MLB.com removes Buehrle quotes from story

Yes. There are a ton of hangers-on media at professional sporting and major college events. A BBWAA card indicates to the player, coach, executive, or manager that you are part of the game's inner-circle, so to speak. I'm surprised there is so much resistance to this notion. I thought it was pretty universally understood, particularly among baseball writers. Players will glance down at a lanyard to determine, for example, if this is a writer worth speaking to or not when the approach ("Got a second?") is made. Happens all the time.

 

You think there aren't foofs wearing BBWAA cards?

Here's how you get "instant respect:" Ask good questions. Don't smell. Respect the player's space. Don't have facial tics. Don't monopolize a player's time. Quote him accurately.

There are a lot of people who are neither BBWAA members nor "hangers on."

 

That does seem like an excessive and unattainable requirement.

 

For those who want to really understand Buehrle's commitment to dogs:

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/illinois/article_8b11bb9a-2fb8-5a6c-a5df-048cffded8ea.html

 

Ballplayers looking for BBWAA?? Maybe they recognize ESPN, but that's about it. Other than a handful of very seasoned veterans, they have no idea about BBWAA.

 

I'm going to say that maybe 20 percent of the players have any idea about who is in the BBWAA and who isn't. For it to make a difference, you'd have to be talking about a player who didn't know you in the first place AND was aware of what the BBWAA meant AND was going to treat you differently based on it.

 

The primary reason that MLB.com has not been approved for BBWAA membership is that the BBWAA is at times at odds with MLB over things such as access, press-box problems and other day-to-day issues that affect our ability to conduct business. Flooding the membership with employees of MLB could easily allow the entity we cover to dictate BBWAA policy.

MLB.commers, by and large, do an excellent, professional job, and many fine former newspaper reporters - and editors - are employed there. I have no issue at all with the work they do, but they are employed by the league they cover. That presents a very real possibility for conflict of interest when it comes to issues that affect the BBWAA.

As BB Bobcat says, they know the deal when they go to work there. And the same holds true for team-owned media outlets, such as YES and some of the CSNs, NESN, etc, and some fabulous reporters have lost their regular yearly BBWAA cards - Jack Curry and Ray Ratto, to name two I admire enormously.

If you're working for the team you cover, you are not really an independent journalist. The work is all, from what I can tell, above reproach, but there is a conflict - you are paid by the team or league you cover, and if they want, they can tell you what to do....and how to vote. I don't mean when it comes to national awards, although I suppose that is possible, but when we have membership-wide issues that must be decided, such as concerns over postseason player-availability policies, to name one recent instance. We don't want the league - or, say a press-adverse team - deciding how we approach such issues.

 

Of course there are.

Of course there are.

 

Don't forget the all-time favorite - that any manager or GM is not "fired," but "relieved of his duties."

 

To be clear, you guys may be right. It was always my impression that players noticed. Maybe I'm getting a biased take from my friends and colleagues in the BBWAA. They certainly wear the badges with pride, so they have to think there is some advantage to it, but it could just as likely be a version of Dumbo's magic feather.

 

I have never met an athlete who cares about the perceived public credibility of a reporter. Athletes respect the guys they recognize as intelligent and -- yes, Smasher Sloan got it right -- clean and somewhat normal.

In baseball, there's a decent chance BWAA writers are part of that group simply because they've all been reporting on the sport for years. Therefore, veteran players are more likely to know them and they theoretically should have some idea of what they're talking about or at least how to talk about it.

 

I think guys notice a season pass and/or BBWAA card, if they don't know you. A card definitely gets you some cred with veterans. And I've definitely, 100 percent, seen guys look at my pass. Those daily ones are more noticeable, in a bad way, than a BBWAA card.