5-7-5 makes no sense as a double play, or, why haiku?

a mission statement:

what I hope to accomplish

or at least, to fake

The wonderful thing about the internet is that everybody can have a sports blog. The horrible thing about the internet is that everybody can have a sports blog.

That's not to say that sports bloggers are bad. On the contrary, they are wonderful human beings, toiling away to post free content on the internet only to endure personal abuse from folks like SoXRoX04, IH34RTBR4DY! and Anonymous. Good sports bloggers are fucking saints.

No, the problem is one of information overload. Assuming you follow any major sports team or figure... and not, like, the Moroccan national elephant-back curling squad... there are a multitude of good blogs covering every story, every angle, with different takes and perspectives. It's allll out there for your edification. With enough time to surf the web, any reasonably functional layman could learn enough about a squad to become an expert, if not a GM.

I believe that the next step in sportswriting is not expansion (the One World Under ESPN dilemma) but contraction. 17 syllables. Ask yourself: would the world be a better place if Jay Mariotti was limited to 17 syllables a day? Skip Bayliss? Gregg Doyel? Scoop Jackson?

It's possible that the haiku, at this point, is irredeemably cliché. All the better! Everything there is to say about sports has been said already and by superior writers (the Shakespeare dilemma). After all, it's not as if anything in sports is mindblowingly new. There have been, by my painstaking scientific count, exactly four new sports innovations in the past decade and one of them is that stupid comet-tail on the puck. Do we really believe we're covering terra nova?

To that end, then, I will attempt to cover the sports world 17 syllables at a time, mostly once a day. That doesn't, of course, preclude a couple of haikus after a big weekend. Maybe even the occassional sonnet or rondelet if I'm feeling frisky. I tried doing this with the Nationals last year only to find that there's nothing particularly poetic about Cristian Guzman throwing the ball into the stands at RFK. This year, I will expand my scope and hopefully, my results.

And it's haiku, for crissakes, so play along, huh? Best ones in the comments section get posted on the main page for all to see and appreciate.

I am done, for now,

talking from my ass. Now, for

your daily haiku.