No autographs!

This is pure conjecture, though, right?

You don't have any evidence of him asking for other autographs?

 

Of course, there was an incident where a reporter asked for Henson's autograph, and Clemens was the enforcing official.

 

Perhaps we could learn something from this. The report says it's common practice in Japan for reporters and baseball stars to often dine together, so things like this are common practice. Here we keep it on a professional level...in some cases, like White-Brained has suggested, don't even take any type of handouts whatsoever for any services in some things.
What can we learn? Japan has the highest newspaper circulation rate per capita than any other nation, and is third in total circulation, ahead of the U.S. While US papers are making cutbacks, and seeing circulation drops, Japan papers have seen a slight climb.
Not sure what we can learn exactly, but maybe there is something to this let's-not-be-so-distant attitude the Japanese have. And yeah, yeah, yeah, I know it's a clubhouse/MLB type rule, but we'd still say it's unprofessional to have relations with players like that.

 

WRite-Brained. The R is not silent. Anyway, I'm not sure your conclusion is correct. Go to Europe and Japan and you'll see not only more people reading newspapers but an overall emphasis on education. They want to be informed. They are just as knowlegdable about stuff in our country and surrounding countries as they are in their own country.

We're suffering from the dumbing down of America. Half the high school seniors in my state don't graduate on time. We're a stupid country with stupid, self-centered people. Perhaps being more sociable would help ... but being professional isn't the reason people don't read the paper.

 

Ack, sorry Write-brained, honest mistake.

I don't disagree with anything you said there either.
Like I said in my post, Not sure what we can learn....I'm just throwing it out there. But back in Americas newspaper glory days, reporters were pretty tight with subjects then too. I don't know that we can ever go back, but I think we are going too far the other way where we all seem to cold and distant from each other, and athletes/celebrities, police officers, even some of the high school coaches I deal with hate talking to us. The only people that enjoy taking are fellow journalists (and even then there's the news vs. sports mentality) and parents who are more than happy to tell me how to do my job.

 

Someone from a European country could very easily make a comparison between the size of their country and the size of a state in the United States. Or make that comparison in terms of population. Ask most Americans to make the reverse comparison and see what happens.

I also don't think American journalistic emphasis on professional distance does any good compared to the more familiar relationship between Japanese players and media. It's six in one hand, half a dozen in the other as far as I'm concerned. And I say that because each nation's culture is radically different.

 

I did not know that....

 

It sounds like an honest mistake but I think there may be more to this story. My guess is that joe may have been guilty of doing this sort of thing for a while, was asked to stop, and didn't.

 

You are correct. We're revoking his Write-Brained privileges.

 

That holds true until the American is on the outbound flight.

 

Of course he does! How dare you question the great Stoob.

 

That may be the case in central Europe, but in Britain the population is getting stupider every single year.