January 18th, 2007 → 8:33 am @ Seth Mnookin
More readers send in their email correspondences with Murray Chass. This one is a gem.
“I would prefer not replying to your e-mail, but I need to tell you that you know nothing about journalism.It’s also questionable that you know anything about baseball, but I’ll leave that for you and your buddies to decide. If you want to talk about unhealthy obsessions, what about your obsessive need to comment on what I write? At least I get paid for what I write.
From a journalistic standpoint, it would have been remiss of me to write about the unusually long delay in Bonds signing his contract without noting that there was another such case. Had that other case involved Alfonso Soriano or Carlos Lee, you would not have given it a second’s thought. But when ‘Red Sox’ appeared on your radar, you could not let it go without responding. That, my friend, is obsessive.
Murray Chass”
From a journalistic standpoint, it would also be remiss not to, at the very, very, very least, correct a glaring, blatant mistake that Chass printed one month ago: that the tension between Theo and Dodgers GM Ned Colletti resulted in a stony silence throughout the winter meetings. (I’ve written before about what Chass’s original article said about the questionable ethics of the sports section.) Within days of Chass’s original article, the Globe wrote that, “Through a Dodgers spokesman, Colletti also refuted Chass’s allegation that there was a rift between Colletti and Epstein, and that he refused to take Epstein’s phone calls in Orlando. ‘They probably talked about 20 times last week,’ said spokesman Josh Rawitch. Indeed, when Colletti arrived at the meetings late last Sunday night from the Dominican Republic, one of his first orders of business was to conduct an hourlong face-to-face meeting with Epstein on a possible deal for Manny Ramírez.”
But apparently, as Murray’s said before, he’d stake his “nearly 40 years at the Times” against other news outlets…even if those other news outlets actually, you know, talk to sources and stuff: “Ask anybody in the business, and he will tell you my reporting is always correct, whether I’m quoting people by name or not. You don’t have to believe what I have reported, but that’s your problem, not mine.” And, apparently, Ned Colletti’s.
Also, from a baseball standpoint, the notion that Manny would be patrol perhaps the most spacious right field in baseball…well, it’s pretty moronic. Almost as moronic as suggesting Barry Bonds might end up wearing a Red Sox uniform, both of which Murray did yesterday.
Finally, if you’re interested in someone who knows something about both journalism (or at least writing) and baseball, check out Jose Melendez’s Keys to the Game. Astute readers will know that Jose has one of my coveted (and almost never updated) links on the left-hand rail of this page. Jose is also recogized in the acknowledgments of my first book. And, as Jose has said, I’m the only person ever to have bought a Keys to the Game thong. (Don’t ask.)
Post Categories: Jose Melendez & Murray Chass & New York Times
