Duff McKagan is a god among men.
First, he kicked ass as the bass player in one of the
greatest bands of all-time, Guns ‘N Roses. Then
he became a featured writer for local street-to-suite
Seattle culture newspaper, The Seattle Weekly. Now he
has landed a gig as a sports columnist at ESPN.com. Holy
guacamole!
Yes, the same Duff who in 1993 was
knocked out at a Guns N’ Roses concert by a flying
plastic bottle of urine is now telling America why Jay
Cutler’s devil may care confidence is a good thing.
The same Duff whose name was used for the generic beer
found in The Simpsons is now eloquently pontificating
about Blake Griffin and the Los Angeles Clippers sudden
awakening. The same Duff who battled drug and alcohol
addiction is also one of us: a Seattle native and homer
through and through.
Undependent Media wishes Duff all
the best on his second coming as a sports writer. God
knows the current crop of hacks is awful and could use
this sort of competition. With their complete and total
reliance on merely stats to make sense of modern sport,
these writers are missing the point: greatness in sports
has nothing to do with the numbers.
Duff’s entry into their world
as an everyman who somehow caught a break to become a
fortunate rock star is a needed breath of fresh air that
slaps the face of the “stat writer.” Unlike
his peers Duff is humble in the sports arena, freely admitting
that as a kid he dreamed about a life in pro sports before
realizing the dream could only go so far. He hasn’t
pretended his words are fact and doesn’t twist statistics
to his theories. Duff relies on what he sees in games
rather than the statistics he reads in the box scores
for his analysis.
So here’s to hoping Duff continues
to be true to himself and speaks from the fan perspective
as someone who watches games rather than spit rhetoric
as a sensationalistic critic spinning anything and everything
with a lot of nonsense statistical data.
Good luck, Duff and thanks for making
Seattle proud!
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/thelife/music/news/story?id=5988617
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