Top Five Sexiest L.A. Sportswriters

Lists, lists everywhere! You can't turn your head without seeing on in the newstand or online, even when you cup your balls and cough. Bleacher Report helped make a mockery of lists and online journalism — while the assessment is true, I have to admire with a tinge of envy that they got paid.

It's easy to do a "Top 10 LA Sports Moments of 2012" list or something equally asinine, although I won't say that I won't do the same exact thing in the final weeks we have in 2012.

So I decided to do a top-five list of the sexiest sports writers in Los Angeles.

This was inspired by a piece on Yahoo!'s "Big League Stew" blog ranking the sexiest MLB general managers. I don't know what criteria the writer David Brown used in determining his list which concluded that Arizona Diamondbacks GM Kevin Towers was the sexiest. I'm sorry. There is no world in which I will allow Towers' penis anywhere near my mouth or ass.

I was chatting with an out-of-town baseball writer on Facebook the other day, and he asked me who the sexiest beat writer is and where he ranked. I found it hard to think of all of the traveling beat writers I've met and seen over the years to do an accurate ranking, but there was a group I was well acquainted with: local sportswriters!

I've kept bloggers out of this list because I haven't met most of them. I have no idea what Mike Petriello from Mike Scioscia's Tragic Illness looks like. This list is culled from writers from the LA Times, Daily News/LA Newspaper Group, Orange County Register, Associated Press, ESPN Los Angeles and FoxSportsWest.com. I didn't include national writers based in Los Angeles such as JA Adande and Tim Brown. I also didn't include writers on the team specific websites such as Ken Gurnick and Mike Trudell.

5. Dylan Hernandez's facial hair, Los Angeles Times. Do you know how everyone around the country is obsessed with Andrew Bynum's hair? Well all of us locally are just as obsessed with Dylan's beard. One look at it, and you'll be transfixed. In fact when his wife forces him to shave his beard the spell is broken, the whole lot of us wiping our eyes and wondering what the hell had gone on the last several months.

So the Dodgers lack of offense last season? That was Dylan's beard hypnotizing Don Mattingly into paralysis. Okay, it's not sexy in a conventional sense, but someone contributed this selection at the last minute. I had to include it in here somewhere.

4. Beth Harris, Associated Press. Beth is all over the place. Baseball, football, hockey, horse racing and even the red carpet of awards shows. Whether from Churchill Downs to the London Olympics to the STAPLES Center, she does all of this with her shock of red hair and always looking stylish. I have never seen her in a bad outfit. EVER.

Beth's foxiness transcends what's going on in her life. I've seen her come right back after covering the Kentucky Derby for a week, waking up at 5 a.m. in the Eastern time zone, and delve right back into the late night Dodger games with not one hair out of place. Granted she was ready to collapse, but that would have been a very good looking heap of woman.

3. Andy and Brian Kamenetzky, ESPN Los Angeles. I believe they are officially free agents right now with ESPN Los Angeles stupidly not extending their contract. Unlike the Sklar Brothers, they're not twins and they're not annoying endlessly pounding the audience with a joke until nothing remains in its carcass.

Brian looks like he'll check you on the boards on the ice while Andy looks like he'll either dribble all around you on the pitch or be that scrappy boxer. Isn't that all of the signs of a great first date? I thought so.

2. Jill Painter, Daily News, LA Newspaper Group. In 2011 Jill took columnist of the year honors from AP Sports Editors for newpapers with circulation 75,000 to 175,000. Like Beth, Jill covers it all and does it with a panache that is a breath of fresh air in the stale locker rooms and press conference podiums across the city.

Jill is a cool cat, period. One person insisted that she be included on this list, especially if I valued my life.

1. Baxter Holmes, Los Angeles Times. Baxter has a tough job. With a staff that includes Bill Dwyre, he is putting the sexiness of that sports department on his shoulders. The puppy dog eyes, scruff that seems painted on and a wardrobe to kill for, what's not to like?

The Oklahoma native predictably went to the University of Oklahoma and was the school paper's sports editor. He's currently on the UCLA basketball beat but can be seen backing up other beat writers when they take a vacation and working on enterprise stories for the department.

I fucking hate him. Not only is he good looking, but he's also a good writer. And that pisses me off every day.

Honorable Mention (in no order): J.P. Hoornstra, Daily News/LANG; Ramona Shelburne, ESPNLA; Jon Rosen, FoxSportsWest.com; Dan Woike, OC Register; Greg Beachum, AP; Abbey Mastracco, FoxSportsWest.com; Broderick Turner, LA Times; Eric Stephens, OC Register; Blair Angulo, ESPN LA; Lisa Dillman, LA Times.

What have we learned from this exercise? There's a whole lot of ugly going on amongst sports writers in town. And this is probably the uneasiest piece I have ever written especially since I run into these people a lot.

Also since these are writers they are rarely in photographs. So their Twitter pages will just have to suffice.