Mark Whicker retires ...

Whicker: The stories don’t end when a storyteller leaves
Grateful for the opportunity to tell these tales for 35 years at The Register and SoCal News Group
By MARK WHICKER | MWhicker@scng.com | Daily News
PUBLISHED: January 31, 2022 at 5:08 p.m. | UPDATED: January 31, 2022 at 5:08 p.m.


Everyone has a story. Some are more vivid, some more complicated, and some folks have a lot more than one.

But the stories, and the hard news reporting, are why you’re holding this paper or viewing this screen.

Lately, our business wants to judge its own relevance by how many eyeballs and clicks it can provoke. It’s really not hard to do that. Just come up with Top 10 lists, or put celebrity names in the headline. That’s fine if you’re operating a vending machine. The stories are where the value is.

I’d like to read the story of Jamie Mulligan, from Virginia Country Club in Long Beach. Last week he was named PGA Teacher and Coach of the Year. That means he not only guides Patrick Cantlay to the FedEx Cup championship, he spreads the gospel of golf to those of all ages, and does it in holistic ways. On Saturday, 37-year-old Luke List won the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines, his first PGA Tour victory, with Mulligan by his side.

I’d like to know how Sean McVay looks at the rest of his career. If he’s coaching in 2046 (or even if he’s not), he won’t be old as Andy Reid is now.

I’d like someone to ask the baseball writers how they would handle Tom Brady if they were electing Pro Football Hall of Famers. After all, he was suspended the way fellow San Mateo Serra High alum Barry Bonds never was.

I’m curious about the Ducks, playoff contenders. Will they add talent at the trade deadline? Can they re-sign upcoming free agent Hampus Lindholm? Are they part of the circling throng that wants to get Jakob Chychrun, the skillful Arizona defenseman with the sweet contract?

I’m interested in how long it takes Lincoln Riley and USC to catch UCLA, much less the rest of college football. Bruins fans must have watched the major bowl games and said to themselves, “This could be us.”

I want to know how MLB commissioner Rob Manfred feels when he notices that 48 of the top 50 rated TV programs in 2021 were football games, and whether an uncompromising, pointless lockout is the best way for baseball to regain American hearts and minds. Or maybe I don’t.

I’m looking for signs that indicate whether The Asteroid will crash into earth before Andrew Whitworth retires.

I’m intrigued by the way Josh Giles built Southern California’s top high school basketball team at Corona Centennial, a public school no less.

I’d like to find out why Josh McDaniels is a viable head coaching candidate after jilting the Colts, or why Josh McCown is being interviewed in Jacksonville when his only experience is assisting at Rusk (Texas) High. Eric Bieniemy, Byron Leftwich, Leslie Frazier and Brian Flores would, too.

I’d like to know more about Aboubacar Traore, the freshman from Ivory Coast, who is averaging 8.1 rebounds in 20 minutes per game for Long Beach State even though he’s 6-foot-5.

I wonder how Rudy Dvorak and Dusty Dvorak felt when they watched Bryce, their son and nephew, get 36 assists as Pepperdine’s setter during a win over Lewis University the other night. Dusty won a gold medal for the U.S. in the 1984 Olympics and Rudy played on the national team.

I’ll be keeping up with the senior year of Megan Faraimo, who was 48-8 with a 1.14 ERA in her first three softball seasons at UCLA.

I’m hoping somebody will highlight “In Search Of Millionaires,” the highly-entertaining book by former Angels scouting director Bob Fontaine. Same with the book “The Eye Test,” by Chris Jones, which questions the dependence on analytics in all realms, not just ball.

But someone else needs to tell those stories.

I have decided to retire from Southern California News Group, and this is my final column.
It is being published exactly 35 years after my first one for the Orange County Register. That was about baseball collusion, in an age when the average salary was an outrageous $412,000. Today it’s $4.17 million.
Not many are fortunate enough to begin a professional career in 1973 with a capital letter and end it in 2022 with a period. I’ve never lost sight of what a rare privilege it’s been.

I’m thankful for anyone who has read any of them and for literally thousands who have served as intermediaries, interview subjects, running mates and colleagues.

But I’ll single out those who made it possible to work at the Register and SCNG: Chris Anderson, Jim Colonna, Michael Anastasi and Tom Moore.

So blame them.

And keep reading.

You can contact Mark Whicker in retirement at MWhicker03@gmail.com, and for the rest of Monday at MWhicker@scng.com.

 

Longtime All-Star... and a very good farewell column, to boot.

 

That's how you do one of those. Good work. He made it topical.

 

It's almost like he wrote it for someone who had been kidnapped and needed to know what was going on in sports.

 

I was waiting for some variation of that one.

 

Wanted to put some thought into it.

 

That's a pretty low shot, man, at a guy who made one big misjudgment on a holiday weekend where an inexperienced and depleted desk was unable to rescue him. He wrote 5-6 days a week for 35 years and that's what you remember. Sad.

 

Anybody care to explain what's being danced around?

 

Chris, did anyone on the desk have the authority to yank the column? Just curious.

 

Guessing it’s this:

Mark Whicker Leaves The Yard

 

I was about to post some variation of this. I wasn't happy with the alluded-to column, and I'm sure Whicker has taken a lot of grief for it ever since. It is the kind of thing that sticks out, that people remember and always bring up -- i.e. the kind of thing that could potentially ruin someone, and it probably would have ruined a lesser, or lesser-known/recognized writer. But I am glad that it apparently didn't do so.

And I am inclined to let it go. People do make mistakes, there are things people do wrong that they regret, that they would've handled differently, and no one is perfect, etc. So, we shouldn't always only bring up that one thing.

Mark Whicker is the kind of writer, and person, who should be able, and allowed, to enjoy his sendoff.