How does your paper handle hometown big-leaguers?

Wabberjocky · **Posted:** Tue Sep 06, 2005 12:34 am

I'm interested in how your paper gives special treatment â€” if it does at all â€” to major-league ballplayers who grew up in your coverage area.

At my smallish daily, we've been giving this a lot of thought as our ranks are starting to grow a bit looking ahead to 2006. We have Willie Bloomquist (Mariners), Aaron Sele (ex-Mariners, but perhaps not through), Jason Ellison (Giants), Todd Linden (Giants), Scott Hatteberg (A's) and one who will probably break through next year in Jason Hammel (Tampa Bay).

We're discussing special infoboxes for each player or for the players as a group, or a nightly "How the Hometown Guys Did" sidebar to our Mariners coverage ... or not doing anything regular, but instead just run periodic updates as space and cicumstances warrant.

Then there's the issue of how we track our locals who are in the minor leagues ....

Any ideas? Thoughts?

argyle · **Joined:** Sat Mar 05, 2005 11:27 pm **Posts:** 40

Mike Remlinger is from our coverage area. We don't cover big-league sports, so we haven't followed him that closely. Of course, then he signed with the Red Sox, so our sportswriters went a little nuts.

Summer is a slow time for a community newspaper's sports department.

Oeditpus Rex · **Posted:** Tue Sep 06, 2005 12:51 pm

A nearby paper's been doing this for a couple of years. (The only local guy I'm aware of currently in the show is Xavier Nady of the Padres, but there've been about half a dozen others over the years, including the Aldrete brothers and Ernie Camacho, incidentally a high school classmate of mine.) Generally they run a box in the Giants or A's story with what the player did the previous day and his season totals. This is readily available online, even for minor leaguers, and I think it's a good idea.

jjmoney62 · **Posted:** Tue Sep 06, 2005 1:11 pm

Nothing says "podunk" more than paying too much attention to local boys made good. I say it's overdone. Including at my own paper.

Wabberjocky · **Posted:** Tue Sep 06, 2005 1:20 pm

As a professional looking at other newspapers, I agree, jjmoney. But our readers have long been clamoring for regular local-kid updates. We're going to do something ... it's just a matter of how, and how often.

Oeditpus Rex · **Posted:** Tue Sep 06, 2005 1:31 pm

jjmoney62 wrote:

Nothing says "podunk" more than paying too much attention to local boys made good. I say it's overdone.

At metro papers, yes. At a 20,000-circ, it's of interest to a fair-sized chunk of readers.

ADKbrown · **Posted:** Thu Sep 08, 2005 10:45 am

When I was growing up in Utica, N.Y., the local paper daily ran the stats of our only two locals in the majors: Dave Cash and Boots Day. Cash was an all-star second baseman. Boots Day was a bench-warmer for the Expos who hit around the Mendoza Line. Seeing his pitiful stats on display like that, I always felt a little embarrassed for him. Many years later, I was flipping through a vendor's nickel cards at a baseball card show and came across his card. "Boots Day!" I exclaimed and handed over my nickel. At the time, the value of old baseball cards was rising exponentially (perhaps it still is). Because of my excitement, the vendor evidently feared there was something about the Boots Day card that made it worth more than a nickel. Perhaps as much as a quarter.

More recently, the Utica area gave us Andy Van Slyke and Mark Lemke. The paper still highlights local players, but I'm not sure who they are.

Wayne Countryman · **Posted:** Thu Sep 08, 2005 1:31 pm

I too felt sorry for Boots Day, especially when Dave Cash was putting up good numbers on strong Pirates teams and their stats showed up in the same little box every day.

I was born in Utica and grew up in nearby Rome, home of Archi Cianfrocco, who later played nearly every position with mediocrity--an occasionally handy guy in some fantasy leagues.

Pitcher Dave Giusti was from the area too, I think. Sometimes his stats would be posted in the Utica papers back in the 1970s. Pitchers' stats don't lend themselves as well to simple box treatment--they go days without changing.

For fans living far from a big-league team, especially those whose papers don't cover one team closely, local players' stats help fill a need (though maybe this isn't as true as it was before the Internet, fantasy leagues and cable TV).

wordygurdy · **Posted:** Thu Sep 08, 2005 1:52 pm

Well, I went to Utica College of Syracuse University for my first two years. Interesting that there are a few TCEers with a Utica connection! I didn't know there were so many major leaguers with a Utica connection.

I have to say, I couldn't wait to transfer out after my sophomore year. Utica had it all, as the city's then slogan said--including snow on May 6, 1986. Even as someone raised in Poughkeepsie, where the winters got plenty cold and snowy, I could not believe I was seeing frozen precipitation on May 6. I had made my decision to transfer long before then, owing to the colder-than-cold winters, but that weather event sealed the deal.

That said, Utica's journalism program, in which I was enrolled, was first rate (and probably still is). One graduates from Utica with a Syracuse University degree, which looks pretty cool on a resume.

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