"The Team is Doing Well? That's Okay, I'll Find Something to Hate."

It would be un-sportswriter like to actually celebrate the home teams for any length of time. There’s a gene inside all sportswriters that kicks in about 5 years into the job that makes them (a.) loathe their job, and (b.) loathe sports in general. But instead of leaving their jobs and making way for people who will actually, you know, write things that people want to read, most sportswriters enter bitter cycles in which they cannot go more than a few days without resorting to writing something negative. If the home teams don’t give them something negative to write, then they’re forced to make tangential connections and use anecdotal evidence to make some ridiculous point that pretty much no fans of the team even care about.

Enter Mike Downey.

I’m not sure how long Downey’s been back in Chicago. I know he took over at the Trib when the guy from Boston wet the bed, got homesick, and moved back to the East Coast after three columns. Since then, Downey’s rarely written anything that could be described as “relevant,” “interesting,” or “publishable.” But since the Tribune’s stock tanked faster than New Coke, he has kept his job. Apparently, someone has informed him that he needs to be “edgier” or something, because he managed to pull a Mariottibloom yesterday. Let me set the stage:

The Cubs were on the verge of a sweep. They were about to hit their high water mark on the season (21 games over .500). So naturally, a column analyzing the way they have managed to find offense and re-establish themselves as the team to beat in the National League is appropriate, right? Of course not.

Apparently, there have been two (gasp! That’s more than one!) incidents in which Cubs fans (or at least people who apparently have no other distinguishing characteristics) have beaten people up. The first was in the Northwest suburbs and should have been newsworthy for a single reason: it was at a Sesame Street themed birthday party. After discussing the historical relevance of Mr. Hooper (RIP)*, three men got in a fight. Two were Cubs fans, one a Sox fan. One ended up in the hospital. The other incident involved what appeared to be a jawing match after the game, which escalated to someone throwing something (either a beer can, Red Bull can, or-and I hope this one was the actual item for so many reasons-a bag of trash) at the other fans’ bus. Fight ensues. Guy injured. Douchebags arrested. Life goes on.

For rational people, this would simply be a case of two incidents, involving a total of four fans (out of a Cubs’ fanbase of about eleventy billion), that just happened to be within the same week. Coincidence, nothing more. Most likely, had they not been Cubs fans, they would have gone off in an argument about whether or not Snuffleupagus is imaginary.
But to sportswriters who are paid to hate everything, this was A DISTURBING TREND OF VIOLENCE AMONG A RABID FANBASE.

From the beginning of the column and through a detailed analysis of every horrible atrocity committed by Cubs fans throughout the last 100 years (all six of them), Downey basically demands a Surge to deal with this rabid underground terrorist organization. In an effort to crap on anything and everything that might be enjoyed, there isn’t a single mention of anything related to the things they are supposed to be covering, i.e. the goddamn game. The only positive to this whole experience was a reminder to stop reading hacky columns by irrelevant sportswriters.

On a larger note, however, this ridiculous obsession sportswriters have with overcompensating due to the fact that they aren’t writing about “real” news is one of the most annoying things in journalism today. Just get over it and stick to the games. Let’s just make this simple: you write about the players and the game and we’ll read it, comment on it, and generally have a good time making fun of you. Leave the hard-hitting, moral outrage stories to real journalists like the guy from “To Catch a Predator.” Now there’s a badass.

*may not have actually happened.