Hurricane Irene’s advance coverage was heavy on worst-case scenarios. Thank goodness they didn’t pan out. Steve Rushin Read Quote
Broadcasters calling a big game are often reminded to let the action breathe. A great moment of a televised game doesn’t need any narration, which is why the announcers – the good ones, anyway – shut up at the celebration and let the pictures do the talking. Steve Rushin Read Quote
I spent a year slaving over a hot rollergrill in a Metrodome concession stand and watched the World Series there – and a Super Bowl and a Final Four. I can honestly say – regardless of outcome – that I left every game floating on air. Steve Rushin Read Quote
The Metrodome was built for football. Fans seated down the third-base line at a baseball game faced centerfield, so that they had to turn and look over their right shoulders to see home plate. Steve Rushin Read Quote
Baseball consists of a million threads of dullness, on a loom of ennui, woven into a tapestry of tedium. Steve Rushin Read Quote
Occasionally, Americans in large numbers are moved by a vanquished athlete’s grief. Larry Bird with a towel over his head in 1979 comes immediately to mind. But more often, sports fans do the opposite – they delight in the desolation of a defeated archrival. Steve Rushin Read Quote
Hype covers every surface of mass culture, and sports fans are intimately familiar with it – the heavy-breathing buildup that leads, inevitably, to a first-round knockout or a 30-point blowout or a fourth-inning rainout. Steve Rushin Read Quote
Hype is supposed to overpromise and underdeliver, not overpromise and overdeliver. Usually, it doesn’t deliver at all – it takes your money and keeps your pizza. Steve Rushin Read Quote
In golf, a wedge issue means just that: You can’t hit your sand wedge, or your lob wedge needs to be regrooved. In politics, a wedge issue is more serious still: It’s one that splits the electorate, dividing voters along ideological fault lines. Steve Rushin Read Quote
