Dobrow: Paper-clipping five more to Congress’ hearings

A hearing is a meeting or session of a Senate, House, Joint, or Special Committee of Congress…and Larry Dobrow wants them all!

Issue—The media’s complicity in the steroid era: We’re hearing now how so many writers had their “suspicions” about the bulked-up brutes of the late ‘90s and early 2000s, but didn’t feel it was proper to air them without supporting evidence. OK, fair enough. So why is all the speculation OK now? What new evidence has come to light prompting a handful of basebally scribes to point their fingers at Jeff Bagwell? No matter how many tendons he may have sheared during his last few seasons, he never failed a test or became bestest buddies with a trainer who has a felony rap hanging over his head. Owing to such uninformed guesswork, I say we make all the microphone monkeys and laptop cowboys suck on their beloved freedom of the press.

Potential testimony: Sweet nothings from a few members of the sabermetric community (“I can’t believe we’re stuck here! Tim Raines’ Hall of Fame candidacy needs us now more than ever!”), a few old-school grunts (“No, I don’t own a blazer without any mustard stains”), and me (“I wasn’t writing about baseball in 1998, but if I did I never would have farted out a Paul Bunyan/Mark McGwire comparison. I’m much more nimble in my usage of metaphor and simile”).

How this will Protect The Children!: They can sleep well at night knowing that the newspapers their generation largely ignores will report the news accurately and ethically. Maybe, just maybe, some of that will carry over into Facebook.