Just when I thought it was ok again to respect the game, I see too many subtle signs that the baseball media at large is reading our free copy, using our ideas and words as their own and acting as if we don't exist. And they like to talk about baseball's problems?
What about the shady creative impetus of so-called pro sports jounalists? What's the difference between a sports scribe coming here to do his homework and regurgitating fan copy as his own without so much as a credit or Barry Bonds using Creatine, a Maplewood bat or a juicy fruit baseball?
A raw scribe, unschooled, hardspoken and low brow not because they don't allow too many Italian-Americans into Ivy League schools, but because I'm too much of an individualist to be a pop cultural snob, my writings in this arena have taught me something about dog eat dog sports journalism.
While sports beat literati are amiss over old issues which are only new again because of an impending work stoppage, they gladhand the grand old game in droves to avoid controversy and drag their jobs down to the level of the sport they cover. For if they utter the truth, they may not get that next interview with the latest megastar or that next cushy seat at Fenway.
Moreover, when they are fresh out of ideas of their own, they come here for a quick fix of brain power from a guy like me who gives his opinions away for free. It's like a professional BS artist who trades in superior wit but has to steal his best quips at a public forum where FANS who have nothing to gain or lose will tell the TRUTH.
Indeed, while the Ron Santos will miss the Hall because writers who never played the game foolishly call the shots, how much will 3000 hits and 500 home runs mean in an era of cheating? If the current offense keeps up, in 15 years the Hall will be bursting at the seams. And next thing you know only 600 jacks and 3500 hits will make it.
Perhaps in 20 years, they'll be using golf balls, stadiums will be the size of NYC's Central Park and Tiger Woods will have long since switched sports. Hold that thought. You might read or hear it again at a cable sports network or cyberspace site near you. Minus the credit.
Although work published here is of free forum access, should copywrited material be free to the media without fair recognition of this website and the writers herein? I don't mind being subject to verbal or thought theft. I once had a baseball screenplay almost ripped off by a major studio in Hollywood. Long story.
Yet my point is, if contributions here are any good, then they deserve proper credit or recognition like the established sports savvy figures who choose to use them. On at least several occasions, I've witnessed this with my own writing. I'll be damned if I don't come here and spill my guts and then see a few media types either quote my ruminations thinly veiled as words of their own or make references that require individual identification and not a mass summation of public fan consensus at large.
But of course there is a moral of the story that leads us to the overall importance of baseball beat copy and all sports journalism in general. It is insignificant because too many writers and reporters are all caught up in the safe, politically correct status quo of sticking to the game between the lines and not the big picture.
So guys like me say it for them while they get paid to browse and verbally mug writers at the BaseballLibrary. I won't go away any time soon. Sooner or later someone will take a stand I hope. Maybe baseball needs a new pro league to compete with the so-called "major" one. I don't mean to be a dead horse, but the modern game is a dead horse that needs a beating.
Major League Baseball is a monopoly.
Unless a salary cap is instituted, then it should be disbanded as if it were Microsoft, starting with the Bronx Bombers. And if fans continue to confuse love of the game of baseball as opposed to the farce the "Majors" represents, then Uncle Sam must step in and do some MLB house cleaning.
At least half of today's so-called superstars are on some sort of performance enhancing substance. Legal or not, it's a blight on the game and
has no place in pro sports. Forget testing. It will be supervised by proverbial wolves in the hen house Catch them in the act and put them in jail or ban them.
All or most records set or passed since the juicing of equipment and bodies should be null and void or listed with asterisks. Either burn the record books after 1993 or segregate the results in the kid's fairy tale section at your local bookstore.
Forget the Players Strike. FANS need to boycott baseball and go on STRIKE until the game is fixed once and for all. There is a vast difference between the love of our national pastime and what MLB really represents. Once we learn to separate the two we can save the game by demanding that the level of fairness and reforms match the amount of money which has taken over and has destroyed the integrity of the game.
Now, there. Take notes if you will, sports media. I'll read you online or hear you on TV. Or me, I should say...
» Hank Festa is mad as hell and is not going to take it anymore. Not only is baseball "juiced" ... so is the the media that covers it.
Also by Hank Festa
» A Statistical Proposal For the Best-Ever Debate : Runs & Bases Per Hit Average
» The Straw Who Stirred Drinks: Mr. October's Legacy
» For Ted...: 1918-2002
» Strike Talk: It's Still A Players' Game ... But Not For Long
» MLB Pride: Waxing Poetic
» June Swoon: When Human Loss Makes MLB A Kid's Game Again
» Cramer's DiMaggio Hatchet Job: A Bio Worth Burning
» Looking for Growth ... In All The Right Places
» Get Your Red Sox Here: Weep All About It!
» The Strike Zone Or Your Life: The Bean Ball Debate Exposed
» Seasons In The Sun : Baseball In The 70s
» A Closet GM's Philosophy Of Winning: Stats & Role vs. Heart & Soul
» Gibby's '88 Series Limp Shot: Baseball's Last "Earned Home Run"
» Flamethrower's Epiphany: Confessions Of A Live Arm
» In The Event Of A Strike...: The Time Off Must Be Used to Fix the Game
» More submissions
Copyright © 2002 by Hank Festa. Posted July 30, 2002.
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