Central Casting

So, it turns out that the Washington Post's Nationals beat writer hates his job.

“I don’t like sports—I am embarrassed that I cover them,” Chico Harlan says. “I can’t wait to stop. It is a means to an end and a paycheck.”

And who can blame him? I mean, this guy had to watch Paul LoDuca in the outfield.

He apologized for this intemperate burst of honesty, and in doing so led us into Chico Harlan's Fantasy World, where archetypes that exist only in his head abound.

I didn't want to be portrayed, though, as some central casting sportswriter: the sort who always dreamed of athletic glory, lacked the skills, and chose the next best thing. That's not me.

You know anyone like that? I can honestly say that I don't, and it strikes me that Harlan could only have further revealed his ignorance of and distaste for the whole milieu if he'd said something like, "You don't cheer in the press box, even when the home team kicks a home run in the last period."

Well, whatever. As they would say on the internet, snotty j-school grad is snotty. I really don't care - he does a fine job, and the knowledge that he'd rather be Woodward and/or Bernstein bothers me less than that he pretends his first name is Chico.