Jeff Pearlman interviews Tom Verducci

[Norrin Radd]

Huge Verducci fan. For a while he, Phil Taylor and Dr. Z were the only reasons I kept my subscription.

Like most of the media, he was never in front of the steroids story. Caminiti's story was more like a "well, yeah, of course." Besides those stupid goatees that whole Padres team had, the idea that Caminiti was on the juice was out there.

Anyway, thought Deadspin had an interesting take:

http://deadspin.com/5972947/should-steroids+era-sportswriters-be-kept-out-of-the-hall-of-fame-voting?popular=true

 

[Lugnuts]

http://deadspin.com/5972947/should-steroids+era-sportswriters-be-kept-out-of-the-hall-of-fame-voting?popular=true

That was really well written. He makes great points without slamming Verducci.

I've said it before... I do think Deadspin occasionally grabs story ideas straight from our boards.

 

[Boom_70]

Agree , well done by Deadspin. As they pointed out Verdcucci wants to take credit for blowing the cover off the Steroid era with Caminiti story but has his head
in the sand about Clemens. It's hard not to accept the idea that Verducci was one of Clemens enablers.

 

[dooley_womack1]

All this party is missing is John Kerry in the hazmat suit.

 

[Riptide]

I've said it before... I do think Deadspin occasionally grabs story ideas straight from our boards.

Is that a bad thing?

 

[Dick Whitman]

That's a really outstanding interview.

I have said the following many times on here and in real life - not that I've always followed my own advice:

Anybody with a credential and a pen or a microphone can get "a" quote. You've seen it, Jeff: the scrum around the star of the game and the stock questions that typically feature phrases such as "how surprised were you . . . ," "the mindset," and "what pitch." The worst are the non-questions. They almost always start like this: "Talk about . . . ." It's sheer laziness. The point is that you ask a stock question you get a stock quote.

I don't want mere quotes. I want information. And I want what's true. You have to be patient if you'd rather drill closer to bedrock than the surface layer.

And I completely agree with him on this point. I spent my entire full-time career at newspapers, and I was a square peg in a round hole, although my eventual destination job was way, way better than 99 percent of the papers in America about letting us write long. But it still wasn't a magazine:

One of the things I really enjoyed when I got to SI was the expectation of nothing short of high quality work. Newspaper writing is full of compromise—budgets, time and space. Writing for SI, the compromises are peeled away. You generally have enough time, space and resources (though as writers, they are never enough) to produce something of outstanding quality every time.

People here have talked a lot about the Clemens issue.

I'm more concerned about the MLB Network issue. Verducci rationalizes it here by saying they don't have editorial control. I don't buy it. He shouldn't be working for that network. Period. End of story. And SI shouldn't let him work for that network. Period. End of story. He's taking a paycheck from Major League Baseball. It is astounding to me that he thinks that's OK. That anyone thinks that's OK. It taints every word he writes.