{"id":4481,"date":"2019-04-20T15:45:37","date_gmt":"2019-04-20T15:45:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.pages.roanoke.edu\/?p=4481"},"modified":"2019-09-21T00:17:46","modified_gmt":"2019-09-21T00:17:46","slug":"our-senior-sports-writer-send-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/?p=4481","title":{"rendered":"Our Senior Sports Writer Send Off"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Written by Ian Gillen<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Well, here they are, my final few hundred words in the Brackety-Ack. \u00a0First and foremost, I want to thank my fans. The two of you have been with me since the beginning. You got me to where I am today, and I will miss sharing my ramblings with you.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">During my time as your second favorite sports writer, we have spread the good word of Fitzmagic, maneuvered past the madness of March a few times, saw the rise and fall of an empire in Philadelphia, but now a goodbye fails me. At least I can say I went out a winner.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Tiger\u2019s weekend at The Masters stands to remind everyone what hard work, perseverance, and consistent therapy can bring, which are all things I have tried to splice in to my writing over the years. Watching a victorious Tiger walk up to the 18<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">th<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> hole in his classic devil-red shirt brought a tear to each eye as I prepare to walk up my own version of the 18<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">th<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> hole.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Not only was I happy that a legend of golf had returned, but I was happy that he did it for me. \u00a0My last days of sharing a job title with Stephen A. Smith were almost spent with the first-round of the NHL and NBA playoffs as the dominant headlines. \u00a0Thankfully, Tiger saved us all from that world, just as I have hopefully saved you from any amount of Stephen A. Smith.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">My retirement will not be like Mike, Magic, or Favre. \u00a0There will be no comeback, and there will most certainly not be any jean commercials. \u00a0I am riding off into the sunset of obscurity, left only with the memories we have shared, but I can rest easy knowing that I will be replaced by a younger, hopefully better writer. I\u2019ll miss you.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Written by Ian Gillen Well, here they are, my final few hundred words in the Brackety-Ack. \u00a0First and foremost, I want to thank my fans. The two of you have been with me since the beginning. You got me to where I am today, and I will miss sharing my ramblings with you. During my [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":4482,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/article.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4481\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}