A Grimm ending

Not all stories have a happy ending.

Sometimes, the princess's hair just doesn't quite reach the knight in shining armor.

It is the stories without neat, hopeful endings that try our patience and push our emotional boundaries. Maybe for good. Often for bad.

And all too often society has a way of pushing these stories under the surface, largely because they fail to conform to archetypical conceptions of plot development and conclusion. Call these "normative expectations" or what have you, but they've fundamentally shaped our interaction with and perception of sports, and life.

Remember Ted Williams?

No, not the baseball player

Ted Williams was the Ohio Native (and homeless drug addict) who gained fame for a YouTube video demonstrating his unique talent, a particularly sonorous baritone voice perfect for an announcer's booth.

Demonstrating the Internet's amazing capacity to elevate obscurity to renown, this man was offered a job by the Cleveland Cavaliers to announce home games.

The story was perfect. And it spread like wildfire.

For the modern media cycle, that was that. A man down on his luck, with an amazing gift, was ultimately rewarded by a system where the wheat rises from the chaff.

As you may have guessed, this is not one of those stories.

After having lost everything, and regained it all in one fell swoop, Ted Williams entered voluntary rehab. And left less than 2 weeks later.

Talk about a fall from grace! baziiing!

I won't go on and on about the implications this story has for media coverage, in general, and how we relate to sports, specifically, but ask yourself: how much coverage was devoted to the former facts, and how much to the latter?

Stumped?

Unequivocally, people love a success story. And really don't like dealing with being let down. It shapes everything in terms of how we consume media. How the hell else would you explain the box office popularity of Will Smith's "The Pursuit of Happyness"? Crack?

Actually, we can blame a familiar downfall on that one.

Still not the baseball player