NEW YORK—The death and subsequent overly sentimental eulogizing of longtime Yankees announcer Bob Sheppard has left sportswriting's maudlin stockpiles almost completely exhausted, sources at the Baseball Writers Association of America reported Wednesday. "We knew Sheppard's passing would cause sports journalists throughout the country to nearly tap our national maudlin supply, and now, with the sappy memorializing of Sheppard as an icon of a simpler time; the almost mawkish comparisons of him to DiMaggio, Berra, and Mantle; and the excessive use of melodramatic closing sentences in the nation's sports columns, there is simply no more maudlin in reserve," BBWAA president Bob Dutton said. "We may have to change the entire way we write about sports, at least until our weepy-self-indulgence levels return to normal." Sources at all major sports news outlets claimed the problem has been developing for some time, with maudlin supplies already overtaxed by the death of John Wooden and the uncontrolled gusher of crude, unrefined maudlin that has been leaking from Rick Reilly since 1994.