Takimag Sportswriting’s Last Pure Knight The campaign against Phil Mushnick is a disingenuous attack on one of the last greats. TakiMag Credit: LSU Sport has always been an American obsession, and the greatest sportswriter in America today is by far Phil Mushnick. His twice-weekly column in the New York Post is a guillotine, ridiculing the obnoxious, drunken, gun-carrying, women-bashing, N-word-saying, multi-millionaire sports stars whom the rest of the press treat with the obsequiousness of medieval servants. No one keelhauls rapacious and arrogant sports stars like our Phil, but only those who deserve it. Mushnick is a sports fan like no other. And he’s on the side of the angels as he takes on those billionaire-backed sell-outs, the commissioners of football, basketball, and baseball. He is the only writer I know who has the guts to do it time and again, exposing those powerful charlatans who have ruined sport.  In an age of social media, lying and disinformation are paramount and everywhere. Today’s sportswriters tend to become cheerleaders in return for access. Phil, however, tells it like he sees it. When I was young I read Red Smith, probably the  most eloquent sportswriter of his time. There were others, of course—Grantland Rice. Bill Cannon—but no one wrote such beautiful prose as Smith. Back then sporting heroes had to behave. They were paid little money but played hard, much harder than they do today. For pride. Chuck Bednarik, Frank Gifford, Whitey Ford, Willy, Billy, and the Mick. Some know-nothing fool once accused Phil Mushnick of being a racist. It was all over the internet. If you guess the reason, I will invite you for two weeks on my sailing boat in the Greek isles—nah, it’s too good to resist. The reason for that low blow was (just wait for it): As a child, Phil hero worshipped Whitey Ford, the greatest of all Yankee pitchers. The moron who wrote this figured if one liked Whitey Ford it was clear evidence he was a racist. But let’s go back 65 years or so. I was 22 years old and out on a date with Linda Christian, Tyrone Power’s ex-wife and one of the greatest Hollywood heartthrob beauties. We were at Billy Reed’s Little Club, and it was early morning after a night at El Morocco.  A nearby table of two men offered us a bottle of champagne. Recognizing the men, I invited them over for a drink. They were Mickey Mantle and Billy Martin, both Yankee greats. While drinking, I heard Mantle whisper to Martin, “He’s only a kid, let’s lay off.” I invited them for dinner at El Morocco and they were flabbergasted. El Morocco was out of their league. Two nights later they arrived with Whitey Ford, who turned out to be the most polite and well-mannered of us all. We had a memorable (for me at least) evening.  Now I read that Phil Mushnick is called a racist for having adored Whitey Ford as a child. Go figure, as they say. The person spreading the poison does not mention Phil’s adoration for Roberto Clemente, Elston Howard, or Ernie Banks. Nor his war against the N-word, used non-stop by celebs that call women “bitches and hos,” Jay Z–style. Phil Mushnick’s main war has been against college grads that can’t read or write—in other words, professional athletes who attend universities, get paid for it, but never attend classes and graduate illiterate. Many of them do not make it as pros, the result being they end up in their mid-20s without an education and no prospects. A life of crime beckons.  Skewering TV franchises that “scrape the bottom of barrels” when hiring ex- NFL thugs, “among the lowest forms of fined and suspended humanity,” is vintage Mushnick. Marshawn Lynch, a star NFL running back, is hired by Amazon Prime after multiple arrests for drunken driving and refusing to surrender, and as Mushnick points out, “enhanced by conspicuously grabbing his crotch after scoring.” His was a lone voice reporting on Dior Johnson, a 6’ 3” top basketball recruit who enrolled in 10 high schools in six states and committed to first Syracuse, then Oregon, and finally Pitt. At Pitt, Johnson was charged with assault, false imprisonment of a woman, and strangulation.  Mushnick has reported countless such incidents over the years, but media silence prevails. Needless to say, because most of the perpetrators are young, black, recently enriched athletes, charges of racism are inevitable. But Phil Mushnick is the least racist columnist working today. And he had the guts to write, “BLM is and was a massive media-reliant con.” He wrote that back in 2020, and six years later we have undeniable proof that BLM was a total con that enriched black crooks.  His column has repeatedly demanded justice for one poor man called Adler who while announcing a tennis match described Venus Williams “using guerrilla tactics at the net.” A Times man reported that Adler had said Venus played like a gorilla. He was fired and was unable to work for more than five years. His life was destroyed. Mushnick has written countless columns pointing out the truth but to no avail. Such are the joys of political correctness in our time.  Truth no longer matters, according to Phil, when, despite decades of evidence, major league pitchers last only a few years—if that—because of major-league demands for over-100 mph deliveries. Again, his is a lonely voice in the wilderness of hyperbole and profit. The Super Bowl halftime show is a stew of pornographic gesture and language, and only Phil protests. Nonstop TV talk describing a visual sport is another Mushnick bugaboo.  The reason he’s the best sportswriter today is that he’s brave, honest, unimpressed by wealth or fame, and defends—like Jimmy Stewart in that Washington golden oldie—the causes that are worthy but losing, or, as T.S. Eliot described them, “the abandoned ones.”  Sporting hearts and minds have been snatched by the dark side in America, and Mushnick is a sole voice against the subversion of our sporting life.   The post Sportswriting’s Last Pure Knight appeared first on The American Conservative.