Further Review
“Fred White’s and Paul Splittorff’s commentary of college basketball [during the Kansas-Iowa State game] leaves a lot to be desired. A lot. They suck. Wayne Simien was called Tony Simien. Dwight Gooden was out there. The commentating was awful. These guys are baseball guys who should stick with baseball. It nearly ruined a great college basketball game. You had two baseball guys who didn’t know what the hell they were talking about. We are patronizing to these old guys. Anybody old we give a free pass. Not unlike Pat Summerall. He has sucked for fifteen years. If you can’t tell the truth about someone, don’t say anything at all. Don’t say something good just because someone’s old. If Fred White and Paul Splittorff want to accept a paycheck, they’ve got to accept what comes along with it. If I suck when I hit forty or fifty, call me out on it. Run me out.”
— Jason Whitlock, 810 WHB
GH: Whitlock’s comments about White and Splittorff sound similar to what many of Whitlock’s critics say about his work. But since he accepts a paycheck, I’m sure he can accept what comes along with it.
“That’s my biggest pet peeve about mascots: when one walks by and a strange odor is coming out of him. How friendly is that to the fans? So I try to control the monkey odor. I wash with a lot of Woolite to keep that fresh smell.”
— Bob Woolf, a.k.a. the Phoenix Suns’ Gorilla mascot, Sports Illustrated
GH: There may be no way for the Royals’ Sluggerrr to control his mascot odor. He can knock out a fairly large man with one whiff of his mane on a July day game.
“You must have been an abused child, because you sure have a lot of negativity and bitterness inside of you. Give me a homer any day to you guys who want to climb the ladder of sports notoriety by ripping the home teams. I long for the days of writers like Joe McGuff and Gib Twyman who didn’t have to constantly bag on the guys who should be our heroes.”
— R.W., commenting on my column (Dick Ball, January 17, 2002) by e-mail
GH: My heroes are people like R.W. who take the time to e-mail me their opinions.
