Top MLB beat writers?

Like Gammons when he was at the Globe, Ringolsby can fill a whole page with notes if he so chooses. Baseball fans just eat that shit up.

 

Pedro Gomez who is on the Barry Bonds beat does a nice job.

 

When he was on the Braves beat I thought Thomas Stinson of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution was one of the best out there. On Sunday, Dec. 26, 1999, dude had four stories on the fallout from the John Rocker incident. I think he's now strictly enterprise and hard sports news.

 

I'm biased, but I still gotta throw T.R. out there.

 

I dig Henry Schulman at the SF Chron.

Maybe not as nationally known, but he's a great writer who happens to cover an MLB beat.

 

I appreciate the kind words, although it's funny that the mere mention of my name killed this thread.


Henry Schulman
SF Chronicle

 

Marc Tompkin of the St. Pete Times does a heck of a job covering the D-Rays. Really knows his stuff.

 

Point of order: Assuming he covers all 162 games, it'd take just more than six years to reach 1,000. For him to have scored 10s of thousands of games, he would have to have covered the game for more than 60 years. He's great, no question, and has been for a long time. Sorry for the nit-pick, but that's stretching it.

Carry on.

 

Topkin (editor wielding his red pen) told a great story of how, before the Devil Rays came to Tampa-St. Pete, the Fabulous Sports Babe had him on the show frequently, saying he had the best baseball "beat" in the world. "You show up for the All-Star Game and World Series and that's it! What a life!" In between those two blessed events, I know he worked his ass off. The coming of a regular baseball season must have been heaven.

See, Hank? We kept it alive for ya.

 

OK, tens of thousands of innings.

 

I thought Svrluga's book was excellent. And he's clearly talented. But his gamers read like the first chapter of another book. Waaaaaay too long and convoluted, bordering on an arrogance he hasn't yet demonstrated he has a right to have. And he really still doesn't get the game, after over a year on the beat, and seems to think he has to overwrite the crap out of everything to compensate (typical effin' stud behaviour ;D)
Gets his butt kicked by the mlb.com guy (who cannot write a lick) on every key piece of information, too. Most of it probably passes Barry like the wind, because he doesn't see the importance of it. I'm told he asks the most inane questions in the manager's office every day, too. Between Svrluga and the website guy, no wonder old Frank Robinson looks like he's about to kill sombody.

Boswell would be great - in the 1950s.

I'm astonished at how poor a baseball media town my town turned out to be. I really was looking forward to reading a lot of great baseball stuff with the return of the game. But it hasn't happened.

 

I'll add another vote for T.R. Sullivan
When he was at the Star-Telegram, he routinely kicked butt on breaking news, made the DMN look feeble.