'Worst Sports Column Ever' Author Sorry, Sort Of

An Orange County Register sports columnist is the talk of the blogosphere and the Twitterverse—and not in the good way. Mark Whicker used his Tuesday column to reminisce about the sports events of the past 18 years under the guise of catching Jaycee Dugard up on "what you've missed" while held captive by her alleged kidnapper and rapist. Today he issued a lukewarm mea culpa, writing that it was "not my intention" to outrage readers around the globe and "it's obvious that I miscalculated."

His miscalculations included ending the column: "Congratulations, Jaycee. You left the yard." (Seriously.) "I am quite surprised by the angry tone of the reaction," Whicker wrote in response to a query from AOL sports blogger Michael David Smith. He could have Googled himself to soften the shock: Searching "worst sports column ever" yields thousands of results, a  huge proportion of which refer to him.
(More Jaycee Lee Dugard stories.)