Tracking Jay Mariotti's Herks And Jerks

One of our favorite things about the city of Chicago is that it still has two big, brassy, loud newspapers who love to snipe at each other. (And they're even just down the street from one another.) In one of those columns that make our lives worthwhile and meaningful, Chicago Tribune metro columnist Eric Zorn tracks a year's worth of Jay Mariotti columns on the White Sox, watching him go from hater to unabashed fanboy back to naysayer and then, finally, back to "I told you so." It's the perfect dissection of just how much of a reactionary, wishy-washy blowhard Mariotti really is. Our favorite is this missive from April:

"I go into every season thinking we can win a championship," says Ken Williams, the loopy general manager of the Sox. "I think we have a chance to do great things." They tote the rhetoric. I bring the reality. ... Williams is trading mashers for midgets.

To last week's:

What they did, thanks to the feisty leadership of Guillen and foresight of Williams, was write a new blueprint on how baseball might be played in the post-steroids era.

Ah, Jay Mariotti, these are the dangers of an archive. Imagine if "Around The Horn" had one.

Jay Mariotti's Year In Review [Chicago Tribune] Why Your Hometown Columnist Sucks: Jay Mariotti [Deadspin]