Gary Cartwright
Game Over
The decline of sportswriting in Texas can be blamed on many things—the collapsing newspaper business, for one—but the real problem is that nobody’s having fun anymore.
8 comments
Monday, June 15th, 2009, 2:48 pm
Mike Rothstein says:
Who is Gary Cartwright?
Saturday, June 6th, 2009, 8:18 pm
Shirley Q says:
How can you write this piece and not include Dan Cook from San Antonio? He was a Geezer among Geezers.
Friday, May 15th, 2009, 12:39 pm
Mike says:
Yawn. I get it: "We were better in the old days. These young guys -- they couldn’t carry our jocks." I will admit that in more than a few cases, it’s true, esp. with Jenkins and Shrake. But where is Cartwright’s opinion on what is wrong with sports writing today? Surely, it’s not as simple as, "We were great. These guys suck." A weak, mail-it-in article. I hope the mag’s editors asked for their money back from Cartwright after he turned in this tripe.
Wednesday, May 13th, 2009, 8:21 am
Lisa says:
Blah, blah, blah. What self-indulgent tripe. Newspaper columnists are mostly awful, but not for the reasons Cartwright cited.
I really don’t need a sports columnist to try to be the next Hemingway. What I’d like to see is a writer who can actually analyze what happened on - and off - the field, and make an informed and original opinion about it. That’s why blogs have become so popular. Because instead of reading a columnist regurgitating his sources’ talking points, bloggers actually have original takes.
Wednesday, May 13th, 2009, 12:10 am
gary says:
My response to the Houston Press blog about Gary’s TM article gary gary brandenberger says:
the "Mad Dogs" Gary Cartwright could skin a pit bulldog put its the
skin back on and paint a smile on his face and still get a kiss. Dan, Blackie and Shrake did it without the skinning it back part and also got the kiss.
i guess i was the younger dawg breathing in the flavor of their stories. Sports writing is a long way from their gonzo approach. i say lets get back to the basics of the "Mad Dogs"
Posted On: Tuesday, May. 12 2009 @ 11:50PM
Wednesday, May 13th, 2009, 12:04 am
gary says:
The Houston Press said this...i said the following:
Texas Monthly Hates Houston Sports Columnists, Others
By Richard Connelly in SportsTuesday, May. 12 2009 @ 4:04PM
A month ago Texas Monthly editor Jake Silverstein promised subscribers an upcoming Gary Cartwright "screed" against modern-day sportswriting, and it’s here.
And it bored, mostly. Precis: No one writes as good as we did back in the old days.
At least Cartwright calls people out by name: Cedric Golden and Kirk Bohls of the Austin American-Statesman are hacks, he pretty much decrees; and "Houston hasn’t produced a warm body since [Mickey] Herskowitz retired."
Cartwright proses on about the wacky, wonderful days of him, Blackie Sherrod, Bud Shrake and Dan Jenkins. While there is some immense talent there, the examples Cartwright cites won’t blow you away. (Nor will his apparently-meant-to-be-hilarious recollection of how the group "used to go around in capes and leotards claiming to be Les Flying Punzars, an Italian acrobatic group of mysterious origins. Our most celebrated act, we liked to say, was the amazing triple somersault, which we were always prepared to perform but for the lack of a trapeze.")
It’s a cranky, old-man piece that isn’t the takedown of current sports columnists we were hoping for. Abe Simpson could have wrote it. (Complete with the trademark "P.S. I am not a crank.")
The only good ones left, he argues, are in the Metroplex.
The best of today’s sorry lot are Randy Galloway, at the Star-Telegram, and Tim Cowlishaw and Kevin Sherrington, at the Morning News. Houston hasn’t produced a warm body since Herskowitz retired. San Antonio? Forget about it. Though our big-city dailies are top-heavy with sports columnists, there are hardly any worth spending a cup of coffee on.
Galloway is old-school. He was a young sports reporter in Dallas in the sixties, at roughly the time that Sherrod was presiding over the Times Herald. Maybe that’s why he’s so intoxicated with attitude. Cowlishaw is a good reporter and a good enough writer. Sherrington’s offerings are, as they used to say, an inch deep and a mile wide, but his short, punchy style can be pretty funny. In a column this spring about claims that the Chinese were cutting a few years off the reported ages of their gymnasts, Sherrington noted that fourteen-year-olds supposedly have an advantage over sixteen-year-olds because they’re more flexible. "Sounds sketchy to me," he wrote, "but then I’ve never tried to bend one of my teenagers, either."
Again, the examples don’t exactly back up the arguments.
We’re not really defending the current crop of columnists, to be sure. We were just looking for something more than "We were great and the new guys stink."
Tuesday, May 12th, 2009, 4:46 pm
Jeff says:
This reminds me of a Simpsons episode when George Bush Sr. moved to Springfield. Bart repeatedly called him "George" and Bush finally said, "You know, in my day, little boys didn’t call their elders by their first name," to which Bart replied, "Yeah? Well, welcome to the 20th century, George."
Tuesday, May 12th, 2009, 4:28 pm
Brian Murphy says:
Hacking through Gary Cartwright’s self-absorbed prose and unabashed cheap shots, the only worthy point I grasp in this waste of 3 minutes: today’s kids don’t know crap, the good old days will never be topped.
Even Blackie could not imagine a more tired cliche.
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