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Wednesday, March 22, 2006

An Embarrassment of a Column

One of the beauties of Dan's Sybil-like mind is his ability to present two sides of an argument and, through tortured calculus, determine that they somehow support a single thesis.

Case in point: Today's column.

Per The CHB, the United States' loss was "shocking" and "it's going to be difficult to argue that Americans are still the best at the sport we invented." Yet in the next graf, he says the U.S. team "was hastily assembled, did not include all of our best players (one of America's pitchers, Al Leiter, retired Sunday), and entered the tournament in midwinter form while many of the other squads were in midseason shape." He writes
We did not put our best team on the field (Jeff Francoeur, Michael Barrett, Brian Schneider?). Because the tournament was held in March, we sent players into games before they were ready. And we were embarrassed -- losing to Canada, Korea, and Mexico.
If, as Dan argues, we sent Little Leaguers to compete against other nation's pros, wouldn't we be expected to lose? And if so, then why would a 2-1 loss to a pro team be grounds for bridge-jumping?

Yet even while claiming Americans' were embarrassed by the outcome, he says that fans ignored it. In true Sybilish style, The CHB is saying that fans weren't even aware the games were going on, yet red-faced over the loss. A neat trick.

He concludes with typical Shaughnessy schmaltz: "[N]ow there's proof that the game belongs to the world." Perhaps he wasn't aware that the International Baseball Federation has more than 110 member countries. Or that 30% of major league players are not U.S. citizens. Strange, though; you think he would have noticed names like Ortiz, Martinez, Cabrera and Ramirez on the jerseys of the Red Sox players as they celebrated their 2004 World Series victory.

29 comments:

Anonymous said...

Manny Ramirez became a US citizen in fall of 2004.

mike_b1 said...

That doesn't really change the point now, does it?

Anonymous said...

Should I be grateful that he's harping on the now-moot WBC still because it keeps him from making nasty remarks about Bronson Arroyo, or should I wish he would just get over it already? I feel like if it wasn't this, it would be something personally insulting to someone. This is just generally stupid.

Anonymous said...

An embarrassment of a blog is more like it.

We find this in the on-line Globe:
"Hank Aaron threw out the first pitch. Sadaharu Oh, Japan's manager and the only man with more homers than Aaron (868 with the Yomiuri Giants) escorted Aaron onto the field."

I have no idea whether this was a thumb-sucker or whether it went ROP, but with the blogger's addiction to running archive checks, surely we should not have read about how his column "misses so many nuances."

A mistake over Shaugnessey's reference to Oh, along with the doucmented mistake on Ramirez citizenship, justified with the comment "that doesn't really change the point, now does it."

And this the day after a good catch, on the Cuban defectors.

When will we see the corrections, both to the continued, egregious factual errors made by one who appoints himself to the public position of being on the lookout for factual errors in the work of others, and to the general philosophy expressed by the blogger that errors are worthy of scorn -- a philosophy which now seems to be abandoned if the errors do not "change the point," at least when applied to his writings.

This disgraceful public display really has no credibility left.

To quote the immortal J.J. Jeffrey:
I think my job is done here.

dbvader said...

"Hank Aaron threw out the first pitch. Sadaharu Oh, Japan's manager and the only man with more homers than Aaron (868 with the Yomiuri Giants) escorted Aaron onto the field."

Where is this quotation from? I cannot find it in CHB's 3/21/06 game story.

When will we see the correction from CHB's 3/19 column? The Globe has already made corrections from each of the last three days' papers.

Anonymous said...

http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_action=doc&p_docid=110803BBE1FD6A80&p_docnum=7

Might have been a thumb-sucker, might have gone ROP, who knows. But there it is.

Anonymous said...

http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/
Archives?p_action=doc&p_
docid=110803BBE1FD6A80&p_docnum=7

Might have been a thumb-sucker, might have gone ROP, who knows. But there it is.

edited to make full link address appear.

dbvader said...

What? Try using tinyurl.com.
I still do not understand your point. I cannot find the quotation in CHB's game story, which was the topic of the chief's entry.

mike_b1 said...

Bruce, your bizarre objections are giving me a serious headache.

mike_b1 said...

Rick, all I can tell is that OB tried to link to a non Globe story about the Japan-Cuba game, and is saying that because someone else in the world made mention of these things, Dan didn't/shouldn't have to.

dbvader said...

I second the headache inducing qualities of OB's posts today.

I checked yesterday's Globe print edition. There is no game story other than CHB's. Maybe boston.com published the article that OB cites, but the Globe did not.

Anonymous said...

Hey OB, you made a pretty big deal a couple weeks back about mike b.'s claim the Globe was losing money, and demanded a correction.

But word came out over the past few days that the Globe is indeed losing money. Are you going to correct yourself? Doubtful.

mike_b1 said...

Boston.com ran an AP story which included the Oh info. While that semi-historic moment was happening, Dan was probably still in the buffet line, or maybe he was distracted by all the cheers for Terry Bradshaw.

As for why Bruce threw such a nutty, only his therapist knows.

Anonymous said...

//This disgraceful public display really has no credibility left.

To quote the immortal J.J. Jeffrey:
I think my job is done here.//

good. bye!

troll.

Anonymous said...

Dan wants me to relay that he is flattered by this blog, and he appreciates the fact that free speech is alive and well.

dbvader said...

A sportswriter would say it is ironic, but I will choose to say that it is odd that CHB would relay his opinions about the blog through an anonymous source. CHB always makes a point of noting whether an email has been sent without a full name. Yet CHB wants to give his opinion anonymously.

Anonymous said...

Guess what people?
Sometimes one story is subbed out for another in later editions, especially when it is breaking, as with the World Baseball Classic story. And guess what? Maybe if the blogger was as adept at archives as he appears to be, he would find that there are two Shaugnessey stories of similar length archived from the same page on the same day -- and one mentions the Aaron and Oh angle, the other offers details on the actual game. The former does not appear to be a mislabeled wire story, since it included some of the Shaugnessey style and locally oriented notebook style entries. The stories were about 860 words each,which would seem to confirm that a latter story replaced an earlier version -- either for a new edition or during a replate. If so, depending on how close the story being filed was to deadlines for a replate, there may have been no time for makeup to carve out more room and the game story had to conform to the existing hole, leaving little room for the color aspects of the event.

I must confess that in this business of transposing URLs into text I'm somewhat behind the rest of the class. I shall leave it to the archive-savvy blogger to have the integrity to search for all of the Shaugnessey stories on the WBC final, and then to correct his claim I linked to wire copy.

Now as for the nonsense about corrections needed to my objection that the remark that the Globe was hemorrhaging red ink was unsupported, kindly provide a report, contemporaneous to the posting, that states authoritatively that the paper lost money and I will be most happy to correct myself. Fact is the blogger had no facts to back up that statement. In fact even now, the only suggestion that the Globe is losing money is mere speculation, which may be confirmed at a later time, but which is nothing more than unsourced speculation at this point. Ad revenue dropped, and by more than one would expect in January and February. But until NYT Co. reports an operating loss for either the Globe or the New England division, or someone uses a source,named or unnamed, that confirms a loss, anyone saying the Globe is hemorrhaging red ink is just speculating.

Now as for speculating, let us turn our attention to Herald Square and the coming new world order.

mike_b1 said...

I'm going by what's on the web site or in the paper, which is what the rest of the world reads too, I might add.

If Dan reads my criticism and updates his columns accordingly, so be it.

dbvader said...

Maybe if the blogger was as adept at archives as he appears to be, he would find that there are two Shaugnessey stories of similar length archived from the same page on the same day -- and one mentions the Aaron and Oh angle, the other offers details on the actual game.

OB, what you don't understand is that the chief was correct to state that CHB's game story lacked certain flavor because neither the print edition nor the online edition published the quotation you cited. It is irrelevant that the Globe archived two game stories at NewsLibrary.com.

Anonymous said...

OB's most recent post, with his in-depth knowledge of the process the paper goes through with its various editions and usage of terms like "replate," make it almost 100 certain that OB works on the sports copy desk at the Globe.

Anonymous said...

Sure looks that way.

Anonymous said...

Notice how objectivebruce always disappears for awhile whenever the speculation he's on the Globe copy desk pops up, then reappears again once the talk dies down.

Anonymous said...

Nope. don't work the Globe copy desk. Never have. Last time I did any work for the Globe was when I had 36 copies on my paper route, along with 7 Travelers, one Record-American and two NY Times (couldn't get them delivered in the morning in those days).

Besides there is no mystery to replating or editions.

And that original column could be found in the Globe archives.

As JJ and I said, my job is done here. We'll let this Troy fellow obsess on the use and abuse of the apostrophe. Perhaps someday he will learn that sentences require verbs. And we'll let the knee-jerk "critics" have their day. Maybe I'll check back in some time, but I think anyone who wanders by this blog realizes that it's a joke.

My work is finished. The blogger's credibility is shredded. It was child's play, really.

Now I really feel like Ali in round three of the Cleveland Williams fight. Don't hurt yourself running to the archives.

mike_b1 said...

You'll be back.

And until then, we'll make sure everyone knows your IP address: 24.34.184.210.

Anonymous said...

[198.115.78.29]
[198.115.66.52]
[64.12.136.5]

mike_b1 said...

That didn't take long: Bruce checked in at 6:47 a.m. today.

mike_b1 said...

And again at 1:45 p.m.

dbvader said...

And that original column could be found in the Globe archives.

But how could you have known that? You posted the original quotation and attacked the chief as if he had missed it in the print and online editions. It was in neither, yet you knew there was a mention of Oh and Aaron and had immediate access to the orignal column, allowing you to post the quotation. You are very adept a purposely misunderstanding people's arguments. Answer this question: How did you know the original column containing the quotation about Oh and Aaron existed if it was not in the online or print edition?

Anonymous said...

Because he works on the Globe copy desk, hi-ho.