This is an almost no-fail ending, especially for personality portraits. A quotation from the principal subject of a profile leaves the “voice” of the personality in the reader’s inner ear and should, additionally, reinforce the character of the speaker that has been established throughout the article.
Writer Pat Jordan (1994) profiled baseball manager Whitey Herzog for the Los Angeles Times Magazine, in an article titled “The Wit and Wisdom of the White Rat” (Herzog’s nickname).
Jordan’s last three paragraphs were: Herzog today seems less passionate about the game he loves, though still intellectually involved. He seems more determined to enjoy his life outside of baseball, too. So he accepted a no-lose situation.
The Angels can only get better, not worse, and the credit will go to Herzog. So what if he was overruled about Joyner and Abbott, if he must listen to Jackie Autry say she had no money to throw around, and to Richard Brown warn that all Herzog’s suggestions must be filtered through a committee.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
A younger Herzog might have raged, or even quit, over such things, insisting on the last word. The loss of such power doesn’t seem to bother him now, because the game has changed and so has his place in it. The power has shifted to the players, and that rankles him.
Suddenly he lurches forward, his elbows planted on the table. “You know what I don’t understand,” he says. “One year I made six thousand dollars as a player and I had to buy my own tickets to the game for my family. Today, you got players making two million a year and they want five hundred free tickets.”
He shakes his head in despair. “I just don’t understand it,” he says. “I never saw so many unhappy millionaires in my life.”