Comeuppance a Chicago Sportswriting Tradition

In my opinion, if I was an overpaid, under performing ball player I would want to work out of my funk in any other city besides Chicago. The fans are great here; however, in Chicago, energy is focused everywhere but on the field or in the arena where the focus and energy needs to be. We Chicagoans love to build it up if only to tear it down. You get what you deserve in Chicago.

To be a sportswriter in this town is like being an abused and moral stepchild of a bygone era in a candy store or a brothel house: an incessant search for the spoils. Sportswriters eagerly lay waste to the land like vultures with a vendetta, safeguarding the mad creation of the circus environment like angry pit bulls.

In the "City That Works" only the "strong" survive, the mentality being "I work hard so I watch you like a hawk to make sure you work hard too, and if I perceive your effort as 'not good enough' then I make your life a living Hell!"

Chicago sportswriters write to cause confrontation. They cause confrontation for a story to write. Like bottom-feeders, it is all fair game -- the 'product' that is 'our' sports teams can never 'get it right'. It is simply not good for business.

Makes me wonder when the likes of Jay Mariotti, for example, finds the time for a regular bowel movement. He must be so busy.

Does it make sense to attack Ozzie Guillen, who led the Chicago White Sox to this city's first baseball championship in (hello!) 88 years, and 'drive the s**c out of town'? Attacking Guillen for his teams' lack of fundamentals is truly small ball a year and a half after a World Series victory. But we don't care about class or manners in Chicago.

He criticizes Chicago Cub manager Lou Pinella for going ballistic. Predictable? Sure. But do you expect a Yankee to sit back and put up with this circus? And now you criticize him when he does go off because he "doesn't have any control"?

Pinella should use his 'indefinite suspension' to stay away as long as he likes. It will be a nice vacation away from the constant barrage of pseudo-experts and their blathering bile.

If Guillen's treatment has been small ball, Pinella's treatment has been Small Town.

And before you complain or point out Pinella's contract, I would argue that a sportswriter like Jay Mariotti is even more privileged than any MLB player or manager.

"It's not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the Strong Man stumbled or where the Doer of Deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes up short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither defeat nor victory."

This Theodore Roosevelt quote is framed and hanging above our oven in the kitchen.

Read a Mariotti article -- any Mariotti article -- and you will envision his ravaged prostate gland and his constipated constitution and you will know the dying breath of this "cold and timid soul" will be full of regret.

Source: http://mgspandg.blogspot.com/2007/06/comeuppance-chicago-sportswriting.html