Only The CHB could take an event as dramatic as an earthquake which interrupts the World Series just before the start of a crucial game and leaves more than 60 people dead in the San Francisco Bay area and turn it into something completely trite.
Which he does today.
Writing on the 25th anniversary of the Loma Prieta earthquake, Shank manages to reduce both the elegance of the World Series and the solemnity of a wide-scale tragedy into a pronounced heap of metaphorical slop, thanks to such phrases as "unforgiving riptide," "angry earth," and "the upper deck was ... frozen in time." (Not to mention his self-characterization of trying to get his work done before being escorted from Candlestick Park: he "typed feverishly." Ugh.) He simultaneously manages to depersonalize the significant while inflating his own role in the proceedings, describing how he sneaked back to the press room to grab his jacket.
Let's hope The CHB spends the next 25 years learning to compose better prose. And growing a heart.
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