Results tagged “wallace matthews”

I can't wait to see the Wallace Matthews piece about this bit of email:

The Mets obviously haven't done enough to take taxpayers money with their horrible stadium. Now, they encourage workers to skip out on their jobs and line their pockets, too--thus depriving the city of thousands of valuable man-hours! For shame!

And to promote this shameful, anti-patriotic effort, they use Jose Reyes--the man whose lack of grit and hustle has single-handedly cost the Mets a playoff spot two years in a row! How long shall we allow the Mets and Reyes to corrupt the youth of America?! For double shame!

To be fair, Wally has a column in today's Newsday where he sort-of compliments the Mets on their sweep of Pittsburgh. Back-handed praise is the only kind of praise he allows.

I never thought I'd write these words, but I'm a big enough man to admit it: I owe Wallace Matthews an apology.

Mind you, I still think he's one of the worst writers on the planet. But I also thought he was one of the worst human beings on the planet. I stand corrected. He has been dwarfed in hideousness by Howie Carr, a "writer" for the Boston Herald.

Matthews is cranky and joyless and seems to take pleasure in raining on parades. But he has not, to the best of my knowledge, actually caused anyone harm--or really wished harm on others. Howie Carr, on the other hand, wants people to starve.

Carr is a reprehensible right-wing talk radio windbag on Boston's WRKO (against his will, apparently). He lies somewhere in the Venn intersection of Bob Grant, Morton Downey Jr., and a playground bully, filling his shows with Code Word Bigotry and seething anti-gay invective.

He also writes columns for the Boston Herald. You've probably never read the Herald unless you've had to line a birdcage in the greater New England area. It's basically an angrier, more overtly racist version of the NY Post, aimed squarely at the Tommy from Quinzee set.

In this latter capacity, he authored a piece that appeared in Sunday's Herald, "Shed no tears as Boston Globe fat gets Pinched". I was alerted to its poisonous existence by the justifiably angry tweeting of BP's Will Carroll.

As you may know, there's a very good chance the Boston Globe will close down very soon. I'm ambivalent about the future of newspapers myself. And I have to cop to a snotty tweet I tapped out on Monday about how no more Globe would (hopefully) mean no more Dan Shaughnessy.

But I think we can all agree that the shuttering of the Globe would be sad. Not only because it's a storied daily with a long history, but because it would put a lot of people out of work--very few of whom are responsible for the paper's financial woes. It would also leave Boston with only one newspaper: the reprehensible Herald.

So again, I think we can all agree that the Globe's imminent closing is a very bad, very sad thing.

Wait, we can't all agree with that? Apparently not, according to Carr. He's dancing on a grave that hasn't even been dug yet. Why? Because the Globe is a liberal newspaper, owned by the NY Times Corp., and therefore is worse than Hitler in his book.

Keep in mind as you read these excerpts that Carr writes for the Globe's rival paper, and that no newspapers are doing well right now. So his insane, petty, vindictive Schadenfreude makes about as much karmic sense as the head of GM crowing about Chrysler's bankruptcy.

I ain't gonna lie: The Opening Night loss really bugged me.

Part of it was because I've only gotten the chance to see a few Mets games from beginning to end so far, and they've won only one of them.

Part of it was the team's general lack of urgency, an eerie reminder of recent seasons.

Part of it was battling back from a 4-run deficit, only to see it depart on a petty balk that might have gone unnoticed were it not for that cancerous little midget David Eckstein. (If I hear one more broadcaster call him a "winner", I will Elvis my TV).

Part of it was I knew it would sour my whole day, despite my best efforts to prevent such meaningless events from negatively affecting my life.

But mostly it was because I knew the media doo-doo storm would be in full poo-flinging swing. I knew that the Mets would be absolutely murdered in today's papers, on the local sports channels, and by the radio yakkers, all of them spewing forth with absolutely no perspective whatsoever.

I avoided all three outlets like the plague for most of Tuesday, because I knew what they would say, and I knew it would just anger me. Sometimes, getting annoyed can spur you on to do great things, but Tuesday was not such a time. I wanted to coccoon and wait out the media maelstrom until the next game.

But for reasons I still don't fully understand, I visited Newsday's online site late in the day. I felt drawn there by evil forces I couldn't resist, like Frodo aching to slip on The One Ring. And while there, I saw a link for a Wallace Matthews article entitled "Citi Field lacks real Mets fans". And god help me, I clicked and read.

I shouldn't be mad at Wallace Matthews for this literary abortion of an article. I've documented this fact at Scratchbomb enough times: The man lives to eat joy and shit out despair. I knew exactly what he would pen on such an occasion. And yet I read it anyway. I'm at fault here, not Matthews. He's just doing what comes naturally to him, like a dog eating its own vomit.

For Wallace Matthews, the Mets opening a new stadium with a listless, embarrassing loss is like eight Christmas mornings rolled into one. Except in Matthews' version, there are no presents under the tree for anyone and he gets to tell all the children in the world that Santa Claus was raped and bludgeoned to death.

With all that said, let's dive in, shall we?

As chairman of the New York Douchebag Sportswriters' Guild, I, Mike Lupica, call this meeting to order. First item of business, all praise and worship be due to Gorlaqk the Dread.
Hail Gorlaqk!
Indeed, Murray Chass. Second item of business, it looks like Eric Mangini might have a job interview with the Cleveland Browns. Do we think this is the next best move for him? The floor recognizes Phil Mushnick.
No. Not only did he lead the Jets to a disastrous end, but he didn't heed a word of our invaluable advice!
Shall we cut him any slack because that advice varied wildly among all of us from minute to minute?
Surely you jest! There is only one honorable thing for Mangini to do: take his own life.
My mustache and I agree. To go on living would do nothing but bring shame upon his ancestors. It would also make it seem as if our pointed barbs did no damage to his fragile psyche--which surely cannot be true!
I concur, Bob Raissman. So we're agreed that Eric Mangini can only truly find peace in the icy grip of the grave. The question follows: What would be the best method?

I'll get the juvenalia out of the way:

Wallace Matthews is a penis.

I'm convinced there isn't a more sour, hopeless writer in America, regardless of medium. Perhaps in the history of the world. He makes Franz Kafka look like Mr. Rogers.

If you've never had the displeasure of reading him, let me darken your doorway for a moment. Wallace Matthews is a sportswriter for Newsday, and he hates everything. There isn't an ounce of joy in the man's heart for any human endeavor. If he was in Paris during the Liberation, he would have complained there was too much confetti in the air.

This was going to be the part where I rattled off sportswriters who I think are good, but sadly, there are very few sportswriters in traditional media that I actually enjoy (this discounts various bloggers and sabermetric geeks like Baseball Prospectus). Tim Marchman of the little-read NY Sun is one baseball writer that I really like, and I'd be hard pressed to think of too many more.

After Marchman, it's simply a question of degrees of douche-osity. There are self-promoting douches like Mike Lupica and Tony Kornheiser. There are self-righteous douches like Phil Mushnick. There are cranky Luddite douches like Murray Chass and Bill Plaschke. There's the plethora of middle-of-the-road douches whose names barely register because their writing is all the same shade of pale vanilla.

Matthews is a whole different class of douche. In fact, douche doesn't even come close to capturing his loathsomeness. It was once said that Willie Mays only played in the majors because there was no higher league. Someone needs to invent a new word to describe the depths of Matthews' ugh-itude.