A Vancouver writer has been fired after committing a bold act of plagiarism.
Radio host David Pratt will no longer write columns for The Province after stealing a rather unique line from former Sports Illustrated writer Rick Reilly. In a piece on Hockey Night in Canada play-by-play man Bob Cole, who finished his last Stanley Cup Final for the CBC last night, Pratt wrote “Cole was born 75 years ago, but it’s more likely he dropped straight out of Guys and Dolls with a martini in one hand and a puck in the other.”
Amazingly, Pratt took that almost word-for-word from a piece Reilly wrote for SI in 2000 on college basketball announcer Al McGuire. “They say he was born 72 years ago last Thursday, but don’t believe it. McGuire dropped straight out of Guys and Dolls with a martini in one hand and a basketball in the other.”
Pratt did little more than change the word ‘basketball’ to ‘puck’. He admitted his wrongdoing, saying “I did it, no question … It was a mistake. … That particular line is a pretty famous line and I should have credited Reilly with it and I didn’t.”
Link to The Province article via Awful Announcing.
