The game's out there, and it's play or get played – Omar Little
When I first started blogging after the 2003 season on an old Cubs blog and then later on Another Cubs Blog, there weren't many places you could go to get breaking news. If you wanted to read what's up with the Cubs, you were still stuck with the traditional sources. Sources like Paul Sullivan and the other talent-less Chicago Tribune sportswriters were a necessary evil. So too was Gordon Whittenmeyer and whatever else the Chicago Sun-Times offered. The same is also true for the more talented Bruce Miles. Cubs.com was relatively new and ESPN didn't have regular coverage of the Cubs in the same ways that the local Chicago papers did.
Even back then, if you wanted information on Cubs prospects, you weren't going to find that information in the major sources. You'd have to comb through the box scores yourself, read Baseball America or find the rare blog that regularly covered minor league prospects.
The landscape has changed significantly since then. So much so that I have not had to go to the Chicago Tribune, Sun-Times or Daily Herald in well over a year to find news about the Cubs. If I'm interested in post-game notes, Carrie Muskat has proven herself more than capable of providing the details I want. In the offseason ESPN is a bit more interesting, but I rarely visit the place during the season.
While a lot of people will point to social media and how it has made reading the news we're interested in a lot easier, but as far as baseball goes, nothing changed it more than MLB Trade Rumors did. That site, at the time it launched, was a baseball junkie's dream. Early on it was essentially a collection of the rumors posted by sources just like Paul Sullivan, but as it grew they developed their own sources and would almost always be the first to report a rumor.
Twitter started a few months later, but as soon as MLBTR launched, the need for reading Paul Sullivan, Gordon Whittenmeyer and others declined significantly. They did for me anyway. I never needed those guys to tell me how to think and that's what they're especially good at. The only use I ever had for them was news that I couldn't get elsewhere and now the combination of MLBTR and Carrie Muskat was bringing me just about everything I was interested in reading about the Cubs.
There were still times where reading the hacks was necessary, but over time it's become almost irrelevant to even check out what they're writing.
Twitter also provided an avenue for the players to speak directly with their fans. Even the desire to read something as simple as player quotes following a game is less important because of this. The fans had no access to the players. They now do on twitter.
MLBTR and the fast pace at which people had breaking news thanks to Twitter changed baseball blogs. What was once more about commentary and occasionally analysis, was now also about news. Check out Brett's Bleacher Nation for a fantastic example. Aisle424 said awhile back that he goes to BN to get his news before most other sources and it's true. You can get up to the minute news coverage of the Chicago Cubs on a baseball blog now. It's amazing. Some do it better than others and Brett is an example of one of them doing it exceptionally well. He has helped make the mainstream sportswriters even more obsolete than they were.
People's interest in the sport has evolved over the years too. I already mentioned that few blogs and almost no one in the media covered the minor leagues. Once a few blogs started doing it, and no one covered or still covers Cubs prospects better than The Cub Reporter's Arizona Phil, the media had to get on board though they never did it well. Once that happened every team specific blog on the planet had to get on board. Prospect information is readily available at nearly every blog you visit. The fantastic thing is that it almost doesn't even matter which blog it is, you are going to get more information than you'll find by a major source.
Again, MLBTR can be partially thanked for the growing interest in prospects. The trade rumors and transactions in general are a huge business and MLBTR has done it well. If you read your team is going to trade a player you want to know who they'll get. They provide that info, link to sources who have written about them and that information is then reposted on numerous other blogs. I don't always like what MLBTR does, but their influence cannot be denied. Whether intentional or not, they have made baseball fans more informed than ever.
Then there is sabermetrics. Like prospects, few team specific blogs discussed sabermetrics early on. That was after the time they had become more accepted in the game, but outside the game the fans were very reluctant to embrace it. Some fought hard against it. They lost.
Some blogs cover it more than others and some are more knowledgeable than others, but you don't have to go far to find a blog listing a player's wOBA, wRC+, FIP or WAR. 5 years ago it was his batting average, maybe his OBP and SLG and the number of RBI, runs, the ERA and errors the player had. The advanced metrics have found their way into broadcasts, news networks like ESPN and MLB Network, and down to hundreds and maybe thousands of blogs.
The media? They were the last to accept it. Some are still fighting a battle long lost.
I don't share in the outrage that fans feel over performance enhancing drugs, but neither did the media until it was convenient. The media, along with Major League Baseball, helped cover up the use of performance enhancing drugs. The fans were outraged at the use and when it became clear the media had no alternative, they were merely ready to get in line.
The BBWAA has tried for years to protect their sacred group and continue voting for awards in the same silly manner they always did. Some well deserving writers outside the mainstream media forced their way into the BBWAA because they had proven more capable of covering baseball than the ones trying to keep the doors locked.
At every step the major media has been one-upped by its previous readers. They watch the games in more detail. They know more about their favorite team, their favorite players, the ballpark and even the city. They better understand in which direction the club is headed. They more accurately assess the quality of the farm system, MLB team and its front office. They're often ahead of the journalists when it comes to transactions. They have far superior analysis of those transactions. They don't need Paul Sullivan to know what's being said by the players, coaches or executives.
Almost every advantage the media once had has been stolen from them. Stolen in part because of technology and in part because others were just better at their passion than the journalists were at their job.
You know those sporstwriters who thought they did something that was difficult no one else could do it? Yeah, they were wrong. The internet has proven that there are hundreds of people who can not only do their job, but do it better.
No wonder the media has such contempt for bloggers. It's like the bloggers went into their houses and stole the very things they prize most. They got played, yo.
Comments
I guess they still get to gloat because they get paid for sucking.
Rice CubeQuote Reply
I liked this blog. I agree about BN and AZ Phil. Glad those blogs exist, almost every time I read something off the regular beat guys I feel like I develop a headache.
Rice CubeQuote Reply
This. You know you don’t have an important job when drunk assholes in a bar can do it just as competently.
GBTSQuote Reply
@ Rice Cube:
Thanks. Both Brett and AZ Phil deserve a lot of credit. Others have tried what Brett has and couldn’t stick with it or weren’t very good at it. He’s good and he sticks with it. Everybody does minor league updates it seems, but nobody has even tried to do what AZ Phil does. I don’t think anybody could.
mb21Quote Reply
@ mb21:
I think it helps to have blogging as your full time job (Brett) and to actually live in Arizona (I assume Phil does). But it definitely takes effort.
Rice CubeQuote Reply
So if you’re the Tigers you pretty much have to go with Verlander in 1, 4 and 7, right? I can’t see either the Cards or the Giants managing to win that series.
uncle daveQuote Reply
I should add that Mercurial Outfielder helped out with this a little bit. He gave me a better Omar quote and suggested I add in a couple other things that made it better.
mb21Quote Reply
@ Rice Cube:
Though I guess Al Yellon has blogging as his full time job and yet gets made fun of all the time, so obviously that’s not a good prerequisite or a huge advantage…
Rice CubeQuote Reply
Suburban kidQuote Reply
Aisle424Quote Reply
@ Suburban kid:
Blast from the past…
Rice CubeQuote Reply
@ Suburban kid:
This is a webpage I recently enjoyed.
Mercurial OutfielderQuote Reply
@ Aisle424:
(dying laughing)
Mercurial OutfielderQuote Reply
To play devil’s advocate, the media is still necessary since most of the things that get aggregated at BN, MLBTR, and any other blog like this one, get a lot of their information via the beat writers and other major media like Kaplan.
Without the beat writers providing content, Brett would have very little to fill his Bullets posts, which are essentially more consistent and better Daily Facepalms. Someone still has to have access and work the sources to break the news and then we rely on guys like Brett to weed through it for us to highlight the interesting stuff so we don’t have to wade through the schlock ourselves.
Aisle424Quote Reply
Dammit Lincecum.
Rice CubeQuote Reply
@ Aisle424:
Good point. They’re much less necessary and declining in importance.
mb21Quote Reply
@ Aisle424:
Those quotes from Theo aren’t going to transcribe themselves. But you don’t need to pay a “Professional” reporter to do that.
BerseliusQuote Reply
I must admit that I’m pretty annoyed to see the last 2 WS winners battling it out for a chance to go to the WS again (and the WS champions from 3 years ago made it pretty far, too.). I mean, geez, give some other teams a chance for a change (preferably some of the teams that haven’t been there in a while).
Rizzo the RatQuote Reply
To also play devil’s advocate, it’s easy to forget that the fans who are blog regulars are still a vast minority of greater Cub fandom (though in total media consumed, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was even). I don’t think most Cubs fans could tell you that the Cubs picked Almora in June, let alone name two players in the minors, and don’t really mind.
BerseliusQuote Reply
*Pats self on back*
Yeah!
joshQuote Reply
Thanks for the super kind words. Like Tim said, I couldn’t do what I do without the beat writers, so there’s definitely *some* value there. I just figured that if I could do things like (1) highlight the most important stuff, (2) dissect that stuff in a useful way, (3) be timely and reliable, and (4) write well enough, I could provide some value, too. Since I went full-time last year, I’ve started writing quite a bit more of “my own” stuff, rather than just aggregating – but until folks like me have access, aggregating will always be a big part of the job.
I’ve been overwhelmed by my good fortune, and I’m lucky as hell to have been around and doing this at the right time in the Internet’s history. I don’t know where it goes from here (the Trib is now set to go behind a paywall, like the ST and the DH before it), but I’m hopeful I can keep doing this as a job for a while to come. I’m also lucky as hell that I’m not a real journalist, and I can just be a fan – write like a fan, think like a fan, etc. I really think that’s a built-in advantage that fan bloggers have over the mainstream media.
BrettQuote Reply
@ Berselius:
Agreed. I’ve mentioned that many, many times. We are not the average fan, but we are the fans who are most interested and read their work more frequently than anyone else. They lost us, or at least a large portion.
mb21Quote Reply
Brett wrote:
It’s a huge advantage.
I may have exaggerated some parts here, but it is true that the media had to get in line with regards to following prospects and even sabermetrics.
mb21Quote Reply
@ Berselius:
I think if anything, what we’ve learned over the last 5-10 years is that is most certainly true. Damn near anybody can do what the sportswriters do and many do it better.
mb21Quote Reply
Good read.
GWQuote Reply
I will agree that you find better commentary on blogs than you will in most any newspaper. There just aren’t that many great newspaper-based baseball writers around anymore.
I’m way more interested to read commentary by any number of blogs than I am from most anything I find in a newspaper. I read the newspapers mostly so I can mock the over-reactionary, ill-conceived narratives that are passed off as expert analysis.
And the push to cover prospects and sabermetric analysis was absolutely pushed by the secondary media and fought tooth-and-nail by the mainstream. There is no debating that at all.
Aisle424Quote Reply
Beltran out, insert Carpenter, Carpenter on base three times.
Cardinals…
Rice CubeQuote Reply
@ Aisle424:
I really think it’s amazing how much the mainstream media has fought the change. Imagine if they had embraced it. They probably still don’t have the hold on the business like they did before, but I can’t help but think they’d be in a better position than they are. They lost a lot of respect.
Then again, when you tihnk about it, they’ve always relied on informing the uninformed and since so many fans are still uninformed, they still have jobs. It’s also going to be interesting to see how much more this changes. There are a lot of older people alive who barely use computers and stilly rely on print coverage for their news. That is the last generation that will and when they die off they’ll be replaced by ones who can find whatever they want on the internet. Odds are they won’t want to find Paul Sullivan, or whoever it is that replaces him.
mb21Quote Reply
By the way, I remember when Ryno, Adam and I were on this old rundown Cubs blog before we started ACB. Each day we’d go through the minor league box scores, find as much info as we could that had been written about the games and the players and then discuss it. It was a chore to get minor league information back in 2003/2004. Baseball America had their prospect lists and updated content online, but not to the degree they do now. BP didn’t cover prospects. MLB.com did not. Same with ESPN, CBS, local sources, etc. All you had was bits and pieces that you could find about the game, the box scores, and Baseball Cube provided updated minor league stats. That was it.
So when I look around at all the blogs covering the minor leagues today, something ACB was one of the few doing back in 2005, 2006 and even in 2007 I’m shocked at how much things have changed. Even the biggest Cubs fan back in 2003 or 2004 couldn’t name prospects they hadn’t heard on WGN. Few people cared or had any idea who the top prospects in baseball were.
This is something the media could easily have provided, but they were too lazy.
mb21Quote Reply
That’s a different Adam than AC.
mb21Quote Reply
@ mb21:
I’d say what beat writers should add is the ability to get behind the scenes stuff from contacts and interviews. But a lot of times a guy gets stuck on the sports scene whether he wants it or not. It’s not the most interesting beat to get stuck with as a writer, I don’t think, if you don’t already have a passion. It’s disappointing that journalists don’t keep trying to learn and improve, though. It seems like they get trapped in these easy storylines and just whip off a story and go back to playing minesweeper.
joshQuote Reply
From the Ballpark forum discussion:
Hey MB, I don’t get it. Here’s what I see:
I don’t see a bunch of buttons. Also, I couldn’t upload/link to a photo on the Forum, so that’s why it’s here…
SVBQuote Reply
As a former (make that recovering! Dying laughing!) journalist, I have an infinitesimal amount of sympathy for the beat guys. I imagine some of them got into sportswriting because they, like us, loved sports. They did their time writing agate, then covering the big Niles North/Niles West matchup. Then, finally, they got the call to the majors. Pen and notebook in hand, they went to Wrigley. They saw themselves as conduits to the nation’s game, as maybe the next Roger Kahn.
Then the job started. Players who make more in a week than they do in a year treated them with disdain. Assholes like Will Clark snubbed them or swore at them. When they wrote something bad about a player, he wouldn’t talk to them, and the front office wasn’t exactly welcoming, either. They spent hours working on a story and trying to get a quote from some 22-year-old who couldn’t stop making fart jokes long enough to say something meaningful.
This is not to excuse someone like, say… Paul Sullivan and his astonishing laziness. His blase attitude is just this side of unforgivable. No excuses. But I can see how it might be hard to keep up the passion when the job isn’t quite what you’d hoped when you started.
Steve SwisherQuote Reply
Cardinals —> more black magic
Rice CubeQuote Reply
@ Steve Swisher:
Yeah, I wouldn’t want to deal with baseball people. The baseball players I’ve known have been, about 90% of the time, pieces of shit.
joshQuote Reply
josh wrote:
So that wasn’t pine tar on George Brett’s bat?
SVBQuote Reply
@ josh:
I tried to get a quote from Brad Ausmus one time. He couldn’t have been more aloof and dickish.*
Again, I’m not trying to excuse these beat guys. It seems like the life has been drained out of them, and they’re just happy to do the bare minimum and cash a check. (If anyone can explain the Trib’s policy on game recaps, feel free.) But while we might think it’d be a dream job, I can see how it might be kind of dispiriting after a while.
*Mickey Morandini, however, was pretty cool, and Ron Santo was awesome. Mark Grace was smoking in the locker room and rolled his eyes when he saw I was just after some pap about how Wrigley Field is a civic treasure. He thought for a minute, gave me a perfect quote, then went back to his cig.
Steve SwisherQuote Reply
(dying laughing)
Cardinals…jeez.
Rice CubeQuote Reply
@ Steve Swisher:
Definitely. I would find it soul sucking just to work for the Trib at all. Fuck, for that matter, it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that I do, somehow.
joshQuote Reply
@ Steve Swisher:
Was it Kruk one time who someone saw smoking and told him he shouldn’t do that b/c he’s an athlete. His response was “Ma’am, I’m not an athlete, I’m a baseball player.”
joshQuote Reply
My favorite Mark Grace story was when someone asked him what his biggest contribution to the clubhouse was and he paused, took a big long drag off his cigarette and said, “Leadership by example.”
Aisle424Quote Reply
Shit.
Rice CubeQuote Reply
Amen, brother. I’ve never gone to mainstream writers for info. Maybe someday if I get blunt head trauma and want to hear why Prince Fielder’s a perfect fit for a rebuilding team.
I have four bookmarks in my toolbar that give me my fix – Cubs Den, Bleacher Nation, Obstructed View, and MLB Trade Rumors. I can’t remember a time I needed to go outside those four sites for news… even breaking news.
Carne HarrisQuote Reply
Carne Harris wrote:
Sounds like it’s time for us to go behind a paywall. CHA-CHING!!!
Aisle424Quote Reply
@ Carne Harris:
Seriously though, thanks for including us in such an exclusive group with those other three sites.
Aisle424Quote Reply
@ Aisle424:
Best sites out there. (Yes, that’s my hand on your knee.)
Carne HarrisQuote Reply
@ Steve Swisher:
I never got past writing agate (dying laughing)
Suburban kidQuote Reply
@ Carne Harris:
Hmmmm, I noticed that BCB isn’t listed there. Seems like a glaring omission on your part. Alvin would be so sad. (dying laughing)
mikeakaleroyQuote Reply
For me, Twitter is what started my new adventure in Cubs/Baseball knowledge. I’ve been on twitter for like 3.5 years, but only last January did I really started using it and found some other Cubs fans. Then one of my Cubs friends retweeted some snarky comment by this Aisle424 character, which led me to this blog. This blog came to me at just the right time, since with the sucktatude of the team, I probably wasn’t going to pay a whole lot of attention to the season, but you guys here made it very bearable because ya’ll don’t take yourself (or the team) too seriously. Just what I needed. Well done to the crack staff at OV.
mikeakaleroyQuote Reply
@ SVB:
I’ll try to figure something out then.
mb21Quote Reply
@ mikeakaleroy:
Rice CubeQuote Reply
@ Steve Swisher:
You make some strong points here. I’m probably a little tougher on them than I should be. It probably is a more difficult gig in some respects than I realize. That being said, some of them are just plain awful and could easily be replaced by a random person on the street and Sullivan is one of them.
mb21Quote Reply
Carne Harris wrote:
Glad we’re included. I don’t even have OV on mine, but that’s because the tab is always open. (dying laughing)
mb21Quote Reply
Carne Harris wrote:
OV: come for the MILF porn, stay for the breaking Cubs news
WenningtonsGorillaCockQuote Reply
mikeakaleroy wrote:
(dying laughing) …….and (dying laughing)
Suburban kidQuote Reply
New shit
http://obstructedview.net/commentary-and-analysis/season-in-review-david-dejesus.html
BerseliusQuote Reply
@ WenningtonsGorillaCock:
I usually come for the MILF porn, grab a sandwich.
Carne HarrisQuote Reply
@ Carne Harris:
By Christ I hope someone answers “different strokes” to this.
Carne HarrisQuote Reply
I have to assume it’s an oversite that you left out Cubs Den. When it comes to analyzing prospects, there’s nobody better. You can’t talk prospects and not mention that site.
SteveQuote Reply