Dear dimwit on the phone

That almost feels a little... non-Englishy to me. Like a parent writing an e-mail via an online translator or something.

 

Not a dimwit (unless you count the players), but at state softball today I witnessed a magnificent collapse. Team A blew a 4-0 lead by allowing 14 runs on 11 hits, four errors, and a wild pitch in the top of the seventh. Damn. Just felt I should share that.

 

Thank God for the orange slices!

 

The "Marshall Henderson tweets about Michael Sam" story earlier in the week brought out the worst in some of our callers. I can't even begin to process all of it, except for one anon caller, female - of course, because almost all the worst callers are - who said "You disgust me."

Funny thing, she was rocking some sort of Yankee accent. Not a hillbilly.

 

Don't even get me started about Twitter. I mean, who gives a rat's tail what Marshall Henderson tweets about someone? How is that news? Why does that matter any more than what you or I tweet?

Now, if it were one of Sam's coaches or teammates, or former coaches or teammates, I suppose it might have some news value. But Marshall Henderson? If Marshall Henderson tweets that Obama is a muslim/communist, does that make the paper, too?

 

If that's not newsworthy in and of itself, and I could really give a shit what any former player has to say about much anything, when the school's AD feels compelled to quickly strike back by distancing himself and the school from the athlete ... yeah, that edges into newsier territory.

 

The AD completely overreacted. A school like that has, what? 300 athletes or more on scholarship of some kind? And probably every last one has a twitter account. How on earth can a school official be expected to do anything beyond "they don't speak for me"?

This is the enormous problem with twitter as a whole. Anyone anywhere can say pretty much anything at anytime.

 

For good or ill, Henderson was the Face of the Program. For a while.

 

Dear hs baseball grandma, you're right, I did not mention your grandson's pinch hit single in the seventh inning of a game that his team lost 8-1. Because the game was 8-1 at the time he singled with 2 out, and the next batter popped up to end the game. His contributions meant nothing. I'm sure you're very proud.

 

Had one of those this baseball season. Kid's mom e-mailed me to say I was doing a "disservice to this child" and "You guys cant seem to produce enough ink to print about a few select players and their pictures every day and I'm absolutely disgusted with you!" She also threatened to drop her subscription and tell her parents, subscribers of more than 50 years, to drop theirs.
Her kid is a sophomore relief pitcher on a pretty good team. She e-mailed after he'd gotten his first start of the season, gave up four runs in five innings, and left with a no-decision in a road game (meaning it was a call-in with limited information) his team won with a run late in the game.
I sent her a long e-mail back explaining the process of writing stories, how we pick out the most relevant information, etc., and reminded her that her kid is a sophomore who will likely get plenty of coverage in the next couple of years.
Naturally, there was no reply to that.

 

Had one of those this baseball season. Kid's mom e-mailed me to say I was doing a "disservice to this child" and "You guys cant seem to produce enough ink to print about a few select players and their pictures every day and I'm absolutely disgusted with you!" She also threatened to drop her subscription and tell her parents, subscribers of more than 50 years, to drop theirs.
Her kid is a sophomore relief pitcher on a pretty good team. She e-mailed after he'd gotten his first start of the season, gave up four runs in five innings, and left with a no-decision in a road game (meaning it was a call-in with limited information) his team won with a run late in the game.
I sent her a long e-mail back explaining the process of writing stories, how we pick out the most relevant information, etc., and reminded her that her kid is a sophomore who will likely get plenty of coverage in the next couple of years.
Naturally, there was no reply to that.

 

A father called to tell us his child is being "haunted" by an incorrect score we ran.
Mind you, the kid won and we reported it as such. But we had him winning in 3 sets with both of the first sets being close.
He actually won 6-1, 6-0.
Of course, the score is "haunting" the kid on the Internet...because it's costing him a scholarship! (out of dad's mouth!)
We made sure to fix such an atrocious mistake!