Sportswriters flock to television

A number of years ago – maybe in the early 1990s – I made fun of sportswriters’ migration to television. We were a paunchy, balding, unsightly group helping fill cable’s vast wasteland for a few extra bucks.

That was then. This is now out of control.

We’ve gone from minor nuisance to cultural menace.

What was once just “The Sports Reporters” is now a sports Armageddon. We’ve reached critical mass. Everywhere you look, there are sports journalists blabbing, gabbing, fretting, chatting, arguing, debating and, mostly, shouting.

On ESPN alone, you have “The Sports Reporters,” “Pardon The Interruption,” “Around The Horn” and “1st and 10,” plus several other of its daily shows – “SportsCenter,” “Rome Is Burning” and “Outside The Lines First Report” – include regular forums of talking heads.

(I woke up in a dead sweat the other night because Skip Bayless was in one of my dreams excoriating Mike Shanahan for a bad third-down play call. Plus, I saw an ear-nose-and-throat specialist last week in a desperate attempt to get Stephen A. Smith’s voice out of my head.)

If ESPN got out of the sports business tomorrow, half of America’s top sports columnists would have to send their children back to public schools.

Sportswriters have gone from the locker room to the green room, from “Get me rewrite!” to “Get me wardrobe!” We used to just write, eat and drink; now we just talk, eat and drink. Who has time to write?

(Heck, I’ve gone into some towns and seen sports editors with their own TV shows. Sports editors! Hey, I love those fellas – without ‘em, I don’t get published – but if you’re turning on your Sony and seeing a sports editor, you might have grounds for consumer action against your local cable carrier.)

Every sports columnist, it seems, is also on talk radio daily – talking, well, a lot.

After all, why type when you can talk? It’s relatively tough to craft a sentence – not for Couch Slouch; I just bang out my columns while watching Nick At Nite – and it’s relatively easy to speak nonsensically. Check that: scream nonsensically. That’s right – everybody’s yelling. Because if you want to be heard over the roar of the crowd, you’d better be louder than the next guy.

In addition, with all of our sharpest scribblers becoming serial screamers, there is a huge talent drain out of newspapers. Which brings me to two of the best at both, my erstwhile friends Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon of “PTI.”

(Disclosure: I used to be an occasional presence on “Pardon The Interruption,” but I was sent down to the minors and eventually banished from the program. These days, I co-host a cable access show, “Excuse The Disturbance,” with Nipsy Russell.)

Kornheiser once was as good as it gets as a sports columnist at the Washington Post. But, due to his TV and radio duties, he went from writing three columns a week to two a week to one a week to dictating “columnettes” into a black hole. All he writes now are biweekly checks to his therapist. He also plays golf.

Then there’s Wilbon. Apocryphal story: I used to know Mike pretty well when we worked at the Post. A month ago, I happened to be in one of the several country clubs in which he is a member. I went up to him to say hello – I hadn’t seen him in a couple of years – and he handed me his valet parking ticket to be validated. He also plays golf.

You understand what I’m saying here? Quality sportswriters are jumping to the other side, and when they get to the other side, they forget the ink-stained wretches they’ve left behind.

Now, I don’t want to get all emotional about losing good buddies like Kornheiser and Wilbon, because, frankly, I hate appearing to be this weak. But there are tears falling onto my keyboard at this very moment.

(If I had more time, I’d figure out a better way to express myself and end this column properly, but I have to go commentate on an ESPN World Series of Poker telecast.)

Ask The Slouch

Q. Major leaguers go to the minors to rehab after injuries. Where do minor leaguers go? (Lee Bailey; Gahanna, Ohio)

A. I believe the Pittsburgh Pirates have them all signed through 2012.

Q. Brothers Jerry Hairston Jr. of the Rangers and Scott Hairston of the Padres both have hovered near .200 much of the season. Any suggestions? (Leonard Greene; Milwaukee)

A. I’d give William and Stephen Baldwin a call on this one.

Q. “Rocky III,” “The Godfather III” and now Wife III. When will it all end? (Barry Goodrich; Northfield, Ohio)

A. It had better end at Wife III – Rocky went to “Rocky V” (and beyond), and that was just ugly.

Q. Now that Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez has virtually declared war on the United States, shouldn’t opposing teams be able to take Magglio Ordonez and Carlos Guillen as POWs? (Dan Murray; Spokane, Wash.)

A. Pay the man, Shirley.