Clubhouse Etiquette

Just curious ... What's your etiquette on feature questions with baseball players. I generally prefer to do that stuff pregame, but sometimes you miss a guy or he doesn't want to talk pregame and you've got to catch him postgame. I cross my fingers that the guy's team wins on those nights, but I still try and get it done when they lose as long as the guy is cool. I just wait for the deadline guys to finish and then ask the guy if he's got a minute.

I've never had a problem with it until tonight, when the team's PR guy (the visiting team) tapped me on the shoulder and questioned why I was asking feature questions right then. It was pretty weird. The player was totally fine with it, but the PR guy seemed upset. Yeah, the team lost and is in a bit of a rut, but I don't think a 2-minute interview is enough to warrant that reaction. I could understand if the player seemed huffy, or if I was badgering him for 10 minutes. But this was literally two questions into the interview. Seemed a bit of an over reaction.

Am I wrong?

 

Very good post, Big Ragu. I'm just wondering if the last name of PR guy in question rhymes with Snoreowitz.

 

Clubhouse etiquette in baseball is that you handle your feature stuff before the game and reserve post-game for game-related questions.

 

I suggest talking the whole thing over with the PR guy in the press bo-- uh, the Jim Beam Club.

 

I've had times where I've tried to work on the feature stuff beforehand, but because the players in question are often on some kind of streak, they don't want to talk about it until after the game.

To me, that's fine, especially if I'm going to be one of the only ones working on that piece. And when the player tells me that he prefers it that way, well, I can't really disagree with that choice.

 

My thoughts exactly, Ira.

 

Thanks for the posts. I felt fine about it, and had never had a problem with that approach before. The incident kind of caught me off guard, and I haven't been around baseball that long, so I thought I'd post.

One question though: How much do you think it matters that the team lost and is in a little bit of a rut right now? Obviously, I can't control that, and seeing as how it's the visiting team, I only have a few shots at the interview. I just figured if the player was in a decent mood and seemed willing to do the interview, which he was, to just go for it.

 

Sometimes the PR guy plays bad guy so the player doesn't have to.

Plus, you said you were two questions into the interview. How did he know you weren't two questions into a 20-question interview?

I don't like PR guys who interfere, but feature-type stuff is usually reserved for the hours that exist in pre-game and not the minutes in post-game.

I don't know who you work for, but that's a factor, too.

 

you sound like a big-league apologist.

why don't we just stop asking questions altogether? that would make these guys' lives so much easier.

 

What's a big-league apologist? He was just stating fact. That is baseball clubhouse etiquette.