Longtime Long Beach PT columnist uses column to troll for chicks?

I deleted him from my friends. I don't get tech messages, but I just assume if I can't log in, there are tech issues.

 

Apparently it's considered edgy. And it might just get you a job in the Monday Night Football booth.

 

Bingo! I'm glad someone agrees with me on the "arrogant ignorance" as I like to call it. And Tony K. is the worst offender.

 

In Krikorian's case, he isn't being edgy. He really doesn't know baseball.

Krikorian's the one who wrote several times that Billy Beane wrote Moneyball.

 

I hate it. I don't know why it's considered so cool - it reminds me of the kids in junior high and high school making fun of the smart kids. It's pervasive in this business - just listen to how many talk radio guys brag about their bad grades in high school and college, like it's a badge of honor. This is just an extension of this. No wonder fans on message boards get pissed because they feel like they know more than us. Yes, we're supposed to inform AND entertain, but the comedy act without substance is tired.

 

Got damn, you guys have hit on my biggest pet peeve with columnists:

Nothing drives me up the wall more when a sports writer -- someone who gets paid to do his/her job, which is to write about sports -- writes a column about his dislike/disinterest/ignorance about a particular player, team, event, sport, etc.

Like all those "I won't be watching the World Cup" columns. And all those "I'm a real 'Merican and don't follow the NHL" columns. It's all a bunch of self-serving crap.

It's not entertaining.
It's not informative.
It's not persuasive.
It's not compelling.

And frankly, to me, it means you're not doing your job -- which is to know about sports, and write about them. There are plenty of ways to do it without playing the "haha, I made a funny" ignorance card.

If you don't know about Andre Ethier, well, find out and then write about it. If you don't know why the World Cup is so big, well, find out and then write about it. If you don't know why NASCAR is so popular when you always thought it was just a bunch of rednecks making left turns, well, find out and then write about it. That's your job. Your job is not to be Joe Sixpack and write "I don't get it"; there's plenty of Joe Sixpacks out there. You get paid to "get it" and then share that acquired knowledge with all the Joe and Jane Sixpacks who care about sports.

If you take pride in the fact that you don't know who/what something is, then you're not doing your job. In any other line of work, not doing your job will usually get you fired. If you write a "proudly ignorant" column, you are obviously not qualified to do this job.

Bah.

 

Beloved Southern California columnist? In his own mind, perhaps. I would ask where his editor has been all these years, but the P-T's staff never has been that big and is micro-sized in the Singleton era.

 

I used to have a mail subscription to the L.A. Herald-Examiner because they were very creative with their presentation in the 1980s. Krikorian's face was so far up Abdul-Jabbar's ass that it looked like Kareem had a tail.

 

It took four posts to post his column. It's about four posts too long.

 

Glad that I wasn't the only one who had flashes of Bob Greene.