Bedard and the invented media controversy
Now maybe this is me being cranky because I finally saw a doc about this sickness and the options were bad and worse, but I don’t care at all if Bedard gives good quote or not as long as he pitches well and doesn’t commit any crimes that involve hurting other people. Ibanez and Bloomquist are well-paid to be the public face of the franchise and provide quality post-game interview content.
This is the same kind of baloney that gets peddled about Ichiro not being a leader because he’s quiet, not demonstrative, always uses an interpreter when he does interviews, and frequently gives interesting and thoughtful comments that defy easy dissection for quotability.
None of this matters.
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which is why having someone in a widely-listened-too radio show actually describe it as “a brewing controversy” so annoying. It is only brewing because you talked about it for 2 hours.
p.s. DMZ. take your drugs. rest up.
MLB Manager Wanted: After game interviews required.
MLB Pitcher Wanted: Good pitching required. Media friendliness optional.
Ultimately, I care much more about his performance than I do about his attitude. But is it seriously too much to ask that he not act like a jerk in interviews?
I care that Bedard not act like a jerk, period. But I don’t care if he doesn’t want to do interviews. “Not being a jerk” doesn’t equal “Pleasing journalists.”
yup. and as his previous team’s players and coaches have spoken highly of him through the years, professionally & personally, there is reason to believe that he is not a jerk.
I wonder what Bedard thinks of Cleveland…
The hilarious thing is that the guys who give “great interviews” are just giving canned responses we’ve heard time and time again.
Interviewer: “How did it feel to hit the game winning homer?”
Player: “I’m just glad I could help the team win. It wasn’t just me.”
These players “do the right things.” They “play the game the right way.”
This is also seen as some sort of free pass for having crappy skills.
Amen. Listening this morning made me want to ship the complainers to Cleveland, where Ichiro could punch them in the face.
of course.
doesn’t mean we won’t perseverate, though.
I’ve pretty much always had a huge aversion to any and all interviews of sports figures. Few of these people ever offer anything but cliches, one word, or a rehashing of things we already know. Sure, you might get great soundbites once in a while from guys like Ichiro or Lasorda, but the endless amount of forgettable crap hardly makes it worth while to listen.
Spaceman Bill Lee gave great interviews. Pretty much everything since has been pale by comparison. Bedard’s Canadian! Just leave him alone.
And yet there was a sizable contingent who loudly wanted the M’s to pick up Barry Bonds in the offseason, because his offensive production would more than offset whatever baggage he brought. I certainly hope none of those people are among the complainers about Bedard.
I honestly don’t understand this. It would be funny, if it wasn’t so sad, that so many people (guys especially) seem to want these players to be their boyfriend or something.
Good Christ, they’re already complaining about him? Well, what did he say?
Ted Williams and Boston never got along to well… if anyone ever complained about a Ted Williams level player on our team for his interviews they should lose their job as any sort of sports writer/analysis.
So who was the one inventing this controversy? Mitch, Softy, or someone else?
Ian Furness was complaining about it on KJR after the game for an hour or two. I don’t know why it bothered him so much. Elise is the one that has been doing the post-game interviews. Ian called Bedard “unlikeable.” Mitch picked it up in the morning after hearing Ian’s complaints plus a similar story in one of the papers. I did hear Mitch call it a controversy, but really it’s only a controversy amongst the media because they don’t like dealing with him. Ian was going overboard with it. Just don’t interview the guy after the game. Nobody cares.
No offense to Ian and Mitch, but not everybody is as blowhardy as they are. The amount of talking and smiles doesn’t mean somebody is or isn’t a jerk. Mitch talks a lot and he is not only boring but comes off like a jerk. I know a guy who played with Bedard and he said he was a really nice, down to earth, stand up and cool guy. I trust his opinion more than that of the whiny media members.
well, the one guy at the station who seems to have actually spent with Bedard (Sandmeyer) is fine with him and his media-shyness. Gas this afternoon (as the non-story went on & on) said that Bedard couldn’t have been nicer when telling him he was done with interviews 🙂
Ichiro’s interesting and thoughtful comments are actually extremely quotable, and entire books have been published on that basis. They may not always lend themselves to quotability by newspaper columnists who live and breathe one-sentence paragraphs, but that’s no significant loss.
Well, Gas is the ultimate KJR kiss-ass.
Furness has been bitching about Bedard ever since that four questions thing at the beginning of Spring Training. Funny thing is I rarely listen to that show, but whenever I have recently listened to it he’s been whining about Bedard and how he has to take responsibility after losses. I thought, what does it matter whether he wins or loses? If he’s lousy out there I want Stottlemeyer, McLaren, and Griffin to answer questions before I want Bedard to.
I think reporters are often treated unfairly, but it really bothers me on those rare occasions when they decide they want to turn the public against a guy. Furness is reminding me of Max Mercy from The Natural.
Not having the time or energy to deal with sportwriters, to me, speaks highly of someone. I always liked Bonds ’cause he obviously though that the writers were there for him, not the other way around.
he will complain about someone he thinks was unfair or rude to him (see Neuheisel, Rick) and he went out of his way to say that Bedard wasn’t. As for Furness, I don’t know what his deal is, but after the ‘4-questions’ day Bedard has been there to answer more than 4 questions, and been there after losses, just as he had been in Baltinmore.
The whole thing started when Bedard was asked “what happened” after his very first outing in spring training where he gave up some runs…I mean, I would have gotten mad too.
The sportswriters get mad when you don’t “play the game” with them and now, unfortunately for Bedard, his muteness becomes way better copy for them than it would be if he just said something. He might want to rethink his approach if he’s really interested in being left alone.
You tell ‘em!
If players just played the game and just gave the old “Bull Durham†clichés day in and day out, the media would run out of things to write about, especially columnists. It’s a columnists job to write opinionated articles and in order to do that on such a regular basis one might have to raise some eyebrows, be controversial or write things that they don’t even believe in just because they are on a deadline and they have to submit something. But hey, that’s OK, it’s their job. Once we understand that, we can start taking what they say with a grain of salt. Some get carried away with this and wind up aggravating people (sometimes it even affects the players, managers, etc.) more times than not.