"Losing pitcher"

[Ace]

The dumbed-down H.S. athletics scene of 2009 has many who are bothered by such terminology.

Let's give everyone who participates a trophy, to commemorate their participation.

This sh*t is what really pisses me off.

So whaddaya want? A trophy?

 

[RickStain]

The dumbed-down H.S. athletics scene of 2009 has many who are bothered by such terminology.

Let's give everyone who participates a trophy, to commemorate their participation.

This sh*t is what really pisses me off.

I don't think the newspaper industry is in a position to throw stones about giving out too many meaningless awards

 

[shotglass]

I'm just saying there are ways to write it without calling someone a loser, and, besides, in most cases, writing that way is simply better writing and gives the reader more information.

I don't for a minute see why the other options are better than "losing pitcher." It's simply finding 10 ways to tiptoe around the term. And my question remains, why?

For all the talk about "we need all the readers we can get" and all that, I'm not going to dive out the PC window for them. There's simply nothing wrong with the factual term "losing pitcher." If anyone thinks there is, they're too sensitive, and if you're looking over your shoulder to see who's sensitive among your audience, it's not a good way to write a sports story.

 

[Kato]

I'm just saying there are ways to write it without calling someone a loser, and, besides, in most cases, writing that way is simply better writing and gives the reader more information.

This only seems like tiptoeing to you because of this thread. You

I'm just saying there are ways to write it without calling someone a loser, and, besides, in most cases, writing that way is simply better writing and gives the reader more information.

I don't for a minute see why the other options are better than "losing pitcher." It's simply finding 10 ways to tiptoe around the term. And my question remains, why?

For all the talk about "we need all the readers we can get" and all that, I'm not going to dive out the PC window for them. There's simply nothing wrong with the factual term "losing pitcher." If anyone thinks there is, they're too sensitive, and if you're looking over your shoulder to see who's sensitive among your audience, it's not a good way to write a sports story.

I don't for a minute see why the other options are better than "losing pitcher." It's simply finding 10 ways to tiptoe around the term. And my question remains, why?

For all the talk about "we need all the readers we can get" and all that, I'm not going to dive out the PC window for them. There's simply nothing wrong with the factual term "losing pitcher." If anyone thinks there is, they're too sensitive, and if you're looking over your shoulder to see who's sensitive among your audience, it's not a good way to write a sports story.

I'm not saying it's wrong, and I can live with it being in the paper, even if it rubs some parents the wrong way. But, at the same time, I'm not reading the "factual term losing pitcher" anywhere but in prep roundups right now. AP and other outlets aren't using it, and they're writing about MLBers! I'm saying there are better, more descriptive, more informative ways to write. It's not just about sensitivity, either. It's about giving readers the most information we can give them that space allows. They know which teams won and lost by the score, and they'll know which pitchers won and lost by the line we put up. We don't have to use the term winning pitcher, either, by the way.

I'm not sure why we get so damn defensive when people get mad at us. Sometimes they have a point and we should at least consider it and discuss it, rather than put up our guards so fast. I think this is a good discussion. I'm not sure who's right or who's wrong. I know what I prefer. But I think it's a good discussion.

 

[RickStain]

Again, you aren't reading it in anything but prep roundups because nothing but prep roundups are written from box scores.

 

[Big Buckin' agate_monkey]

I'm disappointed in SportsJournalists.com today. That "Dead Putting Society" from the Simpson's hasn't been referenced yet is criminal.

Ned: May the best man win.
Homer: ``May the best man win.'' The mating call of the loser!
-- From one who should know, ``Dead Putting Society''

Homer dares Ned to bet on the outcome, so Ned offers to wager one of Maude's
wind chimes against a batch of Marge's blueberry muffins. Homer asks Ned
to make a ``real'' bet and makes chicken sounds for quite a long time.

Simpson, you're starting to annoy me.
-- Ned Flanders, ``Dead Putting Society''

Yelling at the top of their lungs, the two agree to make the father of the
loser mow the winner's lawn in his wife's Sunday dress. Marge reluctantly
draws up the terms of the agreement. Ned suggests they phrase the bet as
``the father of the boy who doesn't win'' to avoid hurt feelings. Marge
writes up the bet and asks, ``I hope blood won't be necessary.'' Once
Ned steps outside, he asks himself, ``Good gravy, what have I done?''

 

[stix]

I agree that losing pitcher is the proper stat.

However, I think there needs to be some caution when pointing out the losing pitcher, especially in roundups. Often times the pitcher on a softball team is the best player, especially if the team is horrible. If you have a team that goes 2-18 or whatever, and the only noteworth statistic worth pointing out from the losing team is the losing pitcher, such as "Jane Doe walked eight in a losing effort for Bumble****" or plainly "Jane Doe took the loss for Bumble****." Call me a wuss, but I think you need some sensitivity there. Poor kid is having her name in the paper every day in a somewhat negative way (in a losing effort, took the loss, etc.), when chances are she's the only good thing the team has going for it and more often than not was not the reason the team loss. I actually had a softball player ask me one time why she was always the one "blamed" for the loss. I explained the reasoning behind it, that she wasn't being blamed for the loss.

But the more I thought about it, you can just name that Jane Doe struck out seven and walked three in five innings for Bumble**** without saying she was charged with the loss, or picked up the loss, or did so in a losing effort and not lose anything from the roundup or story.

Just my two cents. Not saying that losing pitcher is wrong. Not at all.

I agree with you, Billy.

Look, I hate the ****ing over-sensitive parents who call and e-mail about every little thing that might reflect negatively on their kids. It's sickening. And, to the original poster, there's nothing wrong with with saying a pitcher was the losing pitcher. It's a fact and a statistic and should absolutely be used in the story if it's a pertinent fact.

However, and I don't mean to get over-sensitive here, these are just high school athletes. Especially with smaller schools, there are so many teams that just get the snot beat out of them every game because they just don't have the resources and manpower to compete. It's not an "attitude" thing, it's just a fact. So I don't see much need to point out that Jane Doe was the losing pitchers 20 times for a team that goes 2-20.

Frankly, the way I always handled roundup calls from terrible teams was to simply get the score, ask the coach if he/she wants to give stats for any players, get the team's record, hang up the phone and be done with the whole worthless opertation in about 30 seconds. Besides, we ran linescores, so if you really wanted to see that Jane Doe's record fell to 2-20, you can check the box. ****, most of the time the coaches of these awful teams didn't even know their own pitcher's or team's records anyways.

 

[stix]

This reminds me of a little firestorm we had at the paper I used to work for along these same lines. In this case, though, it wasn't a ****ty softball team, it was a local baseball team in the state tournament.

So our reporter is at the game, the semis I believe, and our local team was going for its third straight title. Well, in this particular game, the shortstop made something like five errors in three innings. It was so God-awful and painfully clear that the poor kid was mentally screwed up and couldn't field a grounder that game that the coach actually pulled him in the middle of an inning. The local team ended up losing by a close score, so essentially this kid cost them the game.

Well, our reporter has to report this, right? That's the game story, and I felt he did a nice job focusing on the key events of the game (the shortstop's errors) without humiliating the kid. He had good quotes from the coach (who was always very honest and told it like it was) about the errors and I think even a comment or two from the kid himself, who, to his credit, calmly answered questions about his own mistakes. I thought the story was great, and it's not like our reporter wrote a column scapegoating the kid like you might do for a high-paid pro athlete blowing a big game. And it's not like the headline was "Joey Butterfingers Costs Butts****ville State Semifinal Game."

Lo and behold, in the days after the story runs, we just get scores of emails about how our reporter was unfair to the kid, about how we were singling out one player in a team game and on and on and on. It probably didn't help that we ran a photo of the kid with the gamer, either, but I remember it being a damn good photo. Mind you, none of the letters were from the kid's parents or from the coach, but I believe other parents and some other of the kid's relatives, along with members of the stupid general public, sent them in.

Finally, we got so sick of the emails that our reporter just put a stop to it by writing a column called "Sometimes the News is Negative." It was a great column and it addressed all the emails just by how it was written. I thought his best point in the column was that everybody calls and emails and clamors for coverage and plasters articles all over the school when their team does well, but it's like they expect us to ignore them if they fail.

Well, **** that. The good and bad come together.

 

[cranberry]

Now if you had written the looser pitcher ....

 

[stix]

Now if you had written the looser pitcher ....

That's solid.

 

[shotglass]

Finally, we got so sick of the emails that our reporter just put a stop to it by writing a column called "Sometimes the News is Negative." It was a great column and it addressed all the emails just by how it was written. I thought his best point in the column was that everybody calls and emails and clamors for coverage and plasters articles all over the school when their team does well, but it's like they expect us to ignore them if they fail.

That column probably needs to be written, at some time, for every newspaper in this land.

 

[albert77]

We had a football parent get pissed because the coach named the positions "strong linebacker" and "weak linebacker." His kid was the weak linebacker.

I don't wonder if some form of "don't hurt the kids'/parents' feelings" is how we ended up with the terms "Sam," "Mike," and "Willie" for linebackers at the high school here.

No. Those specific terms have been around for at least 30 years.

And linebackers have been getting code names for at least 50 years, and more likely longer. (As evidence, I point you to Bob Oates' story on LBs in the L.A. Times of 12/6/1973, where **** Butkus relates the Bears' codes of "Stub," "Mac" and "Buck" for strong-middle-weak LBs. Or look at Arthur Daley's column in the N.Y. Times of 12/4/1960, where Tom Landry used the codes "Sam," "George" or "Walter" depending on where he wanted Sam Huff to line up. In fact, in that same column, Daley says the Giants also used "Sarah," "Meg" and "Wanda" when they wanted a specific linebacker to blitz. How's that for feelings?)

True, but it's only been recently those nicknames have become widespread in newspapers. I change them to strong, middle and weak in our copy.

And do not get me started on basketball positions being numbers now.

Actually, the way offenses are spread out these days, I'd say the terms strong and weak linebacker are fairly obsolete. My preference is to call them inside and outside linebackers.

As far as pointing out kids who make errors, I generally avoid it for high school kids, but there are exceptions. Last week, I covered a playoff game where the catcher had four passed balls and a throwing error, but he got the game-winning single in the bottom of the seventh. Basically, I wrote it as the kid redeeming himself after a bad day. Not a peep out of anybody about it.

And, one of the best quotes I've ever gotten from a high school kid came in a similar situation. Senior player struck out four times in the first game of a state championship series, all of them with men in scoring position, and his team lost by a run. The second game, he had the walk-off home run that ended the game on the 10-run rule. After I asked him about and he said, "I went from a zero to a hero." Classic stuff.

 

[Some Guy]

We had a football parent get pissed because the coach named the positions "strong linebacker" and "weak linebacker." His kid was the weak linebacker.

I don't wonder if some form of "don't hurt the kids'/parents' feelings" is how we ended up with the terms "Sam," "Mike," and "Willie" for linebackers at the high school here.

No. Those specific terms have been around for at least 30 years.

And linebackers have been getting code names for at least 50 years, and more likely longer. (As evidence, I point you to Bob Oates' story on LBs in the L.A. Times of 12/6/1973, where **** Butkus relates the Bears' codes of "Stub," "Mac" and "Buck" for strong-middle-weak LBs. Or look at Arthur Daley's column in the N.Y. Times of 12/4/1960, where Tom Landry used the codes "Sam," "George" or "Walter" depending on where he wanted Sam Huff to line up. In fact, in that same column, Daley says the Giants also used "Sarah," "Meg" and "Wanda" when they wanted a specific linebacker to blitz. How's that for feelings?)

True, but it's only been recently those nicknames have become widespread in newspapers. I change them to strong, middle and weak in our copy.

And do not get me started on basketball positions being numbers now.

Actually, the way offenses are spread out these days, I'd say the terms strong and weak linebacker are fairly obsolete. My preference is to call them inside and outside linebackers.

As far as pointing out kids who make errors, I generally avoid it for high school kids, but there are exceptions. Last week, I covered a playoff game where the catcher had four passed balls and a throwing error, but he got the game-winning single in the bottom of the seventh. Basically, I wrote it as the kid redeeming himself after a bad day. Not a peep out of anybody about it.

And, one of the best quotes I've ever gotten from a high school kid came in a similar situation. Senior player struck out four times in the first game of a state championship series, all of them with men in scoring position, and his team lost by a run. The second game, he had the walk-off home run that ended the game on the 10-run rule. After I asked him about and he said, "I went from a zero to a hero." Classic stuff.

Was the kid's name Robert Van Winkle, by chance?

 

[shotglass]

I'll let them call my kid a weak linebacker as long as he gets a trophy.







For "weak" linebacker, I may demand on ice cream, too.

 

[albert77]

We had a football parent get pissed because the coach named the positions "strong linebacker" and "weak linebacker." His kid was the weak linebacker.

I don't wonder if some form of "don't hurt the kids'/parents' feelings" is how we ended up with the terms "Sam," "Mike," and "Willie" for linebackers at the high school here.

No. Those specific terms have been around for at least 30 years.

And linebackers have been getting code names for at least 50 years, and more likely longer. (As evidence, I point you to Bob Oates' story on LBs in the L.A. Times of 12/6/1973, where **** Butkus relates the Bears' codes of "Stub," "Mac" and "Buck" for strong-middle-weak LBs. Or look at Arthur Daley's column in the N.Y. Times of 12/4/1960, where Tom Landry used the codes "Sam," "George" or "Walter" depending on where he wanted Sam Huff to line up. In fact, in that same column, Daley says the Giants also used "Sarah," "Meg" and "Wanda" when they wanted a specific linebacker to blitz. How's that for feelings?)

True, but it's only been recently those nicknames have become widespread in newspapers. I change them to strong, middle and weak in our copy.

And do not get me started on basketball positions being numbers now.

Actually, the way offenses are spread out these days, I'd say the terms strong and weak linebacker are fairly obsolete. My preference is to call them inside and outside linebackers.

As far as pointing out kids who make errors, I generally avoid it for high school kids, but there are exceptions. Last week, I covered a playoff game where the catcher had four passed balls and a throwing error, but he got the game-winning single in the bottom of the seventh. Basically, I wrote it as the kid redeeming himself after a bad day. Not a peep out of anybody about it.

And, one of the best quotes I've ever gotten from a high school kid came in a similar situation. Senior player struck out four times in the first game of a state championship series, all of them with men in scoring position, and his team lost by a run. The second game, he had the walk-off home run that ended the game on the 10-run rule. After I asked him about and he said, "I went from a zero to a hero." Classic stuff.

Was the kid's name Robert Van Winkle, by chance?

No.

 

[dailygrind]

Tell them the girl sucks, you have all been joking about her in the office all year, and couldn't wait to call her on being a loser in print. Tell her, in hindsight, the simple answer is for the girl to pitch good enough to win.

 

[slappy4428]

If you don't want your ****ing kid to be known as the losing pitcher, then don't let him or her pitch...

 

[Mark2010]

If you're keeping score, there are winners and losers. If being called the "losing pitcher" is so damaging to a kid's psyche then he shouldn't be playing competitve sports.

After all, that's offensive shouldn't we redact the losing pitcher from the box? Omit interceptions from QB stats?

I got a call from a parent once who was upset that I mentioned in my story that their son (QB) threw four interceptions in a game, including one that was returned for the winning touchdown.

THEM: "Well, he threw two touchdowns, too. "
ME: "Yes, and I mentioned that."
THEM:"But why did you have to talk about the interceptions?"
ME: "Because it was a key part of the game."
THEM: "You shouldn't write that. You hurt his feelings."
ME: "Sorry, but you have to take the bad along with the good."

 

[editorhoo]

Once had a stringer describe a QB's interception in a story, saying that he was "harried on the play." QB's Dad calls the office the next day to ***** out the editor. He tells the editor, "I have my Webster's Dictonary in my hand, and that word isn't even in there." Obvisouly, this tool didn't even know what he was bitching about.

So, my editor picks up his dictionary and tells Dad, "Well, Merriam must have come up with the word, because I have my Merriam-Webster Dictionary here, and it's in there."

On topic: If you're the losing pitcher or the QB who threw four picks, then that's what you were that day, and that's the way it NEEDS to be reported. It's not a journalist's job to build the self-esteem of ANYONE. That belongs to the parents, a concept that has long been lost.

 

[Inky_Wretch]

If you're keeping score, there are winners and losers. If being called the "losing pitcher" is so damaging to a kid's psyche then he shouldn't be playing competitve sports.

After all, that's offensive shouldn't we redact the losing pitcher from the box? Omit interceptions from QB stats?

I got a call from a parent once who was upset that I mentioned in my story that their son (QB) threw four interceptions in a game, including one that was returned for the winning touchdown.

THEM: "Well, he threw two touchdowns, too. "
ME: "Yes, and I mentioned that."
THEM:"But why did you have to talk about the interceptions?"
ME: "Because it was a key part of the game."
THEM: "You shouldn't write that. You hurt his feelings."
ME: "Sorry, but you have to take the bad along with the good."

Did you then sing the theme to "The Facts of Life" to them? ;D