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The Canseco/A-Rod joke is on…someone

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By now, you, dear reader, may have read the Jose Canseco/Alex Rodriguez story spreading through the Internet. It started this morning with a Deadspin post, spread to Baseball Think Factory and from there, landed on blogs across the Internet. A little over an hour ago, the story jumped from the Internet to Newsday when Kat O’Brien wrote up a quick story.

There’s only one problem: I think it’s a fake.

The story begins with a column by Joe Lavin, a Boston-based writer. Lavin writes that he’s read a copy of Canseco’s latest book Vindicated put on sale early by a “quaint Cambridge bookstore.” The book, Lavin writes, is full of stories about Magglio Ordonez, Roger Clemens and Alex Rodriguez:

As for Alex Rodriguez, Canseco says he didn’t inject Rodriguez, but that he “introduced Alex to a known supplier of steroids.” Canseco didn’t mention Rodriguez in the first book because he “hated the bastard.” He was worried that people would have “questioned [his] motives” had he included Rodriguez.

Why all the hatred, you ask. Well, Canseco claims that A-Rod was trying to sleep with Canseco’s wife. Apparently, even after Canseco had been nice enough to help A-Rod find a friendly steroids supplier, A-Rod kept calling Canseco’s wife.

Canseco’s ex-wife, Jessica, is a former Hooters girl. Remember the story about A-Rod and his Toronto woman?

Anyway, Lavin claims that Canseco ends with a story in which Mike Wallace asks him, off the record, about the benefits of HGH as though the venerable CBS host wanted to try the hormones himself. If that sounds a little incredible, it’s because Joe Lavin is no mere writer. He’s a Boston-based humorist who pens a bi-weekly humor column. He joked about Google Stalk and penned a parody of a Harry Potter letter last year.

Right now, everyone is falling for his A-Rod/Canseco shtick. But considering the story — aren’t all Cambridge bookstores quaint? — I’m calling this one out. It’s a humor column being reported as news. I could be wrong; maybe Lavin is using his space normally devoted to sarcastic humor for a real breaking news story, but I doubt it. Let’s see how this plays out.

Covering Spring Training the right way

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When I railed on the Daily News’ Spring Training coverage yesterday, most of you who chimed in agreed with my critique of the paper’s over-the-top attention to Spring Training details. Thursday’s game — highlighted by a horrendous pitching effort by Yankee ace Chien-Ming Wang — gives us another chance to evaluate how the New York sports media covers March.

Today’s story comes to us via Tyler Kepner of The Times. With a headline “Girardi Says Wang Has Work to Do,” Kepner’s piece explores Wang’s terrible start today in the context of Spring Training.

“His sinker was up, his slider was flat,” Manager Joe Girardi said. “He was in bad counts. They were aggressive, and they weren’t missing. You don’t ever like to get your butt kicked, but it’s a spring training game. We’re trying to get arm strength and we’re trying to get him ready for the season, and we’ve got work to do.”

Wang said he had to work on shortening his stride to the plate. He said his stride was too long because he was trying to throw too hard. “I will fix it quick,” he said…

The pitching coach, Dave Eiland, said: “It’s early, so he’s feeling strong. He was just under some pitches, so they were staying up and he wasn’t getting that late movement on his sinker. He did throw some good changeups. I try to take the positive out of everything. It was a rough day for him, but I think he’ll be O.K. He knows what he needs to do.”

That’s all there is to it. There’s no need to harp on Wang’s previous bad outings or his subpar ALDS appearances. A few quotes from the manager, one from the pitcher and one from the pitching coach all recognizing that Wang is working on getting his mechanics and arm angle where it should be for the season. That is how to cover Spring Training.

The world of New York media is a tough one. Some of the harshest and most popular blogs exist to dissect the media arena in this city. But for sports, be aware of what you read. Spring Training is a time for practice; it’s not a time to be concerned about how some bad outing in Florida stacks up against career experience. Worry in April; worry in May; enjoy it in March.

Covering Spring Training the wrong way

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Now that everyone and their mothers — or at least mine — reads baseball blogs, the media, under pressure from the competition, is paying closer attention to the results of Spring Training outings. This is sadly to the detriment of the Spring Training process.

Exhibit A in this era of over-reacting media is Mark Feinsand’s overly dramatic piece about Joba Chamberlain’s outing in today’s Daily News:

Joba Chamberlain called it “just one of those days.”

Of course, Chamberlain had never experienced a day like this since joining the Yankees last August, at least one without midges around.

The hard-throwing 22-year-old allowed two runs on two hits – one of them a towering two-run blast by Twins outfielder Garrett Jones – in two innings, giving up twice as many earned runs as he did in his 19 outings last season.

Harping on less-than-stellar outings by Chamberlain and Ian Kennedy, Feinsand spends a story talking about the struggles these two had yesterday. Missing from the story is any mention of the fact that these are the first two innings these pitchers have thrown against Major League hitters since last season. Missing from the story is a nod toward the purpose of Spring Training: refining mechanics, getting a feel for the strike zone. Missing from the story is a mention of the fact that these outings came on March 4 and not October 4.

Instead, Feinsand compares this outing to one of Joba’s Minor League appearances in which he gave up three home runs. This coverage needs perspective. Yankee fans shouldn’t expect an undefeated Spring Training; that’s not the point. Rather, these pitchers use the time to get out the rest, to get their throwing in, to get in shape. By the time April rolls around, these guys are ready to go.

If, in June, Joba and IPK are still struggling, then we can worry. But two less-than-perfect innings during the first week of Spring Training hardly warrant an alarm. Is this really where we are with sports coverage today?

The media needs an A-Rod story

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I know this story is a couple of days old. I was actually sitting around with a couple of my buddies, debating philosophy and politics, when I came across it on Pete’s blog. Yes, I’m referring to Alex Rodriguez’s clearly exaggerated statement that he was tested nine or 10 times last year for PEDs. Why did we wait? Because if I posted something Wednesday night or Thursday morning, it would have been a cuss-laden diatribe that wouldn’t have resonated well with readers. But now that I’ve had a few days to reflect, I think I can discuss this in a more sober manner.

(Proof of my inability to articulate my position on Thursday morning was a conversation with my father, wherein he dissected everything I said, and was right. But now I think I can put together what I really want to say).

It all started on Wednesday. Alex came into camp and categorically denied ever having used PEDs. That’s all fine and good. It’s something he had to do, given the current environment in Major League Baseball, and especially the one surrounding the Yankees. In his statement, he exaggerated a bit, saying he was tested nine or 10 times last year.

Of course, only players who have failed a test for amphetamines are tested that many times. This roused the parasitic media. But instead of asking Alex, or one of his representatives, if he was exaggerating, they started to call — according to Abraham — “Brian Cashman, MLB, the MLBPA, Scott Boras.”

Why?

Because if they asked Alex, they would have been told what they undoubtedly knew: He was exaggerating. It takes nothing more than common sense to realize this. Even if A-Rod did fail a test for amphetamines, that’s not something he’d offer to the press in any way, expressly or implicitly.

None of this matters to the press, though. They need stories to get readers. And the more sensational the story, the more readers they draw in. It’s a sad but true fact of journalism. However, sensational stories are like Digg. They may bring in a lot of traffic, but it’s not quality traffic. You don’t get many repeat readers out of these sensational stories. You get one-off readers who are inherently drawn to scandal.

So the strategy changes. Because tabloids like the New York Post don’t gain eternal readers for their sensationalist stories, they have to keep a steady stream of them. This way, they’re getting a variety of one-off readers all the time. If they ever stopped with these frivolous stories, the readers who picked up the tabloid for sensational reasons simply wouldn’t pick it up any more.

At least that’s how the theory goes.

This non-story could have been nipped in the bud. It didn’t have to see an inch of column space or a kilobyte of bandwidth. But it did, because the media needs this. They need scandal and controversy. Otherwise, they’ll be exposed as bland, boring figures who rarely have anything interesting to say.

Clearly, this criticism is aimed more at some than others. While I don’t much care for Pete Abraham’s defense of his fellow journalists in this scenario, I generally think he does a great job with the blog. He understands what readers and fans want to see: more information. We tend not to care about the spin that various papers put on stories. We care about getting first-hand information about our favorite team.

Because Abraham understands this, he’s risen to one of the premier baseball bloggers. It’s not just that he has the backing of a fairly large media outlet. Hell, Pete Caldera has the backing of a big media company, too, but I don’t know anyone who reads his blog. This is because Abraham understands the people and serves their will. And he’s rewarded by having the greatest level of readership in the Yankees blogosphere.

You know who doesn’t get it? George King. Other than Mike Lupica, there might be no greater A-Rod hater in the New York media. The subhead of this post explains exactly why he doesn’t get it: “Get ready for 10 more years of Alex Rodriguez finding ways to stir it up.”

Sorry, George, but it is you stirring it up, not A-Rod. You see, humans often exaggerate to make points. Alex was attempting to 1) categorically deny PED use and 2) praise MLB’s testing program. Yes, he might have done better to further exaggerate the number, as Abraham suggests. But it was an exaggeration any way you slice it. Be honest. When you heard that he said he’d been tested nine or 10 times, you thought he was exaggerating, right? Come on. Only people who are out to get the guy thought otherwise.

I’ll say it again. They could have simply asked him or one of his representatives. But they decided to stray from the horse’s mouth. Why? Because the mere act of calling around could become the story. There was clearly nothing to this. You can’t tell me that any journalist actually thought that this was anything but an exaggeration. And if they did, I’d like to sign them up for my new course, How Not To Think Like a Dumbass.

This is par for the course for King, though. When I talk about sensational news piece after sensational news piece, he’s target No. 1 of that criticism. I’ll take a page from Stephen Colbert’s book and invite Mr. King to debate me here on this site. It can be on this issue, or any other one related to the manner in which sports are covered. Of course, it will end up being me arguing common-sense points, and King offering up smoke-and-mirrors defenses.

I think I’ve said my bit on this issue. It shouldn’t have made any sort of headlines. But because the media needs a sensational story, it did. And that’s a damn shame. The players are out on the field doing things, working towards a championship season, and all we can talk about is how Alex Rodriguez exaggerated how many times he was tested for PEDs last season.

Media finally realizes that Pettitte, Clemens weren’t friends

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So here’s a “shocker” from Ken Davidoff: Andy Pettitte is mad at Roger Clemens, and — brace yourselvse — the two of them weren’t as close as everyone made them out to be.

My world has just been torn apart. No, wait. It hasn’t. But we’ll get to that in a minute.

First, the goods:

“They were never as close as they were made out to be,” a friend of both said on the condition of anonymity. “They just sort of went along with it in the media, because it was a good story.”

Indeed, we had one of the game’s all-time best pitchers taking a fellow Texan under his wing, a guy whose childhood bedroom featured a Clemens poster. We had the pair bolting together to the Astros and returning together (a few months apart, granted) to New York.

Though Clemens and Pettitte enjoyed working out together, their relationship didn’t extend much beyond that. Clemens is an extrovert, Pettitte an introvert. Clemens enjoyed going out after games on road trips; Pettitte almost always stayed in. Their families aren’t particularly close, although both make the Houston area their full-time residences.

When Clemens sat out the start of the 2006 season, keeping the Astros waiting for months on yet another unretirement, Pettitte joined other veteran teammates in growing annoyed by The Rocket’s prima-donna vacillating.

So not only is Pettitte, as Davidoff’s piece notes, mad at Clemens for his defense tactics concerning the Mitchell, but it seems that the two had fleeced the media. And, oh yeah, had the media bothered to report this story two years, they would have found out that Clemens and Pettitte weren’t best friends then either. But, hey, that would actually require reporting and effort.

Now, I don’t care about the facts in this story. Does it matter to me if Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte are friends? No. Do I care if they’re close or not? No. It impacts my life and the Yankees about as much as that overblown story concerning the quote-unquote fight that Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez are in. Whatever. This is baseball, not high school.

But this story matters because it’s yet another example of how the media gets things wrong. Switching gears for one minute, if you take a peak at The New York Times’ coverage of Saturday’s Democratic caucuses in Nevada, the article leads with the fact that Senator Hillary Clinton captured more votes than her opponents, and then the reporters conveniently slip in the fact that Senator Barack Obama will actually get more national delegates. You know how one becomes a presidential candidate? By capturing more national delegates. So who really won, other than the people reporting the story and selling papers?

This story from Nevada and the Clemens-Pettitte story are from opposite sides of the news spectrum. One is about a highly-charged partisan battle for the chance to run for the White House; the other focuses on two baseball players from Texas who are dealing with accusations from a shoddy report. Yet, these stories both have one thing in common: They are complex issues with shades of gray that media insists on presenting in black and white.

Everything is win or lose. Clinton either wins the most votes or loses the most votes; forget the more important delegate count. Clemens and Pettitte either are best friends because they follow each other to Houston or not. There is absolutely no leeway for anything else. Maybe Clemens and Pettitte were friends, but the Mitchell Report strained that relationship. Maybe Davidoff is right or maybe not. How are we to judge a story when, three years later, the media basically says they covered it wrong the first time? Does anyone care what the facts are?

There is, of course, one final explanation that would get the media off the hook, at least in this one case. Roger Clemens planted this story about his non-friendship with Andy Pettitte so that when Congress questions him about Pettitte’s admitted HGH use, he can avoid answering by pointing to the “revelation” that the two aren’t that close. I wouldn’t put that past the Rocket; would you?

Nothing in this post is an endorsement of any political candidate or party. I don’t care for whom you choose to vote. Please leave the partisan politics outside of the comments.

Defending the sportswriters from a rabid Schilling

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Let’s forget for a few minutes that Curt Schilling is on the Red Sox, and let’s forget his stupid “mystique and aura” comments from 2001. Let’s instead just consider Curt Schilling to be a baseball player with strong opinions who shares those opinions on his blog. Maybe this way, we can have as unbiased a discussion about Curt as is possible on a Yankee blog.

Last week, when the Baseball Writers Association of American first instituted the Curt Schilling Rule which bans players from awards consideration if their contracts feature incentive clauses, I applauded this move. The members of the BBWAA are hardly the least biased folks in the room, and I can’t really blame them. Eight months of traveling with a team and interacting with players on a daily basis will inevitably lead to some soft feelings toward some of the players.

While the BBWAA has disappointingly tabled their resolution pending discussion with MLB and the Players Association, the man for whom the proposal was named — Mr. 38 Pitches himself — was none too happy. In a rather personal and often rambling blog post, Schilling lays into the BBWAA for many of the inconsistencies that bloggers have long noted about their voting patterns. He rails on voters omitting pitchers from MVP ballots or Hall of Fame ballots for petty reasons some years only to include them in others. He wonders why traditional print writers are any more or less qualified to vote than the writers like Buster Olney, Jayson Stark, Rob Neyer and Ken Rosenthal, to name a few, who make their living online.

All in all, Schilling makes some very valid points. But as is often the case with Curt Schilling, there’s rather big but (and it’s not his. Zing!). Schilling takes a very strong exception to BBWAA Secretary Jack O’Connell’s statement. “But the attachment of a bonus to these awards creates a perception that we’re trying to make these guys rich,” O’Connell said. Schilling starts out hot and goes from there:

Give me a break. Don’t get me wrong, 100k, 500k, 1 million dollars is a huge sum of money. But to think that these guys ever approached this as anything other than them being touted as the ‘experts’ on who wins what is crap. Add to that I seriously doubt anyone ever looked at this from a perception standpoint and thought wow, they are making this guy rich. I would disagree.

Curt Schilling may disagree, but let’s look at this from a journalistic standpoint. Curt Schilling’s new contract includes a clause where he needs to draw just one third-place vote to kick in a $1 million bonus. Do you know how many Cy Young Awards have depended upon those third-place votes? I’m leaning toward none.

So what’s from stopping one of Curt’s friends from tossing a throw-away third-place vote his way? Every voter fills out a 1-2-3 ballot, and if Curt ends up with one meager vote, the $1 million is his. That reeks of unethical journalistic behavior right there.

Schilling, in my opinion, has it wrong. This move by the BBWAA isn’t one of their efforts to steal the thunder from the players; it’s an effort to make sure that all of their voting members are following the guidelines of their profession. It’s a sad commentary on the state of journalism than such a move by the BBWAA is necessary, but it isn’t an attempt, as Schilling would have us believe, by the journalists to upstage the players.

In the end, Curt says it best himself. “It only takes 1-2 guys to screw it up and those guys exist in decent numbers,” he writes. The same holds true on the other end as well. In this case, it only takes one guy to kick back a million bucks, and any effort to end that practice should be applauded.