Dewey Defeats Truman on the sports page

MLB.com reports the Kansas City Royals lose heartbreaker to the Oakland Athletics:

http://deadspin.com/mlb-com-runs-royals-lose-game-story-1641093117?utm_campaign=socialflow_deadspin_facebook&utm_source=deadspin_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

 

Dewey Defeats Truman Sports Complex

 

I'm feeling bad on behalf of Mr. Kaegel. He's quite the gentleman.

 

Well played.

 

I am absolutely stunned this doesn't happen more often in baseball. I would sometimes have three or four stories ready to send in the ninth as soon as the last pitch was thrown, and be adjusting on the fly with each batter.

 

Way back when sitting in the slot meant actually sitting in the slot, for night football games that would be finishing at the deadline, I'd write headlines that could be used (physically ... this was in the days when we had a backshop and the section was literally pasted together). Bit me a few times, though.

Once, one of my front-page day game heads was "X Slips By Y" (the winning team was a fairly heavy favorite and had to score in the last minute to avoid the upset). In my night game, my head was "Qs Whip Zs" (was a workable play on each team's nickname). This could be sliced and diced either way at the last minute.

I didn't notice that the margin of victory was the same in both of those games. And we actually had fans of school Z complaining, because we said their team had been whipped but said that team Y had been merely slipped by.

 

Deleted.

 

Isn't it sad that modern journalism, with all the metrics and the constant race to be first, often insists that reporters write versions of news that never actually happens?

Writers can top a running story with the proper lede in five minutes. Let them.

 

The risk definitely doesn't seem worth the reward, does it? I guess a place like MLB.com wants people to immediately have a story to read. It's cool, but how many people actually notice?

I could halfway understand it in newspaper days. The press has to run, the press has to run. I wrote countless features that never ran just in case the game went over - I'd usually file the notebook by the first pitch, then hammer out a 12-inch filler story in the first couple innings and send it along. Then I'd start writing again in the seventh or so.

 

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