Orange County Register offering buyouts ...

Whicker is like having a GA person because he seems to have a different dateline every day. But he's worth it - best writer that sports section has by far.

The other columnists don't make for mandatory reading for me.

 

Whicker is one of the most underrated columnists not only in SoCal, but in the country. Miller is a nice counterbalance/different voice.

But FIVE columnists? A bit much, I'd say, even for a paper like the Register.

 

It seems like layoffs are a bit of a trendy thing lately. If everyone's doing it, perhaps the suits think it's easier to get away with.

It also seems like the volume of job openings is down lately, although I don't have any actual data to support that idea.

 

Jeff Miller has been covering the Angels, so he is pretty valuable.

If they want to lay people off, the top three names on the list should be:
Steve Bisheff
Marcia C. Smith
Randy Youngman

All three are absolutely worthless.

 

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Yeah, that's right, let's get rid of guys like Bisheff and Youngman who have been around forever and have some institutional memory.

In fact, let's fire everybody over 30 and just get on with it, all recent college grads making $30,000. And, in fact, when they reach 30, let's do a Logan's Run deal and just kill 'em and be done with it and hire another 22-year-old.

That's the ticket.

 

I know you didn't mean this in a limiting way, you were just mentioning one important thing they bring to the paper. But it's important to note that they serve as more than just breathing reference materials, they pull their weight in many ways. Bisheff is one of those old-school columnists who will take his rips at people when deserved, but then he makes it a point of personal honor to show his face in the locker room so the person he ripped can have at it in person. Columnists like him aren't just institutional memory (although they are that, too), they are living proof that we've always had an an alternative to the hit-and-run attack columns from afar that so many columnists do now. I hope they let him write as long as he's still breathing.

 

Bisheff is productive and accountable, but he isn't a very good writer. Some readers would miss him, but others would benefit from more compelling approaches.

 

Bisheff knows horse racing in addition to USC and being close to John Wooden. His columns are fairly routine to me. I understand the experience factor, too. As for Youngman, they could do much, much better than him.

 

Yeah, his "These are only opinions but at least they are all mine" was really compelling today. :

Your reasons for wanting to keep Bisheff sound like the same reasons that the Raiders hired Al Davis.

 

I heard today was a deadline for those interested in taking the buyout offer at the OCR.

 

Whicker is excellent . . . . . .

But his Cory Lidle column had one of the most hilariously bad segues I have ever read:

OAKLAND – Oakland's pitchers met before they faced Baltimore and decided that, under no circumstances, should they throw Jay Gibbons a changeup.

Gibbons came up with two runners on. Cory Lidle threw him a changeup. It landed on a right-field seat.

"Rick Peterson was our pitching coach then," A's manager Ken Macha said Wednesday. "He wasn't too happy. He chewed out Cory when he came back to the dugout."

The next time Lidle faced Gibbons, there also were two runners aboard. And he threw him a changeup again.

"I was doing the chart," said Macha, who was the bench coach at the time. "I think the second home run might have landed on the same seat.

"Cory did things his own way."

Lidle's 34-year-old life was full of independent decisions, solo flights.

The final one was Wednesday, when he flew a plane into a 40-story condominium, near Manhattan's 72nd Street and 1st Avenue.

WOW.