Steve Kelley, Not A Big Fan Of Blogs
We generally don’t link to Steve Kelley’s stuff, mainly because we don’t want you guys to be tempted to read it. But today, Steve decides to talk about the blogosphere.
I can almost hear the dissent building irrationally. Nerves beginning to fray. Cactus League questions lining up like hitters by the batting cage.
Bloggers blogging until their finger tips are as worn as base-stealer’s pants. Anxiety increasing before Felix Hernandez has thrown the season’s first pitch.
His intro paragraph is clear - bloggers are ready to freak out over spring training results.
Before Tuesday’s 10-3 win over Texas, the Mariners were 0-5 and a guy actually came up to me at breakfast Tuesday, shaking his head and telling me, in all seriousness, he thought Mariners manager Mike Hargrove was doing a lousy job this spring.
That comment got me imagining the kind of blogosphere nonsense that could build rapidly if the Mariners keep losing before the real games begin.
Guy in Arizona makes a dumb comment to Kelley during Spring Training? Why, he must be a blogger. And since that blogger is frustrated with the team, they must all be frustrated with the team. In fact, I bet I could guess exactly what they’re saying without even reading the blogs themselves!
I conjured a group of passionate, well-intentioned, if not quite well-informed, fans hunkered in some chat room, debating the Mariners’ slow start in the desert.
“There he goes again, mismanaging his bullpen,” ILuvGar types, beginning the debate. “What’s Hargrove thinking bringing in his closer in the sixth inning of Monday’s game against the Cubs? I know we were clinging to a 4-3 lead, but what’s J.J. Putz doing in there?
I love that Steve Kelley calls us “not quite well-informed”. Pot, meet kettle.
Also, for comparison with what Kelley expects us to write, here’s what I actually wrote about the team’s start the other day:
The team is beginning to build faith in a resurgent year by… losing every spring training game they play. They’re now 0-5 in games that don’t count. No, this doesn’t matter at all. No, you shouldn’t care. No, this isn’t evidence of Mike Hargrove’s inability to motivate his players. It means nothing. Really.
Similar, huh?
The rest of the column is similar drivel about make believe comments that you can’t imagine even an 8-year-old making.
It’s okay, Steve. We’re not the enemy. We’re not even that different than you. We watch the games, we write about what we see, and we use the best knowledge we know how to evaluate what goes on in front of us. We even use full paragraphs from time to time.
The term blogger doesn’t mean irrational idiot any more than staff columnist does.
Hi, I’m a strawman, knock me down!
I’m conjuring up a very lazy Steve Kelley who was too busy doing shots of Jagermeister to do any actual research for an article, much less write it, so he whipped up a whinefest about “bloggers” instead.
The sad part is, that is probably closer to the truth than anything Steve Kelley has ever written.
March 7th, 2007 at 6:45 amMy e-mail to Kelley:
Mr. Kelley,
Would it not have been better journalism to have actually consulted some of the most popular and best informed Mariner blogs (such as U.S.S. Mariner and Lookout Landing) to see what they actually are saying rather than making up a fictional blogosphere that has no basis in reality? Absolutely no one who cares enough about baseball to post to a blog regularly harbors illusions about the importance of spring training games. The arguments against Hargrove have certainly been made in those places, but not for his performance in spring training games. The best-informed of these blogs place very little
March 7th, 2007 at 6:45 amimportance on spring training even as a way of evaluating talent, so why would they evaluate the manager during the spring? If you are trying to throw a bone to the “regular fan,” why not provide some real substance? I don’t have a problem with fiction. I have a problem with columns that simply aren’t true.
The print media is really upset at blogs, “unininformed” people, freely distributing material, stealing their thunder. The smart writers are embracing it, going as far as making their own blogs.
March 7th, 2007 at 7:05 amBeing made fun of by Steve Kelley?
My life has reached a whole new pinnacle of irony. It’s beautiful.
March 7th, 2007 at 7:15 amHey Steve, perhaps you should stick to what you do best.
Write one-sentence paragraphs.
Badly.
March 7th, 2007 at 7:17 amDon’t forget the fact that the “bloggers” he read were just a group of people in, as Kelly wrote, “some chatroom”.
March 7th, 2007 at 7:25 amI read this drivel this morning, and wasn’t surprised to see you guys already all over it.
Kelley’s writing is so stupefyingly bad that it’s tough to read carefully enough, but after forcing myself to comprehend this steaming pile of writing, it’s clear that he made up all of the quotes and usernames.
If the “blogosphere” is really going irrationally nuts over losing spring training games, it shouldn’t be real difficult to find actual quotes to illustrate his point.
Lazy, dishonest and smug is no way to go through life, son.
March 7th, 2007 at 7:31 amWell, one difference would be the use of an editor. Another may be the ability to change a flat tire, but I can’t be 100% sure about that one.
I’m not sure why you’re taking his article personally. I don’t think he was really talking about informed bloggers. Maybe he’s been visiting the PI Forum. Really, it might help to grow some thicker skin. (especially in light of recent events)
March 7th, 2007 at 7:36 amC’mon guys. You know the deal. Pocket Lint has retired.
Obviously, the mantle has been passed on to Kelly.
The standard “Mariners are losing money” column is just around the corner……..
March 7th, 2007 at 7:37 amIs there any evidence that Kelley actually watches the games? Maybe we’re not like him………..
March 7th, 2007 at 7:39 amThe irony of that quote is that alot of bloggers would probably favor putting Putz in a tight game in the 6th rather than waiting for the 9th every time with a 3 run lead.
March 7th, 2007 at 7:43 amI think this stuff is crap, but in Kelley’s defense (the only defense I would dare off him), I think the line, “I conjured a group of passionate, well-intentioned, if not quite well-informed . . ”
actually means the bloggers are passionate, well-intentioned AND perhaps or probably well-informed. The use of the “if not” in this case serves to note an attribute that is probably true. He then of course goes on to dump all over any reasonable agrument that he thinks us well-informed, but hey, that’s Steve for you.
For Reference:
if not
adverb
March 7th, 2007 at 7:45 amperhaps; indicating possibility of being more remarkable (greater or better or sooner) than; “will yield 10% if not more”; “pretty if not actually beautiful”; “let’s meet tonight if not sooner”
ah-hem. “the only defense I were dare OFFER him, that is. Freudian slip.
March 7th, 2007 at 7:46 amThere is only one solution to determine Steve Kelley’s intent. Start a wikipedia page about him based on your opinions of his journalism and see if he takes the bait and writes about how inaccurate wikipedia is within one month.
Recently, someone added some slightly untrue stuff to Collin Cowherd’s page, and he talked about it on the air, essentially saying wikipedia is terrible and inaccurate despite studies to the contrary.
Yes, everyone can make fun of me for listening to ESPN radio, but in my defense you would too if you had to sit in So Cal traffic every morning.
March 7th, 2007 at 7:56 amI stopped reading Stevie’s stuff years ago because it’s mostly garbage. However, this morning’s piece tempted me to the point of taking a look-see…but better judgment took over.
Philosophical question: If the Times publishes something by Steve and nobody reads it, did Steve really write something?
Steve’s just mad because he’s paid to write and can’t attract a readership while bloggers do it for the love of the game and have plenty of readers.
March 7th, 2007 at 7:57 amBTW, I can certainly see Dave’s reading of what Kelley wrote, and that line of Kelley’s is nothing IF NOT ambiguous. I have no idea why I would give Kelley the benefit of the doubt that he chose his words poorly rather than took a shot. Something must be wrong with me. . maybe I should see a doctor . ..
March 7th, 2007 at 8:00 amI highly doubt that Kelley can even define or distinguish between message boards, chat rooms, and blogs. His internet knowledge matches his baseball knowledge. By the way, does he ignore Geoff Baker because he “blogs.” In fact, most newspapers, including the Seattle Times, run and publish numerous blogs on their on-line editions. Thankfully, the Times has not offered to give Kelley a blog.
March 7th, 2007 at 8:07 amanyone know just where that chatroom is? It sounds like a fun place to visit
March 7th, 2007 at 8:18 amI emailed the editor of the Times sports section a few weeks ago to voice my displeasure at the overall “sucky-ness” of Steve’s articles [including. his. habit. of. writing. one. sentence. paragraphs.]
I got a canned response about how they have multiple columnists that may not all appeal to me. Blah. What makes me mad is that there are tons of better “columnists” out there and he gets paid to turn in crappy, uninsightful articles.
March 7th, 2007 at 8:20 amI am surprised his column didn’t go like this:
“One cannot trust the internets.
Chatting on blobs all day.
Increasing the tension level by conspiring on the http://www.dots. Who knows what kind of people these are?
You can still read this guy in print!
The little number ticker thingy that my assistant checks says nobody even accesses my columns on the internets anyways.
That says all I need to know about the average blobber’s intelligence.
I still submit my work on my good old fashioned Smith Premier 1896 Model 2. Let’s see Steve Jobs match my superior typebar action.
Internets. Right. Like THAT is ever going to go anywhere.”
March 7th, 2007 at 8:20 am#17 - We don’t know for a fact that the Times hasn’t offered Kelley a blog, we only know (and are thankful) that he doesn’t have one. It’s entirely possible that they did indeed say, “Steve, want a blog?” To which he likely replied, “No, thanks, I just had lunch.”
March 7th, 2007 at 8:22 amYou know, trashing Steve Kelley is more enjoyable than worrying about why the Mariners don’t just play their regular starting line-up for nine innings in a Spring Training game so they can get a win!!! Thanks for the fodder Stevie!
March 7th, 2007 at 8:28 amthinking about it … either the unnamed, head-shaking fan in Arizona said “Steve, as a longtime blogger, I think Mariners manager Mike Hargrove is doing a lousy job this spring”, or, when said fan shook his head at Steve, Steve recalled that someone, sometime up in the pressbox last summer mentioned that many local blogs had the irrational notion that Hargrove was doing a poor job, and perhaps should have been fired the previous year
March 7th, 2007 at 8:33 am#20, unfortunately, your imitation of Kelley’s articles are spot on. We should write parody articles, set them side by side with his real articles, and see if anyone can tell a difference.
March 7th, 2007 at 8:43 amIf you think of the blogsphere as the (now defunct?) p-i blog and mlb.com’s forums, then Kelley’s comments aren’t far from truth. Basically the passionate, irrational fan is a bit freaked by the 0-5 start.
Of course, if you think of the blogsphere as USSM, Looking Landing, et al, it’s nowhere close to truth. (Really it’s both, I guess.)
What this column shows is that Kelley doesn’t know the difference between a blog, a forum, and a chat room or blogging and commenting. Really by bloggers he means “casual fans” and doesn’t know the difference. Actually I’d suggest the terms are opposites — anyone serious enough to write about the Mariners on their blog, much less have a blog dedicated to the Mariners, has a fandom that is anything but “casual”.
#2 firova, let us know if you hear anything back from Steve Kelley beyond “thanks for your comments”. I’ll buy you a beer if you do.
March 7th, 2007 at 9:01 amThis is nonsense.
You’re just attacking.
A wonderful.
Writer.
Jealousy?
How dare.
You!
March 7th, 2007 at 9:28 amThis article is hilarious. Kelley clearly indicates that his is making up (”conjuring”) the whole discussion. It really would not have taken him long to find enough dumb real comments somewhere to fill out his article, but he can’t be bothered to do actual research. He spends 15 minutes writing his article and calls it a good day’s work.
March 7th, 2007 at 9:32 amI want to meet these Mariners bloggers he’s talking about. He’s either lying, or Corco has one heck of a sockpuppet collection.
March 7th, 2007 at 9:32 amThe term blogger doesn’t mean irrational idiot any more so than staff columnist does.
In Seattle, given the major bloggers and the major staff columnists, it’s rather more the other way around (and it isn’t close).
March 7th, 2007 at 9:47 amThat’s awfully cruel to Mr Corcoran. His puppets would be much better informed than that.
March 7th, 2007 at 9:48 amAs Ted Stevens said, the internet isn’t like a big truck.
It’s a series of tubes.
These blogosphere guys are in there sending their interwebs to each other without really knowing about baseball.
Like I do.
March 7th, 2007 at 10:14 amI can’t believe Kelley is still there. I guess local newspaper sports columns are appointments for life. He’s never been less than embarrassing. Even setting aside his dumb opinions about sports, he’s a godawful writer and hasn’t developed one whit in all the time he’s been there; he still has the same bundle of stylistic tics masquerading as a style that he’s always had. How long has he been writing that column? A quarter century? And is there anyone who thinks he’s even moderately notable as a sportswriter, much less any kind of local institution? He’s set some kind of standard for persistent mediocrity, a small but irritating itch that won’t go away.
March 7th, 2007 at 12:21 pmLook, guys. This is what Steve Kelley does. If he ever did figure out to manipulate the series of tubes to get onto the Internet and make regular posts that are of the same quality of his writing, we’d call him a troll. His modus operandi is to make inflammatory comments that piss people off with the hopes that a. the people who are pissed off will buy the paper in order to read what’s pissing them off, and b. the people who are angry at the people Kelley went out of his way to offend just now will buy subscriptions to support their champion. I’m not saying that the people in Group B are very intelligent, but they’ve been around for a long, long time. “Summer of 49″ talks about one Boston writer in particular who fashioned an entire career out of calling Ted Williams a bum.
The problem here is, if you respond then you just support his idiocy. Of course, this is a blog and if you don’t respond there’s that proverbial 800 pound gorilla sitting in the room for the next few days. I wish there was a way to alert people to the writing without sending them over to the Times webpage (where they’ll see all those readers as hits and clap Kelley on the back for massaging the Interwebs). Perhaps if you Fisked the entire article, bolde-style?
March 7th, 2007 at 1:08 pmKelley’s style is similar to that of a teenager who first discovers Ferlinghetti, yet his content is studded with opinions that make you think the words “by cracky” or “whippersnapper” will inevitably appear before the end of the article.
This makes me believe that one of his role models must have been Jim Murray, who won numerous awards but always reminded me of a bad borscht belt comedian who had been exiled to the sports page.
Murray’s articles tended to be a series of loosely-connected wisecracks. Occasionally some of them were funny, but the sports insights weren’t particularly insightful.
I think of Kelley as Jim Murray without the occasional good joke but with many more uninsightfully insightful sports insights.
When Kelley left Portland for Seattle, I wept for joy.
March 7th, 2007 at 1:21 pmRe #32: Back when Bill Simmons was just the Boston Sports Guy, he wrote a column talking about trying to make it as a sportswriter (and why he opted out and went on the Web); from the picture he painted, yeah, local newspaper sports columns pretty much are appointments for life. Heck, judging from the Ron Borges story (a Globe sportswriter who ripped off the TNT’s Mike Sando), even blatant plagiarism isn’t enough to cost you your job.
March 7th, 2007 at 1:29 pmYou know, Celadus, I bet you’re right about Kelley idolizing Murray. Personally, I always thought Murray was honestly funny, but even if you liked his stuff, he was one of those guys that no writer should ever try to copy. If you do, you wind up . . . well . . . Steve Kelley.
(I honestly do not understand how that man ever got a job. Even when I didn’t know how little he actually knows about sports, I could still see he was an idiot.)
March 7th, 2007 at 1:33 pmBorges did get suspended today
and lest we forget, Kelley immortalized
March 7th, 2007 at 1:37 pm#31 - every once in a while when the tues get clogged you have to send a baseball through there to knock out the porno and keep things running smoothly.
March 7th, 2007 at 1:39 pm“tues” was suppose to be “tubes”. Sorry.
March 7th, 2007 at 1:39 pmUh, today is Weds.
March 7th, 2007 at 2:05 pmcorrection to #41:
March 7th, 2007 at 3:59 pmugh. today is *only* Weds.
Let’s talk about something more edifying, speaking of blogs…
#3. chrisisasavage said: The print media is really upset at blogs, “unininformed” people, freely distributing material, stealing their thunder. The smart writers are embracing it, going as far as making their own blogs.
To celebrate chris’ last sentence, let me post an excerpt from ESPN’s Buster Olney’s blog (I rarely quote him, but the subject is near and dear to my heart):
March 7th, 2007 at 4:28 pmOh, one more thing about baseball bloggers:
Boston pitcher Curt Schilling has been known for his lack of shyness in expounding on a lot of stuff both baseball-related and not. He’s posted on a couple of fans-of-AL-East-teams message boards the past couple of years, and now has started up his own blog.
He’s probably not the first baseball player to do this, but I think he’s the first high profile active player. Should be interesting reading.
March 7th, 2007 at 5:06 pmPhilsophical Question #2
How is it that you can remember that you’ve forgotten something? Furthermore, how is it that you can remember that you have forgotten something, know what it is not but still not know what it is?
I’ll give you a few minutes to think…
March 7th, 2007 at 5:07 pmthere have been several articles about Jamie– I think the Phillies writers find him a novelty in many ways …
old men Moyer & Roges … Moyer works hard
March 7th, 2007 at 5:19 pmRE: #44. I suppose I should have qualified my comment in #43 by saying instead “…I think he’s the first high profile MLB-active player to RECENTLY start up a blog.” (as well as hold promise to make it really interesting to read)
Is this what you’re referring to, remembering something forgotten? If it’s been linked, I never clicked on it. I actually found it Googling (which I probably should have done before 5:06 pm).
March 7th, 2007 at 5:27 pmRe #37: yeah, msb, I know he was suspended; my point is, he was only suspended, which seems to me wildly insufficient for plagiarism.
March 7th, 2007 at 5:41 pm#46 — well, I just updated that page two days ago with some more blogs the other day, actually. But there have been plenty of player blogs in the past, some of which get updated a lot, some of which don’t. The ones that don’t are generally in the MLB, and the ones that do are generally in the NPB, at least in my observations. I think the one that impressed me the most was Takuro Ishii’s blog, which he pretty much updates daily through the season and offseason… and he’s currently something like #2 on the career hit list of current active NPB players (2135 career hits — in Japan you need 2000 for automatic inclusion in the Meikyukai). It’d be sort of like if Craig Biggio wrote a blog and updated it daily.
Pat Neshek is the rare exception in the MLB, and his blog is pretty awesome.
Anyway, I hope Curt continues with his, since he’s one of my favorite baseball geeks. I’ll have to go add it to the player blog page later — I’d just skimmed mlblogs when trying to find this year’s list.
March 7th, 2007 at 6:00 pmRe: Moyer. I miss him in so many ways. He’ll make one helluva pitching coach someday.
March 7th, 2007 at 7:21 pmYou rang?
March 7th, 2007 at 10:07 pmThe web is full of horrible chatty rooms. What this guy doesn’t realize is that there are lots of wonderful bloggers out there. He is also missing the point that there is a difference between the authors and commentors.
March 8th, 2007 at 1:51 pm