Newsday: Best: SNY’s Cohen gets to call Mets game from upper deck

Well it’s about time somebody called the g-d Met game!...I sat in the freezing rain with Belth and Lederer the other night for over an hour and a....ohh, announcing.

It was two hours before Thursday’s Nationals- Mets game, and SNY’s play-by-play man was sitting a few rows from the top of Shea Stadium, surveying the vast, red stretches of the upper deck.

Soon Cohen would be fulfilling a decade-long aspiration, calling a game from the cheap seats he used to occupy as a fan, just in time before they tear down the dump. It was a nod to his past, but more so to the others who grew up as fans far from the field, including the 18,000 or so children in the house Thursday for “Weather Education Day.”

“Everybody comes to this job differently,” Cohen said, listing the varied backgrounds of announcers who are former players, or who arrived from other cities as veteran broadcasters. “But Howie and I grew up as fans, in this ballpark, and somehow found our way back here to be play-by-play voices for the team,” he said.

“Ultimately, all of us want to go back to our roots; to me, these are my roots. This is how I got where I am.”

Sun-Sentinel: ESPN’s Steve Phillips fan of interleague baseball play

Yea...but Phillips also thinks forced chicken molting home videos are fun for the whole family! QUARK!

“It’s been great for the game,” said ESPN baseball analyst Steve Phillips. “Not only is it good for the fans, but it creates a good opportunity for the players in terms of free agency because it allows the players to see different stadiums and different markets and get exposure.”

Of course, the main criticism of interleague play is the unbalanced schedule. Critics argue, for example, that it’s not fair that the Mets have to play the Yankees every year. Meantime, division foe Florida gets to play Kansas City, Tampa Bay and Seattle.

“I think the rotation of playing different divisions each year but at the same time maintaining the rivalries works well,” Phillips said. “The integrity of the schedule issue by far is outweighed by the positive impact on the fans.”

Kornheiser Among ‘Wash Post’ Buyout Takers

The Seinfeld Curse continues…

Kornheiser, the Post sports columnist who gained national fame on Monday Night Football and other ESPN network programs, announced on his radio show Wednesday afternoon that he was taking a buyout after 29 years with the newspaper.

“It just feels odd,” Kornheiser said on his radio show, according to a transcript posted on the “D.C. Sports Bog” by Post sportswriter Dan Steinberg. “It feels odd and it feels bad. It doesn’t feel sad, there’s no sadness to it, it just feels wrong.”

Kornheiser said “all I ever wanted to be was a newspaper writer.” “In my mind that’s what it says on the headstone, it says ‘newspaper guy,’ “ he added.

Kornheiser hasn’t written a regular column for the paper recently, but provides video for its Web site, with some items excerpted on the second page of the sports section. Kornheiser said on the radio that he might continue to contribute to the Web. He said he signed the buyout papers Tuesday night.

In addition to commenting on Monday Night Football, Kornheiser co-hosts a daily sports talk show “Pardon the Interruption” with fellow Post sportswriter Michael Wilbon.

Thanks to Can’t Stop the Bleeding.

N.Y. Daily News: Lo Duca calls WFAN

Meh...I just found out that Rays honcho, Stuart Sternberg...used to call into John Sterling’s crapantheon sports radio show back in the early 70’s!

On Monday’s cheers in the dugout: “I wasn’t there. The last few games - I’m on the DL. They have a policy here, the Nationals, when you’re on the DL you stay home. But they let me come on this trip because I live here.

“I don’t know. I’m not a big fan of it to be honest with you. I’ll be honest with you. You know, we’re struggling. Guys are just trying to have a little fun. I think they saw Figueroa getting a little upset, so they amped it up a couple of notches. I do think it’s a little bush league. At first it started off as a little fun, until he got mad. I don’t agree with it. But, also, Nelson Figueroa has nine wins in the big leagues and he needs to keep his mouth shut.”

On being named in the Mitchell Report: “I apologized. It’s something I did a long time ago. The perception, and people think that, hey, he did it last year. No. I did it a long time ago. And it was a mistake I did. I wish it would have never happened. It’s something I’ll have to deal with. But, you know, I’m sort of glad. I think it was a monkey that’s been on my back for a long time that finally flew off. It was something that I’m not proud of, obviously.

“I don’t view myself as a cheater. Obviously it’s something I did. And obviously it’s something that helped me. But, you know, a lot of people don’t realize I got into a bad collision and got run over at home plate one year, in ’95 in Double-A. And I got it prescribed to me by a doctor. A lot of guys did it. There’s a lot of guys in front of me that did it. Like I said, I’m not making excuses. It was part of survival. You want to be at home or you want to be playing? That’s the way it was. I apologized for what I did, but that’s plenty true.”

Splice Today: Just Watch the game

New York’s Daily News has been on a tear of late in its campaign to crush Roger Clemens, issuing daily revelations of his reported adultery and pathological hypocrisy, and the rest of the sports media has been glad to climb aboard the bulldozer aimed at the now smaller-than-life Texan. This is not a defense of Clemens’ apparently reckless and extraordinarily selfish lifestyle—and the allegations of his affair with a teenager when he was a 28-year-old Red Sox pitcher are truly creepy—but I’d rather not know the details. Unfortunately, if you follow baseball as closely as I do, in particular the ups and downs of the Red Sox (thumbs up) and Yankees (big toes down), it’s impossible to escape the almost daily denunciations of columnists posing as priests. Another recent unnecessary “news” story was that Alex Rodriguez passed out while his wife was in labor with their first daughter in 2004. Who cares?

The Washington Post’s Thomas Boswell, revered in the sporting world’s establishment, is among the very worst columnists when he writes about the “scandal,” which is often, but at least last Saturday, upon celebrating the careers of pitchers Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and John Smoltz, he didn’t touch Clemens’ non-baseball activities. (Boswell, although a snoot of the first order, isn’t dumb: he knows that scores of baseball stars have, ahem, colorful, private lives—just click on the blog “On the DL” to see what I mean—and wisely sticks to the playing field.)

The Biz of Baseball: Brown: “[Your Business] At Wrigley Field” Still Being Considered

Or as Maury sez..."Can’t find a business with this name, but what if “4 out of 5 Dentists” got deal?”

One thing that was not mentioned, possibly due to the hot-button nature of it, has been the possible selling of naming rights to The Friendly Confines. As Kurt Hunzeker and I noted in The Curse of the Ex-Wrigley Field, any company looking to purchase the secondary naming rights for Wrigley would find it nearly impossible for anyone to think of Wrigley Field as, well, anything other than “Wrigley Field”. While secondary naming deals have been able to get out from under the original name’s recognition (best example would be the short-lived Enron Field which is now Minute Maid Park), Wrigley would nearly impossible. As we wrote in Curse, “Hyatt Field?  Gatorade Field?  State Farm Field?  Blue Cross Blue Shield Field? None of them work.”

Beyond the financial implications (based upon Hunzeker’s research, using the Mets Citigroup naming deal as a barometer, a secondary naming deal for Wrigley would run -276 percent of value based on Wrigley’s longstanding history as a name), the political realities of those immersed in the purist and traditional world that baseball, and more importantly, the Cubs hold, show that a complete renaming of Wrigley Field would create a backlash the likes of which the Cubs may have never seen before.

Bradford: Diamond comes full circle in Lowell’s life journey

Excerpts from Mike Lowell and Primer-pal Rob Bradford’s new book...Deep Drive: A Long Journey to Finding the Champion Within. Good stuff.

After the 1-0 win, the Puerto Rican team was getting ready to load onto its bus when Fidel Castro requested to shake the hands of all the players in his private box. One Puerto Rican player, my father, chose to wait behind for the rest of his team on the bus. He was not about to acknowledge the man who spearheaded a government that persecuted my father’s family and friends and committed unspeakable atrocities. Shaking the hand of this man would have been another black cloud among the memories my father’s family were so desperately trying to put behind them.

That refusal to shake Castro’s hand has always stayed with me. My father stood up for what he believed in, and because of it I have always tried to do the same.

Dad got another crack at exacting a measure of revenge against Castro in ’72 when he went back to Cuba to pitch in a tournament called, ironically enough, the Friendly Series. This time my father went face-to-face against his former countrymen, the Cuban National Team. He went seven innings, leaving with a 5-1 lead, having scored the fifth run to complement his extraordinary pitching performance. That final run would prove to be the winning run in what ended up as a 5-4 Puerto Rico victory. My father had become the first Cuban to ever come back and beat the Cuban National Team.

Buffalo News: Accountant makes Elias the source

A look at the most important man in Bill Madden’s life (well, outside of James “Prexy” Petrillo, that is)...Seymour Siwoff and his Elias Sports Bureau.

“You can’t talk to the computer in the English language,” said Siwoff, the company president. “From the very first day I realized, ‘Oh my God. You’ve got to learn the nomenclature of how to talk to this machine.’ That’s the key. We talk to it. And in many [search] cases you have to stop and think, ‘What’s a better way to approach this?’ ”

Siwoff and a staff of more than 30 have historical perspective at their fingertips and it regularly ends up on the lips of SportsCenter’s anchors, or tucked into newspaper notes columns. Quite often the facts they unearth aren’t nearly as impressive as their ability to unearth them, and with virtual immediacy. Usually Elias is providing the answer before the question’s been asked.

...“The difference between us and Google and Yahoo is, we put the stuff in the machine,” Siwoff said. “They brought us files already there. We spent a lifetime doing this. . . . To this very day we’re researching mistakes of the past in the sports we do, incredible as it is. In fairness to our previous generation, they didn’t have any computers. There was a casual approach to keeping statistics.”

“We like the sports themselves,” Siwoff said. “We just don’t like numbers, for example. We like the games. That’s more important than anything. There’s a romance to sports.”

tHom Brenneman and Chris Welch May or May Not Be Child Pornographers

Oh, hello. What’s that? You want me to back up my claim that tHom Brenneman and Chris Welch may or may not be child pornographers? Why should I? tHom and Chris weren’t forced to back up their completely ludicrous implication Monday night on a live baseball broadcast that Cub stud catcher Geovany Soto has used performance-enhancing drugs.

THOM: You look at his career numbers, I’m talking about his minor league numbers, he just came to the majors for the first time this season. And you wonder, you know, where did all of this offense all of a sudden come from Geovany Soto?…You look at his minor league numbers, .260 one year, .269, .242, .271, .253…he had never hit more than nine home runs in a minor league season..NINE, until last year when he hit TWENTY-SIX in Triple-A Iowa and hit .353. Now all of a sudden, in his first full-year in the major leagues, granted it’s only a month and a week, but he’s hitting almost .340 and leads the Cubs in runs batted in with 24.

CHRIS: I don’t mean this in a bad way, but before steroid testing, you see a blip in the radar like that you say, well..

THOM: Right…

CHRIS: …one of the possibilities might be he’s juicing, but obviously that’s not the case anymore, everyone’s tested. And you know that doesn’t happen very much with baseball players because usually, whether it’s at the minor league level or the major league level, by the time you’re 28 or so…I’m not sure how old Soto is…he’s only 25, you reach a certain plateau of productivity. You pretty much stay within range. Maybe now that he’s getting closer to the prime of his career…around…he’s 25, so it’ll be a couple years until he’s in that…but maybe he’s reaching a new plateau.

THOM: Well another guy that was similar to that was Sammy Sosa…now people can accuse Sosa of “did he do this or did he do that”. To my knowledge he’s never been tested in a positive way for any kind of steroids, whether people believe or not he did is an entirely different question.

But the point being, that Sosa was one of those guys coming up through the White Sox organization who never hit many home runs, then all of a sudden got to the big leagues and started knocking the cover off the ball.

More demoronic Brenneman antics here...at The Cub Reporter.

The Biz of Baseball: Brown: Financial Book on the Cubs Expected This Week

And from Maury..."Or, as some like to call it, the prelude to John Canning owning the Cubs, and Cuban getting snubbed”

The sale of the Chicago Cubs will move beyond pure discussion when Sam Zell and the Tribune Co. deliver the financial “book” to the six prospective bidding groups sometime this week.

The “book” is a financial assessment of all the holdings being sold by Tribune in association with the storied franchise, including the team, Wrigley Field, Comcast SportsNet Chicago, and Wrigley Field Premium Tickets. A separate “book” is also being distributed with Wrigley Field removed as part of the sale. Zell has been in discussions with the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority about selling it off separately, a move seen as a negative for prospective owners.

As for the six groups bidding they include Madison Dearborn Partners CEO John Canning, Jr., the Ricketts family, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, the partnership of attorney Thomas Mandler and businessman Jim Anixter, MVC Capital Chairman Michael Tokarz and private-equity investor Thomas Begel.

As we have reported at the outset, from MLB’s perspective, the leading candidate is John Canning, Jr. due to his close ties to MLB and deep financial resources. He is a minority owner in the Milwaukee Brewers and has had close ties to Commissioner Selig. As reported by the Chicago Tribune, MLB could pass on any of the prospective buyers, even they are acceptable to Zell and Tribune, or offer more money than an owner they see as working well within MLB’s close-knit ownership framework.

Olbermann Blown Away By New Yankee Stadium (Video)

And look for a special Dukakis-he-for-real?! moment with Olbermann wearing a Yankee construction helmet!

Ignore his politics for one minute and watch this video of Keith Olbermann touring the new Yankee Stadium. He has nothing but nice things to say about it.

NY BASEBALL Report Card- YES and SNY

Lucha libre bonanza!...Loudmouths vs Michael Kay and his Large Head!

YES does a great job at game coverage minus the fact that their rotating collection of announcers can get annoying. On any given day it can be a combination of Michael Kay or Ken Singleton on play by play with Paul O’Neill, David Cone, Al Leiter and John Flaherty rotating in and out as color guys. It’s hard to hit that rhythm you expect from your broadcast team over the course of 162 game season when every day is a new combination. Neither Kay nor Singleton does the strongest play by play in baseball and they can both be a little bland sometimes but neither makes me want to turn the volume down.

Michael Kay and his large head are not universally loved by fans. He likes to flex his Fordham education by using big words and this turns off much of his blue collar audience. To their credit some of his broadcast partners have done a good job bringing him back down to earth. (Especially Paul O’neill who will make fun of him about his head size, his waist size and his pretentiousness) Almost every partner he has will make a comment like “That’s just my opinion but I didn’t go to Fordham.” It’s these types of light hearted jabs between Kay and the ex Yankees that make me think he doesn’t have as big a chip on his shoulder as some fans think. While the majority of fans like their play by play guys to be some one they think they can go get a beer with: The Vin Scully type who has a good story for every occasion. Michael Kay is more of a game show host. He likes to moderate the chaos of the game and add in a witty line every now and again.

Thanks to Baseball Musings.

Deadspin: Even Joe Posnanski Gets Yelled At

In coincidental timing with David Weathers’ storming at the media, Poz takes his turn in the “Dark Side Of The Locker Room” section by recounting a (kind of) dark encounter with Jeff Montgomery, the face of the 90s Royals.

Now, I’m not going to tell you I’m the bravest guy around, because I’m not. I’m a bald, chubby-to-fat sportswriter. At first, I had that, “Damn, I’m going to have a fight with Jeff Montgomery and he’s going to pound on me like Sonny pounded Carlo,” feeling in my stomach. But after a couple of minutes, I realize he really isn’t going to hit me, there isn’t going to be a one-sided fight, and then it’s like I have one of those out of body experiences. Suddenly it’s like I’m looking down on the scene, and I’m thinking, “WOW, this guy is mad. Look at him. He’s really, really mad. He’s like crazy mad. Look at this guy, pacing around, stomping around, that towel wrapped around his hand, he’s really mad. I mean, this guy is mad.”

And then, it becomes sort of a mini-struggle not to laugh. Well, I don’t know that I was every close to laughing, but he WAS mad.

My favorite part was when the thing ended, and Jeff says, “Do we understand each other?” and he stomps off. The PR guy turned to me and in a shaken voice whispers: “I just want to thank you for allowing me to be a part of that.”

Newsday: Best: Suzyn Waldman on Roger Clemens, one year later

You mean it was a year ago already...that Waldman read for the lead in The Hazel Court Story?

Twelve months later, is Waldman shocked by what has unfolded in the life of Roger Clemens?

“Nothing shocks me anymore,” she said on a rare day off yesterday. “The only thing that has surprised me and disappointed me is the glee with which people are going after Roger.

“I think the more people accomplish, the bigger people are, the more excited people are to bring them down, and there’s a real feeding frenzy on this man.”

...Of course, Waldman is not as visible as Clemens, but last year, she absorbed criticism and ridicule both for her reaction to Clemens’ return and for shedding tears after Joe Torre’s final game.

“The only thing that surprises me about anything that happens is the glee with which people are dealing with this venom,” she said. “It surprised me last year when it happened to me.”

The Big Lead: An Interview with Buzz Bissinger

It takes a really big #### to admit when he’s almost wrong…

Q: The internet is agog over the HBO special. When you walked off the stage, did you have any idea of how big of a deal this would become? Did your cell phone blow up, and your inbox get clogged? And what was the overall reaction from friends and colleagues you spoke with? And what’s your reaction to the masses who think that you and Costas - longtime friends - were in cahoots against Will Leitch?

The initial reaction was quite positive, more than quite positive from those I immediately spoke to–fellow panelists and members of HBO with the exception of Costas (Bob was friendly but muted in his response to my performance. He is one of the most thoughtful people I know and I think he was mulling that I had gone way too far.) What I began to realize by the next afternoon is this: What the fellow panelists thought (at least the ones I spoke with) were not remotely a representative group. When I came home from New York, my wife simply told me that I had been over the top and undignified. Then I started reading emails sent to me. The majority were predictably vindictive — ########, ###########, #########, windbag, ugly, stupid, etc. But what struck me far more is that many of the emails were smart, not laced with personal invective, and made cogent points about sports blogs and the Internet. It was also abundantly clear that I had disappointed people who had been fans of my work. That hurt terribly. They were also right.

Thanks to Dodger Thoughts.

Indiana Jones Slides into MLB.com Team Schedules

Moola ram down your throat?

Official Major League Baseball team sites have long been home for entertainment advertisers promoting sports flicks. A campaign for Paramount’s upcoming Indiana Jones movie is among the few non-sports film related efforts seen on MLB.com and its 30 team sites. And after launching Friday, one unique component of the campaign already has the Web chattering.

Baseball fans checking their favorite team’s schedules for the month of May this past weekend were surprised to find Harrison Ford in his signature adventure hero getup peering up at them from the May 22nd calendar slot.

..."The demographics of the core portion of our traffic fit right in there with men who are vying for entertainment options,” said Matthew Gould, MLB advanced media’s VP, corporate communications.

In no time, the promo spurred Web buzz about the movie and the calendar ads themselves. One witty post about the bullwhip-wielding archaeologist to Fark.com, a news aggregator site popular with younger men, stated, “I’ve heard he has an awesome WHIP.” WHIP is a stat used to gauge pitching prowess.

ShysterBall: And That Happened…Marty Brennaman

Volvoxpopuli!...Calcaterra needs snide impact protection from Brennaman!

Mrs. Shyster came into the living room yesterday afternoon and told me that I had to fix the shelves in the garage. Her view: the screws holding the standards in the wall are hanging by a thread, and sooner or later 75 pounds of garage crap is going to fall onto her station wagon. My view: I’m the one who did the substandard job of putting those shelves up in the first place, so I’m in the unique position to know that if they haven’t fallen down by now, they’re probably not going to fall any time soon. Maybe. Besides: the wagon is a Volvo, and the Swedish build those things tough. Now will you please let me watch the ballgame?

Five minutes later I was in the garage with a drill in my hand listening to the Braves and Reds on the radio. This was actually OK, because my first exposure to baseball was over the radio, and I often forget how enjoyable it is to listen to a game on a sunny Sunday afternoon. Unfortunately, I was listening to Marty Brennaman, and that poor bastard has simply lost it. Look, we all hate to listen to homer announcers, and we all find it refreshing when the guys in the booth tell the tough truths. Brennaman, however, is long past that stage and is deep into angry and bitter disgust with the Redlegs. Sure, the seven-run second inning would be tough on anyone, but Brennaman made it sound like he was being forced to watch the commission of war crimes. He sounds like a man who truly hates his job, and truly hates the Reds. As a Braves fan enjoying the pasting I should have been reveling in just how bent out of shape he was, but I was mostly just embarrassed for him. Perhaps the most telling thing was the fact that I was actually happy when Jeff Brantley took over next inning. It was so discombobulating that I plan to blame Brennaman when the new shelves come crashing down on the Volvo next winter.

US Marshals allegedly drove McCarver and Buck to Fenway

Hopefully in handcuffs and matching snaffle split bit pony gags!

Federal authorities are investigating whether the head of the US Marshals Service in Boston assigned deputy marshals, normally charged with tracking fugitives and protecting judges, to ferry Fox Sports broadcasters Tim McCarver and Joe Buck between their hotel and Fenway Park during last year’s World Series.

more stories like thisThe Justice Department’s office of the inspector general in Boston is looking into whether Yvonne Bonner overstepped her authority as acting US Marshal in Boston or violated any ethics rules by allegedly ordering her deputies to essentially serve as private taxi drivers, according to two law enforcement officials and other people familiar with the investigation. They talked on the condition of anonymity, because the investigation is ongoing.

During both home games, on Oct. 24 and Oct. 25, two deputy marshals allegedly watched the Red Sox defeat the Colorado Rockies from the broadcast booth with McCarver and Buck, as well as Joseph Band, a lawyer who works for the US Marshals Service in Washington and occasionally does work for the Fox network, the officials said.

Mets Geek: Interview: Howard Megdal

Ahh, Megdal...his name always reminds of the time I drinkingly told Meg Griffin she was a doll (which, needless to say...did not go over too well).

Your thoughts on Mets fans’ rude treatment of Phillies fans visting Shea?

When I was nine years old, I attended one of many Phillies-Mets games at Veterans Stadium. I was decked out accordingly—Mets shirt, Mets shorts, Mets socks—pretty sure that was the year of Mets shoelaces, too. And as I went to get a hot dog, a Phillies fan in his 20s or 30s shoved me and yelled, “Mets suck!” I looked up at him and said, “I’m nine years old.” The guy didn’t apologize, just kind of shuffled away. How lovely to bring that energy into Shea Stadium.

I don’t think it is a coincidence that Shea is a more violent place when the Phillies come to town than it was during any Mets-Yankees battle. And it makes what, for me, was a rivalry I had long hoped to ripen into something that transforms Shea into an unpleasant place. I am hopeful that energy disappears—the Collapse has seemingly made it the standard MO, even when the Phils aren’t in town.

On Saturday, somebody heckled Cow-Bellman, the symbol of all that is right with Mets fans. He had this look like the Native American in the littering commercial. I’ve had the privilege of interviewing him, meeting his friends—I wanted to go give him a hug.

Newsday: Best: MLB.com believes strongly in charging for live games

The premium version costs $119.95 for the season and features amazing resolution for computer video. The regular version costs $89.95.

The recent trend in streaming video, from “Amen Corner Live” at The Masters to “March Madness on Demand’’ at the NCAAs is ad supported rather than fee supported.

Bob Bowman, the head of MLB Advanced Media, says baseball is not ready to go that route. “We believe firmly in charging for premium content,’’ he said.

The percentage of subscribers who opt for the $119.95 level, which features clearer pictures and the ability to watch six games at once, has risen from about 20 percent to about 65.

Overall, Bowman said, the service had about 400,000 subscribers last season and is growing at 20 to 30 percent per year.

Make that 399,999 subscribers...as my MLB.TV Nosaic is still frozen from Sept.!

TV Barn: Bob Costas: “Buzz realizes that he did a disservice to his own points”

‘Bleep you, #########.’” That’s a hit!”...quickly contacts Blogagotchi.com to see if its free.

But the worst thing you’d find in talk radio the snarkiest thing you’d read in print ... even more virulent forms of it are found on the internet because in most cases there are no standards. Now, coming with it are there many important fresh new voices? Absolutely. Are there places where people like you, who were one of the first ones, and Joe Posnanski, not to name all Kansas City guys, but where you can go to get more expansive or quirkier versions of their thought? Yes. Are there nichier places ... baseball-centric sites filled with detailed statistical analysis or, say, everything you want to know about the Seattle Mariners? That’s great. Nothing wrong with that.

But I think the blogosphere, if you’re a critic of the blogosphere you’re somehow against its democratic virtues. Hey, I spent my whole career talking to cabdrivers, everyday people, I did sports talk radio in St. Louis in the 1970s. Some people are more knowledgeable about aspects of sports than I am. I absolutely respect that. ... But it also opens the door for every anonymous bully and lout to spout.

I was talking to King Kaufman about this. He said, “You know, a lot of this stuff, you can get on sports talk radio, except (on the Internet) you don’t have the bleep button.” And I agreed but added this: If you truly didn’t have a bleep button in talk radio ... you wouldn’t just have the occasional person spewing scurrilous things, you’d have it all the time, more and more ... to the point where it crowded out other voices and brought the whole enterprise down.

Truth be told, on any websites, not just confined to sports, that is what happens. It’s not that this kind of lowbrow stuff is tolerated, it is implictly encouraged because the more of those type posts you get the more it is validated. The popularity of sites is measured by it. Who is going to say, “I don’t want the person who says ‘Bleep you, #########.’” That’s a hit! That’s my single criticism of this. And anyone who interprets that as a rejection of all the upsides of the web is either rather dense or wilfully misinterpreting what I say.

FOX Sports: Whitlock: Buzz off base vs. blogger at media town hall

Hackney Alert! Whitlock and Bissinger share cab!

Ninety minutes before Bissinger’s eruption, we shared a car service from our hotel to the Equitable Center Theater where Bob Costas’ live town hall meeting on the changing landscape of sports media would take place. It was my first in-person meeting with Bissinger ("Friday Night Lights"), and I found him bright, intense, straightforward and likable.

He told me on the ride over that he hated blogs. I told him that blogs weren’t going anywhere and we might as well learn to live with them and enjoy them.

On camera, Bissinger told Leitch that he was “full of sh**” and that deadspin was contributing to the dumbing down of America. Bissinger cussed, berated and railed against a mostly imaginary enemy. More than anything, Bissinger betrayed his own immense intelligence and surrendered the moral high ground to someone who couldn’t find it with a map, compass and Mother Teresa serving as a guide.

His points were lost in all the sound and fury signifying good TV.

He turned Leitch into a martyr, a role he plays well. I scan deadspin two or three times a week. It is not representative of all (or even most) blogs. Romenesko, thebiglead, profootballtalk, joeposnanski, thestartingfive.wordpress, joesportsfan and AOL’s fanhouse are just a few of the blogs less dedicated to humiliation and self-book-promotion than deadspin.

AP: Shelton celebrates 20 years for ‘Bull Durham’

Is Ron Shelton hinting at a sequel? Who would he cast?

Shelton joined producer and Durham native Thom Mount at a luncheon marking the 20th anniversary of the film that captures a season with a fictitious version of the Durham Bulls, then of the Class A Carolina League.

They’ve discussed the possibility of a sequel to the 1988 film, in which journeyman catcher Crash Davis (Kevin Costner) and superfan Annie Savoy (Susan Sarandon) counsel fireballer Nuke LaLoosh (Tim Robbins) on his way to the major leagues.

“It was such a completed fable that it was hard to go back,” Shelton said. “I couldn’t figure out in the few years right after it came out, what do you do? Nuke’s in the big leagues, Crash is managing in Visalia. Is Annie going to go to Visalia? I’ve been to Visalia. That will test a relationship. ... It was not a simple fable to continue with — not that we don’t talk about continuing it, now that everyone’s in their 60s.”

Bissinger launches a profane, boneheaded attack on the Internet for being profane and boneheaded

King Bees Buzz...On Your Way Down the Drain.

The segment opened with a packaged piece in which Leitch gave a boilerplate defense of his site’s existence, then more of the same between Costas and Leitch live at the round table. Costas, who has recently taken some get-off-my-lawnish potshots at the blogosphere, joked, “To my surprise, I find you very palatable in person.”

After a few moments, Bissinger could take no more. Perched sideways on his chair as though the very act of sharing a planetary atmosphere with Leitch was painful to him, he said, “I’m just going to interject because I feel very strongly about this: I really think you’re full of ####.”

Thus spake the man who says he has “spent 40 years of my life trying to perfect the craft” of writing—which those punk kids on the Internet would never do—and who is offended by the profane tone of the blogs.

That is, in the comment he printed out and brought to the show and read on “Costas Now,” which to Bissinger apparently represents the entire Internet. This routine was very much like holding up a gummy worm and saying, “Food is terrible. I mean, look at this thing.”

What a yutz.

Tom Hanks says Dice-K would make good movie

Cool! Hanks can piggyback this with his Schilling tribute..."The Man With One Red Sock.”

Oscar-winning actor Tom Hanks thinks the story of Daisuke Matsuzaka, Japanese star pitcher for the Boston Red Sox, would make a good film.

Matsuzaka, known by his Boston nickname Dice-K, has been under intense pressure after the Red Sox spent more than 100 million dollars to acquire him last year from his Japanese team.

“An interesting movie, I think—one I’d want to see, if they made it—would be the story of Dice-K,” Hanks told the Japan Times in an interview published on Thursday.

“That movie would have conflict and cultural clashes and superb sports skills and sportsmanship,” he said.

“It would really be something in the right filmmaker’s hands.”

FJM: A Few Words on “The Internet”

And Will Leitch’s take on the Costas/Bissinger disaster....

For what I hope is the last time, but is clearly not: the level of discourse on Athletics Nation, and Baseball Prospectus, and SoSH, and Joe Posnanski’s blog, is every bit as high (if not higher) than what you can read in the best newspapers in the country. Bissinger’s hare-brained attempt to prove Leitch an uneducated oaf by asking whether he had read any W.C. Heinz (which failed miserably when Leitch had, in fact, read some W. C. Heinz) was a perfect example of the old guard’s attitude toward the new guard: you little shits don’t get it. You don’t know how to write. You have no gratitude or appreciation for those who came before you. So: #### you. (P.S. I have never really read your blog.) (P.P.S. #### you, though, anyway.)

There are sports bloggers (and message-board posters) who write very well, in my opinion. There are those who love Ring Lardner and David Halberstam and Robert Creamer and Roger Angell. They try to write well, and entertain, and contribute to the universe of sports reporting. Please read them, Buzz. If you find nothing of interest, you can swear all you want. (For the record, FJM is extremely pro-swearing. We just feel you should be funny while doing it.)

If there is anything tangible and helpful to take away from Mr. Bissinger’s performance—and it takes a good deal of chaff-sorting to get anywhere near this little nugget—I think it’s this: a lot of the discourse and sub-discourse (commenting) on the internet is, in fact, pretty shitty. This is not news, though, really. A lot of newspaper writing and editorial writing and every kind of writing is shitty. It’s just not as immediate and anonymous and easily-accessed as Internet writing is. Thus, the net has this reputation, now, as being a nihilistic and thoughtless meetingplace for people to spew venom. Partially deserved, partially not, whatever—point is, the part that is deserved can be altered. We can all probably do a little better in this realm, by making sure that whatever we write has an actual point, and some thought behind it. So, there’s that.

Okay. I guess that’s it. As the kids would say: [/serious and unfunny discussion of Internet journalism standards]. Coming soon: more swearing!

Dodger Thoughts: Weisman: Vincent Scully ‘49

If I’m not mistaken...Scully was an original member of The Concords.

I was saving this for a special occasion, but when I read that Vin Scully’s Fordham alma mater was going to honor him tonight, it seemed like the right time to run it. Earlier this year, I had contacted the Fordham sports information department to see if there was anything fun they could find in their archives about Vinny, and they were kind enough to send me his yearbook photo.

Fordham’s radio station, WFUV 90.7 FM, is celebrating its 60th anniversary this evening in New York.

“I’m deeply grateful for these honors and consider myself extremely fortunate,” Scully said in the press release. “I was at Fordham when they started their FM radio station 60 years ago so I consider it a real privilege to have been there at the beginning.”

Sports media will be analyzed on HBO’s “Costas Now”

The sports media will take center stage on a special live, 90-minute edition of “Costas Now” at 10 p.m. Tuesday on HBO. There will be five segments on the show, and it will be conducted in a town-hall setting.

“On [Tuesday], we’re going to take stock of the sports media landscape,”HBO Sports president Ross Greenburg said. “We look forward to a comprehensive and opinionated evening of discussion.”

Segment One: Sports Talk Radio. Video package interviews: Chicago radio host Mike North, Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver Hines Ward, Chicago Sun-Times columnist Jay Mariotti and WFAN radio hosts Mike and the Mad Dog. Live Panel: N.Y. Giants defensive end Michael Strahan, best selling author and radio host Mitch Albom and WFAN radio host Christopher “Mad Dog” Russo.

Segment Two: The Internet and Impact of Bloggers. Video package interviews: deadspin.com editor Will Leitch, TV writer and media critic Michael Schur and Washington Post columnist and PTI host Michael Wilbon. Live panel: Pulitzer Prize winning author Buzz Bissinger, Will Leitch and Cleveland Browns wide receiver Braylon Edwards.

Segment Six: Eight town drugdrunks (including Glocko the Swill) will discuss how embarrassing it is for a grown man to be caught carrying a Mickey Mantle baseball card while receiving full depantsiation rights in a hobo alleyway.

Bondy: All wrong bringing David Wright into Carlos Delgado’s mess of nonsense

Even after being shatzcanned...The McGurk Effect lingers on at WFAN.

But then Chris Russo decided on WFAN Monday that Wright had been telling Delgado to defy the fans’ appeals on Sunday for a curtain call, following a second solo homer. Russo said you can tell, if you watched Wright’s lips carefully, that the third baseman was urging Delgado to ignore the applause.

“I guess there are some great lip readers,” Wright said, after refusing to appear on “Mike and the Mad Dog” to explain his alleged stage directions. “It’s not my place to suggest to him whether or not to accept a curtain call. It’s upsetting to me. I’ve been kind of drawn into this.”

For the record - and it should be noted we are not talking about steroid dealers or affairs with underaged girls here - Wright says that he went over to Delgado on Sunday only to congratulate him about the homers and talk pitch selection. Wright says that he respects Delgado’s decision to ignore the fans, but that under the same circumstances he would probably take those four long steps up to the railing, doff the cap and give the buggers their due.

“Different players have different ideas,” Wright said. “More than likely, I’d give ‘em a curtain call.”

Royals hope irritating sports talk radio host doesn’t show

Don’t Worry, Gordon (Dummy’s Only Looking for His Hand in the Show)

The Royals will be keeping a watchful eye on who’s hanging around Alex Gordon over the next few days.

The Royals are hoping that a spring-training incident involving Dallas sports-talk station KTCK and Alex Gordon’s wife, Jamie, won’t escalate during the Royals’ three-game series with the Texas Rangers, which starts tonight.

The incident occurred toward the end of spring training when an afternoon sports talker at the station interviewed Jamie and Luke Hochevar’s wife, Ashley, in the stands at Surprise Stadium, where the Royals and Rangers share the campus. As the sport talker did his interview from the stands, the show’s other co-hosts listened and commented on the interview from the press box — Jamie and Ashley could not hear those comments.

The seemingly harmless interview took a nasty turn when Jamie was asked whether she knew who Yoko Ono was. When she said she did not, someone back in the booth or at the station hit a “drop” button that spewed the words “stupid b....” over the air. The same drop button was hit again moments later after Jamie answered another question.

Then later in the interview, one of the show’s hosts made crude innuendos about Jamie and Ashley, urging his interviewer to “try and get them to kiss.”