Dear dimwit on the phone

It isn't governed by our state athletics association, so it is not a sport and does not run in the Sports section. It is an extracurricular activity and was in Features when we still had that section. Same for cheerleading.

Gymnastics, however, is a high school varsity sport under the auspices of the state association. But the club stuff? We'll get around to it if we ever have time, just like any other non-school events.

I didn't say cheerleading isn't athletic, but it's still not a sport in this state. Our athletics association doesn't handle activities, but I know others do. That makes it more difficult to draw the line.

 

I LOVE the calls from parents of whatever teams or organizations their kids are on, breathlessly talking about how "The Jonesboro Jerkoffs won a NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP! This is the biggest story that's ever hit this area! You should do a special section on it!"

Then when you start asking questions, they qualified for the "national tournament" by paying an entry fee and going to Florida, where they played 5 games, won 2 of them, but that's still enough for them to get trophies from this group proclaiming them as Class C Special Super-Duper Try Hard Reserve National Champions.

 

This story is probably somewhere in the back pages of this or some other thread, but I remember when one of the ladies in our advertising department came rolling into our office breathlessly letting us know her son had just gotten back from a national baseball tournament and had been inducted into the association's hall of fame.

Turns out the team went to a tournament at the Field of Dreams near Cooperstown, N.Y, where teams have to play about $1,000 for each kid and coach for a week of games. Then at the end of each week-long tournament, every kid on every team is "inducted" into what they call the American Youth Baseball Hall of Fame.

Needless to say, there was no story

 

The last two days, I've had someone call and leave a message wondering why I don't run Chiefs, KU or K-State stories. Must be a new reader who doesn't know that I haven't run any of those things since we dropped the AP three years ago. And now that we're two-days-a-week, I have a hard time believing that this paper is that person's only news source for those stories.

 

I posted the same tale when I got a team photo a few years ago with the same info. I love how it's called "inducted in Cooperstown," not the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, alongside Ruth, Mays, Aaron, etc. Oh well, it'll look great on their resumes in 10 years or so.

 

PDF attachment of a box score for a game tonight was totally blank.

 

Once got a track meet submission that had the local team's participants highlighted. Would've been very useful if it hadn't been faxed over.

 

And here I thought getting a basketball write up on a piece of a manila folder (or the back of whatever random piece of paper he had) that routinely featured a made up score to hide how much the team lost by was bad.

 

Merry Christmas, dimwits:

 

At least the lions have a valid excuse.

 

This has probably been brought up in this thread, but how about non-sports reporters in the newsroom whose kids get into sports and they start bothering you to cover everything their damn kid does? That's the worst. I get some of these people never followed sports until their kids got involved, but man, they should know better. I read their sections, I wouldn't bother them over some cops matter that I knew was insignificant.

One lady has pestered us endlessly about her son's baseball exploits since Little League. Non-stop. Tells me the results of U13 summer travel tourneys as if it's our city's college basketball team playing for a conference title. She's even taken to writing baseball-related briefs on her own and dropping them in our sports Qs.

Sometimes they're like clinics and stuff that we'll run (at least she knows how to write them), but she's bitched at us before when we decline to run results that we would never run for anyone else. Annoying.