Lake it Easy

Submitted by Ben Houser
May 10, 2010

When I first saw the tattoo on Nate Winters’ left shoulder, I thought it read “Lake it Easy.” It was unique, and had the date “8-05-08” underneath it.

“Cool Tattoo,” I said to Nate as he was riding in to his dock on his jet ski at his Winter Park, Florida home.



“Thanks,” he responded. “On my 17th birthday, my friend and I got tattoos of our favorite sayings on our arms, his saying, ‘How are you doing?’ and mine being, ‘Take it Easy.’ I just got ‘Take it Easy’ because I’m an easy going guy. It’s just something that I like to live by and I got the date under my leg,” Nate continued. “I don’t know, now people kind of see mine as, oh, that’s cool, that’s something meaningful. They see Adam’s tattoo and think ‘you are an idiot’. Why did you get a tattoo of “How are you doing?” on your arm?”



It was just a couple weeks ago that I learned about Nate’s story when a colleague, Matt Mccormick, read a story on him and passed it along through our E:60 management staff. Upon reading Nate’s story, it was a no brainer for E:60.



I flew to Orlando on Friday April 23rd and was ready to see the local celebrity pitch. Around 4 pm, Nate pulled into the baseball field parking lot in his SUV.



“You must be Ben,” he said to me through the window. I had spoken with his father, Dr. Tom Winters on multiple occasions before I arrived in Florida with E:60 cameras.



It was the beginning of multiple meetings between the two of us that has blossomed into a deep respect and friendship. Over the next couple weeks, myself and our cameras would follow Nate to school, wake him up at sunrise, and take him back to the helipad at the hospital where his life was saved.



Nate stepped out of the car, jersey in hand, focused on the game that night against Lake Howell.

I asked him if we could film him putting on his pitching leg and Nate agreed. It is an interesting process. I have never seen someone pick up a leg, take one leg off and put another leg on. This has become Nate Winters’ routine. He holds up his walking leg and explains the difference of why he has two legs with distinct purposes.



“This leg right here is a hydraulic leg and I can throw on it but it will give out on me and that’s what I was using for awhile and it gave out on me like two or three times,” said Nate. “I ended up hurting my ankle and I couldn’t throw. The leg I have right here is called an XT-9 and it’s made for wakeboarding and skiing and sports like that. It has a built in spring so when I bend it doesn’t give out it, actually like pushes back on me and throws me up the other way which is great for pitching.”

The pitching leg, as he calls it, has been crucial to his success. Nate threw in the seventy mile per hour range before a tragic boating accident cut off his left leg and much of his right ankle and achilles in August of 2008. If you can believe it, now he can throw a fastball in the eighties..



It’s now three hours to game time. Nate gets ready and heads out to stretch and work out his arms. I have planned comprehensive coverage of Nate’s second varsity start since his accident. His miraculous return to the mound a few weeks earlier was a success, but Nate didn’t get the victory. He was still looking for win number one on one leg.

I have a JIB camera, a large camera you see at major sporting events that can pan over a crowd that is placed down the 3rd baseline right next to the dugout. I have another photographer, Phil Iglesias, one of the best in the business, shooting all super slow motion material of Nate on the mound. I also have a third camera shooting the entire game in 24 frames, the standard for ESPN features. I didn’t know if I would get another opportunity to document Nate pitching. This was the final regular season game for Winter Park High School. It turns out they would lose their first playoff game. It was a wise decision to capture the game with multiple cameras and I was supported by E:60 management. This is the only game we film of Nate in HD.



The crowd is very large, around five hundred spectators. Virtually the entire audience is there for the same reason as me, to see Nate Winters pitch. Multiple local athletes, including former New York Yankees pitcher, Dennis Rasmussen, who won 91 major league games, is in attendance.



“It’s why all of us were here,” said Rasmussen. “We all knew he was going to be pitching tonight and why all of you are here and all of the support he’s gotten. To see Nate before the accident he had outstanding ability and was looked at by many colleges and was kind of on their radar. Now, all of sudden to have that accident and to set him back, but knowing his determination he was not going to be denied he was going to get back, get back on the mound and here he is and that’s incredibly inspiring for all of us.”



I thought that our E:60 cameras would make the seventeen year old junior nervous. Well, I was almost correct. It was his Winter Park teammates who were nervous. They committed three errors in the first few innings of the game. Before I knew it, Nate and his Winter Park team were down 4-0.



“I was just like how is this happening, like you’ve got to pick it up. Then all of my team mates were like, come on man, you’ve got to pick it up, you’ve got it, you’ve got it,” Nate told me after the game.



His team rallied, and exploded with eleven runs the rest of the way. In the 6th inning, when Nate was pitching to his final batter of the game, (Head Coach Bob King, made us aware he had one more batter). I spoke to the umpire at home plate. I wanted to make sure he was alright with us moving our JIB in a different better position to capture Nate walking off the field. The umpire obliged and allowed us to put our camera down the third baseline.



Nate got his final batter to ground out to second base. Head coach Bob King jogged out to the mound.



“Everybody congratulated him, and then when he walked off,” said King. “I still have a vision of him tipping his cap once again, and everybody out of the dugout meeting him to a standing ovation and I just think – Nate’s back.”



As Nate is walking off the field, he says he was concentrating on walking so he wouldn’t fall. “That would be embarrassing!” Nate didn’t fall, and all three of our cameras shot him as he walked into the dugout.



Nate got the win. He talked to us after the game saying, “My first win with one leg, it’s a pretty big accomplishment to me.” I have had the pleasure of witnessing in person Adrian Peterson’s 296 yard rushing game and Mets outfielder Endy Chavez’s epic catch in Game 7 of the 2006 NLCS. Nate Winters’ moment is in the same class and in some ways more powerful.

On one of our cameras Nate can be heard saying, “I want to go take my leg off.”



It’s not a typical phrase you hear after a pitcher leaves the game, but then again Nate Winters isn’t your typical pitcher.

He is much more.



Ben Houser is a Senior Producer for E:60. Matt McCormick edited the video feature that will air on Tuesday night at 7 eastern on ESPN’s E:60.

E:60 Extra: Mariano Rivera

E:60 Extra Mariano Rivera from E60 on Vimeo.

E:60 Liberian Amputee Soccer tes feat. Nas

E:60 Liberian Amputee Soccer Tease feat. Nas from E60 on Vimeo.

Tuesday May 4th E:60 presents the story of the Liberian Amputee Soccer Team, featuring narration and music by Nas.

Second Impact

Sports Science and Second Impact from E60 on Vimeo.

Last November, LaSalle University in Philadelphia settled a multi-million dollar civil lawsuit brought by a former football player. His name is Preston Plevretes, and his story highlights in vivid detail the dangers of athletes playing with concussions that have not yet healed.

The 24-year-old suffered a devastating brain injury, called Second Impact Syndrome, more than four years ago. His story highlights the need for athletic programs to treat brain injuries seriously.

To examine exactly what happened when Plevretes was hit by a Duquesne University player back on November 5, 2005, E:60 reporter Tom Farrey traveled to the Sport Science lab in Burbank, CA and met with John Brenkus. Farrey brought that actual helmet Plevretes was wearing in that game. Brenkus and his team analyzed the play that nearly killed the six-foot-two, 230-pound linebacker. They recreated the forces at work by having Jamal Allen, a former San Jose State football player, strike a crash test dummy approximately the same height and weight as Plevretes.

To learn about what Sport Science found, tune in on May 4, 2010, to ESPN’s primetime newsmagazine, E:60, to watch Preston Plevretes’ compelling story of lessons learned.

Art of the Reveal

In the morning producer T. Sean Herbert showed colleagues a rough cut of his feature about Preston Plevretes, a college football player whose career was cut short in 2005 by Second Impact Syndrome – brain damage from a second concussion that occurs before a first one has healed.

The E:60 staff wanted more details on the game, the surgery, context on similar injuries,  and involvement of team trainer and physician.  It wanted more of Plevretes after the injury and fewer ‘specialty’ shots.

Someone suggested a “reveal” – an editing technique in which crucial information is withheld until the middle or end for a surprise.

A reveal was used in the E:60 investigation of retired wide receiver Marvin Harrison, and his alleged role in the shooting death of Dwight Dixon.   E:60 built its piece on a 2009 interview with Dixon, and then revealed that Dixon later was gunned down in North Philadelphia.

Herbert used a reveal in his 2008 feature on MMA fighter Lee Murray, which held back that Murray was the mastermind of a bank heist in England and had fled to Morocco.  In his piece on sprinter Oscar Pistorius the reveal was that Pistorius was a double amputee.

“It’s a tool to keep the viewers interested because the story is being told in an unpredictable fashion,” Herbert said.

In the afternoon Herbert huddled with editor Andre “Dre” Ninchritz over the suggested changes.  Herbert also consulted with reporter Tom Farrey.

They decided to go with a reveal.  Ninchritz began the search for pictures and sound to fill the front of the piece vacated by the information to be withheld until later. 

Herbert’s ‘reveal’ won’t be revealed here – you have to watch May 4.  That’s my reveal.

Posted by Steve Marantz, April 26, 2010

Scratch tracks for Nas.

The MC drops by the edit suite Monday afternoon. After watching the piece, Nas takes 20 minutes for his voice over.  Not giving anything away yet. But trust me, you'll want to hear him.

Michael Jordan's Race Team

Frame by frame, producer Matt Rissmiller built his feature on Michael Jordan’s motorcycle race team.

The basic story was laid out in a day and a half.  Now, in the fourth day of edit, Rissmiller and editor Paul Carruthers hurried to complete a rough cut to show supervisors.

About three minutes into the 10-minute feature Jordan’s introduction to the sport is explained. The section involves Hannah Storm’s interview with Jordan. Three cameras had been deployed.  The “A” camera, a traditional shot without production equipment in the frame, had been on Jordan. The “B” camera, a/k/a “Rover”, had moved to several positions and captured wide shots that included production equipment and monitors. The “C” camera had been on Storm.

Why three?

“ If during an interview the subject is describing a story that takes him or her five minutes to tell you can cut up the answer,” Rissmiller said.  “So you would use maybe one or two sentences on the A Cam and then you can cut to the B Cam later in the story as long as their inflection sounds natural.  This allows you to condense the story. 

“ If you had just one camera focused on the interview subject then you would have to cover that cut with B-roll.  However, in E:60's case, since we have multiple cameras on the interview subject we have the option to cover the cut with B-roll or go right to the B Cam.”

          Rissmiller and Carruthers came to Jordan’s most startling byte, and watched it over and over.

“Well, at first it was scary because some of the speeds that I was going on the streets ....they were not quite safe,” Jordan said.

“Like how fast?”  Storm asked.

“Uh, I think on one straightaway we got up to like 157...which now thinking about it I must have been nuts.”

Jordan’s uber-celebrity, and his frank admission of a daredevil experience, shaped Rissmiller’s approach.  He stuck with the A Cam for most of the interview.

“On this piece, I wanted to be conscious of just allowing the audience to see MJ,” Rissmiller said.  “People most often see him on the sideline at a basketball game or fans remember him during his playing days in a jersey...we rarely get to see an all-access piece on MJ so in this case just seeing him on camera in this setting is more interesting than showing motorcycles. 

“With that in mind, it's not necessary to cover the entire piece with B-roll or music...people just want to see MJ in an environment that they've never seen him in before.”

Posted by Steve Marantz, April 20, 2010