Baseball writer, Orange County Register

I keep thinken, daley, that there are people out there desperate enough to apply for this awful job. Nice effort on the breezy, "fun" job description Keith.

This position is a recipe for disaster. It's actually a backup reporter who covers games when the primary reporter is off -- but then this backup beat reporter must also write the idiotic crap when the primary beat writer is covering games? "Hey, nice job busting your ass on that manager firing yesterday while I was off ... now go do a feature on the kid selling snow cones today because I'm back at the ballpark."

First, no primary writer on an MLB beat takes a day off during the season. A day off for that man or woman is being able to work on a project or special package instead of having to do every gamer. Second, how much credibility is the backup writer going to have in that clubhouse on the few days they are doing "real" reporting? Zero. None. Nada. Zilch.

Your MLB content/product is going to suck if you're dedicating one real reporter and one part-time reporter/oddball story writer to the beat.

I don't disagree that I love trailer-park-trash-tabloid-Tiger-is-screwing-everything-that-moves stories as much as the next person, but hire someone else entirely to track that crap while you hire the best baseball writers who can provide real insight and analysis for your readers.

 

Um, this is life for a back-up writer. It happens often at large papers.

It's still a legitimate role, position and possible job. And the person would have as much credibility as he/she is able to build, and as much right to be in a clubhouse or press box as any other writer with a credential.

 

If I wanted to write any more, or live in Cali, I'd be all the fuck over this. But I'm perfectly happy where I am.

I guess I'm one of the few on here who would love this, playthrough. Game stories bore me. I couldn't care less who won the game. I love the gossipy shit.

 

I don't know if that's really accurate. There are union rules at a lot of papers that require time off. And as hot-stove stuff increasingly makes the baseball beat a 365-day deal, I don't think it's reasonable to expect the main guy to cover 162 games a year.

 

It's standard procedure nowadays for an MLB beat writer to take off 20-40 home games and perhaps one 6-game trip.

 

I could sure see that, especially if you're lucky enough to have a paper that runs Sunday baseball notes or something (Tribune, Globe, etc.). Papers often have more than one person handling the beat.

 

It would be nuts to have a baseball writer (or any writer) work seven days a week. During the season, six days would be pretty common, but not seven. It's counter-productive.

 

I think the ability to wear multiple hats and see beyond just the game would be seen as a valuable asset. Is it entirely sports journalism? Not in the traditional sense, but what has the traditional sense done for us lately?

 

Not every non-traditional idea is stupid, but some are. There is always the possibility that an experiment will make the existing situation even worse. I think that in its heyday when the OCR was fat with ads and routinely ran 70 columns of sports news daily and 120 columns on Sunday, readers could simply skip over the twaddle that didn't interest them (for instance, the weekly notes column on high school water polo) and still find plenty of material of interest to a mass audience of sports fans. In leaner times, crapola such as a feature on the bat boy stands out more. And serious baseball fans will ask themselves, why are they running this shit when they've cut the space devoted to real baseball information?

 

Methinks that this position is likely to be very Web site-centric...and so, with little or no space cut from the more traditional meat and potatoes baseball to make room for it.

 

Anybody heard anything about this one lately?

 

1, 2, 3... naaa, I can't do it.