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  3. The Syntax of Sports, Class 2: The Power of the Particular

The Syntax of Sports, Class 2: The Power of the Particular

Patrick Barry
Open Access Open Access
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  • Overview

  • Contents

What can we learn from baseball great Ted Williams about how to improve our writing? What can we learn we from the iconic ESPN show SportsCenter  about how to manage information? And are you sure you really know what the word “peruse” means? 

Explore these and other questions in the second volume of The Syntax of Sports, a series designed to recreate a popular course at the University of Michigan. Here are a few things students have said about the experience of taking it.

“Patrick Barry is the best teacher I have ever had. I have never learned so much in a class. I hated English my whole life until I took this course.”

“I feel like this is and always will be the most valuable class I've ever taken here.”

“I genuinely wanted to show up to this class due to the amount I knew I would learn.” 

“I'm going to severely SEVERELY miss this course.”

“Every student should try to take one of Prof. Barry’s classes if he or she wants to become a better writer.”

“My writing is now 113x better.”

  • Cover
  • Title Page
  • Copyright Page
  • Dedication
  • Contents
  • Class Roster
  • 1. The Life of Language
  • 2. Previously On
  • 3. Josh Gibson
  • 4. The Black Babe Ruth, the Michigan of the East, and the Man Who Accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris
  • 5. James Joyce
  • 6. Striking Thirteen
  • 7. Ted Williams
  • 8. Electric Clock
  • 9. Before This Decade Is Out
  • 10. No Ideas but in Things
  • 11. Any Idiot Can Face a Crisis
  • 12. Show and Tell
  • 13. Summary and Scene
  • 14. This Is SportsCenter
  • 15. Being a Bore
  • 16. Sentences Nobody Else Could Write
  • 17. Sincerity Sometimes Takes a Few Drafts
  • 18. Strive for Five
  • 19. Mary Karr and John Updike
  • 20. Facts I Can Picture
  • 21. Updike, Oates, and Murakami
  • 22. Sedaris and Green
  • 23. The Poetics of Genocide
  • 24. Bryan Stevenson
  • 25. Unparticular
  • 26. Africa Africa
  • 27. Just Mercy
  • 28. Alliteration
  • 29. Why Is It This Way Instead of Some Other Way?
  • 30. Restraint
  • 31. The Big Dig
  • 32. The Planning Fallacy
  • 33. It’s All About We
  • 34. Cherry Tomatoes
  • 35. Google Maps
  • 36. Notes on Nuance
  • Notes
  • Photo Credits
  • Acknowledgments
Citable Link
Published: 2020
Publisher: Maize Books
Copyright: 2020
Copyright Holder: Patrick Barry
License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license
ISBN(s)
  • 978-1-60785-595-8 (open access)
  • 978-1-60785-594-1 (ebook)
  • 978-1-60785-593-4 (paper)
Series
  • The Syntax of Sports
Subject
  • SPORTS & RECREATION / Essays
  • LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Writing/General
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