Say what?

I've suggested here before that the sports section of the newspaper is usually where you'll find the worst writing.  It's not that there are no good sportswriters -- the peerless Frank Deford is my personal favourite and current Toronto practitioners Bruce Arthur and Cathal Kelly are excellent-- but the subject itself seems to bring out the worst in some journalists.

The Toronto Star's Rosie diManno is a particularly interesting case.  It seems as if she has the freedom to write about anything she wants. so as well as offering up her thoughts on her preferred sports (which include skating, baseball, hockey and tennis), she also gets to cover court proceedings (the more lurid the better) and even international affairs.

When she's writing about "serious" subjects. Rosie's prose is workmanlike and readable.  When she switches to sports, however, some synapse in her brain fires up and her writing becomes quite crazed.  Her article in today's paper about the Halep-Williams final at Wimbledon begins with this short paragraph, which surely ranks as one of the worst I've ever read:

Before it’s dipped in molten gold and preserved for history — ossified as memorable grandeur — sporting greatness inevitably flakes off. The shedding of invincibility gilding.

I suppose we should be grateful that the metaphor doesn't get badly mixed, though trust me, there's plenty of that in the paragraphs that follow.  But, seriously, Rosie?  It's as if you think that an intrinsically unserious subject like sports -- grown ups playing kids' games -- can't be written about in a serious way.  That's insulting to your readers, don't you think? 

Then again, Ms diManno can maybe take comfort that she didn't write this sentence, from the UK's Independent paper in September 2008.  The perpetrator of this particular outrage was James Lawton. like Rosie a veteran hack whose strangled prose always seemed to escape the attentions of the editor.  Ready? Here goes:

Also, and you could see it plainly enough when Faldo embraced him after he had won his fourth straight point in the cause that had looked to be lost the moment Garcia could not disguise the fact he had no answer to the power and the authority of young Anthony Kim in the opening singles match, that here was, for the foreseeable future, probably the most dynamic candidate to lead a European drive to regain some of their old competitive edge in South Wales in two years' time.

Parse that if you dare!