Blackhawks Fri Oct 24 2008

A-Dam, A-Dam, A-dam....

By Ken Green

Most athlete-written blogs are pretty mundane stuff. While I fully acknowledge that the vast majority of the guys writing them are not masters of the written word (most likely opting for something generic like "business" as a college major rather than English or journalism), they still manage to lack the attention-grabbing insight that you'd think a blog written by a professional athlete would automatically contain. No stories about that wild night at the strip club (a shocker, I know...Packman Jones could have a new posting every day), or which teammates are a-holes or what it feels like to trash a sports car (C'mon, Lance Briggs, give us some insight).

No, most of them deal with ho-hum subjects like practice ("The coach made us work really hard today." Great), the (legal) things they do in the offseason ("I attended an autograph signing session and, boy, is my wrist tired!") and the occasional commentary or fellow players, although for the most part it skews toward praise ("He's really tough to hit. Man, I sure hate facing him!"). Curently, you can find Curt Shilling taking about iPhones, Donovan McNabb talking about how great (!) Philadelphia is as a sports town, Jeff Samardzija giddy because he scored tickets to Saturday nights UFC fight at the Allstate Arena and Greg Oden chatting about video games and the summer charity event he sponsors.

All nice, but...yawn.

And then there's the Blackhawks' Adam Burish, who is quickly becoming my favorite athlete sports blogger.

He's only written a few posts (and we've written about it before here), but just as he is on the ice, Burish is pretty much to the point, describing his adventures in brief, unelegant prose that is refreshingly honest and sometimes kinda funny. Consider his observation on taking part in the World Hockey Championships playing for Team USA:

It was held in Halifax Nova Scotia, a town known more for its fishing but prides itself on the fact that they have more bars on one block than any other town. Real smart to put a bunch of hockey guys in that atmosphere!

Or attending a country music concert at Soldier Field with teammate James Wisniewski:

This concert was outstanding, other than having to stand next to Wiz in his tight wrangler jeans, silly cowboy shirt and hat, which he thought was pretty cool.

And here he is on playing alongside the wunderkinds, Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews:

No, I'm not known for scoring as many goals as Kane or Toews, but I can legally get into a bar unlike those two.

He's also address the issue of the necessity of fighting in hockey, and while the subject may draw battle lines between purists and those who prefer the rough-and-tumble approach, Burish makes his stance clear:

Imagine going into the office and your supervisor, who nobody likes, gives you and your co-workers a project that you know is just busy work but is important to get done, but nobody is to excited to do it. The next thing you know is you look over and your buddy is beating up your supervisor. Once he's done beating him up, I'll guarantee you will all be excited and go get that job done with a smile on your face. I am not suggesting you do this. I understand that my working environment is one of the only places in the world where this is allowed.

ONE of the only places... gotcha, Adam.

He postings have a sort of Ball Four-ish quality, a feeling of being let into the club more than the usual "everybody's great and we hope we win this Sunday" prattle. I mean, the guy recently worked as security guard on The Jerry Springer Show. With that resume, I wouldn't expect anything less.