Warren Corbett / HardballTimes.com

By age 26 Chico Harlan had made the major leagues of sportswriting: a beat reporter covering the Nationals for the Washington Post. He was an inventive, sometimes original writer who obviously worked hard to rescue the daily game story from its irrelevance in a wired world.

Then he opened his mouth and chomped his foot. Last March, just before opening day for his second season on the beat, Harlan told Harry Jaffe of Washingtonian magazine, “I don’t like sports — I am embarrassed that I cover them. I can’t wait to stop. It is a means to an end and a paycheck.” He said he would rather be writing about food.

Food fight! One online commenter wrote, “Douchebag is too kind a term for this twerp.” Another said, “Shame on you, Chico. You are a disgrace to sports journalism.” Harlan had pulled back the curtain and allowed the customers to see that the great and powerful Oz thought wizarding was for dummies.

The young writer prostrated himself, apologizing to readers on his Post blog and individually to most of the Nationals’ players. “I was down in Florida for spring training when that interview was published, and my next 5-6 days were tough. Real tough,” Harlan says now. His boss, sports editor Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, “called me at least two different times to talk me off the ledge.”

Read More …