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In Other News, Newspapers Still Trailing As We Head to the Bottom of the Eighth

Memo To: Boston Globe sports department.
From: A Real Live Subscriber. You Remember Those, Right?
CC: Dan Shaughnessy

Yours truly once coined the phrase that a columnist should never be afraid to grasp the obvious. I stand by that theorem, too. There is, however, such a thing as overdoing it.

May I suggest that having a columnist who's covered over 30 years' worth of spring trainings write a piece that says "nothing much happening at spring training" falls into that category. Such an essay has all sorts of unspoken messages, none of which reflect well on the writer or his employer.

1. Heard about the Lindbergh baby? OF COURSE nothing much is happening at Red Sox spring training in 2010. Nothing much happened at Red Sox spring training in 1910 and almost all the spring trainings in between. Aside from players getting hurt or involved in bar fights, nothing much has EVER happened at any spring training.

2. Your readers are well aware of this fact. It is, weird but true, one of the biggest reasons why they like spring training in the first place. It took me a long time to figure that out. When I did, I started to get other assignments. Sports is a big place, and there's no requirement that either a commentator or a consumer need care about all of it.

3. If, however, said commentator makes a huge deal about baseball in general and the Sox in particular approximately 9 of 10 working days, even when writing about other sports, complaining that the object of his affection is boring him is, at best, unseemly.

4. Here's the real danger. It relates to bullet point two. Readers who know damn well spring training is a pleasant ritual of little import will read today's column by Dan and say. "Spring training dull? You've been to how many of them and NOW you're figuring this out? What the &%@! have you been looking at when you've watched baseball all these years?

posted by Michael Gee @ 9:01 AM