Gary Smith piece on the Lamoureux hockey family

As an aside doesn't the mom look like she belongs on The 70's show.

 

I thought his last great piece was the Omar Minaya story.

 

This is entertainment, not the Algonquin Round Table.
If the average consumer of sports can find his direction again after one of Smith's tortured metaphors, then, yeah, it's "a good read."

 

I've been reading Smith for a while, so I remember the real gold, but I can imagine someone who just started wondering what the big deal is, much as I still do with Pierce.

 

"This isn't art - this is sex!!"

 

Your readers make it plain they want a well-done burger platter and you give them overcooked fish - time after time after time again.
And people - peers and not consumers - will eat it up and call it "brilliant".

 

Who said this article was "brilliant?" And what readers are telling Smith they want a burger platter? My guess is Smith has a pretty strong fan base among his peers and readers, otherwise why would SI continue to keep him under contract? There are still plenty of burger platter stories in the magazine, so giving them something different four times a year is refreshing. I enjoyed this article, but I agree it wasn't his best.

There are a lot of people out there -- readers not just journalists -- who come to sports for the human interest angle. They don't give a shit about someone's OPS or GAA or QB rating. They want to read compelling stories that teach them something about the subject, and to discover something that might relate to their own lives. Nine times out of 10 that's what they get from Smith.

That's fine if you don't like his style and think his metaphors are "tortured." Not everybody likes Faulkner either.

 

Lately when I've read Smith, it feels like the narrator is some altered state and I'm not.

I really like SI's insanely prolific new hire, Posnanski, though. His writing is so much more sober and effective. When he does that thing with lists, it's outstanding. And his Joe Paterno piece - which came dangrously close to being Smith-ish - worked for me.

Anyone else?

 

I really liked that Paterno story. I thought the Lamoureux one was overdone and couldn't breath. But too each his own.

 

Smith doesn't trust readers to see that he has found the "universal" in every story. So he draws a little picture of it at the top of every story. Then guides us by our little hands through the drawing so that we may understand the way the master understands. Then he slowly lets go of our hand at the end, feeling so much better that we have been taught life.

 

LOL