Mitch Albom has a HoF vote; Rob Neyer doesn’t
posted in 2007-08 offseason |As I was watching hockey played outdoors and browsing the SportsJournalists.com forum, I ran into an interesting post: Joe Sheehan vs. BBWAA.
It refers to Sheehan’s recent article at Baseball Prospectus stating the Baseball Writers Association, which presents the MVP awards, among others, and votes on the Hall of Fame, excludes most Internet writers such as Sheehan or ESPN.com’s Rob Neyer. (Not all are excluded, several online writers are now members.) Meanwhile, the names on the BBWAA badge list are sometimes confounding and serve to make Sheehan’s point: You don’t even have to cover baseball to be a member, as long as you work for a newspaper that gets near the sport live at least once-in-awhile.
If you want to get frustrated, read some responses on that forum. (Sheehan is a “blogger” to one!) But I don’t want to paint a bad picture, there’s some thoughtful responses from BBWAA members as well as “regular” journalists.
I bring this up because I followed a link to The Biz of Baseball to see what Michigan members might exist (search by Detroit). And remember, if you are a 10-year member of the organization, you have a Hall of Fame vote, but not necessarily a vote for the other awards.
You’ll find oldtymers that make sense like Tom Gage, Lynn Henning, John Lowe and Danny Knobler. You’ll find newcomer Jon Paul Morosi. You’ll find some you wonder about, like Traverse City’s Jeff Peek (does he cover a lot of Tigers baseball? I know the R-E does do a few articles but I’m not a regular reader). You’ll find Detroit News sports editor Ruben Luna and Freep sports editor Gene Meyers and wonder what the point in their membership is. Yet Jason Beck, who covers probably 140 regular season games, Spring Training and the postseason, is ineligible to become a member, period, because he works for MLB.com.
You’ll find a couple of columnists (year is when they received their badge), two or three of whom make you go WHUH? The first four have HoF voting rights.
- Jerry Green, 1960
- Mitch Albom, 1986
- Pat Caputo, 1987
- Rob Parker, 1990
- Drew Sharp, 1999
- Michael Rosenberg, 2001
So there you have it. To the BBWAA, The Little Fella is more qualified than Joe Sheehan in deciding who should make the baseball Hall of Fame. Rob Parker is more qualified than Rob Neyer.
My two cents:
Anyone involved in journalism knows that it is changing, more rapidly each year. Your morning newspaper is updating nearly constantly online, making the paper edition less valuable to the modern reader, but allowing the news gathering organization to remain afloat in the 24-hour news cycle. (Your afternoon newspaper, except in small communities, is dead or dying, as evidenced by the Cincy Post exiting the newspaper world Monday). And suddenly, for some reason, your news paper is becoming involved both in audio (podcasts) and with video(!!). That’s not just the metro papers either, but even smaller newspapers. My own circulation 15,000 paper, will soon add video. Basically, your newspaper and mine learned to evolve to stay alive in today’s 24/7 world by shifting more and more weight to the online world. (Not that everyone likes that. There are fewer journalists and many older ones are struggling with the change. This also tends to mean more work, faster, at the same low pay.)
That introduction was a longwinded way of saying the BBWAA had better figure out that modern newspapers and online-only publications are fast becoming the same beast. It does not matter if one has had a nameplate around for 100 years and the other hasn’t — they are the same beast now. (And the elder folks out there had better learn the differences between online publications and blogs so they don’t come off sounding out-of-touch or ignorant.)
When an important game ends, the online users are looking for news and opinion sources they trust. They want video highlights from the TV folks or the league themselves. They want quotes from people in the locker room — actual substantial quotes. Rote cliche makes an article with quotes no more special than one without them, frankly. They want analysis of what went right or wrong, why A or B happened or didn’t, and how their favorite player’s performance ranked. Oh, and they want it NOW. The deadline pressure applies to everyone. If it’s a big game, you’ll probably find guys from the online publications there. (And you know what? These guys are not “just watching games on TV,” it is their profession.)
This is so important I’ll do a quick recap:
- Sound.
- Video.
- Facts.
- Informed opinions.
All four things. From every source the reader personally trusts when making his or her own opinion. They’re looking for quality.
Immediately.
That is the online world. That is the world as it exists today.
Newspapers have realized this. Journalists (and their guilds) must as well.
Sphere It
There was a quite a debate a few weeks back as both Rob Neyer and Keith Law were not accepted into the BBWAA. Both writers I read regularly and value their opinions.
The reasons given for both was that they do not attend enough games. Implicit in this is that the value of membership was to gain clubhouse or other access. Keith put his take up here: http://www.meadowparty.com/blog/?p=103 and later follow up: http://www.meadowparty.com/blog/?p=104
It is obviously very political and needs to change. Though I think it is changing.
This is very depressing. Two thoughts on Mitch Albom:
1) The man has made a career of turning “rote cliche” into a veritable cash cow. (And Mr. Sharp and Mr. Parker are doing well when they can achieve the level of “rote cliche.” Rosenberg at least provides some real information/analysis in most columns.)
2) If attending games is a criterion for voting, isn’t Albom immediately highly suspect as one of what must be only a few journalist to have lied about attending a specific sporting event?
“You’ll find some you wonder about, like Traverse City’s Jeff Peek (does he cover a lot of Tigers baseball?…”
On Jeff Peek…he has done an interview with The Baseball Analysts and wrote a Designated Hitter piece there as well.
http://baseballanalysts.com/archives/2005/12/pride_and_preju.php
http://baseballanalysts.com/archives/2004/12/a_peek_into_the_1.php
He’s also joined in over here at Baseball Primer for some HOF raps in the past.
Thankfully…he’s no Mitch Album.
Thanks for the links Repoz. Good to see Peek hangs out in the right places and is willing to stay open minded. I’m sure he’s a good cat. But when I saw Traverse City on the list, I wondered how a guy gets a card from “240″ miles away from the ballpark.
The irony in the Albom stuff is he was my favorite writer growing up and made me a newspaper reader for as long as I remember. Back when he was more of a feature columnist — I’m bringing up a first-person he wrote about ski jumping at Lillehammer — he was great. Like the early 90s. It’s really a shame he got so far off track.
As for BBWAA, I think their own subjectivity is what’s getting them in trouble. “I know it when I see it” always causes disputes.
I’m with ya 100% on this one. Some of my favorite writers do not have a vote. You’ve made all of the same points that I would argue so I won’t repeat them all. Nice work.
So true. Some of the people that do not have a vote are unreal and then when i hear the logic of those that do, i wonder how they earned a vote.