Mike Lupica Biofile

Fair enough.

 

When Smith was alive, Loopy WAS doing a good job.

As for Reggie Jackson . . . you lay down with dogs, you get fleas.

 

A person has to be pretty insecure to be unable to come up with a painful moment or an embarrassing memory in the entirety of a career that long. Especially when "Summer of '98" would qualify as either.

 

Thanks SF.

 

A good point, but replace "unable" with "unwilling."

Unless, of course, he seriously does not have the requisite self-awareness.

Am I a winner, winner of a chicken dinner?

 

I don't hate Lupica. I grew up reading him & used to look forward to his columns, but this answer also shows why he's jumped the shark.

The Final Four is his favorite event because he brings his kids each year. Now, the average fan has to enter into a lottery just to have the chance to purchase nose bleed seats at the Final Four, but Lupica is able to get four tickets every year.

Now, I'm sure he buys them, but he's getting a convenience that's not available to the average person from an organization he's supposed to be covering. Unless he's purchasing the tickets from StubHub, he's conflicted.

And, I know as a former NCAA sponsor how hard it is to get a hotel room downtown or near the arena. I doubt the Lupicas are sleeping 4 to a room, and I bet they also aren't staying near the airport or 30 miles outside of town either.

 

every time mikey kvells over his kids, his wife, his parents in 'shooting from the lip' i wanna puke. so i wanna puke A LOT.

we get it, mikey. you've got the perfecto, 'father knows best life.' no need to rub it in our faces. what freakin' self-indulgence. those shout-outs are for only the 7 people they're written about. any editor with half a nut would make him stop but we all know that' never gonna happen. you'd just think he might not want to rub it in everyone's face that he big-times his family 'behind the curtain' every chance he gets....

'insufferable' isn't nearly enough to describe what loopy's become but it's an awfully good place to start.

 

The last sentence is an excellent place to start.

And if what happened to one of his now-former colleagues, who is classy and anything but thin-skinned, wasn't embarrassing to him, he has zero self-awareness.

 

Most embarrassing moment:

Summer of '98

 

I agree:

 

Ah, that doesn't bother me, YF, just as it didn't bother me when Bush didn't cop to anything. In a gentler time when people (even presidents) could be taken in full context, it would make for a good discussion point. (My personal #1 would have been Obama's Homeowner Assistance Plan, which as it turns out could have been called HAPless.) These days, though, it would just be chum in the water for cable news and blogs if any politician admits to anything less than 100 percent correctitude.

When I first saw your post, I thought Obama had come out against Lupica. And that would be so awesome.

 

So now Yankee Fan was writing a comparison between Obama and Mike Lupica. The Messiah and the Midget. Old Tony said that once, he thought, and he liked it. It was 4 p.m. in the big city of Chicago, the great city - maybe the last of the great cities as Mailer said and Ben_Hecht quoted and Breslin agreed with - and as he cut and pasted a line from Obama, he thought, "Nailed him." And he thought of Boom and Fenian and of Politics boards long since dead and of political discussions still discussed, though often disguised.

This would make the crowd roar the way it once did for Reggie, Thurman and a tough-old pitcher they called Catfish. The post hung there for awhile, tantalizing, beckoning, begging to be placed on the board.

Now it was 4:15 p.m. and he hit post and you were again reminded of Bernard and Parcells and McConkey and all the other old New Yorkers who had a bit talent but a ton of guts.

Now people started reading it. Was there really much point in comparing a president to a sportswriter? Maybe not. Was there really much point in comparing a two-year-old career to a four-decades long one? Of course not. But Yankee Fan shook off the doubters, shook them all off on this chilly afternoon in Chicago. He posted it and people read it and some loved it and some hated it but he'd do it again. They call it the Chicago Way, but it takes a New York guy to show us what that phrase really means.