TJ Simers slams rival paper

Doubt TJ will be taking on the Special Olympics considering the guy consistently drums up donations to the Mattel Children's Hospital.

 

It's a joke, son.

 

Well, it wasn't a very good one, Dad.

 

Gee, I don't know. I liked it.

 

OK, I'll change it to: "Sunday, Simers will pull the wings off flies and ridicule a winless Little League team." Happy now?

 

That column just underscores how good Simers is at what he does.

Simers comes up with that stuff, and it just seems light and effortless, like falling out of bed.

The LADN retort was none of those things. The concept was fine, the execution a little forced.

 

Exactly. And when people call him a bully or take offense to what he does, or, forbid, take what he does too seriously, it plays right into his hands....

 

Shouldn't mocking someone from a smaller paper be beneath a columnist from a major daily?

And, yeah, he's a bully. When he was a beat writer he went out of his way to intimidate writers from smaller papers and mock them in front of players. I'm not saying he's a terrible person with no good side, but to claim this is all in good fun ignores who he is and who he has been. The LAT looks low-class in allowing him to get his jollies at other columnists' expense. And, really, do the readers care about a writer-vs.-writer pissing match?

 

Yeah, I'm 100 percent with Frank on this one. First of all, going after a colleague in print is unprofessional. Mostly, though, if you're a columnist in LA and the best idea you can come up with is ripping on something another columnist wrote (that pretty much everyone was saying at the time) just for a few giggles, you ought to get out of the column business.

 

Bingo!

 

Boy, I really try to stay out of these ... but I'll just say, anybody who thinks this is a writer vs. writer column and not a Dodgers column -- and some people I really respect do -- then I really think they're missing the point.

The Daily News pronouncing the Dodgers dead provided a vehicle to write about the Dodgers -- and if the DN columnist doesn't have a sense of humor about it, I'm disappointed.

 

You have to read all of Simers' stuff to truly get it. The real point of this column was about the Dodgers. You have to have read Simers to know that at the beginning of the season HE pronounced the team dead. So the column was tongue-in-cheek, because he's usually the guy that pronounces teams dead, not some cat from the Daily News. He pokes fun at plenty of journalists, including his former boss (Old Man Dwyre).

I've never met Simers and I have no doubt he was probably a prick to people when he was a beat writer. I like his columns because they're humorous. His interview style with players is a joke. Some get it, some don't. Today's offering about Jeff Kent was classic. Kent hated Simers at first (I imagine everybody does). Then Simers shows up and Kent wants him to autograph a copy of a magazine that includes a story ripping Simers. Then Simers gets him to sign a jersey with the proceeds going to the Mattel hospital.

Some don't like Simers' style or what he writes. That's fine. I do. And I think Page 2 is an excellent place for it. I'll be the first one to admit I'm a Simers fan. I don't think I've missed a column of his in four years, and I live in South Carolina, haven't been to California since I was 8, and I don't give a damn about any of the LA sports. I like his column because it makes me laugh.