: “Sudden Death Sabol is one of the most mysterious, awesome living beings of all times.”

Of course, the quintessential passage of the story discusses Sabol’s own minor celebrity and confirms what anyone who saw him on TV likely already knew:

“Sabol, himself, probably wouldn’t have liked that part much. He did not mind being on camera — to say the least — but he did not like being the story. No, he liked being the storyteller. He used to scribble down quotes all the time, maxims, proverbs, adages, phrases, you name it. His favorite was an American Indian proverb his father Ed would tell him sometimes. It is the quote that ends the film and the tribute. ‘Tell me a fact, and I’ll learn. Tell me a truth, and I’ll believe. But tell me a story, and it will live in my heart forever.’”

Storytellers looking for inspirational quotes should frame that last one. For a long time I have heard the adage, “We remember what we feel longer than what we know.” Sabol knew this instinctively. Make no mistake, he was no journalist; he was a salesman, a marketing genius for what has become America’s most powerful sport.

But journalists all over can learn from his storytelling instincts. Joe Posnanski obviously did; his tribute to Sabol the man is also a perfect tribute to Sabol the storyteller.

The whole thing makes me want to dig up my copy of The Power and the Glory and give it one more spin.

LINK: How One Man Gave the NFL its Modern Mythology

Thoughts? Leave a comment below or e-mail Matt Pearl at matt@tellingthestoryblog.com

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