Not since Ali unmasked Foreman in Zaire...Telander knocks out Mariotti

Royko was a hero of mine. And he might have been a great reporter in San Fransciso. But I don't know if he'd have been, well, "Royko."

Part of who he was was uniquely Chicago.

 

This is undoubtedly another thread, although I'd guess most of the posters here never actually read Royko except in anthologies, and it was the day-to-day drama of 'what's he gonna say?' that made him great....

...but Royko worked in Chicago because Chicago politics was better than any sitcom, any soap opera, any script you could concoct.  He never screamed, he was never shrill, he just drove by and left everyone on the roadside with their hoods up waiting for the tow truck.  

Worked in Chicago because Chicagoans love their politics. Would it work in San Diego, or Houston, or Denver? He would still be great....not sure if people would care as much.  Didn't Downey try that column in LA? It's just a different landscape.

Sorry for the digression.

 

Yeah, me as well. Return to Jay/Ozzie.

 

Some great points have been made on this thread, but the interest in this story, regardless of whom it is about, is 1,000 times greater among the media (on this board and in Chicago) than it is among the people of Chicago and White Sox fans. My entire family lives in Chicago, and two of my relatives in particular, like myself, are Sox fans. I talk between 4-6 times to them each day about the White Sox. Since this whole Guillen-Mariotti flap started, I haven't heard a single word from them about it. It's not on their radar. Also, of all the friends I have in and out of the business and all my co-workers at my current job who know my Chicago background and often talk Sox with me, not a single one has even broached the subject with me. Obviously, this is not an overwhelming sample, but if two die-hard Sox fans and just sports fans in general can hold multiple conversations day after day about the team and Mariotti-Guillen never comes up, I think it points out that the media (Morrissey, Telander, Mariotti, the S-T and Trib editors) are much more obsessed with this "story" than the city they serve. Just my two cents.

 

Mariotti, who calls Guillen "The Blizzard of Oz,'' who called Thomas "The Big Skirt,'' former Cubs pitcher LaTroy Hawkins "LaToya''


So Jay isn't above using the "mock their manhood" card?

Interesting.

 

Well, yeah.

 

Excuse me for returning to Royko a minute. I just opened his anthology, "Sez Who? Sez Me." The first column has a section of reporting and writing that could be pertinent here, considering that Jay has said that Ozzie once went nude on him....

Royko wrote about a streaker who screamed from the entry stairs at the Billy Goat Tavern one midnight in 1974. After the streaker left, the offended proprietor Sam Sianis said he hoped more streakers came. He had a plan, and Royko reported Sam's plan...

He extended his hand, waist high and with the palm upward. Then he clenched his fingers into a tight fist, as if squeezing. And he rotated his wrist as if twisting.
"That's what I gonna do to that sommabeesh. And when I get done with him, he won't streak no more. He won't do nothing no more."
A printer flinched at the thought and said: "You can't do that, Sam."
Sam looked indignant. "Why not? He deserve it, don't he?"
"Yeah," the printer said, "but you serve food here. I wouldn't let you serve me nothing after you do that."
Sam considered that. Then he reached behind him and grabbed a pair of canvas gloves he sells to circulation truck helpers for seventy-five cents a pair.
"I'll put on one of these," he said. "OK?"
"OK," said the fastidious printer.
Sianis put on the glove, snapped his hand shut, and looked happy. "I hope he come back."

 

Yeah. Mariotti should have at least sent Slats Grobnik into the locker room for him. That could have been funny.

 

Dave, if I may ask, what's your take on the media being part of the story? Has it gone overboard here?

 

Thank you! I'm so tired of hearing mysogenistic insults hurled from one man to another. He's a pussy, let's call him by a woman's name, he wears a skirt, he's a douchebag, etc.

There's a lot of people, male and female, who would want to kick Jay Mariotti's ass and who could succeed. Gender has nothing to do with it. And as long as men keep using "female" insults toward other men, it demeans women.

 

Agreed, Cadet. On the other thread, I said that pussy is not a derogatory term. Fact is, I love pussy. ;D

 

Yes, I knew it demeaned somebody...

Someday, we're going to come up with a phrase that demeans nobody ... and nobody will use it.

I'd say we all do a lot of navel-gazing, but the Navel Society of America would shut this place right down.