Adam Karon
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It is over.
My life as a sportswriter is coming to an end.
I see no white light, and I’m pretty sure my heart-monitor
flatlined sometime between the beginning of my infatuation with Jim
Everett and my brutal attack on the WNBA.
It’s a funny business, sportswriting. We are asked to
become experts on sports we never played. That’s like asking
a Midwesterner to surf or telling a city-slicker to catch a
rattlesnake with his bare hands.
The only difference is we rarely drown, and if we become
bloated, it has more to do with free press box donuts than deadly
venom.
For two years I wrote about football, but the Intramural
referees will be the first to tell you that even my flag-pulling
form needs work.
I can watch Mel Kuiper, Jr. until I’m ranking my friends,
but nothing short of playing at the college level gives me the
expertise to make sound judgment on my fellow classmates who happen
to play football for UCLA.
Two years before I was an “expert” on UCLA baseball.
Covering baseball might have been a little easier for a former
Little Leaguer who still holds the record for most packs of Big
League Chew in one cheek.
Still, I have not been hit behind my gigantic ear with a
90-m.p.h. fastball, so I have no frame of reference.
When it comes to the two years I spent on women’s
gymnastics, lets just say I was out of my element.
Still, as sportswriters we are obligated to dig and delve,
conquer and critique. What do I know about a Yurchenko layout?
It’s time to tell it like it is, sports fans.
I am not an expert. I’m a fan with a pen and a lot of time
on his hands.
This sportswriting death comes at a good time for all of us.
Your suffering will finally end, and someone new will take over
the area of the sports page you probably formerly reserved for
forming spitballs and disposing of half-eaten banana Now “˜N
Laters. Some people welcome death to escape pain.
Though I have not lived in anguish, I can’t help but feel
that my welcome has worn off.
When I came to UCLA, the football team was exciting, the
softball team invincible and the baseball squad was setting home
run records.
Guess you could say I am just a four-year jinx.
There will be no eulogy, and my only burial will come when the
floors of Moore Hall are swept and the recycling bins are
cleared.
Like any person passing into the next life, I look back with
regret on things I have said and people I have offended.
Giants fans, rodeo broncos and men with mullets, I
apologize.
Somehow I know this will come back to bite me when my afterlife
is filled with orange and black horses who are really pissed off
with my new business-up-front-party-in-the-back haircut.
No one will read me my last rites, but hey, I’m used to
people not reading.
Experts say Daily Bruin readership is down over the past three
years.
I started writing columns three years ago.
Coincidence?
You make the call.
Sometimes when people know they are about to die they take
drastic steps. They buy expensive gifts, confess their love, try to
repair an old grudge.
Well, I’m broke, I was never good at confession, and
I’m not the type of writer that holds a grudge.
If I could have one dying wish, it would be that everyone took
sports just a little bit lighter.
Do not hate an athlete because he drops a pass, stalk an athlete
because of her curveball or criticize an athlete because of his
hair. Save those actions for the sportswriters.
But let me die in peace.