Texas Monthly on the death of sportswriting

I always keep in mind, it's the subject that makes the story, no matter the writer. That's why the spare style of "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold" stands up so well to most any profile written since. Purple prose, on the other hand, can often be the result of bruising. Give me a bigger-than-life subject and a writer with brains enough to get out of the way any day instead of the pretentious dreck of today's scribes angling for TV jobs as they pump up yet another colorless slob beyond recommended inflation pressure.

 

Cartwright sounds just like another old fart griping about today's "youngsters" and how things were so much better in the good ol' days. As great as Sherrod, Jenkins et al might have been "back in the day," even the few examples of prose Cartwright singles out as classic 40 years ago would put most readers asleep today because it uses a lot of words to really say nothing. Just a bunch of geezers trying to show off their literary chops and knowledge of literature (yuk, yuk) while patting themselves on the back.

Trust me, if you took "the best of" what the geezers wrote and put that stuff in today's newspapers, it would no more save our industry than if you cut and pasted Grantland Rice's great stuff like the Notre Dame Four Horseman story.

In writing all this, all that Cartwright reveals is how out of touch he is, and 40 years ago he and his ilk would have had a field day poking fun at what he has become.

 

But they don’t talk about books they’re going to write or mountains they intend to climb or the useful idiots they are obliged to engage in the course of their daily ordeals. Frankly, I don’t know what they talk about. Mowing lawns would be my guess.

Huh? What the hell is he talking about. I had lunch with a colleague yesterday. We crammed burgers and slammed beers for about four hours, mid-afternoon, and this is exactly the kind of material we covered.

 

Jenkins is a genius.
But if you ever read Reilly's "Missing Links," you'd know he had just as much talent. Whether he's ultimately misplaced that talent is a fair question, but let's face it: If Jenkins could have made millions off of one column per week and a bunch of TV hackery, would he have turned it down? Jenkins had to write books to make good money. Reilly doesn't have to. But that doesn't mean at his best he wasn't really something.

 

That was a shit column. Not worth my time. I don't care if he longs for the old day, don't be a dick to guys trying to do their jobs.

 

Yes, it is. But he didn't do it.

The author sounds like a Packers fan, able to do nothing except remember the good ol' days.

 

scattershooting while wondering who put the pine cone up cartwright's butt

 

Moddy, I've pimped "Confessions of a Washed-Up Sportswriter" on here several times because I love reading stories about sportswriting and sportswriters, and Cartwright has a ton of great stories in that collection.

As a teenager in the 60s, I grew up reading Blackie, Shrake (RIP), Jenkins, Cartwright, etc., and have been a fan of them for a long time. But this latest offering is a bad swing and a miss. He sounds very petty. But it doesn't take away from the entertainment level of "Confessions."

 

a dumb piece of writing. all agree.

the real question is Texas Monthly - what's up with that?

ten years ago it absolutely would not have run such drek.

 

Did the sportswriters in their prime 60 years ago look down their noses at Cartwright's crew and pen columns saying they weren't worth a shit?