Web Didn't Kill Sportswriting; Lame, Humorless Writers Did

When the working day is done, sportswriters just wanna have fun—or at least they did 50 years ago, when hot-type dinosaurs like Gary Cartwright and his gonzo cohorts roamed Dallas in capes and leotards pretending to be Italian acrobats. But today’s mirthless philistines are doing more to butcher sportswriting than the digital undertaker, Cartwright grumbles in Texas Monthly.

They “don’t talk about books they’re going to write or mountains they intend to climb or the useful idiots they’re obliged to engage in the course of daily ordeals,” Cartwright says. They’re “absolutely giddy in the presence of bad puns and double entendres, but irony stops them cold.” Another old-timer slamming the new guys as unoriginal: How’s that for irony? (More Texas stories.)