-Glen

The gist of what he’s saying is that he wants his papers back so he can gouge collectors for $10 a pop. Or $20. Or whatever the final edition of this paper he’s never read turns out to be worth. He lunges for my copies, but I jerk them away and begin scampering toward my car.

He follows me. I pick up the pace. He does, too. I go past my car because I don’t want him doing something crazy like jumping on the hood while I’m putting the pedal to the metal. It’s a good move, but it dawns on me that he may be faster than I am, and won’t that be humiliating when he tackles me, yanks the papers from my grasp, and steps on my forehead as he marches away triumphantly? So I spin toward him, my eyes wide with terror and start pointing toward his shop.

“They’re robbing you!” I shout.

He whirls, sees nothing, and turns back to me ready call me a liar.

“Dumbbell,” I say, “they’re already inside. Inside, understand? Like not standing around on the sidewalk?”

The message finally sinks in. “Unh” he says, and races back to battle with the thieves I’ve imagined.

He comes back out just in time to see me driving away. I want to hit him with a line I heard from Tony Kornheiser when he was talking about a basketball player using a great crossover dribble to blow by a defender. I want to say, “See you in church, sucker.” But I’ll save it for another day, because right now I’m really not in the mood. The National is dead.

Looking back, if they could have solved the distribution and production issues, the undertaking was actually ideal for the newspaper age. At the time, there simply was no way to get comprehensive sports coverage in print, or even on TV for that matter. That’s why I think WFAN was such a big success in New York. Radio was the only outlet giving you around the clock daily sports, unless you happened to be one of the lucky ones with cable TV.

Considering how low internet penetrations was at the time, and would be for another decade, I am not sure the National could have sustained itself in cyberspace. It seems as if ESPN has run with the National business plan for the last 5-10 years or so, especially most recently with the regional offshoots, but ironically, the increasing fragmentation of the web, thanks mostly to blogs, has made the concept of amassing talent and comprehensively covering all sports on a local and national level increasingly difficult.

I hadn’t read Grantland before, but will be sure to keep checking it out. One point, however, is it seems like more and more stories, which would be ideal for an expert feature writer, are instead being presented as “oral histories”. I am not sure which I like better. As fascinating as this account was, I can just imagine how captivating it would if distilled by a master storyteller.

Pierce: Legendarily, Lupica went home from the 1990 Final Four because he wasn’t sitting at midcourt. They put him in the auxiliary press box and he couldn’t stand it, and he went home.

For the first issue, we had New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Deford wanted a profile of Patrick Ewing for the New York edition, Jordan in Chicago, and Magic in L.A. Ostler did Magic. I did Jordan. Lupica refused to do Ewing. The quote was, “I don’t do that.” He did his column, but he didn’t do anything else.

Can’t wait to read the piece at Grantland and check it the rest of the site.