Idiots Write About Sports

I love the Baseball Hall of Fame induction ceremonies. Love them. I love the speeches, even though there’s usually a reason the honorees pursued a career in athletics as opposed to oratory. I love when the crowd starts to boo Bud Selig but decides it doesn’t want to overshadow the event for the inductees and just murmurs its general disapproval instead (and this happens every year!). I love it when they introduce all the living Hall of Famers who’ve returned to Cooperstown and list off all their accomplishments even though those introductions change very little from year to year.

Our next Hall of Famer won the 1950 American League Most Valuable Player role and played on eight world championship teams in a 13-year career. Earlier today, he signed a contract to play shortstop with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Please welcome the Scooter, Phil Rizutto!

And I got a big kick out of this year’s ceremony, primarily because it featured the induction of Dennis Eckersley. Always great to see the icons from my adolescence honored (even though it reminds me that I’m aging in dog years at this point). Even better when they bring down the house with a moving, deeply personal speech.

It was also nice watching a guy like Paul Molitor get his due. I enjoyed Lon Simmons’ speech, even if my appreciation for the Ford C. Frick Award winning broadcaster doesn’t quite match that of Brian Murphy, who argues that Simmons was and is a better announcer than Vin Scully. (One word on that theory: No.)

And then there was Murray Chass, the J.G. Taylor Spink Award, who used his allotted time to share his thoughts on the state of baseball writing:

So few writers want to cover a team for more than a few years. In New York, the turnover has been startling — the average is three years or less on the beat. In many instances, before they have learned much, even though they think they know everything, they become columnists.

When they write columns, instead of picking their spots to criticize, they often display their ignorance, or worse, show a mean-spirited attitude toward the people they write about. Their style shows a decided lack of professionalism, and that absence hurts the credibility for all of us with the people we cover.

OK. Awkward.

Hey, it’s Chass’s award, and Chass’s day, so he can get up there and read through the phonebook if he likes. And I tend to agree with the main thrust of his criticism. But on a day where Dennis Eckersley is recounting how he turned his life around and Paul Molitor is thanking every resident of Minnesota and Wisconsin and Lon Simmons is cracking everybody up with Orlando Cepeda annecdotes, a guy who turns his Hall-of-Fame induction speech into the “What’s Your Beef?” segment of the program tends to stick out. I’m not saying it was inappropriate, and I’m not saying it was ill-advised. It just felt… out of place.

You know?