Tag Archives: Blogging bloggers

How to Overestimate the Significance of a Preseason Football Game

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Posted by Lachky on 08/25/2009 – 1:03pm
Filed under Kansas City Chiefs

After looking back at what I had written prior to the Chiefs game on Friday, I have come to the conclusion that I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about. Actually, I’ve known that for a long time, many moons before I started writing for this site. It’s not that I was so completely off base about the significance of a preseason game (I was), or that I fully missed what being a professional athlete is all about (I did). No, what I’ve been taking a look back at is how I got to be so magnanimously jaded.

We’re not sportswriters. We don’t spend time with athletes. We don’t know the nuances of scheme or the importance of game-day preparation. We don’t spend our days at the ballpark, and we don’t travel with the team. That, though, gives us a unique perspective. We like to think we see directly from the eyes of the fans. I guess that’s why they’ve come up with an entirely new noun to describe us: blogger.

The advantages are such that we are able to (mostly) act without direct criticism from those whom we are lampooning on a daily basis. We don’t have to worry about having to face those whom we take to task. While that normally doesn’t stop the common columnists’ barbs, it does serve as a check against some of their more heavy-handed takes. Such is not the case with your everyday blog.

On the other hand, the benefit of seeing things from a close distance is clear. You get a sense of the goings-on that lead to takes that are far-more substantively accurate on a micro level than you would get with a blogger.

So here’s your wild over-generalization of the day: A reporter or columnist is more apt to give you a take of what’s going on with a team. A blogger is more apt to give you the pulse of the fans.

So, with that in mind, I have come to question why, as a fan of a team, from the outside looking in, did I come to essentially characterize the Chiefs as a middle-school football team with a bunch of whiney bitches that would quit at the drop of a hat??

Have I really become so cynical to postulate that a professional football team – a team of players who are chosen and paid to compete on a daily basis, who are taught to kill-or-be-killed, who are mountin-sized slabs of manhood – would really wilt and die like the Royals bullpen??

It’s quite obvious this was not what happened last Friday. The Chiefs showed their weaknesses, the Vikes showed their strengths, nobody really got hurt, and I got to watch Brett Favre complete a pass to Percy Harvin 200 times on ESPN the next 36 hours.

The Chiefs were not intimidated out of the dome. Todd Haley did not lose the team. They sun rose the next day, and a raucus Metrodome crowd did not shock the Chiefs back into a shell of suckitude.

But, what has caused this mentality to encroach my better sports-sense?? Why did I honestly feel that that was even a possibility?? Maybe it’s the onset of the age of athlete depression. Maybe it’s the 23 losses in 25 games. Maybe it’s the team across the parking lot.

Whatever it is, it’s important, I think, as a blogger, not to get too caught up in what’s going on within the walls of the locker room. That’s not my job, and not what I’m here to write about.

That doesn’t mean that we can’t still speculate on happenings with our local teams. It doesn’t mean we can’t analyze what goes on out on the field. That doesn’t mean that we can’t call for heads, or make suggestions on personnel or preparation.

A friend once asked me what kind of blog this was. I said, “It’s basically fart jokes about sports in Kansas City…with lots of cursing.”

I’ll do my best to adhere to that mission in the future.

Now, here’s a picture of Pootie Tang. Have a nice day.

And Now, a Quick Break for a Fake Royals Baseball Controversy

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Posted by Lachky on 07/03/2009 – 3:41pm
Filed under Kansas City Royals

Bloggers v Baseball!!

Old School v New School!!

Numbers v Emotions!!

Bang!! Pow!! How’s that for some 4th of July fireworks!! Well, thankfully, it looks like Rany v Royals-gate has been peacefully resolved without anybody losing a limb. Or at the very least, if they were in danger to, they’re thankful not to have to rely on Nick Swartz to diagnose or treat it.

In the age-old sportswriters v. bloggers debate, we’ve had many a highlight. Generally, the two camps consist of 1.) The crusty old BBWAA member who knows the nuances of the organization, can speak on the mood in the clubhouse, and can run the gambit from organizational apologist to muckraker within the span of two columns, and 2.) The number-crunching, front-office bashing, drippy stat geek broadcasting WART radio* style out of his mother’s basement.

* Anybody get that Pete & Pete reference?? Anyone??

Except, these days those lines are becoming blurrier and blurrier (no red spell-check line under the word ‘blurrier’?? Really??). Rany (for those who don’t know), despite being accomplished as one of the founders of baseballprospectus.com, is not a sportswriter by trade. He’s a pimple-popper out of Chicago who writes passionately in his spare time about our fair team. He ruffled a few feathers last week by taking a blowtorch to admonishing the Royals training staff, calling for the head of the 19 year-tenured Head Trainer Nick Swartz due to gross negligence.

While it might take a really big zit to kill a man, Jazayerli is medically trained. Still, without having access to the player’s records (he doesn’t), you can’t take his take on the medical staff without a grain of salt, especially since Rany’s take seemed to be a hatchet-job as opposed to the deep exacto-knife stat-based analysis we’ve come to be used to from a Sabermetrician.

Luckly, Jeff Zimmerman* was happy to oblige (albeit independently), and, surprise, surprise, completely justifies Rany’s resentment. Turns out since 2002, the Royals are above average in number of trips to the DL (Royals, 116; MLB avg, 101) and in number of days lost to injury (Royals, 6,942; MLB avg, 5,586).

* Zimmerman talks to Royals Authority about his DL studies for Beyond the Boxscore here

But the real issue is not the justification of Rany’s anger, but the justification of the Royals front office to ban him. Well, of course they are obliged to do so to whomever they please, but the fact that they would go out of the way to banish an angry blogger is questionable…until you realize that in this day-in-age, even your run-of-the-mill dermatologist can be considered amongst the big-boy journalistic elite.

The difference between Rany and your boy Bellwether here is that in the blogosphere, his work has garnered him access not to the Royals as a team, but to some of the heavy hitters in the KC sports talk scene. He makes a weekly appearance on 810’s Border Patrol, and now has his own weekly talk show on the same station. He’s still no threat to blow up the front office from his seat in Chi-town, but apparently the veiled threat by the Royals brass to cut off 810 from their wellspring lest they cease their cohabitation of the airwaves with Rany has blown this issue into new territory.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be lumping together the educated, well-versed, stats-based baseball posts with dog-and-pony, dick-and-fart joke idiocy that you would find…well…here. But if there’s one thing to take away from this fracas, it’s that the line between which we find objective journalism and angry blogging is getting precipitously shorter.