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A journalism inquiry

Second-guessing live newspaper coverage of sports events is a risky endeavor. If readers knew how many things can and do go wrong in the process, they'd be pleasantly surprised their paper arrives printed right side up. One of my most painful career memories is how I and the rest of the Herald's four-man team for Super Bowl XXIII (49ers 23-Bengals 16) left a seam in its zone and somehow managed not to write a separate story on Joe Montana.

So with no, merely a genuine sense of mystery, I have the following questions for Dan Shaughnessy and the Boston Globe this morning.

1. It's not unusual for two major sports events to take place in the same American city on the same day-especially not in New York, our biggest city. I don't know a single serious sports fan who hasn't attended two different games in one day at some point in their lives. Why in hell was doing so yesterday considered newsworthy? We know New York has a subway system.

2. The Globe is devoted to baseball, and Shaughnessy is more devoted to baseball than just about anyone I know. As an eyewitness to one of the damnedest plays in post-season history, two men thrown out at home on the same play almost simultaneously, how the triple hell could Dan not make THAT his column? Would it have spoiled the pregame plan? Tough. He should've done what any columnist worth his salt in that spot would've done-whined and wailed, big-foot up the chain of command, and be a colossal pain in the ass until he got his hands on the play as his column topic.

Dan knows that drill as well as anyone. How come he didn't?

posted by Michael Gee @ 8:12 AM