Story of the Week

SPORTS JUNKIE. THE FINAL EPISODE.

    With very mixed feelings, this is to advise you that today’s Sports Junkie article is my last.

    I’ve never presented myself to be a professional journalist, whatever that is. I am simply a sports fan who knows a little bit about the subject. The first article I wrote was exactly seven years ago. On August 9, 2001, I led off my website with a story about Jackie Robinson, and every week for seven years I’ve posted my articles, 364 of them. I recently realized that I’m running out of feature subjects to write about, or I’m simply burned out, or both. It has become an effort for me, and that’s not good. After all, mine has been a seven-year show, and before it gets stale, if it hasn’t already, I feel it’s time to drop the curtain.

    It’s certainly time to drop the curtain on the selfishness, attitudes, disloyalty and dishonesty of too many athletes, the dishonesty and disloyalty of too many coaches/managers, the dishonesty of some game officials, the incompetence of two specific sports commissioners, and the stupidity and disloyalty of too many owners who have only themselves to blame for the asylums they run. I’ve written about all of this during the past seven years. Guess what; it’s gonna get worse before it gets better. Yes, I’m still a sports fan, but I’ve become a sports cynic as well.

    “So Irv,” asked the doctor, “when did these ill feelings actually begin?” I then told the doctor about Walter O’Malley, #1 on my all-time sports “hit list.” The owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers committed a Cardinal sin, pardon the pun, when he traded my hero to the hated cross-town rival New York Giants after the 1956 season for a journeyman pitcher named Dick Littlefield and a mere $30,000. Where was O’Malley’s loyalty to the man who broke the color line and became a legend and future Hall-of-Famer as a Dodger? If O’Malley felt Jackie Robinson was “over the hill,” he owed him the courtesy and respect of a retirement ceremony at Ebbets Field befitting Jackie’s incredible stature and his contributions to the Brooklyn Dodgers, baseball and humanity. Trading him to anyone, especially the Giants, was as insensitive as it gets. Jackie elected to retire from baseball rather than report to the Giants.

    Walter O’Malley passed away in 1979. As far as I’m concerned, the hole isn’t deep enough.

    There, now I feel better. As long as this is my final performance, I want it to be remembered.  

    To all of you who have followed my website down through the years, thank you. I hope I’ve brought you some knowledge, some fun and some controversy. Thanks for your interest in the Sports Junkie, and thanks for the many e-mails you’ve sent me on a regular basis. During these seven years, I’ve received e-mails from so many people I’ve never met. It absolutely amazes me how you all found me. The internet is truly incredible.

    I’d like to extend a special thanks to Jim Saylor for originally setting up my website, and to Howard Kemple and Forrest Myers for solving whatever website and computer problems that occurred from time to time along the way. To be sure, I know a helluva lot more about sports than I do about computers.

    My Sports Junkie website will always remain accessible on the internet. I have no intention of ever taking my website archives off the air. I’ve simply written my final article, and this is it. So again, thank you so much for these seven years.

Cheers to you all,

Irv