Recycling is bad, when it comes to news

Baseball season opened this weekend -- the Giants open this evening in Houston -- which allows me to indulge one of my regretful reveries. If only I'd decided to be a sportswriter instead of a movie reviewer back in college, I might be coving the Giants today.

But life as a sportswriter isn't all fun. Consider this (speaking of Houston): A Houston Chronicle sportswriter was suspended yesterday when it was discovered that a column he turned in last week was virtually identical to one he'd written on the same sports figure -- a college basketball coach -- 14 years ago when he worked for a different (now defunct) Houston paper.

Okay, you're not supposed to palgarize, even yourself. But a month without pay seems pretty harsh. Take this guy John Wooden, the basketball coach. He's 93 YEARS OLD. So the sportswriter wrote about him 14 years ago when he was 79. You think the old fart really changed a lot between ages 79 and 93? Imagine trying to come up with a new angle on that guy, year after year.