Get well soon Danny Baker

Beauty can be found in anything. In the deepest darkest place, explorers have found fantastic wonders.

Danny Baker is one such pioneer, who through the silt and the darkest recesses of football has found the undeniable beauty that lies beneath.

I was saddened then to hear that he has announced that he’s undergoing treatment for cancer, after an absence from his usual spot on Radio Five Live hinted at such health problems.

“After a pretty mouldy diagnosis about a month back I finally begin chemotherapy on Monday with further radiotherapy from January. Yes radiotherapy; can you beat it? This being so, the old treehouse baggy pants will be donned but sparingly. Once the quacks have soundly thrashed this thing I shall return like a rare gas and as if out of a trap. In the meantime I am watching Tommy Steele box sets (and has there ever been a more lying title to a film than TS’s “It’s All Happening”?) and urge you all to keep yakking up a storm and laugh extra loud at the incumbents.”

Whilst Danny Baker is an erudite and concise journalist, he is not affectionately admired for his ability to discuss the finer technical points of the game of football.

Nor is he renowned for insatiable appetite for Sky Sports, Ford sponsored, Andy Gray shouting, Super Sunday between Fulham and Wigan.

It is instead a simple love of the game that is ignorant of corporate sponsors and money making opportunities, but instead embraces everything that happens on the pitch.

As exciting and enthralling as a well crafted passage of play or an exquisitely taken goal can be, Baker has a mother’s love for football which cuddles everything, including the ugly bits.

The slips, the fall, the gaffs, the own goals, the amusing commentary, crowd reaction, refereeing decisions and many more incidents deemed too distasteful and not broad enough for a mainstream audience are embraced by Baker.

Wrap up all these little details in a well worded summary and you have the genius in action.

Get well soon Danny Baker, I want to see more of this.

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