A columnist searches for — and finds — fun in sportswriting again
Dave Kindred |
Oct. 22, 2009 8:01 a.m.
Ever read sportswriting that’s fun anymore?
There I was tooling along the information superhighway in search of that rare category when I went spinning into a ditch.
I had seen a headline that said:
"Why Randy Galloway Will Be Dressed Like a Pregnant Girl Next Tuesday."
Most days, Galloway is a big graying galoot who writes, talks, and breathes Texas macho. Meaning blue jeans, cowboy boots, pearl-buttoned shirts, and belt buckles blessed by Chuck Norris. Nobody does Texas scribbler better than Galloway, who would win many votes as the Fort Worth Star-Telegram’s least likely mother-to-be.
"We had a little bet, Mr. Randy and I, on our little blogcast last Tuesday." So began Jennifer Floyd Engel’s explanation to readers last March. Galloway, I’ve known forever. Engel, another Star-Telegram columnist, I discovered just before spinning into the ditch. "I had written in my column (she went on) that your Dallas Cowboys were going to cut T.O."
Galloway had argued otherwise.
"He said I was an idiot."
Thus the bet: "If the Cowboys cut T.O., he had to wear what has become a pregnancy staple in my wardrobe, my ‘It’s A Girl’ shirt in a future blogcast."
Two days later, Cowboys’ owner Jerry Jones cut Terrell Owens, allowing the giddy Engel to write, "And oh my, my, I can not wait to see Mr. Randy looking all pretty next Tuesday . . . And for this, can I just scream . . .YOU MY BOY JERRY."
If you’re going to drive off into that Star-Telegram ditch and fall in with Galloway and Engel, you’re stuck for the next couple hours reading sports stories that remind you of what it’s so easy to forget. Hey, the games are fun. Have fun, boys and girls.
I’m here to tell you that before I got out of that ditch, the strangest thing happened. I read so much Jennifer Floyd Engel stuff that I understood it – and I say that in the kindest, most complimentary way. She uses nicknames and acronyms that she never explains. Her words ring with familiarity on subjects unfamiliar to the uninitiated. And that’s half the fun. She trusts that you didn’t just fall off the turnip truck and if you scratch your haircut long enough, you’ll catch on and she’ll be waiting with a smile to tell you . . .
`"TCU wideout Jeremy Kerley is bananas."
Meaning beyond the reach of normal adjectives.
And then, her riff on his punt return:
"Kerley reversed field, like, 10 times. He started out wide, with speed, angling toward the sideline. He made a guy miss, then another, then another with five being the final consensus. Hemmed in by the sideline, he twinkle-toed to keep himself in bounds before weaving back into the open field. He cut one way, then another, then another until he had a clear path to the end zone for six points in nasty, sick, bananas fashion. ‘Could I do it again? Yeah,’ Kerley said. ‘I might be a little tired.’"
Galloway and Engel do a video together each Tuesday. A recent one began, Mr. Randy saying, "Welcome to ‘Oh, another one of those," and he nodded, casual gunslinger-like, to Engel across the table, "Little ball of hate, and I’m . . ."
Excuse me? Did he call his esteemed colleague a little ball of hate?
As I would learn, the Dallas Stars once had a small, feisty, mix-it-up player who’d been proud of being called the Little Ball of Hate. Galloway thought it fit the small, feisty, won’t-shy-away-from-contact Engel, once the Stars’ beat reporter. It became an endearment, sometimes written as LBOH. "A nickname Mr. Randy gave me," she says, "not a life’s philosophy."
LBOH often writes about RHG, the red-headed genius. He is the Cowboys’ offensive coordinator Jason Garrett. "I bestowed this nickname upon him last season because, well, what he had done with this Cowboys offense was nothing short of genius." Besides, JG has red hair. The beleaguered Cowboys coach, Wade Phillips, is Coach Wade on good days, and on most days is Coach Cupcake, "soft and creamy with icing on top."
Engel sentences on a dismal season so far for quarterback Tony Romo: "He does not sound or play like himself, either. He missed throws he used to make blindfolded, talks like Wade Phillips and seems to have lost his joy for playing. And who is going to help him? You, Coach Cupcake? You, Redheaded Genius? Hardly. . . .What he needs is Big Bill. Of course, as Big Bill always says, he’s up to his butt in alligators in Miami." Big Bill being Parcells.
Intentionally provocative in the Cowboys’ backyard? Probably. Unfair to Phillips? Maybe. Readable? Certainly. As Engel’s sports editor, Joe Garza, says, "Half the readers love her, half hate her." Galloway is a master at poking the bear without getting a claw across his mustache. Through three decades of beat work, columns and radio shows, he has made himself the voice of Dallas-Fort Worth sports. "He’s the standard for all of us," says Engel, only two years into doing what she calls "the big-girl column." For her, the thrill ride has just begun.
Oddly, my search for fun in sportswriting came because I was fed up with the Rush Limbaugh hoohah. I quit listening to him long ago. If he wanted to be in the NFL, did I care? Better a gas bag than a dog killer. Did any sportswriter care enough about not caring at all about Limbaugh as to write a common sense column?
I found only one.
Jennifer Floyd Engel.
Didn’t like her lede.
"Mega dittos, Rush."
Liked the rest.
She wrote, "We are talking about owning a sports team, right? Not leader of the free world, or pastor, or teacher? I thought so So this fake outrage, that somehow a person needs to be controversy-free, PC, and politically moderate to be able to revenue-share with other rich, white, politically like-minded males would be amusing if it wasn’t so transparent, partisan and pathetic.
"Do not be fooled. Rush and the Rams are just the latest battle ground in the all-too-predictable and frighteningly ugly Right v. Left, Red State v. Blue State, Us v. Them divisiveness that bogs us down daily."
She found the NFL guilty of using the same sort of double standard that Limbaugh has used to get rich and famous. In essence, she said they belonged together.
Which is, in its own way, funny.
But not as funny as Mr. Randy on the next blogcast accepting, with proper humility, his "It’s A Girl" shirt.
Two weeks later, it was a girl, Vivian McRae Engel, 6 pounds, 12 ounces.
Mother says daughter is bananas.
Dave Kindred’s next book will be "Morning Miracle," an inside-the-newsroom account of two years in the life of The Washington Post. Now a contributing writer at Golf Digest, Kindred is a Red Smith Award winner and member of the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association Hall of Fame. He can be reached at inkstained1@aol.com.
There I was tooling along the information superhighway in search of that rare category when I went spinning into a ditch.
I had seen a headline that said:
"Why Randy Galloway Will Be Dressed Like a Pregnant Girl Next Tuesday."
Most days, Galloway is a big graying galoot who writes, talks, and breathes Texas macho. Meaning blue jeans, cowboy boots, pearl-buttoned shirts, and belt buckles blessed by Chuck Norris. Nobody does Texas scribbler better than Galloway, who would win many votes as the Fort Worth Star-Telegram’s least likely mother-to-be.
"We had a little bet, Mr. Randy and I, on our little blogcast last Tuesday." So began Jennifer Floyd Engel’s explanation to readers last March. Galloway, I’ve known forever. Engel, another Star-Telegram columnist, I discovered just before spinning into the ditch. "I had written in my column (she went on) that your Dallas Cowboys were going to cut T.O."
Galloway had argued otherwise.
"He said I was an idiot."
Thus the bet: "If the Cowboys cut T.O., he had to wear what has become a pregnancy staple in my wardrobe, my ‘It’s A Girl’ shirt in a future blogcast."
Two days later, Cowboys’ owner Jerry Jones cut Terrell Owens, allowing the giddy Engel to write, "And oh my, my, I can not wait to see Mr. Randy looking all pretty next Tuesday . . . And for this, can I just scream . . .YOU MY BOY JERRY."
If you’re going to drive off into that Star-Telegram ditch and fall in with Galloway and Engel, you’re stuck for the next couple hours reading sports stories that remind you of what it’s so easy to forget. Hey, the games are fun. Have fun, boys and girls.
I’m here to tell you that before I got out of that ditch, the strangest thing happened. I read so much Jennifer Floyd Engel stuff that I understood it – and I say that in the kindest, most complimentary way. She uses nicknames and acronyms that she never explains. Her words ring with familiarity on subjects unfamiliar to the uninitiated. And that’s half the fun. She trusts that you didn’t just fall off the turnip truck and if you scratch your haircut long enough, you’ll catch on and she’ll be waiting with a smile to tell you . . .
`"TCU wideout Jeremy Kerley is bananas."
Meaning beyond the reach of normal adjectives.
And then, her riff on his punt return:
"Kerley reversed field, like, 10 times. He started out wide, with speed, angling toward the sideline. He made a guy miss, then another, then another with five being the final consensus. Hemmed in by the sideline, he twinkle-toed to keep himself in bounds before weaving back into the open field. He cut one way, then another, then another until he had a clear path to the end zone for six points in nasty, sick, bananas fashion. ‘Could I do it again? Yeah,’ Kerley said. ‘I might be a little tired.’"
Galloway and Engel do a video together each Tuesday. A recent one began, Mr. Randy saying, "Welcome to ‘Oh, another one of those," and he nodded, casual gunslinger-like, to Engel across the table, "Little ball of hate, and I’m . . ."
Excuse me? Did he call his esteemed colleague a little ball of hate?
As I would learn, the Dallas Stars once had a small, feisty, mix-it-up player who’d been proud of being called the Little Ball of Hate. Galloway thought it fit the small, feisty, won’t-shy-away-from-contact Engel, once the Stars’ beat reporter. It became an endearment, sometimes written as LBOH. "A nickname Mr. Randy gave me," she says, "not a life’s philosophy."
LBOH often writes about RHG, the red-headed genius. He is the Cowboys’ offensive coordinator Jason Garrett. "I bestowed this nickname upon him last season because, well, what he had done with this Cowboys offense was nothing short of genius." Besides, JG has red hair. The beleaguered Cowboys coach, Wade Phillips, is Coach Wade on good days, and on most days is Coach Cupcake, "soft and creamy with icing on top."
Engel sentences on a dismal season so far for quarterback Tony Romo: "He does not sound or play like himself, either. He missed throws he used to make blindfolded, talks like Wade Phillips and seems to have lost his joy for playing. And who is going to help him? You, Coach Cupcake? You, Redheaded Genius? Hardly. . . .What he needs is Big Bill. Of course, as Big Bill always says, he’s up to his butt in alligators in Miami." Big Bill being Parcells.
Intentionally provocative in the Cowboys’ backyard? Probably. Unfair to Phillips? Maybe. Readable? Certainly. As Engel’s sports editor, Joe Garza, says, "Half the readers love her, half hate her." Galloway is a master at poking the bear without getting a claw across his mustache. Through three decades of beat work, columns and radio shows, he has made himself the voice of Dallas-Fort Worth sports. "He’s the standard for all of us," says Engel, only two years into doing what she calls "the big-girl column." For her, the thrill ride has just begun.
Oddly, my search for fun in sportswriting came because I was fed up with the Rush Limbaugh hoohah. I quit listening to him long ago. If he wanted to be in the NFL, did I care? Better a gas bag than a dog killer. Did any sportswriter care enough about not caring at all about Limbaugh as to write a common sense column?
I found only one.
Jennifer Floyd Engel.
Didn’t like her lede.
"Mega dittos, Rush."
Liked the rest.
She wrote, "We are talking about owning a sports team, right? Not leader of the free world, or pastor, or teacher? I thought so So this fake outrage, that somehow a person needs to be controversy-free, PC, and politically moderate to be able to revenue-share with other rich, white, politically like-minded males would be amusing if it wasn’t so transparent, partisan and pathetic.
"Do not be fooled. Rush and the Rams are just the latest battle ground in the all-too-predictable and frighteningly ugly Right v. Left, Red State v. Blue State, Us v. Them divisiveness that bogs us down daily."
She found the NFL guilty of using the same sort of double standard that Limbaugh has used to get rich and famous. In essence, she said they belonged together.
Which is, in its own way, funny.
But not as funny as Mr. Randy on the next blogcast accepting, with proper humility, his "It’s A Girl" shirt.
Two weeks later, it was a girl, Vivian McRae Engel, 6 pounds, 12 ounces.
Mother says daughter is bananas.
Dave Kindred’s next book will be "Morning Miracle," an inside-the-newsroom account of two years in the life of The Washington Post. Now a contributing writer at Golf Digest, Kindred is a Red Smith Award winner and member of the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association Hall of Fame. He can be reached at inkstained1@aol.com.
