What does the Chicago Tribune do when it needs someone to write a column that is so awful, pointless and just, plain, wrong that even David Haugh won’t write it?

Ladies and (oh, who are we kidding…) Gentlemen and Gentlemen, we give you, Rich Mayor and the dumbest column you’ll read all year.

ESSAY: A Chicagoan’s lament on Rose

 He just should have leveled with adoring public, treating it with respect it affords him

We could stop here and it would be the dumbest non-Haugh column of the month.  This really isn’t going to go well, is it?

You owed us more.

Derrick Rose, if you sift through the city’s anger, blind support, unhappiness and general confusion, you likely will find one overarching emotion: a deep-rooted disappointment.

Well first, Derrick owes you nothing.

Secondly, “anger, blind support, unhappiness and general confusion” isn’t something a city feels, but it does sum up nicely what happens when Lou Canellis tries to read a two-syllable word off the teleprompter.

Throughout Chicago, your story is nearly a refrain, a chorus from us.

Pretty sure you don’t know the difference between a refrain and a chorus.

We know you grew up without a father and were protected, sheltered and smothered by a doting mother and trio of brothers, headlined by the talkative Reggie.

This has nothing to do with coming back from a torn anterior cruciate ligament.

We know street hustlers begged and pleaded to grab a piece of you in junior high.

This also has nothing to do with coming back from a torn anterior cruciate ligament.

We know how you dominated games without scoring points, dictating tempo like pure point guards do while flashing a violently graceful athleticism when least expected. We know. We’ve known for a long time.

I’m happy that this amorphous “we” you claim to be speaking for thinks you know this.  It’s clear that you don’t know how to not overwrite or make a point.

You are Chicago’s, you are ours. If you change your number to 25, we’ll replace our No. 1s.

I hope he tells Marquis Teague first, or that’s going to be awkward.

We buy your shoes, watch your mixtapes, eat your Giordano’s, excuse your SAT debacle at Memphis, defend your rep at every juncture and applaud your every step before it’s made.

I had no idea that by buying someone’s shoes, apparently dusting off the last working VCR on the planet, eating pizza or looking the other way when a guy might have committed academic fraud, it means you get to tell him what to do.  I wish Adidas would make a Rich Mayor shoe so we could tell him to do something else for a living.

And, if you applaud every step a guy takes before he “makes” it, then how about you applaud his decision to not return for the folly of an overmatched playoff run on a recently repaired knee?

We rejoice in the magic of the Bulls’ hitting on a 1.7-percent chance to bring our humble hero home to make good.

So far, it sounds like Rich Mayor and his imaginary Chicago chorus are with Derrick win or tie.

We have watched you grow and we have supported you, unconditionally.

Well, except now, when you placed the biggest condition possible on your support of him.

We should have been treated better.

I can think of few things that cause people to suffer more than an athlete on one of their favorite teams putting his long term health over the possibility of playing a few games at the end of a mediocre season.  Oh, the horror! Somebody call Amnesty International!

Your vague and perhaps misleading explanations remain my biggest issue.

Now, we’re getting to the good stuff.  Rich Mayor is about to air his grievances!  Pull up a chair, gang, and lean forward so his insights can more quickly attack your cerebellum.

Your season is over but your rabid base is in the woods, confused, subsisting on blind faith until next season.

This doesn’t seem like an issue, more like the worst cult ever.  Like the kind whose Kool-Aid is actually just Kool-Aid.  In juice boxes.

You have given no real answers.

Ask stupid questions…

We talk in bars, on Facebook, on Twitter.

Why do you go to bars?  They serve furniture polish there?

We absorb jabs from friends out of town.

“Hey, Rich, the best player on your local sports team hasn’t come back from a serious knee injury yet!”
Boom.  Roasted.

We digest and dissect every word you say.

You might want to switch the order on that, otherwise you’re going to bleed out.

We dedicate hours of our lives we never will get back to blogging about you, calling in to talk on the radio but, in the end, we’re all just grasping at straws.

So he owes you for wasting your time needlessly obsessing over when he’ll be healthy enough to play.  Makes perfect sense, really.

We’re out here, we have been out here and we’re pathetic.

Stay out there.  Nobody’s going to argue with your last point.

(A quick aside: Dear reader, you might be wondering why I have been given any platform, much less this one.

Mostly, I just feel bad for whoever had to transcribe this for you.  I would guess crayon is hard to read.

Am I a professional athlete, understanding what it’s like to return from catastrophic injury? No.

No.  But you don’t have to be one to have an opinion.  Even if you were, you’d likely be just as wrong as you are right now.

Am I a practicing physician referencing first-hand experiences with professional athletes? No.

No. You’re a hack pulling stuff straight out of his ass, just like 90 percent the other morons at the Tribune.

Am I a teammate not willing or wanting to criticize the franchise cornerstone? No.

Because so many of the Bulls are afraid to be outspoken?  Maybe you should sit the rest of this out.

Am I a national voice, perhaps inclined to take the player’s side to maintain celebrity relationships? Resoundingly, no.

And…just when I thought you couldn’t get any dumber, you raise the bar, again.

Am I born and raised in Chicago, Derrick’s age and a die-hard fan of the city and student of its basketball history? Yes, and that was enough.

That’s not enough.  That’s nothing.  You are an accident of geography, who decided to like a basketball team, and I’m sure you read the Bill Simmons’ big book of 90210 and basketball and consider yourself a scholar.  As someone reading your writing for the first time, I’m pretty sure you have suffered some sort of catastrophic head wound at some point.

Now back to Rose.)

How good of you.

If only you had stood up, even two months ago, and said, “Guys, please trust me, but the knee doesn’t feel right. I don’t want to risk it. #TheReturn will be next year, and better than ever,” something as ephemeral as a tweet, with nine characters to spare.

Why?  Why would he possibly have needed to have “said” that?  You’re big into telling Derrick what he owes people.  So let me try.  What he owes them is to work to get healthy, not to try to soothe the angst of a few idiots, who mistake the actions of a player looking out for his best interests with some sort of personal betrayal.

Ask Luol Deng if it was difficult to control his message post-spinal tap. He heard the critics, grabbed his phone and fired out a few. The doubters went poof. The city would have stood in unison and applauded. We still might be going.

This is so dumb, I’m shocked that the pixels stuck to the screen.

“Hey Derrick! Luol was in a hospital bed suffering the second worst possible reaction to a spinal tap that there is, and even he had the decency to send out a tweet so we could decide to forgive him for missing some playoff games!”

If you announced before Game 6 against the Nets and said, “Guys, #TheReturn is tonight,” scalpers’ prices would have quadrupled. Officials might have had to stop the game as we stood in unison and applauded. We still might be going.

Luol would have done that.  He’d have tweeted he was coming back, then crawled out onto the court, shit himself and died.  And we’d still be cheering.

Also, it’s ironic that this guy is using Luol to prove this point.  Because what Derrick did in these playoffs is exactly what Luol did in the 2009 playoffs against the Celtics.  Fans and the team criticized him for sitting out that series with a lower leg injury that people thought he should be trying to play through. Turns out, his leg was broken.

Don’t you want that moment? Wouldn’t that inch you closer to Michael Jordan?

Remember that time MJ tore his ACL in the first half of a game, then came back in with his leg flopping around aimlessly and scored 57 points against the Knicks?  Hell, at halftime, he invented Twitter so he could let us know when he was coming back.

I can’t remember though, if it was before or after he retired in the prime of his career, then spent nearly two full seasons trying to play baseball.

You know what David Lee did in Game 6 of the Warriors’ first-round series clincher at home against the Nuggets. Lee had torn his hip flexor only four games earlier. But there he was, checking in.

The. Crowd. Went. Insane.

David Lee played one minute, missed one shot, got one rebound and basically got the same reaction from the fans that the mascot gets when he loads the t-shirt cannon.

Three standing ovations. Game delayed. He played for 87 seconds. He grabbed a rebound. He checked out. Derrick, he wasn’t walking a few days before.

Or a few days later.

You know what else? David Lee means about 4 percent to Oakland of what you mean to Chicago.

Which is exactly why Mark Jackson could recklessly shove him out onto the court for a few token, meaningless, playoff appearances and only get a little bit of criticism for risking further injury to his player.  It doesn’t make it right, it just makes it easier to get away with.

Read this.

Phew.  Glad you told me, I was holding my ear up to it like a shell at the beach.

It’s what Lee said to TNT after the game: “I felt like I could go out, especially at home, and energize the crowd a little bit. When I told the guys I was playing, the guys were really enthusiastic. I thought I could help the team, going out there and giving anything I had. That’s part of being a leader and that’s what I was trying to do.”

“You know, all hands on deck. Like I said, I just wanted to give the team anything I could. … I did what I could.”

That’s adorable, what does it have to do with anything?  Did the Bulls lose to the Heat because they weren’t inspired enough?  No, they weren’t as good, and they had too many players out, legitimately, with injury.  A token appearance or two by Derrick wasn’t going to change any of that.

Joakim Noah was running on needles. Nate Robinson was throwing up. Deng showed up to the Berto Center and could barely breathe. Taj Gibson had the flu. Kirk Hinrich was on crutches. Jimmy Butler was playing every second.

But there you sat, like every game this season, while your teammates fell short.

The biggest insult is that Rose isn’t tough, and doesn’t want to win.  For a self-proclaimed “student of the game” to ignore everything Derrick has done in his career to this point, in service of trying to prove the unprovable is disgusting.  Derrick is an incredibly driven player.  If he’s not playing it’s because he’s not healthy yet.  That’s it.  There is no other argument to make here.  Nate Robinson barfing into a garbage can on the bench doesn’t make Derrick any less tough.  This argument is tired and ridiculous, and I truly do not understand the motivation behind anyone who makes it.

Don’t get it twisted.

How can anyone not getting it twisted after you’ve origami’d the shit out of it?

We’re well-aware that you’re our present and future, more than any national talking-head would care to recognize. As puzzling and maddening as the process has been, as mistreated as we might feel, we appreciate you taking care of your body. In our greatest and wildest dreams, our body would be your body. We would take care of it too. But we wouldn’t have misled our own.

You owed us a human explanation.

Why?  Seriously, what is the possible reason that you need an explanation other than he had reconstructive knee surgery and he wasn’t healthy enough to play yet?  Is your life so sad that you have to live vicariously through someone else to the point that having to wait until October to see him play again instead of April or May has caused you some sort of irreversible mental anguish?

But that’s over. You mangled this situation.

You are mangling the English language, logic and reason, so I defer to the expert on mangling.

For months, we knew doctors had cleared you. For months, we knew the next step, the final step, in your rehab is to actually play real games. For months, we knew you had been dunking and shooting lefty jumpers from 18 feet. For months, we had heard dozens of observers from multiple outlets, ones with zero rooting interest, shake their heads in disbelief that you look better than ever. For weeks, we knew you had been doing windmills off each leg. For weeks, we know your mental confidence has been at 90 percent.

You don’t know shit.  What you know is that Derrick was working towards getting back.  Where exactly he was in that process, you don’t know.  The fact that you don’t trust him, that you think he was malingering, and that you seem to think he was doing it to wound you personally, says an awful lot about you.  All of it awful, actually.

Chicago loves you, Derrick. In all likelihood, Chicago always will. You’re from here, you made it here. You’re an athletic marvel, a source of pride, a beacon for the streets, a guiding light above the depths of the Chief Keef culture.

Damnit, Derrick you are from here!  You have to play when we decide you are ready!  That’s the Chicago way!

But the next time you take the United Center floor, the next time you take over a possession, a quarter, a half, a game, a series, a season, the next time you attack the lane after a screen, explode off the floor and contort your body in-air like some sort of CGI animation?

Is that a sentence?

We’ll be standing, and cheering.

But maybe not as loud as before.

You owed us more.

This is a great summary of this article, because all of it is just so wrong.  Well, except for the standing and cheering part.  Once Derrick is back, all will be forgiven.  All.  Not that there should be anything for him to be forgiven for, but thanks to dopes like Rich Mayor, some people think there is.

And of course Derrick doesn’t owe “us” anything.  It’s not our knee.  It’s not our career.

Rich Mayor, a Chicago native and graduate of Illinois, is an editor in the Tribune’s Sports department. He’s 25 years old, the same age Derrick Rose will be in October.

rmayor@tribune.com

 

Twitter @CityHall03

I like how the Tribune felt the need to put this guy’s age there.  It drips of, “He’s young, he’s passionate, he’s completely wrong and he’s a dumbass, but we’re printing it anyway!”

I want to congratulate you, Rich Mayor of Chicago.  Not only for a name straight out of a terrible comic book, but for reminding us, through some incredibly poor writing, just how wrong people can be.

The Internet long ago identified me as the biggest Luis Valbuena jock sniffer on the planet, and to that, I can only say, “So?”

Long, long ago, I founded the Hank White Fan Club and we, to this day, share glorious tales of Henry Blanco’s long (16 YEARS and counting), illustrious (he hit .266 in 2006!) career.

When Hank came to the Cubs he had the lowest career batting average (.201) of all-time for anyone with as much service time as he had.  After he was swaddled in the love of the Hank White Fan Club though, he posted his best seasons of his career.  Coincidence?  Hah!

I’m not sure why I took to Luis, granted, it could have been his number.

Twenty-four’s a solid number in Cubs history, and many of my all-time favorites have worn the immortal two-four.

Longtime readers here know that as a kid, my favorite player was Shawon Dunston (honestly, I think it still is), but I also had a fondness for Brian Dayett.  I honestly thought Dayett was going to be a star, and to this day I’m pissed at Gene Michael for not playing him more.  Dayett was a guy with power (had had back to back 30 homer seasons as he was coming up through the Yankees minor league system first at double-A, then at triple-A).  He had good plate discipline, too.  Anyway, Dayett was the first 24 I really liked.  Then, he was followed by a who’s who of semi-useful bums:

• Gary Varsho
• Cleotha “Chico” Walker
• Steve Buchele
• Manny Alexander (OK, they weren’t all useful, but Manny’s the dumbest Cub ever and that is really saying something.)
• Matt Stairs
• Michael Tucker
• One year of Roosevelt Brown’s illustrious career
• Dave Kelton
• Tom Goodwin
• Henry Blanco (He switched from 9 to get out from under the Todd Hundley curse and it worked.)
• Bobby Scales!
• Marlon Byrd broke his face in that number.

The other thing is that I actually thought Valbuena could be a useful player.  He was a pretty highly thought of prospect coming up through the Mariners’ system.  In 2008 he was flashing a little power (11 homers), some speed (18 stolen bases) and an on-base average of better than .380 as he advanced from AA to AAA during the year.  Then he got traded to Cleveland as part of a 10 player, three team trade.  Such luminaries as Mike Carp, Joe Smith and Endy Chavez were in the deal.  The best players were Franklin Gutierrez, Aaron Heilman (blecch) and JJ Putz.

The Indians hoped to pair Luis in the middle infield, at second with Jhonny Peralta at short, and did for 77 games in 2009.  Luis even played 28 games at short that year.  He only hit .250, he didn’t get on base (.298) and he struck out too much.  He was 23, surrounded by hot Cleveland babes and not ready.

LITTLE KNOWN FACT: Luis is the one who suggested Jhonny move the h up in his first name because it looked cool.  

By 2010, Peralta was moved to third, Asdrubal Cabrera was at short and Luis was hitting only .193 at second.  He spent most of 2011 in AAA Columbus where he was very good .302/.372/.476 with 17 homers and 72 RBI.  But the Indians dropped him from the 40 man roster and the Blue Jays (because they claim everybody on waivers) claimed him.  They cut him loose in spring training last year and the Cubs grabbed him, and sent him to Iowa where everybody hits.  Luis came up on June 14 when Ian Stewart’s wrist fell off and the rest was history.

Well, pretty bad history.  Luis took over at third and basically started there the rest of the year.  He didn’t really hit (he only spent day at .250 or higher) and hit only .219.  He played a good third, but good teams don’t play slap hitting lefty middle infielders at third unless they have no other choice.

Cue the 2013 Cubs, who have no other choice.

But guess what?  Luis’ hitting like a real big leaguer.  At this writing he’s still nursing a jammed pinky finger, but he’s hitting .271/.381/.479 and his .860 OPS translates to a robust 133 OPS plus.  He leads the team in walks and OPS, he’s tied for second in homers (5) and he’s outslugging all of the regulars except Anthony Rizzo, Nate Schierholtz and David DeJesus.

DeJesus?

Whatever.  Luis is only 27, 22 days younger than Darwin Barney, and while there’s no way he’s a long term answer at third, he might be at second.

If you don’t think he can handle second, just watch this:

LITTLER KNOWN FACT: In my winter job as the Spanish language voice of the Cardenales de Lera (translates roughly to Cardinals Who Drive Drunk and Die and are Immortalized With Shoulder Patches) I got to call plays like that all the time.

Regardless, he should have a nice, long career as an extra infielder on good teams.

He has a huge fan in Cubs manager Dale Sveum.  During the spring Dale dismissed Valbuena’s .219 average in 2012 saying he “got a lot of big hits.”  How many big hits does a 60 win team really have?

This year, he has claimed Luis is on a “30-something homer pace.”  Dale’s right, if the Cubs play 200 games this year.

What he really likes is that Luis takes walks, plays good defense (he was fourth in range factor at third last year) (granted, he’s tied for third in errors at third base this year).  He’s mostly hit Luis near the bottom of the order (his best spot is 7th where he’s hit most of the time and has a .293 average and .930 OPS), but he’s been in the starting lineup in the two hole (second) and three hole (twice).

Granted, Dale also said that Travis Wood is one of the best pitchers in the league.  In Dale’s defense, when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Here’s an interview I did this winter with Luis.  I asked him about what he thought about playing for the Cubs and I don’t have to tell you what he said:

For those of you who aren’t fluent in Spanish, basically what Luis did say was that he loves playing for the Cubs and feels like he could win the triple crown this year and the Gold Glove, and then we got interrupted for a while by Rubby Perez signing on the public address system.

Luis also talked a lot about what a great site Desipio is, how he never misses the podcast and was really excited that we were going to a video format, and he put down a lot of money to buy advance copies of my first novel, “Used To Be Famous” which will be on sale at semi-reputable online book sellers this fall.  That Luis, what a guy!

Luis went on to talk about how great it is to play with great teammates like he has in Chicago, especially his best friend Steve Clevenger.  He and Clevenger are inseperable.  They go to movies on roadtrips, they love to binge watch Parenthood together and as you all know this past offseason they toured central and South America with “El Condor Pasa” their Simon and Garfunkel tribute band.

On the field, and off, Luis is proving to be indispensable.

And remember gang, you can’t spell Most Valuable without most of the letters in Valbuena.

• a recap of the exploits of the Cubs minor leaguers–written by a guy named Luke they are infinitely better than the ones at Al Yellon’s House of Dumbassedry
• Dale Sveum is trying to ruin Darwin Barney the way Lou “ruined” Ryan Theriot (there’s so much wrong with all of this that I’m not going to even bother)
• News about how the neighborhood assholes are slowly starting to realize the Cubs are going to be able to ram this whole renovation thing down their throats (insert your own Lakeview joke here) starting with the increase in night games
• News that one of my all-time favorite Cubs has signed a minor league deal with the Phillies (no, not Brian Dayett (but that would have been cool)
• Update of the Tommy John Disease ward the Cubs are running in Mesa
• That “Lukewarm Stove” thing where he plays MLB Trade Rumors

Then a post about a reader who lives in the same apartment complex as Cubs current whipping boy Carlos Marmol overheard Marmol telling his agents he wants “out of” Chicago.  The guy lingered for a while and took photos of Marmol and his agents hanging around the lobby.  One of the agents even said it’s too bad the Brewers are so lousy this year because that might have been a place the Cubs could have traded him.  Milwaukee already has a Marmol, his name is John Axford (actually, Axford’s been even worse.)

The reader tweeted this info to Brett for the world to see, and then Brett wrote a post about it.  In the post he qualified the information so many times it made it hard to follow.  He said the reader may have misheard or misinterpreted the information, and he went as far as to remind his readers that things are “always more complicated than a few tweets, and, indeed, an entire conversation, can possibly convey.”

So that’s a pretty good post.  Got a tip of a rumored conversation with a couple photos, posted it with plenty of provisos, and move on.  It’s not surprising that Marmol would want to get out, considering the Cubs already traded him once in the last six months only to pull out at the last second, he’s pitched poorly, he lost his closer job to Kevin F’ing Gregg, fans and media have been over the top batshit crazy in reaction to his outings this year and Dave Kaplan goes through panic orgasms on Twitter every time Marmol is seen warming up in the bullpen.

So anyway, Brett posts the rumor, and people do what people do on the Interwebs.  They go crazy.  Some pile on Marmol for wanting to leave, most post that of course he wants out and that Cubs fans would gladly help him pack, but some start criticizing Brett for posting the information.  A few even proclaim that Marmol will sue him for defamation.

Yes, Marmol’s reputation and career have been irrevocably harmed by a blog post that maybe he said that possibly he’d like to play for a different team.  If only Johnnie Cochran were around to take this case.  Jackie Chiles is, though.

It’s a testament to the readership numbers at Bleacher Nation that the regular media felt compelled to ask Marmol about the conversation.  Marmol claimed he never said he wanted out, but otherwise basically confirmed that the conversation took place, even taking issue with being “spied” on.

And then, what does Brett do?  He apologizes.  To everyone.

He apologizes to Marmol.  He apologizes to the Cubs.  He apologizes to his readers.

At one point he writes, “When I write something like that, I have to understand that it will be read as ‘Marmol did say these things, because I’m a professional writer and I wouldn’t write it if he didn’t say it.’ It was read that way by many people, in large part because, after weighing the evidence, I said I had no reason to doubt that Marmol had actually said these things or had this meeting. The truth, of course, is that I don’t *really* know it, and I said as much. I know only that someone Tweeted it. And shouldn’t I hold myself to a higher standard than that?”

That falls in an interesting place on the self-immolation–self-promotion scale.  He begs for forgiveness while categorizing himself as a “professional writer” and proclaims his standards should be higher than writing about something someone else told him.

In the article our good friend Paul Sullivan wrote about this last night, Sullivan took great satisfaction in characterizing Brett’s site as “a popular website that aggregates Cubs news and gossip from various media outlets.”  Aggregates is the key word there.

That’s not basically what Bleacher Nation does, it is what Bleacher Nation does, and what most blogs do.  Bleacher Nation finds news and reposts it with some analysis.  Nothing wrong with that.  It’s valuable.  Aggregation is valuable.  Of course newspapers get angry, they feel like they’re doing all the legwork, and some smartass with a blog just picks and chooses what they want to use to populate their own site.  I know that, because for nearly 16 years that’s exactly what Desipio has done (you know, when we’re not busy not writing or yakking on a video podcast.)

I don’t understand why Brett apologized.  I can’t see anything he needed to apologize for.  He didn’t recklessly pass along the information.  As far as I can tell, his mistake was he paid way too much attention to the comments on his own blog.

And that is a big problem.  I know that all too well.  There’s a real lifecycle of a blog.  At the beginning you are writing mostly for yourself (let’s call that phase A), and any attention you get is a mystery.  Then, if you’re any good you get a little bit of a following and that’s fun (phase B).  It’s usually like-minded people.  Then, if you keep at it, your following grows beyond that and you get more of the like-mindeds and just enough of the irrational douchebags that it makes you start to question why you’re doing it (phase C).  Eventually the irrational douchebags start to take over the comments (phase Douchebag), and while your site content is the same, the comments have run amuck.  Bleacher Nation is in the process of going from phase C to phase Douchebag.

Apologizing to them doesn’t seem like the best strategy.  Ignoring them is a better one.  Probably not ignoring them to the extent that I did, but to some extent.

Brett Taylor didn’t make a mistake posting the rumors about Carlos Marmol. So he shouldn’t have apologized for it.

If anybody should apologize it’s Marmol for wearing those awful shorts.

If you see only 15 minutes of any of our awful podcasts, you must watch the first 15 minutes of this one, when I reveal the greatest shirsey in the history of shirseys!

We’re in the missing man formation because we thought Warren was on vacation this week, scheduled the podcast around Kermit’s softball schedule and then found out Warren wasn’t gone.  Awk-ward.

But we’re going to make it up to Warren, wait until you hear a future guest Kerm is lining up.  Let’s just say the guy…got a paycheck…for working on…Battleship the Movie!

This week you’re stuck with just us, and for two fairly lengthy stretches…just me.  For once, I have the most reliable connection and microphone and I do such a good job waiting for Mike to reconnect that I’m pretty sure I’m just going to do my own solo podcast.

The finish line, of all places.

At any road race, the finish line is one of the coolest places in all of sports.  In what other sport do people gather to cheer…everybody?  Fast, slow, sprinting or staggering, people cheer because you finished.  It doesn’t matter, really, how long it took you, though you see all manner of reactions from the runners.

Some are grinning from ear to ear as they cross the line, exalting in a great time, maybe their best time.

Some are clearly mad, upset that they didn’t hit their splits and finished with a time that already has them scheming how they’ll do better next time.

Some are trying to finish without barfing on themselves in front of everybody cheering for them.

The finish line is a great place.  I’ve run in plenty of races, and it never fails.  With a mile to go you are pretty sure your legs are going to fall off or your lungs are going to crawl out of your chest, and then you start to feel the crowds getting a little bigger.  Pretty soon you can see the finish line, and your stride gets longer, your second (or maybe fourth or fifth) wind kicks in and the cheering brings you home.

You see all kinds at the finish line.  Skinny runners who look like they’ll slip through the sewer grates if they hit them just right.  Fat guys who you wonder how they made it.  People with one leg, people with no legs.  Little kids.  Old people.  Some of them are in full gallop, some are trying to make it look like they aren’t walking…but they’re walking.  In the end, it really doesn’t matter.  You start at the start line, you finish at the finish line.  Whatever happens in between just happens.

Distance runners are a little odd in the first place.

They’re the only people who when they race keep moving the finish line forward.

So the psychopathic coward(s) who put bombs in garbage cans to try to kill people at the finish line should know this.

We just moved the line forward again. And we’re going to keep on going.