Two Sports, Two Stories, Too Many Climbs

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/09/insider/two-sports-two-stories-too-many-climbs.html

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On the first day of our assignment in the Czech Republic, Nina Riggio, the intrepid, Vienna-based freelance photographer I was partnered with, told me that she had been a competitive climber and that she had once vomited on a group of spectators during a case of excessive nerves. I recalled this story a few days later as I held firm to the base of a rickety wooden ladder that Riggio was climbing to reach the top of a church bell tower.

As the wind whistled through the openings in the tower, my primary thought was, How did we end up scaling a beautiful, old Central European church — for an article about hockey?

“Ugh, there’s dead pigeons up here,” Riggio said, and she then provided even worse news. “And another ladder.”

I skipped that one and waited nervously by the first ladder. While lugging her equipment, Riggio deftly ascended the second ladder, which was covered in a thick coating of bird droppings. She wanted to get a sweeping shot of the neighborhood where Jaromir Jagr, the former National Hockey League star, had grown up, and a bell tower window provided the perfect framing.

I have covered baseball, tennis, hockey and other sports for The New York Times since 2010, occasionally from abroad. I went to the Winter Paralympics in China last year. I have also reported from Brazil, Britain, Canada, Chile, Curaçao and France. Sometimes we go places to report one article, and other times we produce several articles on the same trip. Almost always, the reporting takes you to places you didn’t expect to visit.

The plan ahead of our Czech trip was to report two articles. The original idea was to go write about the Czech national baseball team, a surprising group of amateur players who qualified for this month’s World Baseball Classic. But we also wanted to profile Jagr, the eccentric former N.H.L. star who, at 51, was now playing professionally for Rytiri Kladno, his hometown team, which he also owns. Two stories for the price of one round trip.

Riggio and I spent eight days reporting in four Czech cities last month, splitting our time between hockey and baseball. We started on Jagr: I wanted to know how he managed to keep playing at his age. But after a couple of days in Kladno, speaking to fans and residents, I saw that the real story was about the convergence of a man, a town and a hockey team that’s fighting to survive.

The photos of Jagr on the ice and the fans at games were great. But we needed to get into the community, to meet people and capture the environment in both words and images.

After I interviewed Jagr, he drew a map of the area around his childhood home in Kladno. The next day, Riggio and I visited the neighborhood to get a feel for his roots — which led me to the church. As we drove away, Riggio noticed the nearby bell tower with a windowless opening way up at the top. It seemed to offer the perch we needed to see the town.

After visiting the church and climbing the bell tower, we roamed the picturesque, medieval town center. We spoke to people about Jagr and how much he means to the city, which is about a 40-minute drive from Prague and has a population of around 70,000. We attended hockey games and practices and poked around the shops and cafes.

We also visited the nearly deserted outer grounds of an old steel mill and mines, part of the core history of the town. Kladno was an industrial hub when Czechoslovakia was a Communist state (1948-89). I fell twice as we scampered over mounds of what we joked was contaminated Soviet-era debris, not the usual routine for a sports story.

For our article on Czech baseball, we visited training sessions in Prague and Brno, the country’s second city. In Brno, as we observed a group of players at a national team workout, Riggio climbed once again, this time for a distinctive photograph that faces the batter from close range. Most teams would never allow a photographer in that space, but the Czechs were very accommodating.

But our report also took us to places beyond the field. We spent time at the firehouse in Olomouc with a right-handed pitcher who is also a fireman, and watched as the crew dashed off on an emergency call. We visited the team manager, who is a neurologist, at his office and dined with members of the team at a roadside McDonald’s — one of the nicest ones I have seen. Over another meal with players in Prague, I tried pig’s blood soup and goulash as we discussed pitching techniques.

I have never dined on pig’s blood soup with the Yankees or visited a Mets pitcher working at a fire station. But spending that time with the Czech players allowed me to see their genuine brotherhood and camaraderie, as underdogs about to embark on an adventure.

On one of the final nights of the trip, at the team practice in Brno, Riggio saw another opportunity, this time for a moody nighttime frame. But of course it was another tricky shot. She asked if she could stand on one of the dugouts, about 15 feet above the field. Two players brought a ladder, but by then Riggio, ever the climber, had already scampered up on top.

I stayed safely on the ground, to hand up her camera.