How covering prep sports in retirement led to a spot on “60 Minutes”

You love the games and the writing and become a sports journalist. You devote a career to that passion and the craft, writing for some of the best mastheads in the country. You write several books, most about sports and some about more personal things, like losing a grandson to addiction. You win more awards than can be fit on a shelf and are inducted into the National Sports Media Hall of Fame. You retire — sort of — to move back home to Illinois and spend more time with your wife, the love of your life since high school, and to sit together in the bleachers watching high school girls basketball. Your wife has a devastating stroke and you visit her, daily, until COVID restrictions keep you out. You keep going to those high school basketball games, and write about them because, as you have said, “Writers write.” You start writing on Facebook, personal missives about dealing with grief and hunting for green beans in Walmart. You keep writing about high school basketball.

And then you land on “60 Minutes.”

Dave Kindred, master of the world of sports journalism and a gentle soul, is featured this weekend (March 28, 2021) on “60 Minutes,” talking about his journey from and then back to covering high school basketball. For a bit more backstory, check out his Storyboard interview with fellow sports journalist Greg Bowers, about the new form of writing Kindred found through Facebook posts.

In the “60 Minutes” interview, the reporter reads a passage from a description of late NBA great Pete Maravich and asks how Kindred found the words he wrote. Kindred’s answer: He didn’t really know, but “you want the reader to see it the way you see it.” When asked why he decided to write about high school sports when he could have settled into a cozy, non-deadline retirement: “I couldn’t sit there and not write about what I saw.”

It’s worth tuning in and then bookmarking the interview when you need a little inspiration in how the work is done.