Patrick Reusse writes a sports column in the local Minneapolis paper. I think he turns out a couple of columns per week, and a lot of them make use of some pretty basic facts of athletic competition. One team wins, the other necessarily loses. If someone hits a home run, the pitcher who served it up failed. It's the easiest thing in the world to gob spit on whomever has failed most recently, and since in professional sports everyone is being paid a king's ransom, you can work into the spittle the salary of the bum. People lap it up. Then in about four days you can do it again.
Here's a specimen of what I'm talking about. The Twins have won 16 of 27 games since it was published. Reusse said they were headed for 100 losses, but, as the team has clawed back to within ten games of .500 (53-63), that would now require losing 37 of the last 46 games on their schedule. I don't think it's going to happen, but somewhere someone is in a slump or on a losing streak, so it's not like he's going to run low on material.
I like also his prevailing tone of jaded wisdom.
