Have you ever seen a one-armed man punching at nothing but the breeze?

Sorry if unemployment has put me in a Springsteen mood. Although I should mention, "Springsteen Mood" could basically characterize the past few months of my existence.

I was listening to "The Wrestler" when the line that is the title of this post came up. Now I suppose within the context of the song, this line works for what Bruce is singing about, and makes sense when considered next to the movie, "The Wrestler," which was excellent and worth seeing. The song is basically about a character who drives anyone who is close to him away because he really only knows how to do one thing, and in this case, it's wrestling.





The line made me think back to an essay I read, the crux of which was how most Springsteen lyrics make no sense whatsoever, and only because it is Springsteen is he able to get away with such nonsense. My counterargument to this is of course the entire existence of the band Phish, who I believe outsources their lyric writing and still end up with garbage. All of which leads me to believe they must be the worst lyricists of all time, but that's not what I wanted to talk about.



I feel like to a certain extent, writers, and musicians for that matter, can lose their fastball. An analogy that holds all the more true when considering Rick Telander's column from yesterday.

Unclear and the cream :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Rick Telander

Now admittedly I've never been a big Telander fan but this column seems almost purposely misleading. He starts off by talking about Pujols, then paraphrases a Sports Ilustrated article about him, opens up a larger can of worms with Hall of Fame voting during the steroids era, and eventually closes by bringing it back to Pujols alone. My head hurts.

The column is by no stretch of the imagination fluid, and if I can recognize that without a formal journalism background, then so can other people.

Perhaps most concerning about some of the writing being churned up is that these are supposedly the good columnists. Enough has been written about all of the writers who have taken buyouts in the past years. Layoffs too have been responsible for a lot of talented writers falling by the waist side.

But when did that give the remaining writers the right to just produce drivel? Telander wrote one of the most famous looks into street basketball culture ever with "Heaven is a Playground" but nowadays he seems more content using his writing reputation to justify cranking out confusing and convoluted columns lacking much punch.

Perhaps there's a new media scare over at the Sun-Times. A lot of the purist sportswriters (cough, Buzz Bissinger, cough, cough) seem a little concerned that the proliferation of sports blogging is dumbing down America, and destroying what's left of sports writing. More and more people paint up an image of an unemployed, overweight, pajama wearing blogger just wearing on the springs of his couch in the basement of his parents' house (and for the record, I write from my room which is upstairs, thank you very much).

To paraphrase, this is wholly untrue. While anyone can start a sports blog from their basement, the successful one's, like Deadspin, KSK, and FreeDarko, require commitment, originality and quality writing. I think there is concern on the old school journalists part that blogs are creating too much of an interest on trivial aspects of sports- endzone celebrations, athlete arrests, and how many kids Travis Henry has. But if there is one thing the internet has taught us, there is pretty much a certain level of interest in just about everything. People go to Deadpsin for different reasons than why they read a Jack McCallum column.

If anything, blogging gives sports fans more access to more opinions. If this means that Matt Leinart ripping beer bongs all of a sudden becomes news because pictures are available, so be it. The writing quality might not be as high with some blogs, but most people who are going to blogs aren't expecting pulitzer prize winning writers. When that day happens, only then will the information being covered on said sports blog become an issue. And for the record, I'm encouraged that Matt Leinart does beer bongs as at least we know he's saved some of the money he received got at USC.

Telander himself wrote an absurd column earlier this year suggesting that Ryan Theriot was on steroids. This Pujols column, all but did the same thing. Telander's writing may be available in a newspaper, but he sure seems to be blurring the line between the old and new.

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