Oh, such was what which the poet once spoketh? To the beat of muffled drums, the press and conquest march upon two variant paths, and never shall the twain intertwine.

Alas, for a score minus a score minus nine, such was true. But that doggerel-slinger and sculptor of yore was evinced otherwise in Monday’s dusk as the Hacks of The Daily Orange bested the Talking Heads of WAER, 54-42, in that annual contest of entrapped-zephyr-sphere-slinging on James Arthur Boeheim’s tanned quadrangle.

The Masters of Microphone and Miscellany reported impudent to the Air Conditioner Castle, sporting cotton accouterments which spouted victory before it had betided. The Newsprint Five boasted but one metacarpally-crafted garment, worn by the cavalier Boots McCullough, but nay, the written message involved the AM clan treading the boards in manners most foul, and cannot be reissued herein.

‘I just want to know what they’re going to do with those shirts,’ spoketh sports editor emeritus and D.O. Headmaster M. Arron Gelb, resplendent in his freshest seersucker.

Ergo, that streak, upon which the chatterati staked their repute, now mimics the Heads’ journalistic scruples and the Hacks’ Friday print edition. Which is to say, it’s nonexistent.

Head Hollerer Dan Wolfgang manifested as the Gipper this twelvemonth and tore down a wall of praxis and disjuncture, thus officially amalgamating the Sports and Talk division of his broadcast outfit. The two units now have coition as one, a fine assemblage of folks with ‘Home to the Dome’ blouses tucked ‘neath their rumpled threads. Moons ago, Wolfgang endeavored to diagram his on-court ontology, except someone spoketh ‘Costas,’ transforming The Gangly One into a prepubescent Jonas Brothers votary, his locomotive ankle-to-hip appendages quivering into a mush akin to mashed potatoes without enough Land ‘O Lakes.

Ah, but the cheatery made nary a difference on Tuesday’s Eve. A coterie of young newsprinters, from the Front Page Battalion, the wily Pulp section and the Department of Image Capturing, ink squelching below their boots, assembled for a peregrination to Boeheim’s Bubble to inspirit Irving Templeton’s Kids.

Gutenberg’s Guys were buoyed by one Anthony Olivero, a greenhorn concomitant inculcated in the ways of Amateur Athletic Union leather hide-hurling – that enemy of Gary Williams and aid to the ambitions of The Daily Orange. Olivero enjoined in a tripytch of terror with senior captain Zach ‘The Spittoon’ Schonbrun (the contingent root for the sideline lasses) and Tyler Dunne, the Buffalo Bruiser. The troika, along with Sports Bureau Chief Kyle Austin and Andrew John, The Center with Two First Names, ventilated that newfangled scamper-and-shoot form of basket-tossing – agnate to the styling of that Nelson chap up in the nether reaches of the old Gold Rush State – cantering past their alpine foes on the unsoiled floorboards upon which James Arthur’s name eternally sojourns.

‘Tonight, we gave 110 percent,’ spoketh Schonbrun, who’s Talk of Smack, broadcasted on Zeta 89 during the hours of the farmer on Saturdays, is the finest the Salt City knows – probably because this broadcast flimflam ain’t hard. ‘Which is more than 100 percent. I learned that in my sociology class.’

The Howling Court Rushers, thus chastened, retired to their hindmost quarters, perhaps to enkindle their fustian and fusty shirts of cloth, or, mayhap, to toss wifty peeks at glass-encased Photostats of the Syracuse men’s basketball team, or, per chance, to edify more of their number to catechize incisive queries such as ‘Is it fun to win a game by 19 goals?’

Oh, how the Hacks gulped the ambrosial piquancy of prepotency, thoughts of tippling hootch wafting through their upper stories. Such nocturnes were pushed aside, alas, as we had a paper to furnish, one which, you know, people actually read.

But somewhere, at the summit of Hawkeye Point in Chet Culver’s cornstalk-brimming republic, that Clayton fellow smiled.

Oh, the piquancy.

W.F. Whence is a germanificated staff sculptor for The Daily Orange, where he re-germanificated to sculpt this glistening prose.

Published on February 23, 2009 at 12:00 pm