WHAT IN THE WORD!?
In world of sports, there’s an emoji for every moment
FOR THOSE of us who make our livings with words, the emergence (and now proliferation) of emojis used to be a welcome respite from walls of cold type. Emojis are fun. Emojis don’t need to be spell-checked.
Emojis are as simple and direct a form of communication as there is. But the more you think about it, emojis can be the enemy, too. Because the ones that have become most popular tend to summarize things with more adroitness and more adeptness than a battalion of sportswriters can. And so in some ways I look at them warily now, the way horse-and-buggy operators surely viewed the first Model T, the way great ship companies probably looked at the first airplanes. Is that the future? For all the fancy writin’ I can muster, there is an emoji available that says it all in one keyboard stroke that takes even writers blessed with brevity (of which I’ve rarely been accused) a couple of dozen. For instance: Me: Mickey Callaway has said some interesting things this year during press conferences. Once he said of his imploding bullpen: “Other than the seven home runs, we did OK.” Another time, after his most important player, Yoenis Cespedes, informed reporters the night before that he might need double-heel surgery that will sideline him 8-10 months, he said, “I didn’t get to read any of the stuff [Cespedes] said or hear it so I am not quite exactly sure what he said.” Oh, and of course there was: “Maybe if [Mets players] were in Cleveland or somewhere else, maybe they wouldn’t feel that pressure. But you are playing in New York.”
Emoji Me:
(See what I mean? That’s a 109word savings. This could be bad ...) Me: Todd Bowles i nsisted that things will be different, that these aren’t the Same Old Jets, the same way Rex Ryan once promised the Same Old Jets were gone, the way Eric Mangini once declared the Same Old Jets dead and buried.
Emoji Me:
(And they even come appropriately color-coded. This is trouble.)
Me: When you read this email that James Dolan sent a fan, you really aren’t sure how to respond. With fury — for the misplaced venom, and the misanthropic tone? With resignation — did you expect any less?
With pity — for this one fan surely represents thousands, soured by 15 years of mostly lousy product, and yet so many still come back, hat (and credit card) in hand, for more? What kind of businessman conducts business this way?
Emoji Me:
(And if you want to get REALLY Y wordy you can add .)
Me: Make no mistake, the Wilpons have engenderd an enormous amount of bad will, thanks to many things: theirr prominent role as both ben-n eficiary and victim of Bernardd Madoff ’s Ponzi scheme; as bigmarket owners who have nev-ever fully embraced big-marketett economics in a sport lacking a salary cap; as serial meddlers (especially Jeff Wilpon); and ass chief architects of a franchise hurtling toward a 13th losing season in those 18 years of the Wilpon Era.
Emoji Me:
(And look, to prove that the emojis aren’t merely included to describe the that litters most of our sporting days and nights these days, let’s see if we can’t team up for a few sentences ...) Us: Saquon Barkley, Odell Beckham Jr. and Eli Manning in the same huddle can make a Giants fan feel sort of ...
Us: If the Yankees can just find enough pitching, we might well be staring at a fine October ...
Us: Maybe Sam Darnold really can make Jets fans believe they’ve found a successor for Broadway Joe.
My work here? Done. Time to crack open a or two.