Annoying thing No. 37

[Della9250]

I got the stupidest e-mail from a parent the other day. A game went 6 innings, I wrote "Starter Stephens lasted five innings and allowed 4 runs" and the parent goes "Starter Stephens was relieved by Johnny Jerkoff in the 6th inning". I wrote her back and said that I didn't say that SS lasted all game. I forget the rest, I'm kinda drunk.

Long ago, in a far off land, a mom blistered me in a voice mail. "How dare you call my daughter a losing pitcher?"

Mom continued with, in this order, how well her daughter threw and how hard she worked and how devastated she was at being called such a bad thing and, of course, how bad the umpire was.

I've had a parent get upset at me that I wrote that his son, the pitcher, was the hard-luck loser after the kid pitched a complete game and lost 1-0, giving up the run on three hits with a walk and nine strikeouts.

 

[slappy4428]

Tell him it might seem like his kid is a good fielder, but until he can produce Johnny's expected runs cost/saved relative to the average fielder number, you ain't putting it in the agate page.

http://stat.wharton.upenn.edu/~stjensen/research/safe.html

Actually, I think a note from Buckweaver would suffice just as well.

 

[slappy4428]

I got the stupidest e-mail from a parent the other day. A game went 6 innings, I wrote "Starter Stephens lasted five innings and allowed 4 runs" and the parent goes "Starter Stephens was relieved by Johnny Jerkoff in the 6th inning". I wrote her back and said that I didn't say that SS lasted all game. I forget the rest, I'm kinda drunk.

Long ago, in a far off land, a mom blistered me in a voice mail. "How dare you call my daughter a losing pitcher?"

Mom continued with, in this order, how well her daughter threw and how hard she worked and how devastated she was at being called such a bad thing and, of course, how bad the umpire was.

Lady, she wasn't just A losing pitcher. She was THE losing pitcher....

 

[SF_Express]

Why do people not get how that is not objective at all? Bugs the living **** out of me.

I'm not sure how much a lot of people understand the "objective thing." They only talk about it when it's about politics and Sean Hannity tells them to.

That said, I couldn't help thinking: If this is only Annoying Thing No. 37, man, you must have gotten into the business like last Tuesday.

 

[lone star scribe]

What I usually do is ask the coach if the kid made a specific play that made the great defense. Sometimes, the kid really does do something special.

Otherwise, we can always just put in the 'Johnny did a great job defensively.' After all, I wouldn't want to be responsible for Johnny's parents having to work hard to put their kid through college because I forgot to mention him and cost him a scholarship.

Tell the coach next time you only run OPS stats. ;D

 

[friend of the friendless]

Mr Express,

Why do people not get how that is not objective at all? Bugs the living **** out of me.

I'm not sure how much a lot of people understand the "objective thing." They only talk about it when it's about politics and Sean Hannity tells them to.

That said, I couldn't help thinking: If this is only Annoying Thing No. 37, man, you must have gotten into the business like last Tuesday.

Sage vet, you might be confusing the Annoying Thing list and the Soul-Crushing Thing list, the latter at last count being in the five digits.

YD&OHS, etc

 

[BB Bobcat]

Isn't the entire point of these Little League summaries to get kids names in the paper? I mean, seriously, is anyone out there typing in these things with the idea that: "Hey, readers are interested in the facts, here. They want to know the score and who drove in the runs, blah, blah."

People want to read their kid's name in the paper. Period.

The parents know it. The coaches know it. The paper knows it.

If the only way to get a particular kid's name in the paper is to say he played good defense, so be it. To me, 99.999 percent of the readers care no more about the kid who hit three homers than the kid who showed "great hustle." It's sort of silly to draw a line between the two because one is objective and one is subjective, when most readers don't care about either.

 

[SF_Express]

Mr Express,

Why do people not get how that is not objective at all? Bugs the living **** out of me.

I'm not sure how much a lot of people understand the "objective thing." They only talk about it when it's about politics and Sean Hannity tells them to.

That said, I couldn't help thinking: If this is only Annoying Thing No. 37, man, you must have gotten into the business like last Tuesday.

Sage vet, you might be confusing the Annoying Thing list and the Soul-Crushing Thing list, the latter at last count being in the five digits.

YD&OHS, etc

Yeah, the Annoying Thing list probably hits 37 in the first couple of hours of your first day, so I stand corrected.

 

[Batman]

Isn't the entire point of these Little League summaries to get kids names in the paper? I mean, seriously, is anyone out there typing in these things with the idea that: "Hey, readers are interested in the facts, here. They want to know the score and who drove in the runs, blah, blah."

People want to read their kid's name in the paper. Period.

The parents know it. The coaches know it. The paper knows it.

If the only way to get a particular kid's name in the paper is to say he played good defense, so be it. To me, 99.999 percent of the readers care no more about the kid who hit three homers than the kid who showed "great hustle." It's sort of silly to draw a line between the two because one is objective and one is subjective, when most readers don't care about either.

I get your point, but why not just run team rosters then? It gets everybody's name in the paper.

 

[ltrain1127]

Batman,
It's funny you mention that. At a previous stop, a place that has had an opening for its one-man (photo, layout, writing) staff in the past year, I had to cover little league, AYSO and middle school sports.
The AYSO leage would send in results, hand-written (this was the late 90s), on 50 games. I drew the line at saying a kid played great defense when his team lost 15-1.
The league prez took me to task for not running the reports as written. When I brought up the great defense in a 15-1 loss example, she had no reply.
The truce we worked out was that she would EMAIL the rosters before the first game and I would run them, so all 750 kids got their name in the paper. After that, it was just scores, and scorers, also emailed.
Gawd, I hate AYSO.

 

[dixiehack]

The truce we worked out was that she would EMAIL the rosters before the first game and I would run them, so all 750 kids got their name in the paper. After that, it was just scores, and scorers, also emailed.

Boy, the people who do the Yellow Pages must be dumb as ****. They get everybody's name in, and just give it away for free.

 

[greenlantern]

Why do people not get how that is not objective at all? Bugs the living **** out of me.

I'm not sure how much a lot of people understand the "objective thing." They only talk about it when it's about politics and Sean Hannity tells them to.

That said, I couldn't help thinking: If this is only Annoying Thing No. 37, man, you must have gotten into the business like last Tuesday.

Annoying thing No. 37 ... that day.

 

[fossywriter8]

Mrs. Uggla?

Isn't it enough that we've got an entire thread devoted to Uggla's poor play, Zeke? Must we keep raking him?

He tries, Zeke. Let him be.

He sure gave an All-Star effort on those two errors. You know, he works as hard as the other All-Stars just to get a chance to make two errors on two consecutive plays in the bottom of the ninth inning with the score tied in the All-Star Game. At least he got his name in the paper. His mom will be proud.

 

[Baron Scicluna]

Mrs. Uggla?

Isn't it enough that we've got an entire thread devoted to Uggla's poor play, Zeke? Must we keep raking him?

He tries, Zeke. Let him be.

He sure gave an All-Star effort on those two errors. You know, he works as hard as the other All-Stars just to get a chance to make two errors on two consecutive plays in the bottom of the ninth inning with the score tied in the All-Star Game. At least he got his name in the paper. His mom will be proud.

Problem is, the game ended too late to get it in most papers. That's going to cost Uggla a scholarship.

 

[RedCanuck]

Played good defence is merely a synonym for tried really hard but didn't have anything statistically worth writing. I've had coaches admit to that time and again.

 

[forever_town]

What I usually do is ask the coach if the kid made a specific play that made the great defense. Sometimes, the kid really does do something special.

I saw a couple of highlight reel-worthy plays when I was umpiring 11- and 12-year-olds. I saw catchers at that level who are better than current collegiate catchers (hell, they may even be better than Major League catchers!). It can happen.