Idiots Write About Sports

Actual letters to actual sports Web sites:

Dear ESPN.com:

In his Feb. 24, 2004 column on spring training, Jim Caple writes: “The Athletics held fundamental drills, working on various techniques for missing home plate, including stopping three steps in front of home to argue with the umpire, side-stepping home plate to shove the catcher from behind when he’s not looking and not sliding.”

In his October 8, 2003 column on the A’s-Red Sox playoffs, Jim Caple writes: “The Athletics have an extensive series of Not Sliding Drills. ‘They’re real sticklers for this stuff,’ outfielder Eric Byrnes said… ‘Anyway, if you screw up a drill, boy, you hear about it. I remember messing up the Forgetting to Touch Home Plate drill one day — Yeah, I had made sure I didn’t touch home plate, but I messed up and forgot to also tackle the catcher when his back was turned…”

Some writers may shy away from repeating the same jokes over and over again. But only a writer of Jim Caple’s talent would have the confidence and self-awareness to know that a joke only gets funnier the more often it appears. Why, Caple’s Steve Bartman-interferes-with-some-play joke is as funny today as the 386th time he told it. Which was in mid-December, actually.

So let others deride your work as cornball hackery, Jim Caple! I hail you for the comic genius that you are, and I look forward to reading the same jokes repeated in column after column.

Because, God knows, I really don’t have much of a choice.

Regards, Philip Michaels Playa Del Rey, CA

[Side note: One of my pet peeves — besides writers who repeat the same corny jokes — is when sports Web sites don’t let readers directly contact their writers and instead require all feedback to be sent through a generic form. I understand that the main reason these sites probably do that is to cut down on spam and letters from deluded cranks. But, in my opinion, it prevents readers from engaging in the kind of give-and-take with writers that makes it enjoyable to be a sports fan. Many’s the time I’ve read something at ESPN.com and wanted to respond to it — a thoughtful, well-reasoned response too, and not just a series of snide insults about Jim Caple’s hackery — but I’ve refrained since I’m not sure if my thoughtful, well-reasoned response will ever be seen by the writer or just by some Bristol, Conn.-based intern who got stuck with the mailbag duties that week.

And upon typing that little rant, I just noticed that ESPN does, in fact, print Jim Caple’s e-mail address — not on any of his Page 2 columns, mind you, but in other stuff he writes for the site. And now I’m stuck with a dilemma. Do I have the courage of my conviction to directly e-mail him to inform him that you can do a search of his name alongside Steve Bartman and come up with a half-dozen articles all containing variations of the same joke? Or is sending the same e-mail complaining that he runs jokes into the ground to multiple e-mail addresses itself a form of running something into the ground?

Oh, the perils of over-analysis!]