Drug problem

http://www.sptimes.com/2006/06/11/Columns/Haze_from_the_drugs_f.shtml

Gary Shelton's take on the drug problem in sports. A very well-written column.

And I'm not Gary ... couldn't carry his laptop.

 

Boo freaking hoo.
Go cover cops.
I am profoundly tired of sportswriters searching for their lost innocence.

 

Most of them left it at Mons Venus, I think.

 

Holy shit!

I agree.

(looks out the window for flying pigs)

 

AQB --
I'm not saying that the effect on the way we perceive and/or enjoy sports isn't real but, lord above, when did being a sportswriter mean demanding the right to be 12-years old your whole life?

 

My guess is sometime around the point when it became as much about the storyteller the story.

 

There's not a sportswriter worth his or her Marriott points who still has innocence to lose.  You can be in this business two days and understand your fan days are over.

Just elaborating on the boo fucking hoo.  

 

I don't know if it is sportswriters searching for their lost innocence as much as it is it is sportswriters searching for material for four columns a week.

You need to write about the drug problem. Obviously, you aren't going to write about how steroids have ushered in a new golden age of sports. So, all of a sudden, you have every columnist in America writing about how drugs have polluted the game. Because it is an obvious view point. Just like you are going to have every columnist in America writing tomorrow or Wednesday about how athletes aren't bulletproof and how they should wear helmets.

Nobody is going to opine that athletes shouldn't wear helmets while riding motorcycles.

I think that's the biggest challenge when it comes to writing columns (aside from, of course, god-given ability): finding a viewpoint that isn't so obvious. Sally Jenkins does this well. So does Rich Hoffman in Philly and Telander in Chicago.

I think Shelton accomplished this to an extent: i think he was writing more about the never-ending stream of news concerning drugs rather than the actual athletes using them.

EDIT: By the way, why isn't this on the Journalism Thread??

 

This "they've taken the fun out of it" stuff is a huge crock of shit.


Remember how good innocence used to feel? There was a time a locker room didn't resemble being backstage at a Guns N' Roses concert. There was a time when you might have believed that character on the field translated into character off it.



Yeah, when  I was 8 years old. Then the Dodgers and Giants moved from New York to California and my Dodgers-fan father told me about O'Malley, the greedy SOB.

Then I got into this business 12 years later and saw athletes not as role models but as people who played the games extremely well and could be very fucked up off the field/court.

Doesn't mean the games aren't still fun.

 

Plus, baseball players have been using amphetamines for at least 50 years.

 

Probably should have gone there. If Moddy sees this, please move it over there. I didn't think Journalism threads were excluded from this section of the board.

 

What a load of codswallop.

Shelton looks to be in his 40's or maybe early 50's.

He's been covering sports for what, 20 years? Column reads like it's first year.