The Complaint Department: This Time It’s Mostly the Media

A random collection of things that pissed me off lately…

Generally speaking baseball players think the media is too intrusive and if they took a vote I’m pretty sure they’d never let us in the clubhouse.

Don’t forget Mark McGwire’s career got screwed up when a reporter saw a bottle with the label “androstenedione” in McGwire’s locker and didn’t know what it was so he wrote the name down and looked it up and his journalistic nosiness put a major dent in McGwire’s chances of getting into the Hall of Fame.

And if ballplayers thought the media was intrusive before, now ESPN is miking-up players and expecting them to do interviews while they play a baseball game.

Which if you think about it – and I have – is kind of insulting because ESPN is basically saying what ballplayers do is so easy they ought to be able to tell us what their favorite kind of ice cream is (which was one of the questions for Rafael Devers on ESPN’s Sunday night broadcast) while they simultaneously play a ballgame.

Which shows just how worried MLB is about TV ratings and just how little much of the media understands about baseball.

It was bad enough when they started interviewing managers during games (they’ve got other stuff to think about and some managers would have a coach do it instead), even worse when they started interviewing outfielders, much worse when they started interviewing infielders and the height of stupidity was reached during the All-Star game when they interviewed a pitcher while he was pitching.

A line drive traveling 100 miles an hour covers 146.667 feet-per-second, so do the math and by the time a pitcher says “one-one thousand” the baseball is already 86 feet past the pitching rubber and sooner or later some ballplayer is going to get smoked while he tries to decide if he prefers Cookie Dough or Rocky Road. 

And as long as I’m complaining about the media…

The Missing Submersible

During the Missing Submersible Catastrophe a CNN story had this headline:

“News outlets go all in on missing Titanic submersible. But have they gone overboard in their coverage?”

Since it was one of nine stories CNN had on the subject that day I’m pretty sure the answer was “yes” and maybe you should also go easy on using the word “overboard” when describing a missing submersible.

Now here’s the media’s problem:

Because it was a dramatic story – we thought it was people trapped in a submersible running out of oxygen – public interest was high, but there wasn’t much new news to report. Nevertheless, editors still needed something and pretty soon they were running stories about submersible interior decoration and bathroom accommodations and how oxygen works and let’s not forget it was a story about five people and unless you’re Super-Rich and plan on visiting the Titanic or letting Jeff Bezos shoot your ass into space, it had absolutely no impact on your life.

According to the CDC, last year 48,830 people in the United States died from gun-related injuries. Do the math on that one and it’s slightly over 133 people each and every day.

And if it’s maritime disasters you prefer, the week before the submersible imploded a fishing boat sunk and 300 migrants who were trying to reach Europe and a Better Life drowned and the media’s reaction was pretty much: “Shit happens.”

Unless the shit that happens happens to rich and/or famous people so if Gwyneth Paltrow has a minor collision on a ski slope the media will be all over it.

And now back to complaining about baseball…

Rathert Stadium versus Kauffman Stadium

On Saturday, July 15^th I attended the Mid-Plains League All-Star game which was held in Rathert Stadium located in Junction City, Kansas and the part about Rathert Stadium is worth noting because it was built in 1937 by the WPA (which stands for Works Progress Administration) back when government still did crazy things like putting unemployed people to work building stuff that would benefit their communities.

Rathert Stadium was built out of limestone and has been in pretty much continuous use ever since it was built, probably because you couldn’t knock the thing down with a fucking howitzer.

Interesting that (at least according to the Kansas City Royals who want a new ballpark) Kauffman Stadium is wreck, falling down around their ears even though Kauffman Stadium was opened in 1973. Rathert Stadium was built 36 years earlier and is still going strong and looks like the place you’d take shelter when a tornado hits Junction City or we get in a nuclear war with China over an off-course weather balloon.

And while we’re at it you might ask yourself why the Royals say Kauffman is a mess, but the Chiefs are just fine with Arrowhead.

In any case…

The Mid-Plains League is a summer league for college players and to start with, parking was free and so was admission and so was the game program and so was the fireworks show after the game. Hotdogs cost $2.50 each and two popcorns and two nachos with enough melted cheese to clog the intestine of a fully-grown, hungry, hungry hippo came to a grand total of $7.50 so clearly the Mid-Plains League has a lot to learn about gouging their fans and forcing them to install apps on their smart phones to attend ballgames while taking out a small loan to pay for parking and let’s all hope they never learn it. 

Soft Leads

Technically, that should be “soft ledes” and newsrooms spelled it that way to avoid confusion with the word “lead” which was the metal used in old-time printing presses, but also technically, I don’t give a shit, so I’ll keep spelling it “lead” as in “first” not “lead” as in the metal Corporate America has so generously donated to our drinking water.

The lead paragraph is the first paragraph in a news story and because I need to have at least a vague idea of what’s going on in the world I read the first paragraph of every story and then decide if I need to read the rest of the story and lead paragraphs like: “When he woke up that Tuesday morning, Bob Jones had no idea how difficult his daily commute to work would be that day” aren’t much help.

You have to read six paragraphs down before you find out what the story is actually about and reporters do this because they think it’s great writing. They got stuck reporting on a traffic jam and decide to go all Ernest Hemingway on it and if at all possible will slip in something about the “sun rising over the Serengeti” while describing a turned over truck with a load of chickens, which makes it hard on people who just want the damn news.

Newspapers have enough problems without giving their readers yet another reason to stop subscribing, so:

“Lede us not into temptation.”

(Man, that was way too much work to set up a lame joke and I hope you appreciate the effort because: “When he woke up that morning, Lee Judge had no idea how difficult his daily pun would be that day.”)

OK, that’s it for today’s complaints, but stay tuned because I’ve become a Grumpy Old Man, although in my defense I like to point out I was also a Grumpy Young Man and when people complain about people who complain because complaining doesn’t accomplish anything, I like to point out I’ve made a damn good living complaining about Life in General.

Some comedian – I think maybe it was George Carlin – said his job was to remind us to laugh at the funny shit we didn’t notice the first time and I feel like I’m carrying on in the same vein and if you want to support this important work, feel free to subscribe or make a random, overly-generous donation that you’ll regret almost immediately or at least buy me a drink in a bar and I’ll continue reminding you of all the bullshit you should be upset about.

And if any of the stuff I said today upset you, then I think we can agree I’ve done my job.