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Oh, ESPN.com, how I despise you
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Author:  wordygurdy [ Tue Jul 26, 2005 11:47 am ]
Post subject:  Oh, ESPN.com, how I despise you
For putting nearly all your baseball columnists into a paid-subscriber area.

Anyone here at TCE subscribe to this area? Is it worth the dough?

I used to enjoy checking out Jayson Stark's and Peter Gammons' columns every once in a while, but there's only so much time in the day. I'm ambivalent about having to pay to read them.
Author:  Matthew Grieco [ Tue Jul 26, 2005 2:56 pm ]
Post subject: 
I subscribe because of Rob Neyer.

Yeah, it's extortion, but my baseball experience wouldn't feel complete without him.
Author:  wordygurdy [ Tue Jul 26, 2005 5:04 pm ]
Post subject: 
Thanks, Matthew. He's pretty good.

It's been curious to watch the process of ESPN's putting the columnists into the paid-only area. First it was Buster Olney, then Stark, then Gammons. (Don't know where Neyer was in that continuum.) I was actually a bit surprised Gammons wasn't the first one ESPN put into the paid-only area, given his popularity.
Author:  Wabberjocky [ Tue Jul 26, 2005 5:15 pm ]
Post subject: 
I used to subscribe, until they replaced knowledgeable baseball people like John Sickels with obnoxious mainstream columnists like Olney, Ratto, etc. Neyer is comparatively brilliant but not nearly as leading-edge or influential as he used to be.

And, I happen to know — through people I know who know him — that Neyer is leaving ESPN.com soon.

I rarely look at ESPN.com anymore. MLB.com, Baseball Prospectus, Diamond Mind, Baseball Primer, Baseball Cube and a number of other sites have far better content. Most are subscriber-only — or have subscriber-only material as a majority of their content — but you get much more for your money on those sites, in my opinion.
Author:  wordygurdy [ Tue Jul 26, 2005 5:41 pm ]
Post subject: 
Hmm, thanks for the recommendations, Wabberjocky. Though I do like Buster Olney's work. He also appears occasionally on a weekly local late-night TV sports-wrapup show called "Mike'd Up" (hosted by Mike Francesa, he of the Mike and the Mad Dog radio show) and is always sharp and informative.
Author:  Matthew Grieco [ Tue Jul 26, 2005 6:15 pm ]
Post subject: 
Wabberjocky wrote:
And, I happen to know — through people I know who know him — that Neyer is leaving ESPN.com soon.


Thanks for the heads-up. I won't renew my subscription.
Author:  Wabberjocky [ Tue Jul 26, 2005 6:17 pm ]
Post subject: 
From what I hear, he's getting the John Sickels treatment ... he's fallen out of favor because he's not a loudmouthed newspaper columnist who does a lot of TV and talk radio on the side. (I think that's what's called "synergy" or something.)
Author:  Matthew Grieco [ Tue Jul 26, 2005 6:33 pm ]
Post subject: 
Yep, ESPN has definitely decided it wants to be trendy more than informative. Neyer is the one of the few remaining writers who gives them any credibility, and if he's leaving, I am too.

If you want my vote for "Most Insufferable Columnist on Any Subject" (and I don't just mean on ESPN or on baseball), it goes to Jayson Stark. I loathe his writing. I'm not sure he's ever written a column without some variation on the following explanatory device: "The last time the Braves didn't win their division, half their current starting lineup were still in diapers and nobody had even heard of Bill Clinton yet, let alone George W. Bush." Or this one: "Rockies bench coach/humorist John Smith quipped ..."

He uses the same lines again and again and again and gets paid to do it. Lots of columnists are guilty of this but Stark is the worst offender I've seen.

Then there's Page 2. It has its place -- even I, as a Yankees fan, can appreciate guys like Bill Simmons and Jim Caple sometimes -- but its goofy approach is spilling over into the whole of ESPN.com. I'm sure that they know what they're doing from a business perspective -- it's a well-known fact the country is getting dumber by the day -- but they're losing a war they were once winning: the fight to have a sports website regarded as high-quality journalism.
Author:  Wabberjocky [ Tue Jul 26, 2005 6:43 pm ]
Post subject: 
Exactly. People like Neyer and Sickels aren't frat-boy yahoos who provide comfort food for people's existing opinions ... therefore they don't sell.
Author:  Wabberjocky [ Tue Jul 26, 2005 6:45 pm ]
Post subject: 
Agree on Stark. Notice that he leans on the same sources time after time. If you read nothing but him, you'd think mediocre outfielder Doug Glanville is the second coming of Mark Twain, Robert Benchley, H.L. Mencken and Will Rogers combined.
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