piling on whitlock

It's going to be a great day in this business when Loopy gets his.

A great day.

 

It's funny... I know the book came out about 20 years ago, but if anybody needs a reminder of just how talented Lupica is/was, they just need to read Shooting from the Lip, which if I'm not mistaken is Lupica's only column compliation book...

Ryan is right, Lupica is great when he puts his mind to it. Unfortunately, he only does that a few times a year...

 

Ryan comes off like an asshole in that interview. He blames Lobel for not pointing out that he said something wrong...when in fact Lobel actually said "you can't say that...." and "I'll give ya a mulligan on that", its a popular clip out here.

 

All Luppy does now is recycle the same columns now over and over.

Now he writing fiction books that are nothing more than recycled stories.

As a columnist in NY he has pretty much become marginalized because he is not able to write about the Yankees or hockey with any kind of credibility.

Luppy was on the Sports Reporters the Sunday after the Mich/ O-state game talking about how great a game it was. Most would have assumed that he watched game unless you saw him signing books at NC bookstore at 3:30 when the game started. Then you knew better.

 

Lupica has become an irrelevant caricature of himself. Nothing he says matters anymore because nobody believes he knows what he's talking about anymore. There was a time when you had the impression he was actually working it -- making the calls, doing the leg work, getting to the bottom of things. There was energy and creativity in his storytelling. Now, you get the impression he just sits there and spouts the opinions of a comfortable, midldle-aged man sitting on his couch up in Westport or wherever. Maybe it's time he got out of the game and stuck to writing his mediocre novels because as it stands now, he's just an imperious little pundit with nothing much to say. Lupica, by the way, is also one of the most gifted sports writers of our era. He's a far better writer than Whitlock but without a tenth of Whitlock's relevance. Whitlock matters, Lupica doesn't.

 

Cranberry you nailed.

"Whitlock matters Lupica doesn't "

I am nominating that for sj slogan of the year.

 

Just for the sake of discussion (altho I agree with cranberry's excellent post):

Lupica isn't the first longtime columnist to slow down after years on the treadmill; there's no shortage of veterans who write more from observation than from the trenches.

Is that always bad?

 

Yea- if your readers have long memories and you contradict yourself like Lupica always does.

As Luppy tells us now he knew all along that Mac was juicing. He just forgot about it in his book.

 

And then there are the non - veterans, like Simmons, who write more from observation than from the trenches. Just couldn't resist that hanging curveball.

Boom, Cranberry - you both nailed it.

Although I'm not certain I agree with the take on Lupica's and Whitlock's relative talent levels as sportswriters. Lupica is by far the better technician, and would be compared to almost anyone. There are subjects, however, Whitlock could write about which Lupica couldn't begin to give a credible accounting of. Like being a college football player, for one. Lupica's a 'host;' JW is an 'analyst.' That's why I love reading JW on football.

But it's a minor point. Everything else you two wrote I totally agree with. Nice job.

 

I'd love to see Luppy writing about Michael Irivn "bojangling".

 

Frankly, what makes Whitlock "relevant" vis a vis Lupica eludes me.

 

My 10-year old nephew knows Lupica as the author of "Heat," not as a columnist. Albom's new book deal will put him in a very rare ring of rich authors. Not saying that's good or evil, just saying.

If "irrelevance" is selling millions of books, I'll be living in Trump Tower soon enough.