Most of us red-blooded Americans enjoyed a long weekend for the Fourth of July, but Bill Madden of the New York Daily News was hard at work on one of the dumbest, lamest columns I’ve ever read. You may have missed this piece of work as you barbecued or blew your arm off with a mortar, but I caught it.
This is a time of year where we’re supposed to celebrate those who made possible all of our cherished freedoms, but this column almost made me wish we were a little less free. It not only subtracted a few IQ points off of its readers, but it also shaved thinner the dividing line between Sports Nerd and Comic Book Geek.
Recently, I took Madden to task for some remarks he made on WFAN about George Steinbrenner, as he promoted his biography of The Boss. The Daily News article also involved Steinbrenner, but in the dorkiest way possible. In my last post about Madden, I just thought the longtime sportswriter was just being myopic and selective in his memories of the Yankees’ owner. Now I think Madden might be in love with him. Because in Madden’s world, through Steinbrenner, all things are possible.
Here’s the premise of his column, entitled “If Boss Ruled Knicks”: In the alternate universe where George Steinbrenner owns the Knicks, LeBron James would sign with them in a minute, because George Steinbrenner is magical and everything he touches turns to gold.
Why is Madden even contemplating such a fantasy world this weekend? Because as you all know, George Steinbrenner was born on the Fourth of July. You all know this because Steinbrenner himself would be more than happy to drill that fact into your head with all the trumped-up patriotism in which he wrapped his team over the years. (Not so much from his Watergate-related conviction, but then again, what’s more American than illegal campaign contributions?)
It’s not until you get 3/4 of the way through the column that Madden mentions a deal that almost went down in the late 1990s, in which the Yankees, Knicks, and Rangers would’ve been part of one huge Cablevision-owned conglomerate. That fact makes Madden’s fantasia at least plausible. But even if this deal had happened, do you think egos such as Steinbrenner’s and the Dolans’ could’ve coexisted long enough to allow The Boss to still be involved with the Knicks more than a decade later? Of course not. Within 6 months, somebody would’ve dropped out or been murdered.
Marvel Comics used to have a series called What If…?, where various hypotheticals of the Marvel Universe were explored. Madden has basically written that, in one of the largest newspapers in America, about two of the biggest figures in sports. It’s not journalism. It’s not even opinion. It’s fan fiction. If the Daily News is going to publish stuff like this, why don’t they just run short stories written by 15 year olds where Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Jack Skellington?
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