Slate articles about sport are, by their nature, awful. Earlier a Slate writer wrote that Bobby Cox didn't "deserve" the ejections record because he wasn't as much of a jerk as John McGraw.

Craggs last year wrote a long hit piece on John Wooden and how he has ruined basketball for everyone to this day.

Every Slate article on sports makes me want to throw my computer against a wall.

You know what was stupid? Pitching to Pujols with 2-out in the 8th inning up by one run with nobody on base last night. Freaking Juan Encarnacion was batting behind him.

Of course, that’s part of the problem, that Hank is getting compared to his more glamourous contemporary Alabamian. But Willie, great as he was, wasn’t as good of a hitter. He won only one batting title, in 1954, and never led the league in RBI. He’s 18th on the Black Ink Test.

Yes he was
Mays: .302/.384/.557
Aaron: .305/.374/.555

Basically Aaron had 1000 more PAs )13,940 to 12,493
which Mays lost due to the draft not due to any lesser longevity or stamina.
Mays also had more defensive value.

Of course Aaron was great
why get upset at any author or article that says otherwise?

Five years ago, when I had fooled myself into thinking that I knew something about writing, I submitted a series of baseball pieces to Slate for consideration. Bryan Curtis -- who now writes the "Middlebrow" column, but then did mostly sports -- responded with a polite "thanks but no thanks" email (deserved; the pieces I submitted sucked). But rather than leave it at that, he went on and explained to me what, specifically, Slate looked for in submitted pieces and even went so far as to attach a memorandum to the email which explained it in detail. If anyone else has submitted stuff there, they probably got a copy of the same thing.

Basically, they want (or at least in 2002 wanted) contrarian pieces. No matter what your topic or how well it was written and researched, it had to first and foremost upset conventional wisdom of some kind. If it didn't, well, forget it.

I think, by and large, that's not a terribly bad philosophy to start with if you're looking to differentiate yourself as a magazine, but it often leads to absurdly tortured arguments. Here, for example, where the Slate writer (or his editor) feels the need to say that Aaron wasn't spectacular so as to diminish the use of his legacy by writers seeking to slam Bonds. Why isn't it simply ok to say Aaron was truly great, but his use to slay Bonds is nonetheless silly? Because that wouldn't be contrarian, now, would it? It would simply be taking a position, and everyone does that.

Basically, they want (or at least in 2002 wanted) contrarian pieces. No matter what your topic or how well it was written and researched, it had to first and foremost upset conventional wisdom of some kind.

This is a very useful thing to share at BTF. I recall a few days ago that guy Salfino whose stuff is getting linked here and who posts, wrote a "Red Sox fans are scared of a collapse" column with some broad turns of phrase. A lot of poeple called/implied the guy was an idiot/clown etc; in response he said he was just trying to write a "provocative" column. I need to remember that instead of getting worked up, as I occasionally do, about "dumbass" columnists.

In an Inquirer article about Donovan McNabb yesterday, David Aldridge brought up a different type of contrarian stance to the Aaron/Bonds coverage that I found interesting.

McNabb is good, and he's not Vick (RR)

I don't want to do what so many do in situations like these - make one black man the hero while the other has to be a villain. We saw this when Muhammad Ali fought Joe Frazier, and Ali, shamefully, sought to make the hard-life Frazier into an Uncle Tom. Much of America, blacks included, let him get away with it.

And we are seeing it in baseball, where folks who otherwise wouldn't give a damn about Henry Aaron are holding him up as a paragon in comparison to that awful Barry Bonds - who is, apparently, plotting the violent overthrow of our government, poisoning our children's lunch milk and wearing white after Labor Day on the way to breaking Aaron's home-run record.

Aaron is beloved now, when his shining example of grace under adversity in 1973 and 1974 can be triangulated to help condemn Bonds. But no one seemed to care much as Aaron shouted at the top of his lungs over the last 30 years about the lack of minorities both in the dugout and at the league office. I don't recall Aaron being on the cover of Sports Illustrated that week.

I guess that makes sense. Everyone knows Slate is stultifyingly contrarian (except Dahlia Lithwick, who's annoyingly conventional), and obviously that's the kind of pieces they look for, but I assumed it was just understood. I never imagined that they'd be so explicit about it.

I didn't much like the Craggs piece, except for this:

A spin through the sports pages over the past few months reveals that [Aaron] is a man of "cool dignity," "quiet dignity," "innate dignity," "immense dignity," "eternal dignity," "unfettered dignity," "unimpeachable dignity," the very "picture of dignity" who "brought so much dignity to baseball" and who, "having exuded dignity his entire life," continues to this day "exud[ing] class and dignity." Aaron, proclaimed the inevitable George Will, who perhaps learned about dignity from selling his to Conrad Black, was "The Dignified Slugger From Mobile."

"Dignified" must be the new "articulate." Sportswriters are the laziest human beings on earth.

I guess that makes sense. Everyone knows Slate is stultifyingly contrarian (except Dahlia Lithwick, who's kind of annoyingly conventional), and obviously that's the kind of pieces they look for, but I assumed that was just understood. I never imagined that they would be so explicit about it.

Amen. I stopped reading Slate 2-3 years ago when it became clear that most of its writers (a) had no idea what they were talking about, and (b) were, as you put it, being "stultifyingly contrarian." But I had no idea they were actively seeking out "contrarian" pieces. No wonder it sucks.

Dignity was the buzzword for Tyrone Willingham when he was Notre Dame's coach. It irritated me to no end.

Actually, I guess that's not true; it ended when they fired him.

Full disclosure (everybody at Braves Journal knows this so I didn't note it): I am fairly bitter with Slate's sports coverage for similar reasons to Craig. I wrote a piece on John Schuerholz for Slate last year, and tailored it for their reflexively contrarian take. If it had been rejected, that's one thing, but they asked for rewrites, then asked me to cut it in half, then sat on it for two weeks and then rejected it. However, I was making fun of their baseball coverage before that.

JPWF13: Well, it's close. Willie got a big boost in his earlier years from the Polo Grounds, while Hank was in a pitcher's park, but Candlestick was a tougher place to hit than Fulton County. Overall, using the adjusted stats function at BP, Mays is at .309 .392 .570 and Aaron at .315 .385 .573. Close enough. I shouldn't have said that.

Basically, they want (or at least in 2002 wanted) contrarian pieces. No matter what your topic or how well it was written and researched, it had to first and foremost upset conventional wisdom of some kind. If it didn't, well, forget it.

Funny -- I was recently re-reading the Abstract in which James recounted the type of writing that the public "wanted to read" back when he was just starting out and submitting pieces to different places. The pieces were rejected for substantially the opposite reason your Slate submissions were rejected. How times change, I suppose.

It's not just contrarian views that the media wants, it's contrarian and stupid views.

How times change, I suppose.

Slate's all about market inefficiencies, I guess.

Slate is quickly becoming my espn.com. "Here's a site with some useful stuff. And I like that Neyer guy's columns. Why are they letting former MLB players write stupid columns? Um, what's this 'Page Two' thing? Why so many pop-ups? Alright, I'm done with that."

To be fair, Slate is good when it features articles by people who can write well and who actually *know things* (i.e. they intimidate Bryan Curtis-types, not the other way 'round) - Austan Goolsbee, Jordan Ellenberg ... there are a few more the names of which escape me just now.

well, when i used to regularly listen to the nyc sports talk radio programs, you could tell when there were no callers on and a substitute host...it would be "why this year the red sox will beat the yanks!" or "jeter's not a god" or something else, designed to deliberately get a zillion yankee fans to call in and defend their team.

in football season, why the giants (or jets) weren't that good any more...or similar stuff. surprising how many people fall for it.

i suspect when statistics are finally fully accepted, the generic boilerplate articles will be something like "why statistics don't tell you the whole story!" or some other straw man, possibly under the guise of (then equivalent of) "luis sojo the key to the yanks playoffs run".

... when statistics are finally fully accepted ...

Do you mean like this sort of thing?

When statistics are fully accepted - by which I assume you mean when the current set of "complicated" stats is recognized as describing reality a bit better than the old stats or the venerable "my eyes" (aka "my gut"), I would imagine that the debates will be about which complicated stats are the most descriptive - "Win Shares!! What, are you crazy?! WARP3!!"

It's an odd moment in baseball writing history. Much of the old boilerplate has been exposed as nonsense ("This pitcher just knows how to win!" "What this team needs is a run producer"), but few recent writers have shown that they can combine an understanding of the meaning of the complicated stats with an ability to write interesting stuff beyond the stats. James is the obvious early example, and then you have Neyer, Baker, Marchman and some others. Some of the BPro guys - Keri, Cameron - but more than a few of those guys are annoying blowhards (neither Keri nor Cameron, BTW). Other than Neyer and Marchman, Joe Posnanski and Art Martone (who hasn't written in awhile, AFAIK) are the only writers I can think of with a wide audience, a sophisticated understanding of the game, and the ability to convey that understanding through lucid, engaging writing. And much of that sophistication, I suspect, comes from reading some James in the '80s and being just smart, thoughtful guys in general.

Goldman, too.

To be fair, Slate is good when it features articles by people who can write well and who actually *know things* (i.e. they intimidate Bryan Curtis-types, not the other way 'round) - Austan Goolsbee, Jordan Ellenberg ... there are a few more the names of which escape me just now.

John Dickerson

Honestly, the only time I've ever read any of Slate pieces are when they are linked from places like this one. And I don't find them contrarian, just mind-numbingly vapid. "Middlebrow" might describe it; unibrow definitely.

Whether it's a book review written by some mediocre college writer/professor that makes no attempt to critique outside of his own little worldview or a movie reviewer who pans a film based upon a character's "immoral" actions, it's pretentious claptrap.

I like Slate, pretty regular skim-reading for me.

Good info, not the most in depth or high minded stuff, but stuff that helps you stay aware..

Their contrarian streak is pretty evident even without the aid of a guidelines memo (how about putting that memo in one of their their "original sources" bits? Post it!!).

i suspect when statistics are finally fully accepted...

Oh, you kids are so funny.