The section that I would like to comment on is on blogging.
The guest panel for that segment were author Buzz Bissinger,Deadspin blogger Will Leitch and the Browns Braylon Edwards.
Bissinger's "Friday Night Lights" was tremendous and arguably the best football book that has ever been written,but he came off here as an angry old man that painted every blog with the same brush.
Blogs are bad,the writing is awful,how can you cover a game without being there etc and looked as if he wanted to take Leitch out back and whip up on him.
Leitch took the higher road,but his arguments were kinda weak.
I think his blog and stuff like Fire Joe Morgan are hilarious at their best and college frat house bad at their worst,but Bissinger made any points during his ramble it was that some of these blogs go over the line in their coverage.
I mean stuff like the Matt Leinart hot tub party photos are not really news,but they are what they are.
Trash blogs exist as do trash talk radio,trash tv ,trash magazines,the list goes on and on.
But things are not going back in time to the way things were before 24 hr cable networks,camera phones and the net,so pontificating on why it was better in the olden days does little good because it is gone and will not be returning.
Ironically,I was most fired up at Michael Wilbon and he was not even on the panel.
Wilbon kept appearing on the video runups that appeared before the panel segments began and one statement was a Bill O'reillyish "What do they know?Who are they talking to?What are they covering from their couch" etc and allow me to say this-I love covering games live,I can get a better feel for the game there at times and it is many times preferred,but to say that I can not see from my chair that Jason Bay missed an easy fly ball that should have been caught because I was not at PNC Park or not say that he blew the play because I did not get his thoughts on the matter in the locker room is ludicrous.
Journalism is part of the reason that I fell in love with sports and I make zero claims to being a great writer,although I do think that the content here and in other blogs is just as high as in many newspapers with the exception of the actual structure of the blog and I do not have a professional to correct my sentence structure to make it higher quality.
My college English teacher once told me that content was king and that all other things can be corrected,but poor content cannot be.
I am sorry to break this to you,Mike,but not all of us had the chance to go to a four year school,never play the game,still act like an expert and look down on people that honestly know more or just as much about a sport as you do.
I mean,really,do I need to talk to Matt Morris in his underwear by his locker to really know that he was pitching poorly?
I don't think so,but Wilbon does.
Is my opinion or any bloggers opinion worth more than Wilbon's? Maybe in a specialized area.
Is it worth less?Maybe in an area that Wilbon covers more closely than I do.
However for Wilbon to basically come off as high and mighty because he has opportunities to meet athletes,go to events that most cannot and ignore the thoughts of others is pretentious and elitist and makes him come off as a faded relic of the past.
The Pirates won last night in Washington over the Nationals 11-4 and are
playing right now,so I will not post a pitching matchup.A six run third put the game away early and was on cruise control from there behind two homers from Jose Bautista (2 and 3).
Bautista finished the game with 4 RBI.
Phil Dumatrait allowed 4 runs in 4 innings in his first start as a member of the rotation,which enabled Damaso Marte to scavage the easy win from the bullpen and improve to 2-0.
Ryan Doumit and Chris Gomez each added 2 RBI for Pittsburgh in the win.
On the signing front
I was able to get all stuff that I needed from the West Virginia Power during their lone visit to Hagerstown.
I did get to talk a decent amount to Mike Ramlow,who you may remember from last season.
Ramlow signed his 07 Power card and discussed his season and we will write about that soon.
The top prospects that we were able to add were catcher Jonathan Lucroy,pitchers Rob Bryson and R.J Seidel and returning shortstop Brent Brewer.
Brewer would only sign two per person,which was no problem for me since I had just two,but told another person that he was not signing balls on the sweet spot because of "the internet stuff".
Looks like Brewer is only going to get tougher for collectors.
Until next time
Photo Credit
Bautista:Charles Dharapak-AP Photo
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