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Sports
October 20, 2006
Where There's Smoke, There's a Sportswriter Taking Notes
Kids, don't start smoking. At least not now. Wait until you're an old baseball manager. Then it will confer instant credibility and create a colorful lead image for profiles of you. Just ask Tigers skipper Jim Leyland.
Sports
October 20, 2006
Brings Out the Tiger in You!
Outside of fans in Detroit and St. Louis, the only people who should be truly happy about this year's World Series matchup are editors from around the country. The teams, after all, have some of the easiest mascots in the world to use as headline fodder. "Not in the Cards," AM New York declared today. "Tigers maul Athletics," The Guardian quipped a week earlier. Surely editors had to be rooting against the Metsso they wouldn't have to beat gems such as "All Mets are Off" for the next week.
Media
October 18, 2006
Macaque Attack
In New Delhi, habituated macaques are running wild in the streets, stealing food from vendors and harassing passersby. In order to deal with the rambunctious monkeys, government workers have tried everything from sterilizing them to trapping and moving them far away. (India's religious and social mores, it seems, prevent strategic culling.) But the potential solution that has received the most ink in the press is bringing in langurs—big monkeys that seem to scare the crap out of their smaller simian counterparts—to send the macaques packing.
Sports
October 16, 2006
Racist like a Fox, or Crazy like a Lyons?
Fox baseball analyst Steve Lyons was fired after Game 3 of the ALCS on Friday. The crime: saying something so weird on air that Fox officials decided it must be racist. Various reporters and bloggers have tried and failed to explain the meaning of the exchange between Lyons and Lou Piniella (it has something to do with Spanglish and a wallet), and have come to two different conclusions about Lyons's intentions.
Media
October 16, 2006
Ingredient in Newspaper Industry's Comeback Drive: Prophecy
Spotted in Monday's Akron Beacon Journal: "Editor's note: Monday night's game between the Mets and Cardinals was not completed in time for this edition. For the result, call the Beacon Journal Scoreline at 330-996-3830 or log on to ohio.com"
Sports
October 12, 2006
Some Players Never Forgave Lidle
Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle died Wednesday after a small plane he was flying crashed into a high-rise on Manhattan's east side. The media today remembers Lidle as outspoken, a lover of flying, and a family man who was liked by his teammates. But when Lidle last made headlines, as part of a trade bringing him from Philadelphia to New York, it was a different part of his life that dominated: His one inning of spring training in 1995, during the baseball players' strike. That inning marked him as a replacement player—rendered less politely by some teammates as "scab"— and caused him years of grief.
Sports
October 11, 2006
The Spreading Myth of Wally Pipp
Wally Pipp lost his starting job as Yankees first baseman to Lou Gehrig, who went on to star in that position for the next 2,130 games. The oft-repeated story behind the switch—that Pipp benched himself due to a headache—is an urban legend (it seems that manager Miller Huggins replaced lots of starters once the 1925 season went down the tubes; Pipp would hit just .230 that season), but that hasn't stopped many in the sports media from repeating various aspects of it as a cautionary tale for today's athletes. Here are some recent examples:
Media
October 9, 2006
Drinking Too Much
Earlier this election season, consultant Dan Geary told the New York Times that the process of trying to maintain the puny servers behind Joseph Lieberman's website was "like trying to drink from a fire hose." John McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis, used the same watery simile to describe to the Washington Post the outsize attention his presidential candidate is getting from the press. So politicians and silly clichés go together like peas and carrots—we already knew that. What sort of other things can be compared to drinking from a fire hose? Gelf investigates.
Media
October 8, 2006
'Putridly Written, Directed, and Acted'
In this week's edition of Blurb Racket—the Gelf feature in which we take a close look at those critic blurbs that are a fixture of ads for movies—see breakdowns of blurbs for The Last King of Scotland, The Guardian, The Departed, and more. This week's Bogus Blurb of the Week comes in an ad for A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints:
Media
October 3, 2006
WaPo's Kurtz on WaPo's Foley Coverage
On Friday, House Majority Leader John Boehner told The Washington Post that he had told House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert about Mark Foley's page problem, and that Hastert assured him "we're taking care of it." The Post printed the quote. Later Friday, Boehner called back the Post to say he couldn't remember whether he'd spoken to Hastert, so the Post yanked the "we're taking care of it" quote from the final version of the article, as noted by Daily Kos. Since then, Boehner appears to have returned to his original version (TPMmuckraker). Perhaps the Post editors should have listened to their own press critic, who has some sage advice on how to deal with a flip-flopping politician.
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