I support Gilbert.

Like, totally man.

Not the most eloquently stated, but it's a pretty intelligent argument once you interpret it. Not a new argument, but I'm impressed that he came up with it and the analogy to his hyperbaric chamber use is pretty good.

Gilbert Arenas makes the Wizards entertaining. do you have any idea how hard that is?

MICHAEL JORDAN (!) could not do that.

I wonder if this reporter was a little overzealous in including every "like" in Arenas's interview. Seems like a lot of these things get cleaned up a little to make them more readable.

Gilbert Arenas is awesome, even if I have no idea what the hell he just said.

I wonder if this reporter was a little overzealous in including every "like" in Arenas's interview. Seems like a lot of these things get cleaned up a little to make them more readable,

Good point. Maybe a little slanting is going on. Arenas is a SoCal guy; a huge number of young people out here dot their conversations with "like," it is not just "Valley Girls" who do it.

I wonder if this reporter was a little overzealous in including every "like" in Arenas's interview. Seems like a lot of these things get cleaned up a little to make them more readable.

One of the former sports reports for the Post was ripped by the Ombudsman for cleaning up quotes a few weeks back. I imagine that the whole department is jumpy now.

Here's the background, if you're interested.

Verbatim quotes are great if you want people to look stupid or make your paper unreadable, not for much else.

Changing the content of a quoted statement for grammar also subtly changes its meaning. In my opinion this absolutely should never be done. If an interviewer thinks the quotation makes an athlete or other interviewee look stupid, he should just paraphrase.

I guess it's just another reason not to pay attention to most of these idiotic interviews with athletes anyway.

I just saw a news segment on ESPN about this.

In case this wasn't clear from my last post, let me state exactly how I feel right now: sports reporting is a ####### joke. Quote me correctly on that, you ############# pandering #####.

Changing the content of a quoted statement for grammar also subtly changes its meaning.

Not much, in this case. And most of the distracting stuff was not grammatical, anyway. It was usage/enunciation. There is no need to use

gonna

, for example:

It’s history,” Gil began. “It’s still history. I mean, the guy’s a man before he’s some big slugger. How are you just going to take what this man’s done for his career and, as another man, say ‘Hey, you were accused of this, you allegedly did this, I want to take this away from you.’ What if we took away your Ecko company?

“I mean, why graffiti the ball when, in everybody’s mind, they think he’s done it. So no matter what, when they look at the ball, they’re going to think, ‘Oh, he allegedly....You don’t have to mark it in history. Who are you? Are you Superman? You’re sitting here throwing all the rockets into space: ‘I want to send it to space?’ Are you serious? Come on.”

Someone asked whether Gilbert thought Ecko was just a hater.

“I don’t know what his relationship is to Bonds, but I just didn’t understand it,” Gilbert said. “As an athlete, I don’t want anybody to say, ‘He was in the hyperbaric chamber, we’re going to ban that tomorrow, now the 60 points he scored last year, I’m going to dot those shoes up.’ Let’s be real.”

***

Changing the content of a quoted statement for grammar also subtly changes its meaning.

Transcription alone might change the meaning for the audience, spoken and written language are very different. We can leave a sentence unfinished when we speak if we see that the audience has grasped the meaning, we pause to think, maybe filling in with "like", we use gestures.... sentence fragments... We repeat thoughts for emphasis, we use much shorter sentences, we repeat thoughts, emphasising them.

I agree. Not much in this case. Sometimes the meaning or tone changes much more sharply than in other cases. My point still stands. I don't find either version hard to read, and the actual version gives me a better feel for Gilbert Arenas as I read it.

And sports reporting remains a ####### joke.

All true, Weasel, which is why further changing of the actual words further unnecessarily compounds the issue. If the meaning cannot be correctly deciphered from the actual words, then the words should be paraphrased and quotation marks should not be used.

I found a continuation of the topic posted above.Wash Post topic

In an ironic twist, conflating Chris's post regarding Clinton Portis and the Washington post as well as robinred's discussion of the term "gonna", I believe one of Portis's interview aliases is "Sheriff Gonna Getcha".

Sheriff Gonna Getcha

I always liked Arenas since those youtube videos popped up, and now I like him more.
Stupid idiots think they can mark history down with their petty misgivings. I hope Arenas buys the balls and washes the asterisk off it. I hope he punches Ecko in the mouth when he sees him.

Wonder why noone is marking McGwire's HR #70 ball with an asterisk. ###### connotationally racist media

I love Arenas, and his ramblings about Ecko don't change that one iota. To each his own.

One of the former sports reports for the Post was ripped by the Ombudsman for cleaning up quotes a few weeks back. I imagine that the whole department is jumpy now.

I read that Deborah Howell piece when it came out, and I almost responded to it (I got lazy as usual) by quoting at length some of the alleged "quotes" made by the likes of Casey Stengel, Yogi Berra and Joe Dimaggio---as filtered by the late Dan Daniel. By the time he got through with the entire Yankee team, you'd think that they'd all been valedictorians at Ivy League schools. All those complex sentences, all those subtle and nuanced thoughts. No wonder they won all those championships---they just outsmarted everyone.

If any of you has access to the Sporting News archives, you can read this stuff for yourself. Daniel went so far beyond any grammar cleaning of today that it's like comparing Babe Ruth to David Eckstein. It was sublime, and the world was a far better place because of it. If I knew how to reach Howard Bryant, I'd send him some examples as ammunition to fire back at his critics.

the analogy to his hyperbaric chamber use is pretty good.

No, it's an idiotic analogy that conflates two things that are completely different.

So, it's not ok to deface a ball you bought, but it's ok to ask Arenas to punch someone in the mouth. People should really look at themselves in the mirror before using words like Stupid Idiots and Petty Misgivings.

I wish there were a baseball player as cool as Gilbert Arenas.

Well, there's Pedro. But Arenas is the coolest non-Pedro athlete in the world.

Gaelan, i disagree. An idiotic analogy to steroids is something like lasik surgery. A hyperbaric chamber might even be illegal in some sports (like cycling, for instance) and is much more akin to steroids IMHO. I mean, sure, it's not the same thing, but he's making a point on a human level IMHO - how would he, Gilbert Arenas, feel if someone stole something that he felt he legitimately achieved? Of course, Bonds probably never felt that way in the first place and in any event is a world class jerk while Gil is a good guy.

Gil, i love your blog. keep it up.

People should really look at themselves in the mirror before using words like Stupid Idiots and Petty Misgivings.

"People"? Is that supposed to be passive aggressive? I'm sure stormcrow is a big boy, Alberto - if you have something to say to him, say it.

No, it's an idiotic analogy that conflates two things that are completely different.

Good to know you hate players in addition to fans.

But Arenas is the coolest non-Pedro athlete in the world.

Contenders in other sports:

NFL - Chad Johnson comes across as cool and funny. It's the touchdown celebrations, the interviews, and the fact that he might be the only Bengal without a criminal record.

NHL - Joe Sakic may be a bit too quiet, but he gives a smart interview and he's always been a professional during the highs (Stanley Cup and Olympic gold) and lows (Quebec Nordiques).

Whatever happened with that murder Chad Johnson got questioned about? And I like him because of his talent. His celebrations made me notice his talent, but he ran out of good ideas quickly. That HOF Class of 20?? jacket was ridiculously dumb. But now he is in territory where no matter how stupid his act gets, Tirico and Co. just marvel at what an entertainer he is.

Sakic was my favorite hockey player beginning with the last season in Quebec until he signed the offer sheet with the Rangers. But I don't think he's cool in that sense at all. Unassuming, classy, but not cool. I may have to go Fedorov for the NHL version. But that's not saying much; it's pretty slim pickings.

Amen, Gilbert.

Ecko is nothing more than an attention wh0re who seems to care more about getting his name immortalized than he does about baseball history. If I took my kid to the HOF and he asked why there was an asterisk on Barry's record ball, I'd tell him it's because a childish moron thought it was funny to deface historic artifacts. It's really not much different than the fools who carve their initials in famous national landmarks. Sure, Ecko owned the ball, but that just makes it legal. It doesn't make it any less stupid. If he had branded the ball and then kept it himself, I'd have no problem with what he was doing. But by doing it and then giving it to the HOF he's basically forcing everyone who see's it to view it in a skeptical light, and that's something people should be able to decide for themselves.

If he had branded the ball and then kept it himself, I'd have no problem with what he was doing. But by doing it and then giving it to the HOF he's basically forcing everyone who see's it to view it in a skeptical light, and that's something people should be able to decide for themselves.

Seems like your beef is more with the HOF accepting the ball than with Ecko himself, since the HOF had to choose to accept the ball before he could give it to them. The HOF seemed positively thrilled to get it, and I didn't see Ecko holding any gun to their head.

And it doesn't seem as if that asterisk is going to "force" you to see #756 "in a skeptical light," either, given what you say that you'd tell your kid if he asked you about it.

So where's all the coercion? The man won the auction, placed an asterisk on a ball that he bought fair and square, offered it to the HOF, and the HOF voluntarily accepted it. Seems like everyone came away happy.

So where's all the coercion?

As has been explained to you, Ecko is forcing his view and the view of the poll respondents onto the ball in a conspicuous, unbalanced, permanent way. He is not forcing anyone to adopt that view. You want balance? Brand "100% Genuine" on the other side, and display it on 24-hour rotation machine, like a little spinning globe, so everyone who looks at it sees both sides.

As has been explained to you, Ecko is forcing his view and the view of the poll respondents onto the ball...

He is not forcing anyone to adopt that view.

Finally an explanation of coercion that we can all agree on.

You want balance? Brand "100% Genuine" on the other side, and display it on 24-hour rotation machine, like a little spinning globe, so everyone who looks at it sees both sides.

That's kind of between Ecko and the HOF at this point, but if it's good enough for them, it's good enough for me.

That's kind of between Ecko and the HOF at this point, but if it's good enough for them, it's good enough for me

.

Fair enough.