A-P "So You Think You're A Sportswriter" Thread

[Guest Bret Sabermetric]

Maybe it's just me, Yancy, but I like this approach. Meta-journalism. It's so delicate covering sources and differing from their points of view, and standing up to their misundersgtandings and defensiveness, etc. I thought it was a terrific piece, and I'd like to read this sort of thing much more often than I do.

If he doesn't use "I" so much, you think you'll conclude that the article was written by a machine? What gave you problems?

[Elster88]

]because he is big news now in New York, as big as a Yankee.

...

[Guest OlerudOwned]

[url=http://firejoemorgan.blogspot.com/]FireJoeMorgan.Blogspot.com[/url] is a great place for seeing crappy sportswriting get snarked.

In this post, Whining MFY Mike Celizic stars

Ah, opening day. The culmination of months of wint'ry anticipation. If you're like most baseball fans I know, you wake up on opening day pretty much overjoyed that the season is finally here. It's the one day of the season that there is almost nothing (really) to complain about. Unless you're an [url=http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12141841/]old, bearded idiot[/url] with a penchant for retarded headgear.

Now I'm no Yankees fan, that much I admit. But I don't think they're necessarily bad people. Some of my good friends are Yankee fans. (Fun exercise: replace "Yankee fans" with "black people" and I sound like a terrible racist!) But I draw the line when Yankee fans say things like:

Only Major League Baseball is capable of screwing up what should be the best day of the season.

What is Mikey C. referring to here? The Barry Bonds saga? The WBC? The fact that Joe Morgan is still collecting a paycheck? No. He is cranky because he had to stay up past midnight (!) to watch his favorite 200 million dollar team play baseball.

When should games start?

One in the afternoon, Mr. Commish. Not 10 at night, when weary Yankees fans had to stay up until just to see the lineups introduced.

Ten o'clock? Are you kidding me? That is fucking outrageous! Is anyone awake at ten o'clock?! I don't care how long it has been since my team last took the field. My name is Mike Friggin' Celizic and when 9:30pm rolls around, I better be in the bed down the hall from the bed my long-suffering wife sleeps in, or else! (Note: Bonus FJM embellishment for the sake of unwarranted personal attack!) Also, isn't 99% of the American workforce working at 1pm? They would almost surely miss those 1pm starts, wouldn't they? What about them?

But surely, Mike, you must have taken some joy in some of the things that happened yesterday...

Mike Piazza went yard, but Barry "My Life is a Shambles" Bonds didn�t. Bonds, in fact, didn�t even get a free pass to first base. He did, however, get booed roundly, squarely and trapezoidally.

Oh, good! Evil Barry Bonds got booed! I'm glad you could enjoy that. Also, good geometry joke. And I'm not being hyperbolic! (Wink!)

Meanwhile, back in Oakland, the Yankees took advantage of the halftime break in the NCAA championship to slap Barry Zito around, scoring seven runs in the second inning, with four of them coming on a grand slam by Alex Rodriguez, who, this being April and not October, had no trouble coming through with a big hit.

It was closing in on 11 p.m. East Coast time by then, and the teams would make it all the way through the third inning before 11:15. They say suffering is part of being a fan, but this was ridiculous.

It was ridiculous that your team was firing on all cylinders in the first game of the season? Or was it ridiculous that your team caused Cy Young winner Barry Zito to have the shortest outing of his career? Good thing your reigning AL MVP only hit a grand slam and had 5 RBIs so you could still make a crack about him being a choker.

Not that I have anything against Yankees fans suffering. And I get paid to stay up late watching sports � that�s the story I tell my wife, anyway, and I�m sticking to it � so it doesn�t make any difference to me.

This paragraph confuses me. You are clearly a Yankees fan. Why do you not have anything against Yankee fans suffering? And yes, you do get paid to stay up late watching sports. Don't you? And if you don't, and this sportswriting gig is merely a smokescreen to deceive your estranged wife, what is it exactly that you get paid to do, Mike Celizic? Moreover, how do you explain the columns that get published in various media outlets? This sure is a great cover story you've got going! (I'm confused.)

Yes, they won in impressive fashion, but who saw it?

Umm, real Yankees fans? A's fans? Millions of people west of the Mississippi who care about baseball? Me?

Great day for baseball. Too bad, like everything else baseball gets its mitt on, someone had to mess it up.

Yeah, you're right. Baseball sure has screwed a lot of things up recently. That wild card thing was a huge disaster. Interleague play has just been one big money pit for the league. That WBC did an unmistakably terrible job of showing just how far baseball has spread around the world. And to add insult to injury, they scheduled the Yankees opener to start at 10 o'clock! Is there no justice?

This is why people hate Yankee fans. The team beats a consensus World Series contender 15-2 on the glorious first day of the season, and this guy structures his article around a whiny complaint that (gasp!) his team had to start the season on the west coast.

Mike Celizic writes regularly for NBCSports.com and is a freelance writer based in New York.

No shit.

posted by Matthew Murbles # 6:22 PM no new comments

[Guest Yancy Street Gang]

Bret Sabermetric wrote: Maybe it's just me, Yancy, but I like this approach. Meta-journalism. It's so delicate covering sources and differing from their points of view, and standing up to their misundersgtandings and defensiveness, etc. I thought it was a terrific piece, and I'd like to read this sort of thing much more often than I do. If he doesn't use "I" so much, you think you'll conclude that the article was written by a machine? What gave you problems?

I don't see how a conversation merits the big coverage it was given. I guess I'd have less problem if it was played as a glimpse behind the scenes. But I saw it as, if Pedro talks to Lupica, it's BIG!

[Guest Bret Sabermetric]

It's pre-emptive.

If Lupica lets the conversation go, then Pedro gets to claim "I really told that lying SOB Lupica how his column about me sucked, how he called me a drama queen,l how I'll kick his ass if he ever tells lies about me in the paper ever again," yyybbb. If Lupica responds, he's being defensive, and there's something suspicious about Lupica keeping the colorful exchange secret, he must have something to hide...

This way, he's writing "This is what just happened, this is why it happened" and putting players on notice that if they want to complain about stories, they don't get to do so without the risk of the exchange (that could make them appear stupid or naive or entitled, which is often the case) appearing in the paper. Better to shut up and take your medicine (if medicine it is. It would piss me off to write a pretty complimentary piece about someone and get bawled out because the stupid over-sensitive prick lacks reading skills. This used to happen to me when I was a reporter, and still happens to me here on the CPF from time to time.) I have nothing but sympathy for Lupica here.

[MFS62]

Mike Vaccaro in Sunday's NY Post:

] You take three parts Armando Benitez, two parts Braden Looper and two parts John Franco, you stir it in a bowl, you throw it in a mixer on high for 20 seconds, then you add just a pinch of Doug Sisk for old times's sake, and do you know what you get? You get Jorge Julio.

This is the same Mike Vaccaro who's book is titled "Emperors and Idiots".

Its about the Yankees and Red Sox, but from the title, I thought it was his autobiography.

Later

[metirish]

Klapisch out does himself.

[url=http://www.northjersey.com/page.php?qstr=eXJpcnk3ZjczN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXkyNjgmZmdiZWw3Zjd2cWVlRUV5eTY5MTYwMTAmeXJpcnk3ZjcxN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXk2]Hemingway hero Derek Jeter[/url]

[Guest Edgy DC]

Wow

[Guest Rotblatt]

]That was a mistake, of course. Jeter may not hit many homers, but under pressure, in the postseason, he's a career .300 hitter. That means he's loaded with muscle-memory in critical moments, or as Jeter himself said, "Any time you've done it before, you expect to do it again."

Ah, pseudo science . . . "He's batted over .300 in the post-season, therefore his muscles automatically remember how to perform in critical spots." I wish I were as simple-minded as Klapisch. Must be nice.

[MFS62]

Blatt, when you started this thread, did you ever dream that you would have such a puke provoking example of pandering journalism as that Klapish comment about Jeter?

I'm glad I read it (well, as much of it as I could stand) before I ate my lunch.

Later

[Guest Rotblatt]

MFS62 wrote: Blatt, when you started this thread, did you ever dream that you would have such a puke provoking example of pandering journalism as that Klapish comment about Jeter?

I have to say, Klapish really outdid himself. If I hadn't read some of his earlier "work," I'd think it was satire.

[Frayed Knot]

Holy Blow-Jobs Batman!


"He did it the old-fashioned, Roy Hobbs way, with a monstrous three-run homer"
- Monsterous?!? That thing was right down the line and about 4 rows deep over a wall that's all of 312'. That thing's 325' most likely, maybe 335' tops! How 'bout we give the guy credit for a game-winning HR w/o exaggerating it story-telling purposes?



"The Yankee captain certainly is no machine (he batted only .261 with runners in scoring position last year), but in this case he needed just one pitch, first pitch, to devastate Burgos. ... as Joe Torre says, "When we need something to happen, Derek is usually the one who starts it or finishes it."
- Except, of course, when he doesn't (see: .261 w/RiSP)


"Jeter, of course, was too modest to gloat,"
- Of course he was. He was also helping a little old lady across the street while conducting this inteview.
"... insisting he wasn't trying to hit a home run, only "a base hit up the middle."
- Bullshit! That swing said HR all the way.
"The shortstop probably was being honest, too, considering he'd hit just 30 homers in 1,260 career at-bats with runners in scoring position."
- Of course if he had LOTS of HRs w/RiSP we'd cite THAT as proof of his invincibility. Heads he wins, tails he wins!

"Jeter may not hit many homers, but under pressure, in the postseason, he's a career .300 hitter"
- Neglecting to mention that he's a .312 hitter otherwise, meaning, of course, that he must get worse in October! Somehow, I don't think Klap will see it that way.

[Elster88]

It's articles like this that make people curse Jeter out. But are they really his fault?

[metirish]

How does Klap sleep at night after writing such BS....like Rotblatt said if I didn't know better this would pass as satire.

[MFS62]

When he writes about Jeter, he probably has a bulge, but not in his cheek.

Later

[Guest Edgy DC]

Yeah, that muscle memory being October-specfic, but available to call on in certain April cameos, was a two-handed head-clutcher.

]Johnny Damon had just been wiped off the map by Royals' reliever Ambiorix Burgos -- three pitches, three strikes, one forgettable at-bat -- which forced the Yankees to channel their karmic energy at Derek Jeter. In other words, the Bombers were saying their prayers.

Saying that Jeter is a deity?

]All this in the home opener, which in the Yankee universe is like a day of worship.

Maybe he is saying that.

]The Stadium wasn't just packed, it was filled with an optimism you find only in October.

You know, this isn't so much about Klap, but calling it "The Stadium" (as if it's sacred and perfect) out of one side of one's mouth, while arguing that it needs to be demolished and replaced out of the other, is... unseemly.

]Turned out the afternoon was full of blemishes -- some momentary, some of which will require longer-range examination -- but all of them were cleansed by Jeter, who single-handedly beat the Royals, 9-7.

"Cleansed" now? O, kiss me, son of God.

]He did it the old-fashioned, Roy Hobbs way, with a monstrous three-run homer that only cemented his legacy as a Hemingway hero, displaying grace under pressure.

OK, FK already killed the Malamud reference, but how is this particularly Hemingwayan?

]Jeter, of course, was too modest to gloat...

Who gloats in that position? Anybody. You hit a game-winning homer, you let the admiration come to you.

]Still, he'd taken careful notes on Damon's three pitch strikeout -- fastball, splitter, fastball -- and was looking for just that, another heater, on his first pitch. Burgos had a different game plan. He tried a splitter, but signed his own death notice by throwing it "right down the middle."

So it wasn't about careful preparation by a high-minded player but a pitch with bad placement hit out by a talented player.

]That was a mistake, of course. Jeter may not hit many homers, but under pressure, in the postseason, he's a career .300 hitter. That means he's loaded with muscle-memory in critical moments, or as Jeter himself said, "Any time you've done it before, you expect to do it again."

OK, one poster pointed out the bogus muscle-memory thing, and another the fallacy of the post season sample, but how about the bad logic in the second sentence. "Jeter may not hit many homers, but under pressure, in the postseason, he's a career .300 hitter." How about "Jeter may not hit many homers, but under pressure, in the postseason, he still doesn't hit many homers."

]The Yankee captain treated the moment like some cool October evening, ambushing Burgos' hanging splitter.

Hanging. Now it's not only bad location but a pitch that lost it's action. Not preparation at all.

]The Stadium turned into some open-air asylum for Jeter. While the crowd rose as one, a handful of Yankees were waiting for Jeter at home plate, everyone hand-shaking and helmet-slapping the captain -- grown men's substitute for a simple thank you.

This differed from other game-winning homers somehow, I guess.

No one was more grateful than Damon, whose strikeout with runners on first and second had brought the Yankees to within four outs of a 7-5 loss.

]"Derek is so talented, you know that over the course of a game, he's going to do something dramatic," Damon said. "I've seen it enough times in my career from the other side. He's very, very professional when the game is on the line."

Except when he deosn't do something dramatic. But even then, he's professional. What does that make Damon?

]Jeter made it possible for the Yankees to ignore just how ordinary Wang has been this season, even in spring training when his ERA was close to 5.00. In his two regular-season starts, the soft-spoken right-hander has allowed 15 hits in 102/3 innings, his ERA now inching toward 6.00.

The rest of the article just beats the Hell out of Wang for his un-Yankeeness. Oh, and the Yankees look old and slow compared to the Royals. That surprises... who? Speed and youth are cheap enough.

[Guest Yancy Street Gang]

Now I bet Scarlett is really sorry she turned down tickets for that game.

[Guest ScarletKnight41]

Yeah - crushed....

[Guest Rotblatt]

Is Klapisch maybe refering to Hemmingway hero Jake Barnes?

Tragically incapable of consumating with soul mate Sheffield due to Jeter's "war wound," Jeter pimps Sheff out to a young "bullfighter" A-Rod?

Man, Klapisch really works on multiple levels, huh?

[metirish]

I'm surprised he works for a decent paper in Jersey and goes National with ESPN.

I imagine the MFY's employ a "mop boy" like one you might find in those sleazy peep show places for the press box on days like yesterday.

[Guest Yancy Street Gang]

I bet the Hemingway connection comes from his having to read The Old Man and the Sea in high school, and remembering the references to Joe DiMaggio.

[Willets Point]

So you think you're a sports journalist.

[Guest Bret Sabermetric]

Didn't you fucking people go to high school? It's a cliche of American Lit that Hemingway's "heroes" strive for "grace under pressure." That's Hem's definition of "courage." There's a clue in the end of the sentence that that's the allusion. Was anyone exposed to this cliche? Anyone? Bueller?

There's almost nothing lamer than someone intoning in a particularly snotty way "I'm afraid your allusion, if allusion there is, is far too subtle for me, hence you have made effectively no allusion at all here, my dear sir," when it turns out that the allusion is totally un-subtle (I'd say he gave it away by adding the "grace under pressure" part, which a good reader should have figured out himself) and you're getting all la-de-da over nothing but your own denseness.

This is in itself emblematic of a lot of CPF griping about sportswriters in general: they write some innocuous or even funny line, and you all gang on up the writer, collectively kick his ass around the block, chortling and agreeing that your streetgang is particularly amusing, while anyone not part of your little organization would read the exchange and say "You've got nothing to complain about here," a comment you're not hearing because you're so in love with the amusing antics of your fellow thugs.

[Guest Rotblatt]

Bret Sabermetric wrote: Didn't you fucking people go to high school? It's a cliche of American Lit that Hemingway's "heroes" strive for "grace under pressure." That's Hem's definition of "courage." There's a clue in the end of the sentence that that's the allusion. Was anyone exposed to this cliche? Anyone? Bueller? There's almost nothing lamer than someone intoning in a particularly snotty way "I'm afraid your allusion, if allusion there is, is far too subtle for me, hence you have made effectively no allusion at all here, my dear sir," when it turns out that the allusion is totally un-subtle (I'd say he gave it away by adding the "grace under pressure" part, which a good reader should have figured out himself) and you're getting all la-de-da over nothing but your own denseness. This is in itself emblematic of a lot of CPF griping about sportswriters in general: they write some innocuous or even funny line, and you all gang on up the writer, collectively kick his ass around the block, chortling and agreeing that your streetgang is particularly amusing, while anyone not part of your little organization would read the exchange and say "You've got nothing to complain about here," a comment you're not hearing because you're so in love with the amusing antics of your fellow thugs.

Oh, come on, Sal. MAYBE the Hemmingway thing is defensible, but muscle memory for Clutchness?

I bet even Yankee fans are a little embarassed by reading that.

[Guest Bret Sabermetric]

Rotblatt wrote: Oh, come on, Sal. MAYBE the Hemmingway thing is defensible, but muscle memory for Clutchness? I bet even Yankee fans are a little embarassed by reading that.

I wrote "a lot of CPF griping about sportswriters in general", Blatt, not every single CPF gripe about sportswriters. The muscle memory thing was embarrassing, and it was fine to point that out. He deserves mockery for that. But my larger point was that, in calling writers on every conceivable error, you often miss their points, and sometime make idiots out of yourselves in mocking them for perfectly sensible sentences that you've simply misunderstood. And what I'm pointing out is that on the CPF no one will defend the original writers because it's so much self-congratulatory fun mocking them.

Check out, for example, the hostility I will earn in this thread for pointing out this modest truth. Probably CPFers were angered by my making the point, and are contriving ways to attack me for daring to make it. Take your honest misreading of what I wrote: I write "a lot of CPF griping about sportwriters in general" and rather than address what I'm explicitly writing about, you take pains to defend the mockery of one very specific point that I wasn't even addressing, as if that's a defense of CPF over-zealousness. Think about it.

[Guest Rotblatt]

Bret Sabermetric wrote: I wrote "a lot of CPF griping about sportswriters in general", Blatt, not every single CPF gripe about sportswriters. The muscle memory thing was embarrassing, and it was fine to point that out. He deserves mockery for that. But my larger point was that, in calling writers on every conceivable error, you often miss their points, and sometime make idiots out of yourselves in mocking them for perfectly sensible sentences that you've simply misunderstood. And what I'm pointing out is that on the CPF no one will defend the original writers because it's so much self-congratulatory fun mocking them.

Well, it IS pretty fun to mock sportswriters, and many of us enjoy doing it.

And sure, we enjoy it enough that we occasionally overlook salient points, but it's all in good fun.

For my part, I don't mind being called out on such occasions, although I'm occasionally a little slow on the uptake . . .

[Guest Bret Sabermetric]

Thanks for the temperate response, Blatt. My point is that you're so eager to tar sportswriters with a "Met-hating" brush, that you often misunderstand their perfectly clear points. (This is far from the first time it's happened that someone has gone off on a sportswriter for writing something that makes perfect sense, yet not getting busted himself by fellow CPFers.) I actually suspect that some of you did remember that Hemingway clichef rom your high school English class, but felt it would be seen as CPF disloyalty to point it out, or more likely that you didn't put any effort into figuring out a way to interpret Klapisch's crack about Hemingway so it would make some sense. Better to mock him for writing nonsense, and remember vaguely that he botched a literary allusion.

[Elster88]

="Bret Sabermetric"]Check out, for example, the hostility I will earn in this thread for pointing out this modest truth.

Any hostility you would have earned would have been for being a prick. You have to realize this. You're intelligent and a good writer. The hostility that results from posts like below can't be a shock.

The post below starts with the line "Didn't you fucking people go to high school?", and then you say you don't think you deserve hostility for "pointing out the modest truth." Honestly, if you're going to be an asshole, be ready for the response you're going to get.

And for the most part, I think you write hostile posts to get a response, so you can turn around and complain about it. It's weird.

]Didn't you fucking people go to high school? It's a cliche of American Lit that Hemingway's "heroes" strive for "grace under pressure." That's Hem's definition of "courage." There's a clue in the end of the sentence that that's the allusion. Was anyone exposed to this cliche? Anyone? Bueller? There's almost nothing lamer than someone intoning in a particularly snotty way "I'm afraid your allusion, if allusion there is, is far too subtle for me, hence you have made effectively no allusion at all here, my dear sir," when it turns out that the allusion is totally un-subtle (I'd say he gave it away by adding the "grace under pressure" part, which a good reader should have figured out himself) and you're getting all la-de-da over nothing but your own denseness. This is in itself emblematic of a lot of CPF griping about sportswriters in general: they write some innocuous or even funny line, and you all gang on up the writer, collectively kick his ass around the block, chortling and agreeing that your streetgang is particularly amusing, while anyone not part of your little organization would read the exchange and say "You've got nothing to complain about here," a comment you're not hearing because you're so in love with the amusing antics of your fellow thugs

[Guest Bret Sabermetric]

Excellent start to the hostility, Elster. I'm an asshole, that's good. And a prick. Also I'm weird.

I get that I can be abrasive. But how about dealing with the content? How about if I expressed the content in a non-abrasive way? "CPFers might want to bear in mind that Klapisch's point about Hemingway may well be explained by the reference in the sentence being cited, hwere he mentions 'grace under pressure,' a subtle allusion to an obscure definition Hemingway once gave to 'courage', " known only to serious students of little-known American literature."

I'm sure if I phrased it like that, I wouldn't raise an eyebrow on the CPF. The fact that I think someone probably DID recognize the 'grace under pressure' cliche, and didn't mention it in the Klapisch-bashing notwithstanding, or else you really are a bunch of nosepickers who got nothing from your elementary educations (Klapisch is writing for the fucking Bergan Dreck-chord, not the PMLA post-modernist special issue, for Chrissake). I think you're better read than that.

[Elster88]

You're missing my point entirely. Maybe I'm phrasing it wrong.

You can't be a prick in your posting and then act all shocked and dismayed if the response is hostile.

I'm not sure if saying you post like a prick is actually calling you a prick. If it is, so be it. Most people here have said you're easy to get along with in the real world. But your online persona should not be shocked at hostile responses to the post I quoted above.