Sportswriter apologizes for "worst piece of sports journalism ever"

Orange County Register writer Mark Whicker has apologized for writing what has been described as one of the worst columns in history.

Under the fairly innocuous headline “Many odd things have happened in sports the past 18 years,” Whicker used the story of Jaycee Dugard — kidnapped at age 11 in 1991 and held hostage until this year — as a framing device to list notable occurrences in the world of sports.

It doesn’t sound as if Jaycee Dugard got to see a sports page. Box scores were not available to her from June 10, 1991 until Aug. 31 of this year. She never saw a highlight. Never got to the ballpark for Beach Towel Night. Probably hasn’t high-fived in a while. She was not allowed to spike a volleyball. Or pitch a softball. Or smack a forehand down the line. Or run in a 5-footer for double bogey. Now, that’s deprivation. …

Dugard’s stepfather says she’s going to need a lot of therapy ? you think? ? so perhaps she should take a respite before confronting the new realities. So, Jaycee, whenever you’re ready, here’s what you’ve missed:

Whicker then proceeds to list a variety of happenings in the world of sports since 1991 — including the Anaheim Ducks’ championship and USC building a basketball stadium. The column concludes with Whicker using a home run pun to describe Dugard’s plight: “Congratulations, Jaycee. You left the yard.” Dugard spent her 18 years in captivity living in a shed in the backyard of her captors.

Whicker’s column has been described as “horrific“, the “single worst piece of sports journalism ever committed to the page,” “astonishingly tasteless,” “quite possibly the worst sports column ever written,” “the single worst column I’ve read,” “The Single Most Tasteless Sports Column In The History Of Written Language,” “ridiculously insensitive,” “atrocious, insensitive,” “loathsome, tasteless, witless, and sincerely unfunny,” “[a]bsolutely disgusting,” “horrendous,” and “utterly without taste, compassion, or common sense.”

At first, Whicker responded defensively to criticism of his column. In response to this reader e-mail — “That?s possibly the most revolting article hook I?ve ever read. September 11 is only a couple days away. Are you going to do a tie-in with that, too?” — Whicker allegedly wrote:

The revolting thing is that you would equate a column that celebrates the release of Jaycee Dugard, and tries to put the length of her 18-year kidnapping in a context that everyone can understand, with a terrorist attack that killed 3,000 people. And then you draw a value judgment about me based on such a preposterous parallel.

Whicker’s reaction seemed to change as the day went on. In an interview with AOL’s Fanhouse.com, he said he was “quite surprised” at the negative reaction to the article, which he said was supposed to “(1) celebrate the release of the girl and (2) show just how long 18 years in confinement really is.”

Then, late Wednesday, Whicker apologized for the column. “It’s impossible to unring a bell or to bring back a column that has already been transmitted. In many ways the damage is done. I’m hopeful that I can be forgiven for this lapse of professionalism by those who were affected most profoundly. I’ll try to earn back the trust of those customers in my future endeavors.”

The apology, which is already up on ocregister.com, will be printed on “the front page of tomorrow’s sports section.”