Thursday, October 11, 2007

Wasted Promise

There’s been a lot of big talk in the newspapers and it’s taking its toll on the 2 train.

“What’s this guy’s problem?” asks Jon from Highbridge as he folds the paper in his lap. “He writes the same garbage every day. It’s Joe’s fault. It’s George’s fault. It’s Alex’s fault. Now it’s Derek’s fault and Jorge’s fault and Chien-Ming Wang’s fault.”

“The Yankees got beat and it’s nobody’s fault,” Jon continues. “Is that so hard to understand?”

“I guess it is for Mike Lupica,” someone says.

Lupica has never been too popular in this neighborhood and his stock is falling fast.

“He used to have opinions,” someone else says. “But now he’s just ‘The Queen of Mean.’”

Everyone laughs.

But none of this is funny.

There was a time when it looked like Lupica was going to be great, maybe the best New York sportswriter since Red Smith. But between becoming an author and a television star he lost what makes a newspaperman.

He still has the voice and the talent, but his humanity is gone. He no longer cares about the games and the players and the people they touch.

He’s just a highly-paid hit man who comes in when things go bad.

It’s a sad state for someone who had so much promise.

1 comment:

Henry said...

Who is going down tomorrow? It might be you. LOL!