Pitch Simply: An
interview with Major League Baseball player Daniel Norris
Adam Fetcher
The Cleanest Line (Blog
by Patagonia)
Before reading this article I had already read a little
about Daniel Norris. For those who have not heard of him he is a Major League
pitcher for the Detroit Tigers. Upon receiving his 2 million dollar signing
bonus he purchased a 1978 Volkswagen van and has been living out of it
traveling to various surf spots during the off season. He is a baseball player,
surfer, photographer, adventurer, and cancer survivor. Fetcher wants go beyond these surface
attributes so his questions focus on the philosophies that led him to make this
abrupt lifestyle change. He also wants to learn how Norris balances the
different aspects of his life, so he asks him “You described a philosophy
around simplicity through the experience of living in the van. I’m just
wondering, how do you incorporate that philosophy into your training and bring
it on the field?”(Fetcher 16). Fetcher is trying to emphasize the complexities
that make Daniel Norris such a unique individual. The interesting element of an
interview is that the reader gets to hear directly from the individual about
what they have to say to question asked. So that means there are no authors to
manipulate what the individual has to say. But the interviewer still has the job
of facilitating the delivery of the information in the fullest sense. A big
part of Daniel’s life is photography so Fetcher incorporates many of Daniel’s pictures
so that again the reader is able to see an unobstructed view into who this
person is.
Daniel
Norris’s life is obviously intriguing to read about, but Adam Fetcher is also
someone who has unique experiences of his own. Before he became the Director of
Global PR & Communications for Patagonia he “was deputy national press
secretary for President Obama’s re-election campaign and served in the Obama
administration.” And just to connect himself
back to the article and seem more human he throws in that he is a Minnesota
Twins fan.
