Fire Gardy

I was going to write a regular post about this, but I was having trouble picking out just which quotes I wanted to use; there were just so many I wanted! Well, if that’s not a perfect invitation for a nice little fisking, I don’t know what is. So here goes … with a little help from Tom Powers of the Pioneer Press, and his latest on the Twins’ new dedication to winning in the playoffs.

Playing against the Minnesota Twins is like getting flicked in the head with a sunflower seed. At first, there’s no visible damage. But by the end of the summer, and after dozens and dozens of little pings to head, the opposition is staggered.

Plus, it really gets the troops riled up when Gardy rallies them by shouting “get your sunflower seeds ready, boys, let’s gem ‘em!” before the games. The crackling of the little plastic bags sends shivers down the spines of their opponents come mid-summer, when the oppressive heat and humidity makes it difficult to move your head out of the way of a projectile seed and you find yourself lethargically submitting to this absurd torture.

And the Twins win the division.

Well, sometimes, they do.

Then the Twins enter the playoffs brandishing their tiny sunflower seeds and — kapow! — they are the first ones eliminated. How many times have we seen this? After so many entertaining summers the team has gotten no closer to advancing in the postseason.

You mean the level of difficulty takes a big jump up, and the team that just managed to scrape by when it was easier has tremendous problems adjusting, and they get beaten by a superior team in the playoffs? Outrage!

That’s because the Twins always have been built for the long haul.

Actually, that’s interesting. Is it true that the Twins are “built for the long haul,” and if so, how exactly? I mean, is it because they always seem to have nine 4th/5th starters that they can slide in (but lack a good one-two punch at the top of the rotation, which you need in the playoffs), and a handy collection of utility infielders who can step in and play in case players need rest or get injured?

They do enough little things right, make the fewest number of critical mistakes, to be able to squeeze into the top spot.

Oh. Well, I can’t argue with the little things. It’s the little things that make up life. It’s just too bad the Twins don’t do the little things right, and are constantly making critical mistakes. They succeed in spite of that because of their star players, like Mauer, Morneau, and Span.

But the playoffs are about star power and great individual performances. They are about lightning-bolt home runs that come from anywhere in the batting order and pitching gems under fantastic pressure.

Yes, the playoffs are not about a long, boring grind through a miserable summer that drives away a great number of people from their putative national pastime because they have something better to do than watch yet another baseball game on such a nice day. They’re about exciting home runs, epic clutchitude, and gripping story lines that sportswriters can latch onto and use to tell us which players have that little special something that allowed their team to win a few games when it actually matters.

To this point, the Twins have been content to win their division and take their chances in the playoffs.

You can’t win in the playoffs without getting there, so consistently winning your division and hoping to catch lightning one of these years isn’t exactly a bad solution for a mid-market/low-revenue team like the Twins. You think other teams who pull in as much money as the Twins (Pirates and Royals) wouldn’t like to trade positions, and get their asses kicked in the playoffs while we suffer 100 loss seasons in their stead?

That strategy appears to be shifting. The organization is starting to think ahead to October. Winning the division and getting blasted out of the playoffs may not be enough anymore.

Woo hoo! Let’s all dance in the street! Bill Smith isn’t going to play second fiddle any more, and therefore, surely, he’ll start pulling the trigger on some deals that will significantly improve the team.

This is the main reason general manager Bill Smith signed Jim Thome, a veteran of 64 career playoff games. In those games he has 17 home runs. And it’s one of the reasons Smith re-signed Carl Pavano, who had a great playoff run with the 2003 champion Florida Marlins. Pavano sports a 1.71 earned-run average in nine postseason appearances.

Okay, let me get this straight. The problem is that the Twins succeed over the long haul, and have repeatedly failed to win the last series of the season (the one in the playoffs). Rather than stay rational, and realize that the best way to improve their chances in the postseason is simply to improve their team overall … they’re going to invest in players who’ve had small-sample-size success to complement their own players’ small-sample-size failures?

“That’s exactly right,” Smith said. “We have to keep our eyes on what’s at hand, which is to win the division. But once we do that we have to find a way to get past the Red Sox, Yankees and Angels. We have to find a way to beat the best teams and advance in the playoffs.”

And that is why it’s important to have Thome’s 17 postseason HRs sitting on the bench, especially since he hasn’t hit any since 2001.

Smith acknowledges that it might take some effort to keep Pavano healthy. But manager Ron Gardenhire has been a staunch supporter of bringing Pavano back, and Smith agrees.

Damn the torpedoes, as it were. It’s important to invest in fragile middle-of-the-rotation guys and call them the ace of the staff because they’re the oldest and had success in the playoffs many years ago, in their prime. Gardy knows this, that’s why he’s been so good at winning playoff games in his career.

As for the 39-year-old Thome, Smith said he appears to be in good enough shape to play the odd game at first base. Thome has played just four games in the field since 2006, though, so such a scenario seems unlikely.

At this point, I can’t tell if Powers is writing a puff piece, or ripping the organization. He keeps relaying what the team thinks, then pointing out why it’s kind of stupid … but not nearly directly enough.

“But I talked with him and he’s willing,” Smith said.

Oh, he’s willing to play first base? Do you not realize, Mr Smith, that his willingness to play in the field is trumped by his inability to actually do so? Or that the White Sox might have tried to use him at first when Konerko was hurt, or the Dodgers might have tried to use him once or twice to give Loney a break down the stretch?

Smith said he’s still looking around but isn’t likely to make any more moves before spring training. At least, he probably won’t do anything considered major.

So you’re saying that the Twins are no longer content with just winning the division, and they want to start making a move in the playoffs … and they want us to believe that while they’re leaving question marks at half the infield, and the top of the rotation?

That means the Twins will be in the familiar position of trying to “make do” at a couple of positions. As it stands, second base and third base will consist of a mishmash of players. But there just aren’t any decent third basemen available. And the Twins are unwilling to go through the Joe Crede “day to day” thing again in 2010.

Well, the fact that there aren’t any good third basemen available means they shouldn’t consider second base options like Orlando Hudson or Felipe Lopez. That’s how free agency works, people!

They also lack backups in center field, first base and catcher. In other words, they lack depth.

Because Pridie isn’t a backup at CF, Morales isn’t a backup at C, and Cuddyer/Thome/someone-from-AAA isn’t a backup at 1B.

“Ideally, if we could put a wish list together, we’d get a right-handed bat that can play center field and first base,” Smith said.

That’s your wishlist?! A guy who plays both 1B and CF (?!?!?!) … rather than a solution at second base or third base? A 1B/CF doesn’t even exist in the baseball universe (though something tells me Bill Smith doesn’t realize that), and wasting a roster spot to take playing time away from Morneau and Span doesn’t exactly scream “Great Idea!” to me.

The projected backup catcher, Jose Morales, had wrist surgery and won’t return until toward the end of spring training. Morales is a heck of a hitter but a liability in the field.

It’s more important to have depth in March than it is in August and September, so Morales being injured now means we won’t have depth during the season. And when it comes to a backup catcher, he’s pretty much pointless if he’s not as good as your regular catcher.

But it’s too early to evaluate the roster.

Which is why it’s a good thing the Twins still haven’t evaluated theirs. If they had, they might have realized that they’re planning to play with only half and infield.

There will be plenty of competition among the pitchers, and it’s difficult to say how that will turn out. However, the bigger news remains the recognition of the need to build a bit differently for playoff success. Thome will limit Gardenhire’s flexibility all season. If he’s healthy in October, though, it could be worth it.

Thome will take up a bench spot all season and Gardy will blame the team’s struggles on his lack of flexibility, but once they get to the playoffs then Thome jumps up off the bench and starts socking dingers all over the place! What a plan!

Pavano had four years of health problems before rebounding in 2009. If he finds his pre-2005 groove, he could be a real asset, especially in October. With the exception of the veteran Pavano, the Twins’ rotation is rather green.

The Twins’ rotation has been “rather green” for three years … and it’s all the same guys. At what point are they no longer “fresh-faced youngsters”, and instead “disappointments?”

Soon the Twins will begin flicking their sunflower seeds in Fort Myers.

If the Mayor’s Cup were 100 games instead of just 5, the Twins might have more of a chance of winning it. That’s how The Sunflower Attack works, right?

Once again they hope to ping their way to a division title. Their hope is that, come playoff time, they will be better equipped against the big boys.

Yup, Thome and Pavano will make the difference this year. Or, since Pavano pitched in the 2009 playoffs (he pitched well and lost because he didn’t get any run support), I guess he won’t be a big difference in how they’re equipped this year. So the addition of Jim Thome and his commanding presence on the bench is supposed to put the Twins over the top this year?

And another thing. Given that the biggest improvement the Twins made this year was adding JJ Hardy, who will make a bigger difference on the field during the regular season and the postseason than Thome will … why was he completely omitted from this article? After all, he’s had amazing success in his playoff career. He’s batting .429! He has a 1.000 OPS! What a clutch superstar! (Small sample sizes are important, right?)

That was refreshing. Just as the players are starting to hit the gym again in preparation for heading down to spring training, I need to shake the rust off after a winter of inactivity. So I’d like to thank Tom Powers and Bill Smith for the material, and hopefully material like this keeps on flowing in.

Just remember: baseball season is right around the corner.

11 comments

Tim Marchman usually isn’t totally off the mark, from what I can tell, but just because someone isn’t an idiot does not mean they can’t spew some idiocy from time to time.* Typically around this time of year, people post retrospectives on the year gone by, and what we can look forward to in the upcoming year; personally, I think that’s a bunch of crap. And it’s even worse since we finished a decade and are starting a new one.** That’s where Marchman comes in: he wrote an article about what we (as baseball fans) can “look forward to” in the next ten years.

* Triple negative? Yeah, we’re doing this thing!

** Don’t give me any of that “but the decade isn’t over yet, because what about year zero?!” mumbo jumbo. This is America, dude. The 70’s started in 1970, not in 1971. I’m just saying.

It will still be better than football

That was your title? Uplifting, and somewhat obvious.

The aughts generally were awful and a review of them could only have ended with a rope, a plastic bag, a bottle of wine and another of pills. What’s worse, the teens look to have potential in this line. We’ll hope the twenties arrive hurriedly.

Who’s trying to commit suicide here? Because it sounds like 3+ people just got handled. And as a matter of fact, no, we’re not hoping the next ten years go by in a flash. I’ll be an old man complaining about loud music and kids these days by then.

At least in the aughts we had good baseball to distract us, but I have five reasons to think the coming decade is going to be a crashing bore; you can surely add your own.

At least? So … the next decade will, as a whole, be extremely boring, and there won’t be baseball? Are you sure you meant to use the words “at least”?

1) Technological advances

Those are boring.

The installation of camera systems in ballparks that will, once refined, allow clubs to precisely measure every aspect of performance is not going to be a good thing. Every club looking at the exact same accurate information will lead to monoculture. Current evaluative metrics, which are quite crude, are already having a bit of that effect; truly granular ones will even more so.

What makes baseball a great sport is that there are shitty teams that are always doing stupid things! If it weren’t for the Royals and Pirates and Nationals and, occasionally, the Giants … well, baseball would just be boring. I mean, when the Twins have the day off and I flick on MLB.TV to check out another game that day, what do I say to myself? Do I say “Ooh, the Rays are playing the Red Sox, that could be good”? How about “Yankees/Angels, excellent”? No! Of course not! I eagerly flip over to the epic Nationals/Pirates showdown, because bad teams are what makes games exciting. Right? Wait, no? So … then what the fuck is Marchman talking about?

This won’t take the human element out of the game. When clubs have something near perfect information it will, if anything, make instinct and intuition much more important, as no team will be able to get an advantage just by noting that obviously good players are good, meaning teams will have to actually get creative.

Oh. So I guess what he was talking about was that the players would be better, the “human element” would still be there, and front offices will have to be more creative. Yup, sounds pretty shitty.

Still, the kind of smarts that allow one to read a boring actuarial spreadsheet properly are quite common

Are they?

while the kind that allow one to steal an edge on rivals by shrewdly picking out the drunks whose drinking won’t affect their development are quite rare.

So that’s why sportswriters and old people think scouts are so mystical and important? Because they have alcoholic radar of some sort?

I worry that just as the former were violently underappreciated in baseball for many years, the latter may come to be, which would be disastrous.

I actually agree with this. But rather than making up some doomeriffic crap, I’d actually think about this first. Just like most things, the stats/scouts dichotomy will eventually reach an equilibrium where both stats and scouts are seen as essential. For a long time, that equilibrium was nowhere to be found; there was a “technological” advancement that caused the popularity of stats to rise, and that continues to happen. In the upcoming couple of years, the see may well saw too far in favor of stats. Do not worry! It will only be temporary; markets always seek out an equilibrium, and I haven’t heard anything from the stats side of this argument saying “scouts are useless and should all be killed.” It’s not going to happen. By 2020, I’d guess that we’re close to a balance, and it’ll fluctuate year to year, but never very far. Not really much of a headline, I guess.

Far better a room full of drunk Bavasis than a room full of Wall Street washouts spouting MBA buzzwords, if you have to choose.

Why are those the choices? Because Bavasi was a pretty awful GM … and Jack Z has done a pretty tremendous job of replacing him and fixing everything he wrecked in Seattle in the short time he’s had there. I don’t know if anyone would consider Jack Z a “Wall Street washout spouting MBA buzzwords,” but if you do, that’s on you. Also, if owners continue to agree with Marchman about this choice, we’re guaranteed to continue with the “these teams are good every year” and the “these teams are terrible and getting worse and there’s no hope whatsoever” split that we currently have. But since having a significant portion of the league suck balls is good for baseball (see above), maybe Marchman’s got a point here.

2) Postliteracy

Do you mean “after becoming literate,” or “no longer literate,” or perhaps “more literate than ever”?

The beat writer’s job is devolving into the maintenence of a Twitter feed, ‘hits’ on TV and radio and quickly turned ‘takes’ on the issue of the hour,

Which is exactly what beat writers would have been doing since the beginning, if they were able to instantly publish to millions of people.

more substantive writing is supported by a half dozen or so outlets that probably won’t exist in recognizable form in 10 years,

Yeah, and they’ll be replaced by just as many (if not more) new outlets.

and for all I know the coming generation of writers will have grown up doing immense neurological damage to themselves by reading too much off screens.

For all you know? For all you know, the previous generation of writers did themselves immense neurological damage by looking at crappy newspaper pages while sitting under fluorescent lights too much. Or for all you know, screens might be so good in ten years that it’s far easier on your eyes than paper ever was.

Of course there will still be good writing—today’s average column or game story is incalculably better than one from 50 years ago—but there will be less of it than there is now and the best of it likely won’t be as good.

So you’re saying that the explosion of baseball-related content in this decade proves that all baseball-related content will disappear in the next decade? Wouldn’t it make more sense that, as the cost of publishing stays at zero, more people would create baeball-related content? Posnanski emerged as a national force during this decade — would he have become so ludicrously famous while writing only for the Kansas City Star? No, it would have been impossible. More access for more people will create both the demand for more content, and the supply of it. Why is it so hard for people to figure that out? Baseball writing will go away because technology makes it too easy to produce and consume baseball content? No.

And the constant need to feed the beast in an age when a print model has essentially been replaced by a broadcast model will have other effects as well. I can’t, for example, be the only one to think that the rightly admired Joe Posnanski is courting burnout by dropping multiple five to ten thousand word blog posts every week in addition to his real writing, though we’ll continue to hope he’s Iron Joe McGinnity.

You’re right, Posnanski should do less of what he loves. Fuck off, I love those Posnanski posts. And if he ever stops doing them, it won’t be because the internet killed his love of baseball with its inability to recognize which kind of drunk will get too drunk.

3) Death of television

Tasty.

This is a big one. If you thought the death of newspapers was ugly, wait until you see the death of cable as it converges with online, much to the latter’s advantage.

The bigger they are, the harder they fall, I suppose. But isn’t it possible that the television companies won’t be as comfortable with burying their heads in the sand and demanding that the world stop advancing as the newspapers were?

Do you really think baseball has a better answer for all that lost revenue than the Times did?

Well, MLB Advanced Media has this thing called MLB.TV, where they directly charge their customers for live video of the games. I gladly pay for it, as do millions of other people … and that’s just right now. Baseball is pioneering the post-television live video industry.

4) The economy

Yup, there’s no chance that improves in the next ten years.

If the economy has really turned Japanese we’re probably in for some hideous effects:

We’ll see.

A labor stoppage out of the next CBA negotiations for one,

Why would you assume this? Because of the unusually long stretch of labor peace we’re currently experiencing? Is this another one of those “the evidence proves the opposite of itself, therefore whatever I’m saying is proven” arguments?

and the death of some major league towns for another. No matter how wealthy its suburbs are, a city like Detroit where more than half the residents are unemployed cannot be reasonably expected to support competitive baseball.

This might happen. But it’s more likely that a city like Detroit will simply no longer be able to support all four sports; why assume it’s baseball that would lose out here?

5) Doping scandals

Yet another current problem that won’t go away in the next ten years? Creative.

I don’t know or really care what guys are on these days, but it isn’t nothing, and we’re in for a repeat of the world’s least interesting scandal once people figure out that various famous players held up as admirable because they claim not to use drugs actually do use them.

That’s it? That’s your whole analysis of the “upcoming” drug scandals? What if people realize that the old-fashioned fearmongers in the dead-press were the only ones screaming about this? What if the drug testing that’s in place continues to work (as it already has been)? What if once the newspapers are finally dead, baseball fans get their analysis from writers who think about their positions rather than just being angry that things are different from how they were in the 1960s, when people didn’t know about the drugs the players were using? I’d say this is another one that’ll just go away, rather than being one of the top 5 biggest reasons we should all stop being baseball fans within the next 10 years.

So in case you read this article and were worried about baseball dying, you can go ahead and relax. I’m calling bullshit on this whole thing.

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Local curmudgeon Patrick Ruesse posted his annual “Turkey of the Year” column late last week, and it is a doozy. I was originally going to take the high road, but you know us kids, we get bored so I decided to call him out.  He only has one point that I want to address, his labeling Joe Caas a “2009 Special Turkey Guest”.  I’ll let Mr. Ruesse dig his own grave:

Joe Christensen. Gentleman Joe is a Star Tribune baseball writer and also the Twin Cities’ leading advocate for OPS, a make-believe number that Bill James acolytes have embraced. How often must we say this, Joe? Runs scored and RBI mean something; OPS doesn’t.

Um, yes it does Patrick.  It means “on base percentage plus slugging percentage”.  I know this is beating a dead horse, but it must be done. OPS has been widely accepted for  most of this decade as an excellent way to measure a hitter.  Peter Gammons, possibly the oldest man alive, often quotes it for his pieces on ESPN.  A network also know as the World Wide Leader in Sports.  World Wide!!!

I can’t imagine if someone tried to use WAR and VORP in front of Ruesse. He would do one of two things: Freak out, or make a terrible Star Trek joke.  There are many advanced baseball metrics that even I think are a little much, but from a math standpoint OPS is just as simple as batting average.  I am not sure what RBIs measure other than how many times a guy comes up with runners on.  A hitter has no control over that. Unless you are playing with like 4 guys like you did in grade school and have “ghost runners” and you can drive yourself in.

Ruesse just needs to accept that baseball is a heavily statisticized sport, and we will continue to develop more advanced (and better) metrics to evaluate players and teams.  He hasn’t done this, and calling one of his co-workers a “turkey” because he has is just insane. Batshit crazy even.  “‘Get off my lawn!’ journalism” at its finest.

12 comments

Alright folks, I hope you have a little bit of time on your hands, because this is going to be a long one. Remember that blogger who wrote about Ibanez and steroids, and then the newspapers picked it up and blew it out of proportion, and Ibanez himself targeted this blogger and offered him his stool? Well, the mainstream media continues to circle their wagons to protect themselves and each other. Today we’ll be reading Geoff Baker, of The Seattle Times, who is very, very angry about the threat to his livelihood. Oh, and he’s also really proud of himself. Bold is Baker.

Figured it was about time we had this discussion, given all the fuss about Raul Ibanez and his comments on that blogger who raised the “issue” that he “might” or “might not” be on performance enhancing drugs. Besides, I’ve since gotten emails from student journalists pleading with me to inject some reality into this debate. So, here goes.

Alright, here we go. I assume Baker’s going to give us some brief history of this Ibanez/blogger altercation.

Back in 1998, I wrote a story about a guy who lied about having served in the Vietnam conflict.

This is … not the backstory I was expecting.

His name was Tim Johnson, and he managed the Blue Jays to 88 wins in his only major league season as a field boss. The reason he managed only one season in the majors is because of me and nobody else.

Are you … bragging about that?

I’d been getting tips about what he was telling players and, after a trip to the Dominican Republic right after the season, in which I spoke to several Blue Jays and was given more avid detail, decided to write the definitive piece about his one year as a manager. I got players quoted on-the-record, including former Cy Young Award winner Pat Hentgen.

So you had access to the players, and they talked to you. Including a Cy Young Award winner! Wow, those guys usually stop talking to anyone once they receive their trophy.

It took legwork. I knew what I was doing.

I love that line. It’s straight out of a crappy murder mystery which is solved by a washed up alcoholic who’s describing his life before he descended into his booze-induced hell.

In my previous life as an investigative reporter, I’d helped get an escaped murderer recaptured and jailed for life in Lorton, Va., by publishing his claims of innocence.

It’s a good thing people believed your writing, then.

I’d pointed an accusatory finger at a Hell’s Angels associate who targeted a police informant — one of my sources — for execution and had him shot five times in a downtown street (the guy somehow survived).

Is this from that same murder mystery?

Had that Hell’s Angels “associate” vaguely threaten to kill me later on, after the story, but fortunately, somebody else got to him first and blew him away in a Montreal restaurant.

The death of others is fortunate. Also, does it seem to anyone else that he’s implying he had something to do with it? Geoff Baker is one of those guys at a bar who makes sure he always has the tallest, wildest story to tell. No matter what you’ve ever done in your life, it’s nothing compared to the awesomeness of this guy’s life.

I could tell you more, but don’t want to bore you.

Yeah, all this talk of intrigue and killings is boring. Let’s get back to a much less boring topic, the business of professional journalism.

The bottom line is, in this business of professional journalism, if you do it right, there are consequences to everything you publish. If you don’t figure that out, you’re a a fool.

That’s the bottom line? That there are consequences to everything you do? Isn’t that true of, like, everything?

The day before my Tim Johnson story was published on the front page of the Toronto Star sports section in October 1998, I sat with a college buddy at a Toronto Argonauts CFL football game, trying to enjoy an afternoon off. I told him about the pending story and said: “This franchise will never be the same.”

That’s right, it won’t be the same. It’ll forever be known as the franchise that had a beat writer set out to take down the manager.

Nor would Johnson’s life. I told him that, too.

You sound like a real confrontational guy, Mr Baker. Did you enjoy telling Johnson that you were trying to destroy his life, and that you were sure it’d make your career? It’s a dog eat dog world out there, you know.

I understood the consequences. Knew I was about to ruin a man’s life and career. Knew the franchise would be set back years because of it. And it was.

I have principles, damn it. That’s why I don’t feel bad about destroying lives and businesses. I have to make a name for myself and get promoted, and if I have to crush a few measly little people on my way, well, then it was their own fault for being in my way in the first place.

Everything I predicted came true on all counts.

Well, you’re just a bad mofo, aren’t you sir?

My story caused a firestorm the next day. The big Canadian national TV sports network, owned partially by ESPN, led their broadcasts with my story, showing pictures of the actual newspaper. Toronto is a competitive newspaper town, with four dailies, and not every writer out there bought what I was writing. That’s natural in this business. Nobody likes being scooped. I had my reputation questioned by some, especially since it was my first year on the beat.

So other people also thought you were publishing a huge story like this and deliberately trying to ruin someone’s life to further your own fledgling career? I’m not surprised at all. Because it’s fucking obvious.

But I was ready for it and answered all comers. Johnson held on pleading innocence for a month until the late Boston Globe columnist, Will McDonough, wrote a column mentioning that Johnson had previously told the same lies when he was a bench coach in Boston. That was really pre-internet time and it took a while for news to spread from city to city.

Yeah, things are much better now, with the internet. Wait, that wasn’t what you were trying to say? Oh.

Once my story that Johnson — who’d claimed he’d never told any players he’d served in Vietnam — was corroborated in a second city, he had no choice but to ‘fess up. At the winter meetings that year, he issued a tearful apology and blamed his lying on a psychological condition called “survivor’s guilt”. It does exist, and maybe he did have it. But it didn’t matter.

Damn right it didn’t matter. My career was taking off, and his was going down the drain, and that is all that mattered.

The Blue Jays brought him to spring training the following February, then fired him after a month because the players he’d lost in 1998 were now ridiculing him behind his back even more in 1999.

So … how did those players respect you after you used your access to air the clubhouse’s dirty laundry? I understand the players love that.

It was inevitable. And I knew it before I wrote the story. I knew Johnson would not survive what I published. How could he?

Well, he probably couldn’t. And maybe he should have been fired for this without being tried by the media beforehand. But in this hectic world with the new 24/7 media cycle and all, well, we have to be willing to forgive all the media’s craziness. What’s that you say? This was 11 years ago, and it wasn’t that crazy back then? Well, I’m sure you still don’t want any blame for this.

And because I knew that, I had to make absolutely certain that I was writing what I was for the right reasons.

Or at least could say some reasons that sounded right, really quickly, like they were obvious and you hadn’t planned them out beforehand. I know what they teach in journalism school. I know because of how all journalists act.

Had he really “lost” the players on his team? After all, they’d won 88 games — despite being sub-.500 right up to the final month of that season.

Sounds like exactly the kind of situation where that end of season run is explained by great clubhouse chemistry. It’s not like the story about Willie Randolph losing his players which led to, you know, the team losing games. But I’m there’s some secret you know that says they managed to win despite a horrible clubhouse environment, but you can’t tell us how you know that.

I was told, privately, by coaches and players that it was a team in turmoil, despite the outward appearance and bushload of wins when the team was all but out of the playoff race.

I told you I knew how journalists act.

That players were making “cuckoo” signs behind Johnson’s back because they knew he’d never served in Vietnam but continued to tell war stories. That good coaches were about to be fired because they’d clashed with Johnson about his lies. That team management knew little about the severity of the inner-clubhouse problems.

So Johnson was a bad leader, the players were dickheads, and management was oblivious. It’s a good thing you knew exactly which life to ruin.

So, I wrote my story. And I ruined Tim Johnson’s major league career. All these years later, I believe Johnson has been unfairly ostracized from a game that tolerates criminals and cheats, just not Vietnam liars.

So you’re saying you think people took what you wrote to some sort of extreme, and missed the exact point of what you wrote? I think I’ll remember this, in case it comes up later.

But I also understand why he can’t come back.

Because he clashed with Geoff Baker On The Rise, and that’s something you Just Don’t Do.

He’s spent years managing in the independant leagues and in Mexico. Heck, he had Chris Jakubauskas with the Lincoln Saltdogs right before the Mariners signed him. For the record, Jakubauskas thought he was a good manager, as do many of the players who served under Johnson. Doesn’t matter. He’ll never manage again in the majors. His career .588 winning percentage as a manager is the best in Blue Jays history.

First, he had a .543 winning percentage. Secondly, it was in exactly one year. Kind of a small sample size, don’t you think?

Do I feel guilty at times? Of course. But I don’t dwell on it. I knew what I was doing and knew he’d never manage again before the item went to print. I walked into his office the following spring, a few weeks before he was fired, and told him we’d both have to live with each other.

But not for that long, because he was getting fired, and you weren’t. So, in your face Johnson!

But I looked him in the eye when I said it.

Yup, confrontational.

He wasn’t thrilled with me, to say the least.

What an ass. Doesn’t he know that you’re Geoff Baker On The Rise, and that everyone should be thrilled just to have you notice them in the process of crushing their souls?

Told me he respected that I could look him in the eye and talk to him man-to-man. And I could. Those words meant something.

Touching?

But even if he didn’t really mean it, or if he’d thrown me out of his office, I didn’t need his blessing on that. I had my own, from within.

Nope, not touching. You didn’t even believe him. That’s cold blooded.

This was no hit-and-run job. I believed in what I was doing, didn’t go at it halfway, and was ready to take the consequences.

Sure seems like you wanted the consequences.

In the end, he suffered far greater than I did. Why?

Because the media sticks together? Because he was a crappy manager who told false stories to his players in order to motivate them? Because you created a toxic environment in the clubhouse, in the process of being there every day, and then wrote about it and got his ass fired? It could be many things.

Because I was right.

Oh. I shouldn’t have tried to guess like that.

Now, can the blogger who wrote about Ibanez say the same thing?

Wait, what? Oh, right, the Ibanez v. Blogger case of 2009. I forgot that’s what we were talking about, given these 1000 words about The Great Geoff Baker, Destroyer of Men. I believe in journalism school they call this “burying the lead.” In regular school they call it “narcissism.”

No, he cannot. Because he never really takes a position.

Well according to the newspapers and ESPN, he did take a position. And that position was “Raul Ibanez took steroids.” You’re not saying that you, other newspaper writers, ESPN, and hundreds of others have completely misread a blog post and are using it as a strawman to gang up on blogs in general, are you?

He throws some innuendo out there, under a provocative headline, then couches it with a bunch of well-researched statistics on park factors, and the like. Makes it all look like a fact-finding mission.

Yeah, in journalism school they teach you to toss out any notion of well-researched statistics or anything like it, because real men wear felt hats and smoke cigars and journalists are real men. Or something like that. You wouldn’t want your research to look like a fact finding mission. You’d want it to look like an auto-biography. Right?

But come on. Baseball is a game played by men.

Real men? Who smoke cigars?

When you cover this sport for a while, you realize that these “issue” pieces some writers try to hide behind when they passive-aggressively go at a different topic really won’t fly.

They won’t? Then why have they been flying for 60 years in magazines and newspapers?

Everybody knows what the “elephant in the room” is beforehand. So, no matter how much research you couch it under, the real issue is what everybody — especially media-seasoned ballplayers — is going to focus on.

Okay, so no matter what you write about, people are going to get what they came in with. They’ll ignore your research, they’ll ignore your conclusion, and they’ll just come away with the foregone conclusion they were already convinced of. For example, Raul Ibanez saw his name and the word “steroids” in the same sentence, got so pissed off he could shit, and then offered said shit to anyone who’d listen. For another example, mainstream journalists saw “.com” on there, and all they could think of was “Fuck blogs.” So you see, Baker made a great point here. People are idiots who don’t read. Even people whose fucking job it is to read and analyze information.

And in this case, the blogger really didn’t have a leg to stand on. That much was clear when he was eviscerated on national television by Fox Sports columnist Ken Rosenthal, a longtime baseball writer for the Baltimore Sun.

He didn’t really get “eviscerated,” did he? I mean, Rosenthal came out guns blazing, saying that it’s inexcusable for anyone, anywhere, ever, to live by any values different from those he personally lives by. That bloggers, by virtue of the fact that some newspaper writers read blogs, should be held to the same standards of newspaper writers themselves. That even considering that a player did steroids is completely inexcusable. If you feel like watching it, which I encourage you to do, go here. It’s 10 minutes long.

I’ve seen some commenters to various fan blogs the past 24 hours try to say the blogger “held his own” but let’s get real. It was ugly.

Yeah, so he’s not a very attractive man. Big deal. He still did a reasonably good job of getting yelled at on television without getting angry or breaking down in tears, which most people probably would have done. Especially since he was being wrongfully accused of something because Rosenthal can’t be troubled to read something if it’s not printed on a paper.

I give the blogger — I won’t mention his name because I’m reluctant to give him his 15 minutes — credit for going on with Rosenthal.

His name is Jerod Morris, you fucking asshole. And he was just on fucking television. You’re not going to be the one to prevent him from getting “his 15 minutes.” Even if you are The Great Geoff Baker.

If it was me on the air instead of Rosenthal, I would have torn the blogger to shreds in much the same way. Maybe even worse.

Damn right.

I know Rosenthal and spoke to him at the ballpark yesterday after his ESPN appearance with said blogger. When you go on TV and radio a lot, you learn how to destroy people like the inexperienced blogger on-air.

And you know what happens when you don’t go on TV a lot (or ever)? You don’t know how to prepare, you get easily flustered, and you look like a stammering dope who can’t answer even the simplest questions. And while Morris suffered each of these, none of them were terrible afflictions. I’d say he did well for a first time.

It was like that Korean dude pounding on Jose Canseco in Japan the other day.

Did you watch that fight? It was nothing like that. The fight was far more boring and pathetic. Although there was a big guy beating on a helpless little weasel, so it was definitely entertainment worthy of Geoff Baker’s time.

But I give the blogger props for standing up and taking his blows like a man. There is not enough of that in the internet world these days. Not enough accountability.

There’s a lot of accountability in the mainstream media world, though. Selena Roberts is proof of that.

And the fact he was ready to stand up for what he believed in gives me hope that he can one day rise to better things. That his blogging career was not just ruined by this one misstep. I don’t think his was.

You don’t seem to understand the concept of blogging. This isn’t like being a major league manager, where there are exactly 30 jobs. Or a major league beat writer, where there are 60. There are, like, 250 million available jobs. It is simply not possible to ruin a blogging career. Do you fucking realize how hard you’d have to try to ruin my blogging career?

It took some guts to wade into this topic.

Have we gotten to the crux of the issue? That the mainstream media wants to control “this topic,” that they want to run the conversation and pick the issues and when to talk about them? That if some lowly blogger says something in a forest and a newspaper writer hears him, that the mainstream media will swoop down, with all the king’s horses and all the king’s men, and make sure that little blogger is never heard from again?

But when you go all-in, you’ve got to go all in. He didn’t do that. When you write about topics like killers, or Hell’s Angels, or major leaguers and steroids, you can’t pussy foot around.

Because men taking drugs to get better at playing a kid’s game is the shit people get fucking killed for. That’s why you have to take it Geoff Baker Serious.

You’ve got to go at it hard, directly, with no b.s. and be able to defend yourself afterwards. This blogger couldn’t because he went in only halfway. He tried to raise the “steroids issue” then claimed he really wasn’t pointing a finger at Ibanez.

You have to? When you write about how the world we live in has changed to the point where simply having a great month is enough for fans to think you may have done steroids, you have to “go at it hard” and be ready and willing to prove that the guy did it?

Maybe he didn’t read his own headline.

“Steroid Speculation Perhaps Unfair, But Great Start in 2009 Raising Eyebrows.” Doesn’t sound like the kind of barn burning accusation you think it is.

I taught journalism at Concordia University in Montreal from 1996 through 1998, before things like blogs were even envisioned.

Blogs were invented in 1997.

Much of what I see written in the blogosphere today would have failed my very rigid course.

That course was rigid, just like Geoff Baker.

There are students I had, now working as professional journalists, who, I hope, learned something from that.

But I thought you said people don’t learn? Oh, I get it. They learn once they become professional journalists. Is that it?

Most of all, I hope they learned that if you’re going to try to be a big man, or woman, and go after big game, you’ve got to have your ducks lined up.

I hope they learned that when you’re a professional journalist, you have to be politically correct, lest some woman develop a wad of some sort because you used the male form of the pronoun in a generic, both-genders kind of way, just like every other fucking language on earth. This shit is important.

Because these half-baked insinuations I read online just would not fly back then, nor should they now.

Morris insinuated nothing. He pointed out that others had raised the question, and decried that as unfair.

We can call it “citizen journalism” or “grass roots democracy” or any other cute label you want. But it all boils down to this: can that blogger look Ibanez in the eye and make a case for what he did? He was scrambling to sound coherent in a debate with Rosenthal, so I sincerely doubt it.

How did you look on your first TV appearance? And was there a long-time pro there, ripping into you for all he was worth, tearing down your career and your efforts and your very being?

And that’s where we’re at. This is not about journalists “protecting their turf” against bloggers.

Yes it is.

We have some excellent bloggers in Seattle, who write all kinds of interesting statistical analysis, some correct and some a little out there.

I wonder which he considers Dave Cameron.

But it’s a good blogoshpere. And still, there is a serious distrust of these bloggers by players and teams themselves because of the accountability factor. Anyone can take shots from a distance.

You mean like Raul Ibanez is doing to Jerod Morris?

But can you look someone in the eye? And that’s what it boils down to.

Geoff Baker is proud of the fact that he can spend 3000 words telling someone they suck and posting it on the internet, and then claim that he’d be able to look the person in the eye and make the case that they do, in fact, suck. Does that make you a journalist? Because I know plenty of people who are Geoff Baker Level Assholes, who love to look people in the eye and tell them to fuck themselves.

And what exactly is the “it” that is boiling down to this?

Local bloggers have tried to gain access to the Mariners clubhouse. I’m obviously not out of touch with the local blogosphere. I see where it is, where it’s going, and as local BBWAA chairperson, I’m not entirely opposed to limited access even though some of my bretheren are. But there would have to be limits. In no way would I ever open the floodgates and let everyone with a “dot.com” address into specialized “press” areas as some sports have contemplated. I’d like to see some kind of formal training involved.

You’d be okay with it as long as there were some sort of litmus test and training involved, to make sure that the bloggers who were allowed in wouldn’t use their access to, you know, rock the boat or anything. Newspapers got it good here, see, and we’re not going to let it any punk kids that’ll blow that for us!

Some bloggers are highly passionate and dedicated and might be considered “journalists” had they ever obtained some type of formal training. Heck, in the right circumstance, I might even hold the journalism classes for them, my past experience as a college lecturer being of use in this case.

That’s probably a good idea. But it probably shouldn’t be Geoff Baker teaching the class. After all, he knows nothing at all about responsible blogging.

But there is a training that has to occur. You either learn it in school, or learn it on-the-job at a paper before going out in the field.

Or from being a blogger for a while. Or from getting access and misusing it and getting ripped by a player or his manager, and learning that you need to be more responsble.

Or from me.

Or … literally anything but that, okay?

But you have to get some training before you head out there. That way, you don’t embarrass yourself nationally, as this blogger just did, or risk ruining a ballplayer’s reputation when you may not be right.

Geoff, were you trained to make sure you were right before attempting to ruin someone’s reputation, or career? Because, you know, you didn’t even fucking read his article. All you did was get really mad and paint a very, very broad brush about bloggers. Oh, and tried to jump on the “destroy this guy’s life” bandwagon, because that’s what you do.

Again, can you look somebody in the eye? It’s as simple as that.

I got it! The reason this is such a big deal to him is because Geoff Baker used to be cross-eyed, and was never able to look people in the eye when he was younger. Then he got those glasses that help you straighten out your eyes, and now he’s really proud of the fact that he can look people straight in the eyes. It makes you a fucking man’s man.

It’s no different from being in the schoolyard in fifth grade. If you’re going to talk smack about someone, be prepared to stand up for yourself and ride out the blows.

That’s what Geoff Baker did, until he was able to look people straight in the eyes. Then they were the ones who had to ride out the blows!

That goes for writing about Ibanez, or Yuniesky Betancourt, or John McLaren, or Bill Bavasi.

There are no links to previous articles here, so I can’t be sure that Baker isn’t just unaware that McLaren is no longer the manager, or that Bavasi is no longer the GM. Or if he’s just not using the names of the current guys because if he did, people might think he was accusing them of blogging, or something. Should I give him the benefit of the doubt?

In this business, you can’t afford to give in to momentary fan frustration and lash out at players and team officials.

Yes, in your business. Where you’re not allowed to cheer. Bloggers are not in your business.

Sure, some people do it in this business. Nobody is perfect. But there is always a price to be paid. It’s not as simple as doing it from your “basement” or “office” or whatever. You have to have the defense ready in your head, and be prepared to defend your reputation in any forum, when you venture potshots at people from my position.

Is Jerod Morris in your position?

And that’s why you see mainstream media taking fewer potshots than bloggers.

I see them making plenty. Like the ones they’re constantly making against Piazza and Sosa, against whom there has never been credible evidence other than the accusations of sportswriters. The mainstream media just doesn’t go fucking insane when it happens.

Because at the end of the day, reason and fairness has to win out.

In the land of sportswriters, “reason and fairness” are actually the same words as “professional journalism.”

Nobody’s perfect.

Except Geoff Baker.

But it’s always better to err on the side of caution — and do a little more legwork — than to have Ken Rosenthal destroying you on national TV, when your only defense is mere cliches and half-hearted insinuations.

Frankly, it’s too bad Morris didn’t point out that Rosenthal didn’t even bother to read the article. Because it was pretty obvious.

It’s rarely about us “soft pedaling it” or currying favor with the people we cover, either. I laugh at those suggestions, which I still see made by bloggers who have no idea what they are talking about. I get accused of it from time to time by bloggers too lazy to try to consider why I might be saying something.

Do you ever explain yourself, or do we just have to trust you?

Folks, I took on an 88-win manager in his first season of a multi-year contract when I was a rookie beat writer 11 years ago because the circumstances warranted it.

Isn’t that the whole point of this? That you were a rookie then, and hadn’t built up a career you needed to fight to protect? You know, the career you’re currently fighting to protect?

Do you seriously think I cared whether McLaren liked me or not?

Do you seriously think McLaren would have given you the same access whether he liked you or not?

Time to get real. There’s a difference between being fair and critical and being an attack-dog. You learn things like subtlety and nuance when you do this for a while.

Yes. Jerod Morris was being fair and critical, and concluded that there’s no way to know whether Ibanez did anything and that it’s too bad some people are speculating that he did something wrong. Rosenthal attacked him, and you attacked him. Given that I don’t think that’s what you meant … maybe you should try again.

Some writers pander to the blogosphere, focusing on popular stats or topics, or targets, to curry favor. Trust me, I know exactly what to write if I want all Seattle baseball fans to like me and worship what I print. But it’s never about that. It can’t ever be that way.

We do have to trust you!

This is serious stuff.

Geoff Baker Serious?

When you have the power to ruin reputations and change lives, it can never be abused. Or gone at in a half-hearted way.

Most people don’t consider “the ability to write and publish an article about a game” to be the same thing as “the power to ruin reputations and change lives,” but I think that misunderstanding says a whole lot about just who Geoff Baker is.

And the ability to think about those things beforehand, truly, is what separates real journalists — serious ones, not Jason Blair types — from basement bloggers. Speaking only for myself, I would never let things deteriorate to the point where I’d be scrambling around on TV like that blogger yesterday. I’ve written some controversial stuff over the years, some well-received, some not, by the public.

Yeah, since you have your Professional Journalist Card, you know how to prepare for TV interviews. They don’t cover that in Blogging School.

But I’ll defend it to the day I die. I can and have looked folks in the eye.

Okay, okay, fine! You can look people in the eye! We trust you!

And that’s really, when you cut away all the nonsense about “the fan’s pulse” that I heard on TV yesterday, what we’re talking about here. Accountability. Not just to others, but to yourself. Can you, in your heart of hearts, defend what you did? Because when you strip away the b.s., you’re all alone on something like this. There won’t be any friends there to save you. No editors to hold your hand. When stuff blows up, it’s you out there against the world. And if you don’t truly believe in your story and yourself, it’s a lonely place to be.

Geoff Baker would know, I guess.

So, if that belief is waning, the trained professional truly thinks twice. If you can’t live with the consequences of what you do, don’t do it. Don’t put yourself in a position where you’ll have to wind up on a national TV stage with a too-bright camera light making you look even more nervous than you already are,

I don’t think Morris expected his post to blow up the sports world for a news cycle. And, speaking as a sports blogger in the midwest, we don’t really think anything we write is going to result in us winding up on national television.

And I can’t tell if finishing his article with a comma was a somewhat clever indication that this story is not over, or if it’s an amusing example of a newspaperman writing without an editor, or if that’s just how Geoff Baker fucking rolls. And frankly, all three possibilities are great options.

But what are my thoughts, you ask?

Given how venomous and desperate mainstream writers are getting, and how quick they are to turn even the most innocuous issue into another chapter of the ongoing Sportswriter vs Blogger war, I think they can see the writing on the wall. Morris actually wrote a well thought out and well-researched article about Raul Ibanez, but Ibanez was only a case study, an example, of a larger trend emerging in this country. And the perpetrators are fans in a bar, bloggers, and professional sportswriters alike.

Morris wrote that that’s a problem:

It will be a wonderful day when we can see a great start by a veteran like Ibanez and not immediately jump to speculating about whether steroids or PEDs are involved. We certainly are not at that point yet, however.

I think he’s right. And I think it’s a blemish on the face of sports media that they were unable to understand this article for what it was, and attacked it for what they assumed it was.

But at least we all learned that Geoff Baker is the baddest man on earth. And he can see straight.

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