Baseballhead:
It's a Shame About Rob

Michael Cox

Hey, Baseballheadians! Today we present for your approval the curious case of Rob Neyer, ESPN.com's best regular baseball columnist. Because of his standing as the only regular ESPN scribe who can nurture a single coherent, linear thought throughout an entire column, his bosses apparently decided they needed to McNuggetize his writing.

Now when you click the li'l mini-Rob icon, instead of the usual festival of number-crunching you get a tabular grid of Neyer bits, mostly free of statheadosity (statheadedness? Statheadery?) until a click of a particular link brings blessed relief (don't worry, his usual stuff is in there somewhere). While Disney may now attract some casual readers who didn't "get" Neyer when his page primarily consisted of one topic, his style doesn't really lend itself to a quick sentence or two.

No, the "shards o' wisdom" format would work much better for a journalist with a way shorter attention span. Someone like, say, me:

MICHAEL'S BUNTS
The clapper


May 6
Observed from a recent broadcast: the Yankee Stadium video screen keeps the crowd from running to the bathrooms with the same "hat trick" computer-animated between-innings pseudo-shell game featured by every other ballpark. You'd think that to add New York flavor they'd use three-card monte instead. (Optional: at the end, the queen is always revealed to be where it obviously shouldn't be.)

They also apparently really like their Aldo Nova in NYC.
 

The clapper


Why haven't more ballpark DJs leapt on "Party Hard"? It's got all the classic ballpark features: it's about partying hard, it has not one, but two guitar riffs Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley would kill to have written, and it's got those "hey"'s that everyone likes so much.

So quit with the "Dig In" already.
 

Jawin' & Cussin'

Michael's fan talk: Dakota County Feed 'N' Seed, Thursday. Meet you at the cracker barrel.

Michael on the radio: During select Mariner broadcasts, if he really has figured out where they stash that crowd microphone.
 

From the Archives
July 27, 2001: "Like other faves the Giants, the D-Backs take flotsam and jetsom and coax improbable performances from them. However, unlike the Giants, who have historically done it with pitchers, Arizona does it with over-the-hill (or too-winded-to-climb-the-hill) hitters."
Complete column

RECENT COLUMNS
April 29: Kwik Kwipz
April 22: Mixed Media
April 15: I was on cold medication that day. You don't really need to be reading this one.

WHAT MICHAEL IS READING
The Ripken Way : A Manual for Baseball and Life (Larry Burke ghostwriting for Cal Ripken Sr.)
How dare Oprah fold her book club while tomes such as this exist? Move over, Dr. Phil.

Have a Nice Day (Mick Foley)
I understand he may have been injured more times than Rondell White.

Win Shares (Bill James)
I believe Bill James plans to remain baseball's foremost statistical authority via the devious method of boring people stiff. Think about it: how many folks can take the time off from work to sequester themselves away with a slide rule and Total Baseball in order to challenge James' 100 pages of formula and explanation? It's perfect. And evil. Hats off to Bill James and his manservant Hecubus.

LINK OF THE WEEK
Abolish the Designated Hitter: http://abolishthedh.ipfox.com/

Some folks have a really hard time letting go. At least this fellow doesn't go on a long rant about how when he was a kid no players ever complained about their salary. He and Bob Costas should get together sometime. Maybe they'd get drunk and do something about Selig.

SEPARATED AT BIRTH I GET LETTERS
The voices of Bobby Valentine and Marvin the Martian. May 5
Stop smoking banana peels, Donovan. The Phillies are totally for real. They have Scott Rolen, and Bobby Abreu, and, er, Jose Mesa...Okay, so they're going to suck. Dammit. I despise Ed Wade. So, do you think I'd look good in a mohawk? -- Stan, Langhorne, PA

about the author

Michael Cox was set to parody the Fox Sports web site, but all the flash and javascript crashed every browser except Opera. Let him know when you've got Opera installed at mc@strikethree.com.

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