In the aftermath of the end of Fire Joe Morgan, kudos to Deadspin for digging through the Bill Plaschke archives (a malodorous task, indeed) and finding that he tends to write the same story, involving different athlete protagonists, and how their lives are more often than not filled with a multitude of pesky distractions.
Deadspin found articles by Plaschke referencing distractions at play for Matt Kemp, Manny Ramirez, Brett Tomko (actually, Tomko's mother), Milton Bradley, and Tommy Lasorda. But his concern about lack of focus extends way beyond Dodgertown, as Plaschke has also written additional concerns about distractions for Lindsey Vonn, Tiger Woods, Terrell Owens, Kwame Brown, Michelle Kwan, Mike Dunleavy, Phil Jackson, both USC and UCLA football teams (separately), and the 2004 Iraqi national soccer team. Wow, that's a lot of distractions! As Deadspin ends its post:
You might have noticed that this is more accurately a list of things that distract Bill Plaschke. Distract him, a sports writer, from having to come up with actual sports things to write about. Lamar Odom won't play poorly because he went on TV, and he won't overcome the adversity of said TV show to play well. Those are just the easy ways out, prewritten narratives that certain writers return to over and over again because they don't have any new or intelligent ground to cover. It's the type of column one might submit if they were too distracted to write well, perhaps because they're on Around The Horn all the time.
Wait, Around The Horn is on? I've gotta go.
1 comments:
The fact that he ever wrote anything about Brett Tomko should be cause for public execution.
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