Did I miss the memo about ESPN morphing into the YES Network

But what about all the Yankees fans and Red Sox fans and Yankees haters that care about this story that live in Georgia, Texas, Montana, Minnesota, Oregon and California? Don't they deserve in depth coverage of this?

 

Sure they do. They deserve it as much as the Minnesota and Detroit fans got it from the WWL when Tom Kelly and Scotty Bowman retired and as much as the Atlanta and St. Louis fans will deserve it when Bobby Cox and Tony LaRussa go.
Don't THEY deserve the same in-depth coverage?

 

I just heard Ron Gardenhire is still the manager of the Twins. Any chance that makes SportsCenter?

I don't care if a New York paper erroneously reported Torre was gone, the bottom line is that Joe Torre was the manager last week. He was the manager yesterday. He's the manager today. He was under contract through next season. The story is not that his status has not changed. It would be a story if his status did change.

Maybe more press should be given to the people, including ESPN, who ran with rumors for days and, to my knowledge, never had any of their own 748 paid ex-players, GMs or other baseball analysts on staff verify/confirm the story themselves. Until their own staff confirmed it with their own sources, maybe they shouldn't have run with the story. To make that big a deal out of the rumors, they should have had their own guys standing by the stories as if it were their story. As they (ESPN) handled it, they got to run the story as if it were their own then never have the downside of paying the price for getting it wrong.

I know my Busch-league, 25,000 circ. paper wouldn't let me run stories on rumors from another media outlet with some sort of independent confirmation and I wouldn't let any of my sports staff get away with it either.

 

Once again, the majority of you people are missing the point and/or failing to understand New York tabloid mentality and the way in which Steinbrenner manipulates the on-going Daily News-NY Post piss fest to break the "big story."
As I have said before, I have no doubt Madden got a call Saturday night from Howard Rubenstein -- George's official mouthpiece who only speaks when George pulls the strings -- telling him that Steinbrenner was ready to fire Torre "unless somebody can convince him otherwise", which IS what Madden's original story said.
So all of you holier than thou, "I wouldn't use anonymous sources" people answer this question for me:
If the personal PR man/spokesman/puppet for George Steinbrenner calls and gives you this information, do you NOT run it?

 

I, for one, welcome our new Yankee overlords...

 

If he gave me the heads up, yeah, I'd be inclined to go with it once. But after this, he's never again credible enough for unnamed source status and a clarification to your readers in the best possible way as to how you got the story and why you decided it was worthy to run with without outing the source is essential.

I like seeing the big boys in New York get worked by Steibrenner. He found a way to keep the Yankees on the cover when they were out and the Mets are still playing. Very nice use/manipulation of the media on his part.

 

So let me get this right, tenacious.... you're going to be a baseball beat writer/columnist in New York and you're going to tell Steinbrenner's mouthpiece that he will never again be credible enough to use as an unnamed source.
Then, you're going to "explain" to your readers how you were "duped" but one of the people closest to the Boss.

Wow. You have no clue how the real world works, do you.

 

And just to add one other thing to spnited's accurate comment ... you'd be taken off the beat post haste. Perhaps they'd let you answer the phones, if you kept your job, that is.

 

Torre ... Torre .... Torre ....

 

After about the second dead fish you swallow down, OUT THE SOURCE. Burn him. Hang him out to dry just like YOU got hung out to dry. Write a column, or story, in which you off-handedly reveal who it was feeding you the horsecrap -- not explicitly, but make it clear who was the leaker.

"OMFG, you can't do that!!!" a lot of sanctimonious Professional Journalists will scream. "You will never get anonymous sources to trust you again."

Yeah. You'll never get anonymous sources using you as an outlet for bogus information, trial balloons, smokescreeens and personal-agenda-driven bullshit to trust you again. Wouldn't that be awful?

 

Starman: If you really believe what you wrote, you are a bigger idiot than I ever imagined.

 

It's not that this story was necessarily overdone. It's that everything regarding the New York Yankees is overdone by ESPN. I may be in the minority when I say that I don't give a rat's ass that A-Rod sharted after having a chili dog from a hot dog stand on 53rd street and 4th avenue and that Randy Johnson bought three cucumbers at a Korean market, but I doubt it.

There's a reason that the Subway Series was the lowest-rated World Series at the time, even though ESPN devoted 45 of its 60 Sportscenter minutes to it. It's because we don't give a rat fuck.