Your usual collection of flotsam and jetsam painstakingly fished from the eddies and tributaries of my mind.
The team at Meadowlark Media has been incredibly prolific in the company's first two years. Recently, Dan Le Batard's folks launched a podcast featuring former ESPN personality Pablo Torre called Pablo Torre Finds Out. The Harvard-educated Torre is incredibly bright, and voraciously curious. The show has proven to be equally adept at handling serious topics and delving into extreme goofiness with entertaining results regardless. I commend to your attention as an example of the former the episode entitled The Teenage Athlete at the Heart of America's Culture War... Isn't Very Good at Sports, which is a well-reported and good-natured discussion of a trans female's high school softball career. Torre's recent interview episodes with Action Bronson and Desus Nice fall nicely into the latter category. Once you're caught up on We Defy Augury, I highly recommend PTFO.
In other self-entertainment news (that's fit for a family blog like this one), I've changed my social media habits a bit. I left Twitter a few months ago after Elon Musk's cringy anti-semitism and the site's increasingly bitter tone got too much for me. It's a bummer, honestly, because I once got real value from my interactions there. I've been hanging out on Bluesky, instead. To date, I find it eccentric, good-natured, and a bit wonky. It's still invite-only, so if you'd like your micro-blogging on the weird side, hit me up - I've got a handful to distribute.
There's been a new development in the war between the neighboring Catholic church and my dog-walking habits. Two days ago, I noticed that the church maintenance team had set up a barrier made of branches and a large stump blocking access to one of three pathways to the road that leads from the church to downtown Leesburg. It's clearly an intentional escalation of the simmering hostilities. So I took a page from the Bible (Matthew 28:2-4, in particular) and rolled the stump away from the path, just like an angel of the Lord did at Jesus' tomb. As Proverbs 12:10 says, “A righteous man cares for the life of his beast, but the compassion of the wicked is cruel.” I'm just doing right by my beast.
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10 comments:
curious about something, obx dave. who do sportswriters universally look at in the profession and say, "that dude/dudette is really good"? as a layman, i've admired a few scribes over the years. chuck culpepper is that dude for me right now. i seek his stuff out. who do the professionals feel that way about?
In a related, but possibly more interesting question, who are the writers that you loathe. ie. _______ is a self aggrandizing, unadulterated douchenozzle. (Fill in Skip Bayless here)
Everyone hates Shaughnessy, right?
jmu's sports glow-up continues. dukes beat gheorghetown to advance to the third round of the ncaa men's soccer tournament. they play loyola marymount next.
if your into such things, the ukraine/italy euro qualifier this afternoon has some import. italy makes the final with a win or draw, ukraine advances with a win.
or you're
the year of the dukes!
Rob and Tim, to (not) answer your questions, I'm a bad go-to for universal sports writer praise and slams. I've been out of the daily grind for a while and don't read as widely as I once did.
That said, Tim, I can say that Phil Mushnick in NY and Jay Mariotti in Chicago are widely reviled as assholes. Bayless used to be when he wrote, but now that he does TV, he's not worth listening to on that medium, either. Z, everybody doesn't hate Shaughnessy. He's plenty annoying but suffers from the same thing as many Boston and New England sports figures -- who he isn't, as much as who he is. He's not the revered Bob Ryan or Peter Gammons or pick a couple others.
As for folks who are destination reading within the profession, Culpepper certainly occupies a slot. Because there are increasingly fewer outlets that permit their people to wander and simply find and tell stories, a lot of terrific storytellers are more narrow or territorial than in the past.
Wright Thompson is on the list. When Charlie Pierce goes slumming into sports and away from politics, he's a must. Sally Jenkins, especially when she's calling out some injustice or asshat. Jeff Passan on baseball. Diana Moskovitz is excellent at deep dives into stories of abuse and sexual assault in sports. Scott Price (S.L. Price) in SI. Howard Bryant, though he mostly writes books now and infrequent regular columns. Steve Rushin, who writes occasionally for SI, is ridiculously almost annoyingly clever with language. He's also Mr. Rebecca Lobo.
I'm omitting a lot of folks. As I said, a lot of the best sports writing is tied to certain areas and states. For instance, if I lived in Southern California, I'd read Bill Plaschke all the time. In the northwest, John Canzano at the Oregonian is primo. Rick Telander in Chicago. Rick Bozich in Kentucky. Jeff Schultz in Atlanta. Many good people all over. A lot of lazy ones, too, who get by on seniority and access.
I’ve got some googling and reading to do now. Gracias, Dave.
Thanks Dave. I love confirmation that Mushnick is a fuckstick.
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