January 10th, 2007 → 12:00 pm @ Seth Mnookin
But there’s a decidingly unexciting non-event taking place today – the Boston Baseball Writers Association’s annual dinner — and this event has, as Cafardo points on online, been used to make announcements in the past…
Post Categories: 2006 Hot Stove Season & J.D. Drew
January 10th, 2007 → 11:59 am @ Seth Mnookin
Okay, fine: that was a cheap and easy transition. But at least I’m trying…
Anyway. Lost in all the HoF commentary/hand wringing/debates is the opening today of the Red Sox’s annual “Rookie Program,” in which — and I’m quoting the press release here — “twelve of Boston’s top upper level prospects” will be exposed “to the expectations of being major leaguers for the Red Sox.” (This year’s participants: pitchers Kason Gabbard, Craig Hansen, David Pauley, Nick Debarr, Clay Buchholz, Kyle Jackson, and Edgar Martinez; outfielders Jacoby Ellsbury, Brandon Moss, and David Murphy; catcher George Kottaras; and third baseman Chad Spann.) Besides your normal workouts, the program includes (and I’m quoting again) “seminars that will focus on the assimilation into major league life off the field. A number of individuals from both in and outside the Red Sox organization will speak to the group, including President/CEO Larry Lucchino, General Manager Theo Epstein, manager Terry Francona, major league coaches John Farrell and Dave Magadan, catcher Jason Varitek, and longtime baseball writer and ESPN reporter Peter Gammons.”
I’ve written before about the ways in which the team tries to prepare rookies for the weird and wooly nature of playing in Boston (Cla Meredith could probably have used some more of this), and I don’t have a whole lot to add to that. It is worth re-recounting a conversation I had with Papelbon in ’05, in which he talked about his participation in the Rookie Program: “In January, I did the media development program. A lot of the subjects we went over in that time period are coming up now, and I’m able to go back to that and rely on it and say, ‘Hey, what did I learn and how can it help me?’ So in terms of dealing with the press and everything else that comes with playing major league baseball, yeah, it’s helped.” Not to get down on my knees — which is something I’m accused of vis a vis the Sox baseball ops folks with some regularity — this really is exactly the kind of stuff the public rarely hears much about, but really is important.
Post Categories: 2006 Hot Stove Season & Red Sox front office & Red Sox rookie development
January 10th, 2007 → 11:57 am @ Seth Mnookin
Some interesting comments in response to yesterday’s Chass column that are worth highlighting.
For instance, when one reader (PatsFanDK) wrote in to Chass questioning his Drew columns, Chass (purportedly) responded (after all, I can’t confirm the existence or genuineness of this email exchange), “You might want to reread what I wrote. You obviously think I wrote that the Red Sox tampered with Drew. I did not, though I suspect they did. I wrote that baseball officials and executives of other clubs were talking about their suspicions that the Red Sox tampered. If you know that is a lie, you must be a terrific reporter.”
I’d suggest once again that Chass check out the Times‘s ethic guidelines, in which agendas — especially when sources are granted anonymity — are expected to be highlighted. In Chass’s pieces, they clearly weren’t: there was no explanation of why other GMs might have a vested interest in making the Red Sox look bad, and no indication as to whether any of these GMs or executives had any previous beef with Theo or the Sox. (There also still has not been any explanation of why, if these “suspicions” were so widely discussed, virtually all of the principals have since said, on the record, that they hadn’t heard anything about it until Chass’s piece.)
A little further down, branatical points out something I had missed. Yesterday, Chass wrote that “no one is saying” if Drew had had a second physical since the Sox-administered one that apparently raised some concerns. (Chass dismissingly attributes this to “privacy laws that give general managers and agents an excuse not to talk about a player’s medical condition when they don’t want to talk about it”. Damn privacy laws!) But that “no one” doesn’t include Drew himself — whom Chass has been unable to reach. Way back on December 30, Nick Cafardo was able to get this info. He wroter: “Drew sought and received a second opinion from Dr. James Andrews in Birmingham, Ala. while Red Sox team physician Dr. Thomas Gill did his own battery of tests when Drew came for a physical in mid-December.” Which seems to indicate that Chass not only is a bad reporter…he doesn’t even bother to read what else has been written about a subject he’s been jawing on about for weeks on end. Or, as branatical says, “If I am Murray Chass and I am a writer for the NY Times, I do Lexis searches and find out (A.) Other reporters in my business have actually spoken to Drew at home and (B.) other reporters have found out the name of the doctor who allegedly did a second examination. Then, I give up on my nonsensical columns about the Red Sox and write more about how Jeter and ARod are planning a trip to Holland in the spring to pick tulips, all in an effort to become close friends again.”
Post Categories: Media ethics & Murray Chass & New York Times
January 9th, 2007 → 3:28 pm @ Seth Mnookin
I would have voted for you. Even if I didn’t have a well-articulated reason to support my position.
Yes, folks, for the thirteenth straight year, Jim Rice was not voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, meaning he now has only two more shots to get a plaque at Cooperstown. (Or at least two more shots to be voted in by the writers — a surly bunch, to be sure. After that, he’ll be dependent on the Veterans Committee. For those who are interested, there are plenty of people who have laid out their reasons for why Rice should be in the Hall.)
Goose didn’t get in either — only Cal Ripken, Jr. and Tony Gwynn did. If it provides Rice any colsolation (and I’m sure it won’t) there were eight writers who felt that even Ripken didn’t deserve a spot in Cooperstown.
Oh, and Big Man? Not even close. Told you so.
Post Categories: Hall of Fame & Jim Rice & Mark McGwire
January 9th, 2007 → 9:35 am @ Seth Mnookin
It’s a good question. On the one hand, you have my obsession with Murray Chass; on the other hand, there’s Murray’s infant-like fascination with the Red Sox. Whatever the answer to that question is, it’s fairly clear (to me, anyway), that my obsession doesn’t result in my putting bad info in a national newspaper week after week, while Murray’s does.
Like, for instance, today, when apropos of absolutely nothing, Murray revisits the J.D. Drew non-controversy. There’s no new info here — heck, there’s really not even any new reporting here, unless you count a phone call to Drew’s mom as reporting — but there is another chance for Chass to trot out his contention/implication that there was tampering going on between the Red Sox and Drew’s agent, Scott Boras. Murray’s had a hard-on for this issue for more than a month, and the fact that multiple outlets (like The Boston Globe and the Los Angeles Times, the hometown papers of the two teams most intimately involved in this issue) have pretty much shown that Chass’s story had tenuously little connection to reality doesn’t seem to sway him one bit.
In a weird way, that’s understandable — after all, he recently told a reader that “my reporting is always correct.” But what’s up with the Times‘s editors — you know, the gatekeepers? At least one national sportswriter has written in to them, asking why Chass is allowed to print information that’s demonstrably false (like the claim that Dodgers GM Ned Colletti was refusing to talk to Theo when, Colletti readily confirmed that the two were speaking almost daily), or, for that matter, why Chass’s stories seem completely exempt from corrections.
Somehow, I doubt we’ll ever get an answer to that question. Sigh.
Post Categories: J.D. Drew & Murray Chass & New York Times
January 8th, 2007 → 4:47 pm @ Seth Mnookin
This isn’t meant to be ironic or knowingly hip or anything else. Seriously: Solla Solla Enna Perumai may be the most amazing person on the planet. (Clip contains a video that’s completely safe for work, unless you work someplace that has an irrational hatred for freaky Bollywood funk routines.)
If you liked that, here’s a bonus clip of Ted Lyons and His Cubs. If I’m not mistaken, that was somehow incorporated into the beginning of “Ghostworld” (the movie, not the comic).
Post Categories: Bollywood & Oblique references to Buckaroo Bonzai
January 5th, 2007 → 4:33 pm @ Seth Mnookin
More activity from New York: as everyone now knows, the only man ever to slaughter an innocent dove in the middle of a major league baseball game is counting down the days, waiting for the time when he can get to Arizona. The details of the deal worried me at first: since I’m almost willfully ignorant about minor league prospects (especially in the NL), for all I knew Ross Ohlendorf was gonna win Princeton its first MVP award and Steven Jackson was on his way to being the second coming of Mariano Rivera. (Luis Vizcaino, while occasionally nasty, is also more than occasionally wild, so he wasn’t a huge concern. To me, anyway.)
Thankfully, Keith Law calmed me down a bit: he does know minor league talent and doesn’t think any of these guys are difference makers. Law, along with Bob Klapisch, also points out that RJ’s departure leaves a definite hole in the Yankees rotation…although I can’t imagine Cashman is anywhere near done for the offseason.
Still, as I said way back in December, a Johnson trade is nervewracking regardless of whom they get in return, both because it means New York is getting rid of another onerous contract and because it offers one more illustration that the charmingly insane George Steinbrenner is no longer running the show. (Said I: “Suddenly, the Yankees are shedding payroll like they’re the Marlins, and Brian Cashman looks determined to pick up young prospects and jettison the senior citizens collecting outrageous paychecks…”) Sure, it’s challenging when your competition raises its level of play, but I was just fine when Boston’s front office was executing a plan and the Yankees were indulging Cuddly George’s every whim.
Postscript: I’ve never been a Randy fan, but I do hope he does well in Phoenix, if only because that gives the Diamondbacks — currently run by former Red Sox asst GM Josh Byrnes, one of my favorite people in all of baseball — a chance to win a pretty weak division.
Post Categories: 2006 Hot Stove Season & Keith Law & Oblique references to Public Enemy lyrics & Randy Johnson & Yankees
