The Lost Art of the Baseball Writer

Derek Zumsteg

There's a mythical baseball past when player legends played poker with reporters who had 'PRESS' cards in the brim of their hats, passing flasks of absinthe around, playing for high stakes of their equally terrible salaries. The legend maintains that once the players started to make obscene amounts of money, the two sides could no longer relate. The real difference is this, though: the players deserve their money.

Sports writers by and large are as annoying as mosquitos that bite your ankles and equally insightful. If every time I got off work I had to endure the kind of 'questioning' Ken Griffey routinely gets, I'd go bananas.

REPORTER: You seemed to get off to a great start early this morning (pause).
ME: Yeah, I got a good night's rest and I felt good going into the logs.
REPORTER: Tell me a little bit about that report you put out.
ME: I got a call close to lunch asking for some statistics, and I was able to call for some help and we got the job done.
REPORTER: Hey, great day at work
ME: Thanks.

Sports writers in this country are responsible for the fact that what they have to say is boring. Rob Neyer aside, I cannot name a single mainstream baseball writer who could convince me they're not a hack, and I daily seek out local writers on remote papers' websites. They live by baseball cliches and have hung themselves and the sport on it. They have conversations with imaginary buddies to use clever phrases they thought up, and whine about their personal views of players on other teams.

There are no debates between columnists over whether power is more important than small baseball, no one debates the value of on-base percentage versus batting average -- there is no serious discussion about baseball anywhere to be found in black-and-white in this country. You want to know where the holes are in your team? Find them yourself, because all your local paper is going to tell you is that you need more speed and defense (in many cases, using the phrase "speed and defense win games"), the most patent lies, the most basic generalizations, the mumblings of your local idiot manager (your manager may vary). I would be overjoyed to read, just once, a local baseball columnist refer to anything but intangible contributions, batting average, home runs, or RBIs.

Think of the possible variety in interviews if reporters were minimally statistically versed and willing to ask the occasional tough question:

REPORTER: You're on pace to hit more home runs than strikeouts, a feat accomplished only a couple times this century, you know that?
GUY: Hey, really? I didn't know that. Who else has done it?

or

REPORTER: You strike out three times more often than you walk, more than anyone else in the league. Are you working on improving your strike zone control?
GUY: Um, yes, yes I am. I was just going to go talk to Coach about it.

I highly encourage everyone who reads this to write smoking-hot letters to their local papers and demand more intelligent sports coverage. In the meantime, please (please) check out Rob Neyer's fine musings on the evil ESPNet, and while you're there look for the articles by John Sickels (Rookie Watch, Down on the Farm..) the other columnists all suck, especially Grant and Gammons, who are both worthy of sustained beatings with Bill James' Baseball Abstract.