A: Yes. To be sure your local columnist or golf broadcaster isn’t a member, simply lift up his comb-over and look for a shamrock tattoo with the number 666 on it. If you see one, don’t fuck with him. He’s hardcore.
The dregs of humanity: your guide to the average sports columnist.
All major newspapers and sports Web sites employ beat writers that do the yeoman’s work of attending press conferences, covering games on a day-to-day basis, and interviewing you in the locker room while your cock is still hanging out. These are the only people in sports media who serve any useful purpose. They are tireless, dedicated professionals who lay the journalistic foundation for the rest of the sports media industry by following teams back and forth across the country and reporting the basic facts about you and your team. After paying dues for decades, many of them go on to become excellent investigative reporters and feature writers.
And all of them are total suckers.
The real money is in being a columnist. Sports columnists are the ones who get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars every year to type up the same opinions you can get from caller 42 on The Jim Rome Show. Many, like Ron Borges, will even lift them verbatim. It’s a nice tribute to the common man. None of the opinions your hometown columnist offers will be the least bit insightful or original (just like the content of this book!). He may even contradict himself within the same column. Why does he get paid so much to be so inane? Simple: columnists are hired by editors to boost the overall self-esteem of the general sporting public. Most fans read the work of an idiot like Jay Mariotti and conclude, “Christ, I’m smarter than this asshole.” And they’re right. That helps make them feel more confident and better informed.
Unfamiliar with the distinguishing characteristics that make these gents such miserable human beings to be around? Not to worry. I’ve listed them here for you.
Height: 5'4"
Weight: Either 100 pounds or 400 pounds. There is no in-between.
Salary: Six figures at a newspaper. Working at a newspaper is a union job, and newspaper columnists are the only people on Earth who earn more to do nothing than your local Teamsters.
Favorite Food: Pasta primavera that’s been sitting in a hotel pan for four hours or more, Caesar salad made entirely with Caesar dressing and croutons, muffins, brownies, blondies, bacon paste
Preferred Stance: Inside press box, hunched over laptop, sweating, occasionally snickering to self
Wardrobe: Pleated Haggar pants, American Eagle Outfitters denim dress shirt
Favorite Brand of Cigarettes for Smoking Three Packs a Day: Pall Mall
Teeth Color: Grayish mustard
Skin: Thinner than a pubic hair
Hair: None
Musk: Turkish bath, with just a hint of Beefeater
Preferred Name While Cross-dressing: Sheila
Turn-ons: Children, sound of own voice, Sanka, fresh tray of eggs Benedict at Quality Inn breakfast spread, old Smith-Corona typewriters, free promotional golf shirts, radio show call-ins, mute hookers, a Xanax prescription refill, talking with others about back pain
Turnoffs: Sports, you performing well, criticism, effort, the sinking feeling that the rise of self-publishing electronic media will lead to his inevitable and just demise
Marital Status: Thrice divorced
Children: Two, whom he never sees
How to Get Him to Like You: Don’t bother trying to curry favor with your hometown columnist. His job is to bitch about you no matter what you do. If you don’t talk to him, he’ll crucify you for being media-unfriendly, and actually assume readers will care about such a characteristic. If you give him a decent quote to work with, he’ll thank you, and then crucify you for speaking your mind. You can’t win, nor should you even try. Turn the page to see what I mean.
Credo: “No cheering in the press box.” Peter King once said he never roots for a team, but that he roots for a story. This is a hard-and-fast belief among all sportswriters. They don’t care about your game. They care about using your game as a way to indirectly talk about themselves. It’s a bold, innovative way of being completely useless, and it helps explain why Peter King so often writes about playing with his dog and going to the proctologist.
HEAR IT FROM A COLUMNIST!
I’m the star here, asshole
by Mike Lupica, New York Daily News columnist
Hey, you.
Yeah, you.
Let me explain something to you before you walk out onto that field for the first time, okay? I’m gonna tell you a little something about how this whole industry works. And take it from me, because I’ve been around here a whole lot longer than you have. So I think I have a pretty goddamn good idea of what I’m talking about.
I’m the star here, asshole.
You hear me?
I AM THE STAR HERE.