GO READ BOB MATTHEWS
This isn’t a column.
It’s a recommendation.
A recommendation and an announcement.
Today, the great Bob Matthews launches his online column. After 40-some years of ink on paper, one of America’s great sports columnists has gone cyber.
After retiring from the “Democrat and Chronicle” and the Gannett News Service, he has a new home.
And I’d like you to visit him there.
I’d like you to tell your friends – in person and on social media. I’d like you to book mark the site and go back often. I’d like you to make his sports insights a part of your daily fare.
This isn’t another sappy dissertation on my affection and admiration for Bob Matthews. Though I will point out that he and I have worked together, at one place or another, for 24 years. For some of those years, we had abutting desks. For other of those years, we passed like ships in the night.
But I’ve been in his professional shadow since I came to Rochester, and that small fact has never stopped being a delight to me.
But this isn’t about my peculiar sentimentality.
This is about you reading the best sports notes column in America, and finding the sports enjoyment that four decades of newspaper readers have enjoyed.
Here’s where you find the column.
Go to www.WHAM1180.com. That’s the website of a radio station. Once you get there, you’re going to have to look around a bit. I think if you scroll down some, in the center of the page, there may be a link to him in the list of blogs.
I’m sorry for not being more specific, but I honestly haven’t figured out our radio station’s website. I’m sure the corporate web people are fire-breathing geniuses, but I’m sometimes not bright enough to follow how things work.
But he’ll probably be listed under the blogs.
Which is an insult.
“Blog” is a word best applied to the scrambled typings of bullied adolescents and postpartum suburbanites. Many things, apparently, need to be written. Almost none of them, however, need to be read. I hate to sound harsh, but writing a blog is usually a symptom, not a talent.
What Bob Matthews writes is a column. It’s a professional product. One enjoyed by millions of people over the years.
It's available again -- and it's free.
The radio-station website may be an awkward place to read Bob’s stuff, but it’s adequate. People who run radio websites may not be focused on sports columns, and the company may not catch on to the wisdom of running Bob Matthews’ column nationally – the way Gannett used to.
But a column that was foolishly sent into retirement by America’s largest newspaper company has been wisely brought back by America’s largest radio company. It won’t be ink on paper, but it will be impressions on hearts. It will be the backbone of countless sports discussions, it will be a digest of what you need to know and what you wouldn’t otherwise have learned.
What overjoys me about this is that Bob Matthews goes forward.
And he goes forward with a staggering enthusiasm. Anyone who assumes this stage of Bob’s career finds him tired or spent is dead wrong. He is fired up, he is competitive, he is bringing his A game.
The best is still the best and the master is still the master.
And if you have any interest whatsoever in sports, I hope that you will make the Bob Matthews column your first online stop every day. No matter where you live, what your favorite sport is, or how old you are, this guy is the guy for you.
So look him up.
And stick with him.
And join a long line of sports fans who love Bob Matthews.
You’ll be glad you did.
- by Bob Lonsberry © 2012
