Today's screwy sportsdesk call

I can, still, recite all of the letters in the Greek alphabet whilst a match is burning between my fingers ... if I have had enough to drink. Not much call for that skill, tho.

 

We just ran our 17-story prep soccer preview on Sunday.

Yesterday (Tuesday) I got a phone call from a fringe-school parent about a photo that ran in the preview. The photo was used of his son. However, the photo we got from a weekly paper and the very same photo was in the weekly's edition on the previous Friday.

Father said even though we gave the weekly photographer credit and source credit, he figured we had a hard copy of the photo.

We didn't. The weekly puts its edition in an online PDF and we grabbed the photo off the PDF.

Tried explaining the situation and told him he could do the same thing (although the photo wouldn't be huge). Didn't comprehend. Wanted the BMP of the file we saved off the PDF.

Told him that if you want the photo bad enough, here's a radical thought: Go to the person and newspaper responsible for it in the first place.

Guy thought since we were bigger, we had the call on such things.

 

We had a guy call today looking for cheats for Madden '09.

 

I love it when the random fan calls asking us how one of two big in-state schools' recruiting is going.

 

I didn't take this particular call, but we had a guy who called in once and asked the clerk what Big Ten team he should root for in one of the games on that day's schedule.

We also had a caller who was a fan of a certain MLB team, to the point where he would collect each of that team's boxscores out of the sports section and compile its season stats like a one-man Elias Sports Bureau. Well, on a Thursday night we had to leave out that team's box because of space issues. He calls that Sunday and demands that we run back the box; we only run back boxscores if they're a day old and didn't make that morning's edition. Apparently he got so agitated that the agate editor on duty ended up finding a copy of the box off the internet (it had already left our editorial system since it was from Thursday) and mailed a copy to the caller. I'm not sure if the agate editor did it to get the guy off his back or what.

 

That's fantastic. Obviously, you call the local sports department for that.

 

"How do I win at Madden?"

"Score more points than the other team."

 

I'd be willing to take a 10 percent pay cut if the ME and publisher would let me answer one call per week with the unvarnished truth.

 

Is 10 percent of your pay worth more than one subscription? Publishers are into the bottom line. You should pitch that.

 

I'd say, "Which year, '92 or '96? Because I'm awesome at both."