bIG bREAK

Looks like it took two keystrokes to write that -- Control and "C".
If that's your original work, it's horrible. If it's a rehashed or copied press release, why on Earth would you offer it up as an example of your work?

Because I want to help (also because the writer's workshop is a festering corpse, and because I'm still not sure whether you're a troll or just young and clueless), I'll offer a more nuanced critique.
Being on the watch list for an award means nothing. Each award has about 100 players on its watch list. Most major programs seem to have at least one. You can, however, use it as a hook for a story -- and a good one -- if you did a little more work.
The guy was suspended a DWI (is it a DUI in Texas)? There's your angle. It's a "long road back" story. Talk to him. Talk to the TCU coaches. Talk to his friends, family and former high school coach. Since he's from your town, you have an advantage there that a lot of other reporters might not. Pitch it to them as a redemption story and they might open up to you.
As it is, this is a rewritten (and that's being generous) press release. You try to make it into the good story it could be, but burying the lede and using three-month-old quotes turns it into crap.
Put some damn effort into it and it could be an award-winning centerpiece for your clip file.

 

Way to dump on his bIG bREAK!

 

The Manny column. Some of your mistakes have already been pointed out (McGwire/McGuire), etc....but sorry I had to stop when I got to the line about the Rangers being "too cheap" to sign Mark Teixeira.
You realize his trade to the Braves help give the Rangers elements to make the World Series a short time later?
You also realized the Rangers a year+ before that trade offered Teixeira what would have been the fourth largest contract in baseball at the time and the largest for a 1st baseball....which he rejected because HE knew eventually he wanted to be a Yankee? Which is why the Braves couldn't re-sign him either.
Sure the Rangers didn't get him re-signed and then traded him, but saying they were "too cheap" is a total lack of research on your part in this column.

If you really want to do this job right do yourself a favor: Don't write columns yet. Focus on having good game stories, good features, good previews, etc.. and save the opinions until you have some years under your belt. You have to be a solid writer first and foremost, and you have a ways to go before you are there.
You're young and at a new place. Your readers don't give a rat's ass about your opinion until they know who you are.

 

Told ya, homie. Nuke and re-spawn. It's the only option you have left.

 

I hesitated at the "too cheap" stuff, too, but didn't want to spend time looking stuff up for this level of critique. I've never thought of the Rangers being too cheap, i.e. A-Rod, Beltre, Darvish.
Good advice not trying columns yet.
Here's another thing. You're doing the same thing that just about all of us did. When you were a senior in college, you were the big man on campus. You did what you wanted, wrote what you wanted, and you became a know-it-all.
Then you go into the real world still thinking you know it all, but you don't know shit. It takes a couple of years to realize that and you're going to get slapped down a few times along the way. Good thing you came on here. Maybe it'll help you learn that you don't know shit and act accordingly.

 

Sheesh.

The mistakes and conjecture in the column are inexcusable. I don't know you, but if you got all of those things wrong in one story and I was your editor, I'd probably go back and look at your work, and if it was of similar quality, I'd fire you.

There's too much unemployed talent out there to employ terrible reporters.

 

I'm not going to pile on...


...but I really want to.

 

Speak for yourself.

 

Looked Mr. SurfCav up on the interwebs and he isn't fresh out of college. He's at least in his 30s and his other work is just as unreadable. Don't know why he's coming in here like Anderson Silva against Chris Wiedman. I don't like the "pay your dues" mentality of this business; if you're good you're good. However this guy.......... -_-

 

It's also rather lazy to not even bother to include in the story, not just the headline, that he's from your town.

If you really, REALLY, want to be a beat reporter, then eating free steak in Round Rock and reprinting TCU press releases isn't the way to get there. There are stories, good ones, to be told in your own town, about your own athletes. Pachall might be that guy, but you can be damn sure that the SID at TCU isn't even going to return your emails if the best you have to offer is that nonsense about Manny.

Most reporters are stronger at either writing or reporting. That's natural. You appear to be good at neither. You're gonna want to work on that.

 

Sacramento is the Triple-A affiliate of the Oakland A's, not Omaha.

 

I am going to feel bad when the real James David comes on here and wants to know what he did to deserve his work getting bashed.