Dear dimwit on the phone

It absolutely pisses me off when someone moves my stuff without asking. It hasn't happened this season, knock on wood, but happened too often last season -- including once by another writer who just had to have my seat at the state wrestling tournament. He moved my stuff to the second table, which was facing away from the action, and then wondered why I got pissed at him. Had a photog with me, but he didn't touch her stuff.

Douchebag.

Haven't heard this gem in a while, but I remember one parent getting mad at me because I wouldn't send their spawn's stats on to one of the big papers in my state.

 

Yup, we have a few. One calls about 3-4 times a day. Another calls to bitch at us for the smallest errors.
On both sides of the coin, it's sad...but what can you do? You can't tell them to get help...that would be "rude".

 

Right, but the weird thing was that this was the first time they called in this year and neither team that played was in our coverage area (both teams were about a half-hour outside the area)

 

Got an e-mail today from a parent complaining that her kid, an excellent three-way player (quarterback, safety and punter), was left off of our defensive all-county team even though he led the area in interceptions and was high on the tackles list.
She'd have more of a case if he hadn't been picked as our offensive player of the year.
To her, it's great and all that he got one of the paper's individual awards, but not also including him a second time is just the most horrible thing that'll ever happen to the guy. Probably cost him a scholarship, too.
Oy vey.

 

Shouldn't his performance on offense have no bearing on defense awards?
He led the area in interceptions and was high on the tackles list.

 

Our call-in line goes to a phone without a caller ID display. I'm about to make a switch and start tracking a few numbers to avoid this issue myself. I just don't have time for shit like "Can you find out who won the NBA Finals in 2004?" when I'm building four pages and writing two stories that day.

 

The way we (and I suspect most places) have always done all-county is, you can move guys around to different positions but they still only get one roster spot -- and a player of the year award is considered a roster spot -- whether you put them on offense or defense.
That lets us shuffle people around some and get a couple more on there. This guy, for example, wound up being a player of the year and had a nice, long feature story written about him. Had he been on the regular all-county team, we likely would have made him a punter because we had a couple of other QBs and a glut of DBs who had good years. So stash him at punter, and you free up a spot for someone else. In this case, making him a player of the year freed up three other spots.

 

I hated doing that. If you have two good QBs, pick one. Don't stash one at one position because there might be a player who deserves that spot. Always tried to avoid it because our big state paper did it and I thought it was a coward move.
This policy got more controversial when we did it for every sport. In soccer, one of our guys picked the team based on position. There were legit stars at forward who we'd leave off the team because they weren't the best at that position.

 

Well, that's just too bad. If they aren't the best at their position, then they shouldn't be on the team. What are you going to do? Make them a defender? As for the three-way stud, my bet would be he'd rather be second team than be an all-county punter. You would have been in even deeper shit if you had done that. But if he's one of the best at a couple of positions, I'd slot him in at the one that would free up another spot where there are players who are is equal or better.

 

We do it by position for football, baseball and softball, so more people wind up getting the shaft in those sports than in basketball and soccer, where the positions and lineups are more amorphous. Half the time in soccer players will move around during a game depending on the situation, and in basketball it doesn't really matter whether you have four guards or two as long as you have the five best in the lineup.
Football and baseball, it's trickier. You can't put a stud quarterback on the offensive line, but if he also happened to be one of the best punters or defensive backs in the area (like our three-way stud was)? Then it's easy to do that. Same with baseball. Most good pitchers don't just pitch, they play somewhere else in the field as well. If they're also a center fielder, and you've got six good outfielders and it lets somebody else get in there, put them at pitcher. If you have a glut of good pitchers, put them as an outfielder or even as a DH if the hitting stats justify it. You wouldn't put them at catcher, though.
Whatever makes the math work.

 

The hard thing is keeping some kids on just one side of the ball. In most small-school areas, a majority of players play both ways. But I know at our paper, we only put a kid on offense or defense, not both.

 

I solved the problem this year: I didn't pick teams.