Promoting a Comment to a Post

FOGTB and 1989 Monroe Dormitory denizen Donna dropped a comment about David Teel's last official column for the newsprint conglomerate that has come to be down here in Southeastern Virginia.  It's a comment worth sending to The Show. It's a gheorghey sort of tale, and, of course, Postcount!

The link is here: After 36 years, it's time for this scribe to begin a new chapter

Subscribers to The Virginian-Pilot (like myself) and/or The Daily Press have seen a recurring segment this week in a story sadly destined to keep recurring: Farewell columns from a proud legion of journalists who go by names such as "keyboard jockeys," "The Sons of Smith Corona," or even "Remington Steel."  Newshounds, hacks, and scriveners who write for a living.

As "write" continues to become "wrote," it's almost become . . . rote . . . (sorry) . . .  for us to wax sadly indignant here at Gheorghe.  But three things to note:

1. It's still a tale worth retelling.
2. The photo below just never gets old.



Tango and Cash, eat your heart out

3. Did we mention Postcount?

So, as industry engines and quantity-over-quality business plans beget the desanguination of our sports sections (and beyond), we here at G:TB herald the last licks of these folks.

But here's the thing that gets me.  Shirley Povich, iconic sports journalist extraordinaire for The Washington Post for 342 years, kept writing 'til the day he died in 1998.  Here's a link to his final column, printed posthumously.  Give it a quick read.

While I'm capable of burying a lede like a body in a back lot, I'll give you the takeaway: He was 92 and still had most of his fastball, plus maybe some Gaylord Perry / Amanda Whurlitzer special sauce. He might've been guilty of some old-man "they did it first (and, by the way, better) back in my day" barbs, he came by that pretty damn honestly. He was the only guy to cover the Mark McGwire's Ruthian assault on the record books who'd actually covered Babe Ruth as a sportswriter. Yeah, okay. Let's just hear the man out.

Here's a morsel:

To judge McGwire a better home run hitter than Ruth at a moment when McGwire is exactly 300 homers short of the Babes’s career output is, well, a stretch. It is not in the mind-set of nice guy McGwire to challenge the Babe’s place as the No. 1 idol and most famed personality in the game. Too many truths forbid it. Before he started hitting home runs, did McGwire pitch three consecutive World Series shutouts? The Babe did. Does McGwire in the batter’s box command the high excitement Ruth did with his head cocked back, a scowl on his face, his toes turned in, and his bat poised for that pirouetting swing that engaged all parts of his body? And if the Babe did whiff, it was with such gigantic gusto that the fans could still chortle.

Anyway, the world of sports journalism was a very, very different realm back when Shirley Povich retired after 50 years at the Post . . . and then wrote columns for the paper for another 25 years.  While I have seen some folks "retire" from the local ragsheets and then pop up in by-lines thereafter in ad hoc cameos, by and large that's not what's happening.

Anyway, G:TB freelance consultant Dave Fairbank, the more prolific of the Daves I know who write for this blog, has certainly earned the R and R respite he gets in the Outer Banks these days. (Interrupted annually by the OBFT invasion and our merry band of revelers.) And we sincerely appreciate the contributions he makes herein that elevate us beyond dipshittery now and again.

But with so much talent being systematically, mind-numbingly culled out of the newsrooms for several years now, aren't there minds like mine who'd rather be regaled with a series of his (and his comrades') intelligent takes and clever writing than what we get instead? The AP reprints, the online typo-graphy, the outright snarksmanship, and the tritely half-baked cracks at insight? If Mr. Povich could go on cranking out Post-worthy pieces until he was 92, there's more to be gleaned from this 'not dead yet" troupe of newsmen and women.

Just a thought.  Until then . . . Dave, rob has your next assignment.