Some jackass wrote a puff piece about Simmons for Rolling Stone, and it's horrible (part 3)

First of all, I meant to include this in the initial post in this series but forgot.  Check out the photo accompanying this piece, which presumably took up a full page in the print edition of Rolling Stone.  Look at it.  It's magnificent.  HE'S SO EDGY.  Nothing says "Authority on Sports" like an awkward dad wearing a douchey LA outfit about to throw a basketball at you.



This is your favorite "sports" columnist, America.  Good job.  You assholes.

In his columns, Simmons embodies the precise average of American maleness: He loves sports, 

Fine.

movies, 

Women love movies too.

fantasy baseball 

Much as I enjoy it, fantasy baseball is not that popular.  

and hot actresses, and is not unfamiliar with porn. 

YEAH!  THAT'S TOTALLY ME!  OMG I SHOULD WRITE HIM A LETTER AND TELL HIM AND MAYBE I'LL GET PUBLISHED IN THE MAILBAG!  YEAH TITS HIGH FIVE BRO

"I don't have a shitload of hobbies," he says. "I'm not very complicated."

You don't say.

Once a year, he goes to Vegas with several friends — 

 But why????  Tell us, Rob Tannenbaum!  Why would anyone go to Vegas?  It's hot there!

to gamble. 

No fucking way.

This is so shitty.  Why is this an article?  Even for Rolling Stone, this sucks.  Would it have been "controversial" if he went there to visit strip clubs?  More importantly, does anyone give a flying fuck why this simpleton goes on vacation?  He could be going to Vegas to check out its public library.  Who cares?  Is any of this relevant?

"He's much more interested in playing cards than in seeing naked girls," Jimmy Kimmel says, with a tone of disdain. 

OK?  I guess Kimmel is razzing him?  Is this relevant?  Come to think of it, it might be relevant, because if he's as bad at cards as he is at picking NFL games, man, he's going to have some financial problems.  

On his podcast, Simmons often talks about betting on games — up to $1,000 on individual games, or $2,000 on futures bets, he tells me. "I love gambling. I wish it was legal. But I never bet a lot, even in Vegas. Unless I'm really drunk."

HIGH FIVE AGAIN BRO!  REMEMBER THAT TIME YOU WERE SO BOMBED????  Bill Simmons is a 17 year old boy who somehow makes 7 figures a year.

He won't say whether or not he has a bookie in L.A., which means he likely does. 

SPICY!  SALACIOUS!  Who is reading this and going "Wow, I gotta keep going.  There might be something EVEN BETTER further down the page!"

And if he offers you a bet, you should probably take it — last football season, he won only 108 out of 256 picks against the spread in his column. "It was kind of a bummer," he says, though he points out that in 2006, he had his wife Kari make her own football picks in his column. "And she beat me. So if I had credibility after that gimmick, it was an accident." 

Another surprising display of self awareness.  Fair enough.  Although I suspect he is only saying this because he feels he has to, and still is 100% confident in most picks he makes.  THAT SPREAD IS WAY TOO HIGH.  THANKS FOR THE FREE TWO POINTS, VEGAS.  /team Bill didn't bet on beats spread by two touchdowns

(Kari was also at least as funny as her husband. 

Not a chance.

She said Lindsay Lohan would "look like a leather purse in 25 years no matter how much Proactiv she takes," and theorized that Katie Holmes "had her ankles removed" so she'd be the same height at Tom Cruise.)

Watch out, Joan Rivers!  Someone's coming for your "queen of celebrity bashing" crown!  Actually, now that I re-read the first part of that parenthetical, I totally agree.  Bill's wife IS about as funny as he is.

Simmons will always be associated with New England — he might love Tom Brady and Larry Bird as much as he loves his wife and two kids — but he's unsentimental about his roots. 

Wrong.  I can't wait to see how he spins this one.

"I don't think you could get him to go back to Boston at gunpoint," Kimmel says. 

If he could maintain his current role at ESPN while doing that (which of course would be impossible if he wanted to stay on NBA Countdown and he obviously does), I'm sure he'd do it in a second.  TOO MANY LAKER FLAGS ON CARS.  GOD THOSE FANS ARE JUST INSUFFERABLE.  FACK YOUUUU!

Simmons is credited as an Internet visionary, but he went into new media only because old media rejected him. 

That is completely correct.  While this article does suck, I like that it's being honest about Bill imperfections.  It's not that in 1990whatever he was like "I know exactly what the internet will be in 2014, so I'm getting on the train early."  It's that he's a bad writer and allegedly insufferable to work with, so he couldn't get an old media job.  Just because he stumbled ass-backwards into success by being good at making pop culture references appreciated by people as dumb as him (and I was that kind of person until 2004 or 2005, I admit, but I was also a lot younger and dumber then) doesn't mean we need to pretend like he invented the idea of blogging about sports.

"Boston," he says, "is where I failed."

Well, Los Angeles is where you continue to fail, but yeah, I get what you're saying.

He began his career as a lackey at the Boston Herald, the lesser of the city's two daily papers, "organizing Chinese-food orders" and covering high school teams. 

His co-workers could never understand what he was saying due to the huge silver spoon in his mouth.  I wonder how many other "applicants" he beat out to get that job?

He stood outside the Herald building on the Mass Turnpike, smoking cigarettes and "wondering what the fuck I was gonna do with my life."

Bill Simmons is, and always was, a boring clod.

Except for the addition of tall buildings, Boston hasn't changed since Paul Revere bought a horse. 

Still as racist as ever!

TV anchors and newspaper columnists keep their jobs for decades, and at the Herald, "mediocre writers were blocking my way," Simmons later wrote. 

Just as they should block the way of any sub-mediocre writer.  You know, I hate that all those guys who play minor league baseball are blocking the way and preventing me from playing major league baseball.  They've got a lot of nerve!

"I didn't do myself any favors," he adds now. "I was probably too arrogant, 

NO WAY I DON'T BELIEVE IT NOT EVEN A LITTLE BIT

and could barely hide my disdain for some of the writers." After three years, "frustrated to the point of insanity," he quit and worked as a bartender. At 24, he began smoking pot, 

MORE SCANDAL.  I BET HE HAD A BOOKIE TOO.

and soon owned a four-foot purple bong. (In L.A., he discovered West Coast weed was way more potent, and one night, ended up "hiding behind the curtains in my living room for 40 minutes because I thought somebody was watching us. After that, I phased back big time.") 

BUT DOES HE LIKE STRIPPERS?????

He considered going into commercial real estate 

Dear sweet baby Jesus, can you imagining negotiating a contract with this guy?  My head hurts just from typing that sentence.

with his stepdad before he came across a new website, AOL, where even a Herald reject could write.

What if he had somehow caught on and stayed there, rather than moving to ESPN?  Would ESPN still be as cool as it was in the 90s, with AOL's sports wing filling ESPN's current role of "purveyor of incredibly shitty and celebrity-obsessed sports content?"  I guess it all depends on who gets bought by Disney in this hypothetical world.  Fuck Disney.

He wrote with a fan's dismay and delight, rejecting the idea of being objective (a Boston partisan, he openly despises the L.A. Lakers and any team from New York), 

Here are all the teams from New York he can name:

1) YANKEES!  FACK THE YANKEES IN SEPTEMBER AND OCTOBER!

2) Knicks (but really, why hate them, they're not really worth hating)

3) Nets INSERT MIKHAIL PROKHOROV/YAKOV SMIRNOV JOKE HERE

4) They might have another baseball team, but I don't follow the minor leagues

5) /Bill eats paste

and attacking local sportswriters by name. No team would give him a press pass, so while newspaper guys padded short articles with boring quotes from athletes, Simmons distinguished himself by mixing in references to bands and movies (especially Shawshank Redemption and Karate Kid), 

Thank goodness.  Someone who really had their finger on the pulse of America's tastes.

and by writing long: "85,000-word essays about Rocky IV," Kimmel jokes.

OK, I will back off a little and admit that I like Rocky IV.  Non-ironically.

Simmons' early work had flaws — bitterness, cheap cracks about the manliness of female athletes, praise for the Counting Crows — 

Please delete the word "early" from that sentence and change "had" to "will always have"

but it was also funny, fresh, expansive, and even sentimental, especially when he wrote adoringly about his dad and their sports bond. 

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

That's the secret element of Simmons' success: He's the most emo sportswriter around. 

I wouldn't call it a secret.  I'd call it an unfortunate and insufferable reality.

He once penned a 3,000-word column describing how his dog Daisy died of lymphoma. It's the Fall Out Boy of sports columns.

In that it's terrible and no one should pay attention to it?  Gotcha.

In 2000, when ESPN launched Page 2, a site that mixed sports, pop culture and humor, Simmons waited for his phone to ring. "That was probably the lowest I sunk, when ESPN didn't hire me for Page 2," he says. 

What an entitled little shithead.

He was in his early thirties, still borrowing money from his parents. 

But those mean people at the Boston Herald were mean and didn't let me write whatever I wanted to write!  It wasn't fair!  I didn't want that stupid really hard to get job anyways!

A few months after the launch, he wrote a column mocking ESPN's annual awards show, and his taunts got noticed. "I was on the floor laughing," recalls ESPN's John A. Walsh. 

John Walsh is a fucking dummy.  He certainly comes off as such in Those Guys Have All the Fun.

Soon, Simmons had his first ESPN assignment. If there's a moral, it's this: Bite the hand you cannot kiss.
I'd say the obvious "moral," if you're going to give the story of Simmons's success that much gravitas, is to appeal to stupid people.  There's a lot of them and they're easy to please.  His rise to power at ESPN is idiocracy in corporate media form.  I'll give him this, though--he's probably less of a shithead than Mariotti.

I'll wrap this up later.

Some jackass wrote a puff piece about Simmons for Rolling Stone, and it's horrible (part 2)

I hope everyone did their homework since Sunday night, and read all of Simmons's greatest columns as linked by Rolling Stone in the first part of this article.  Like I said, I didn't even bother looking at what they listed, but I'm sure his column about his dog dying is at or near the top.  That's always where people who like Bill go when I tell them I think he's a shitty writer.  "But did you read the one about The Dooze?"  I sure did.  And I'm not going to make fun of him for it, but I'll tell you this much: that piece helps my case more than it hurts it.  Anyways, back to Mr. Music Critic Man and his in-depth analysis of America's least important pop culture critic.

Simmons has 2.6 million followers on Twitter. Many can't wait to tell him what an idiot he is. (The Simmons brand has a strong ripple effect: Even his wife, known as the Sports Gal, has 25,000 followers, despite not having tweeted in almost a year.) Sports Twitter is a mire of stupidity, homophobia, and violent threats.

That's an odd way to describe all the scorching hot taeks out there IMO

It's probably the most inane culture on Twitter; at least on Politics Twitter, you occasionally come across a fact.

If you're getting anything other than breaking news and jokes from Sports Twitter or Political Twitter, you're a certified dumbass with a tiny attention span.

Simmons uses Twitter almost exclusively to promote and link to Grantland material. 

No.  That is flagrantly untrue.  Simmons uses Twitter to opine (moronically) on basketball, football, and gambling, to pretend to be a baseball fan if it's September/October and the Red Sox are good, to complain about allegedly bad refereeing that goes against Boston teams, and about a dozen other things just as often or more often than he uses it to promote Grantland stuff.

He doesn't reply to people who think he's a douche, or want to punch his face. 

Well, there are only 24 hours in the day.  Come on. 

He also writes fewer sports columns than he used to, partly because TV and movies occupy more of his time. 

That's the weakest attempt I've seen anyone make to justify the fact that Simmons doesn't write, and knows nothing regarding the subjects he does find the time to write about.  TV and movies occupy "more" of his time?  More than when?  Back in the 90s, when he obviously also watched a shitload of movies?  It's not like he became a big time consumer of visual media in the last five years.  (Hey, I can relate!  But I don't get paid for this.) The guy is just out of ideas, and likes recording podcasts because that's way easier than writing.  I don't blame him for any of that, but--oh wait yes I do, fuck him and fuck his podcasts and TV appearances.

The Internet 

This isn't 1994.  I don't think we need to capitalize it.

gave him a career, an audience, wealth, 

True, true and sadly, true.

influence, 

Over what/who?  America's least informed and most obnoxious sports fans who aren't actually sports fans?

and fourth-row seats for the Clippers. 

As long as the Clippers continue to make the playoffs.

But lately, Bill Simmons is kind of over the Internet.

OOOH!  SO 21ST CENTURY AVANT-GARDE!  BILL WILL NOT BE CONSTRAINED BY THE MOST IMPORTANT AND FAR-REACHING MEDIUM IN THE WORLD!  NO!  HE WILL BROADCAST HIS PODCASTS VIA CARRIER PIGEON!

Bill Simmons' Top 10 Go-To Writing Moves

Another mid-article link.  Still not going to click on it, but I have no idea how they found ten items for that list.  Maybe they separated out "References to mediocre movies" into six or seven separate items, going movie by movie.

On a Friday in January, Simmons and his Grantland staff scheduled a celebration: drinks at a glamorous hotel, 

Maybe there will be some famous celebs there so Bill can rub elbows with other Hollywood elite!  Hey Jack Nicholson, is it alright if Bill calls you "Jackie Baby?"  He's got some ideas to share about how you could have been better in The Departed.

after work, to celebrate the site's redesign. He and I talked for three hours in his undecorated office 

NO FENWAY PARK POSTER ON THE WALL FOR THIS GUY.  HE'S A MAN OF THE PEOPLE.  Either that, or he's just too fucking simple minded and boring to do anything interesting with his office.  My office, on the other hand, contains a day-by-day The Onion calendar, a coffee mug featuring my hockey team's logo, and a printout of my baseball team's 2014 schedule taped to the wall.  Please, pretend not to be impressed.  

/Larry B continues to be lonely for good reason

at ESPN's downtown L.A. complex, and a few times, he described his ambivalence about the effects of online culture.

"I totally don't let anything affect me," he didn't say, since it's well documented that he's hilariously thin-skinned.

Before the site launched, he decided Grantland wouldn't run slideshows, which draw big traffic but are dumb, 

A fair perspective on listicles.

or print reader comments, which breed idiocy. 

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA that is a lie.  A big, dirty, ugly lie.  Yes, comments do breed idiocy (just look at the comments on this blog!), but they also make a site significantly more fun and worth re-visiting.  The reason Grantland doesn't print comments is the same reason so many other popular online forums don't: it thinks it's intellectually superior to its readership.  How sad.

"Everybody was saying, 'Articles have to be short, because people have short attention spans.' And I felt like the opposite was true."

Which opposite?  That articles have to be long, because people have long attention spans?  That articles have to be short, because people have long attention spans?  That articles have to be long, because people have short attention spans?  This man is editor-in-chief of an entity that produces written content.

He built Grantland around long-form articles, the opposite of Twitter's enforced brevity, 

Yeah, that's clearly what Grantland was: a backlash to Twitter.  Where did that come from?  Where are you going with this?  God this article sucks.

and hired writers known for their cleverness and insight, 

OOH LIKE CHRIS JONES AND KLOSTERMAN!  HOORAY FOR NAVEL GAZING!

particularly with sophisticated sports statistics, rather than their snark: Jonah Keri for baseball, Bill Barnwell for football, Katie Baker for hockey, and for basketball, Zach Lowe, whom Simmons poached from Sports Illustrated by relentlessly pursuing him.

Those are probably the four best writers at Grantland.  I have to give it to the author of this piece for trying to pass them off as representative of the entire Grantland staff.

Unlike almost every other site, Grantland doesn't pick fights. 

What?  What the fuck are you talking about?  Which sites, besides tiny blogs like this that are read by no one, "pick fights?"  Are you talking about Deadspin?  They're a dumb tabloid, but they're not out to start "fights" with other sites.  This is a loaded comment with absolutely no substance.

"There's a mean-spiritedness on the Internet that we've stayed away from," Simmons told me in his office. 

"Mostly because I'm not clever enough to engage in it or understand it."

"It seems to be getting angrier — especially Twitter, which is full of coyotes, waiting to attack the next victim." One false move, he added, and you find yourself in "a 24-hour shitstorm."

Here comes the Dr. V stuff.  Those damn "coyotes," holding Bill and Co. accountable for doing something insanely irresponsible and dumb!  Who do they think they are?

His thoughts about vengefulness took on a different meaning only a few hours later, when the shit-stirrer was now in a shitstorm of his own. Two days earlier, the site had published a story, "Dr. V's Magical Putter," about Dr. Essay Anne Vanderbilt, a female physicist who had invented a new, possibly superior golf putter. When writer Caleb Hannan investigated her background, he learned Vanderbilt was a transgender woman. Despite having agreed to her demand that he not write about her life, Hannan told Vanderbilt that he'd discovered the secret she clearly wanted to keep private, and he outed her to an investor. In the third-to-last paragraph of the story, Hannan revealed that Vanderbilt had committed suicide. It was a fascinating story, but also cruel and irresponsible.

Just ask a really smart professional journalist guy!

The initial reaction was favorable: other writers called it "a great read," and "mesmerizing," as they shared the link on Twitter. Richard Deitsch, a reporter at Sports Illustrated, said Hannan's article "might be the best I've read this month," an opinion he regretted four days later, after the article had been widely condemned. 

Good to see so many other sports journalists are just as ethically clueless as Simmons and Company.  Although Deitsch is an alright dude.

Unlike the controversy over Joe Johnson, there were genuine stakes in play. 

Well, there WERE genuine stakes in play.  The limited brain cells involved in the creation and editing of the piece kind of kicked into gear a little late to prevent a horrible thing from happening.

A political reporter called the "Dr. V" piece "absolutely, stunningly unforgivable." One Tweeter called Hannan "a fucking shit head and a murderer," and another said to him, "you harassed a trans woman until she killed herself."

First guy: taking it too far.  Second guy: just about correct.

On that Friday night, Simmons dismissed the furor — just more "mean-spiritedness on the Internet." 

HAHAHAHAHAH that's fantastic.  As much of a lamewad puff piece as this is, I love that that's included.  "HATERZ JUST JELLY THAT MY WEBSITE CONTRIBUTED TO A SUICIDE."

Oddly, a master of new media was badly misreading what was happening. 

Let me fix that for you: the fact that Simmons badly misread what was happening is an excellent piece of evidence suggesting that he is not close to being a master of new media.

The next day, he took his daughter to her soccer tournament, and during a break between games, looked online, where the angry reactions had continued. "That's when everything turned," he says, "and I started to think we'd made a serious mistake. It snowballed over the weekend, and I started going into deep self-hatred."

"At first people wanted to hold me accountable and I was like 'Fuck that.'  But then they didn't go away after 24 hours, and I actually had a moment of reflection and self-awareness.  It was strange."

The story's misjudgment was not the result of malice. The Grantland staff is more diverse, in gender and race, than most publications ("God forbid we ever get credit for that," he grumbles), 

What a fucking asshole.  What a raging cunt.

and when I talked to him in the thick of the anti-Grantland tempest, he was clearly morose and regretful. "People hate our site now," he said.

This guy needs PR training in the worst fucking way.  "People hate our site now."  That's your reaction to people being mad at you for using poor judgment and ultimately contributing to a person's death.  Wow.  WHAT ABOUT OUR BRAND?  WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?

But Simmons also didn't fully understand why people despised the article. "Crazy" and "hysterical" responses on Twitter had made him "embarrassed for mankind," and he didn't agree with me that Grantland never should have mentioned the fact that Vanderbilt was a transgender woman. 

Jesus, I may have to stop calling this a puff piece.  It got dark and confrontational really quickly there.

Like a lot of people, especially people in the sports world, he's amiss in issues of gender and sexuality; a few weeks later, during a podcast in which he discussed Michael Sam, a college football player who came out in February, Simmons used the offensive phrase "sexual preference" – not out of hostility towards Sam, but out of ignorance. 

I'm going to have to bookmark this article, I am getting tired of having to Google for it when I need to link to it every few weeks.

Simmons wrote a lengthy apology for the "Dr. V" story, which Grantland posted the next Monday. 

Which, predictably, he turned into an essay about himself.

The article, he admitted, lacked empathy for Vanderbilt, and should not have outed her posthumously. His apology was thorough and almost self-flagellating, 

Because it was probably insincere, to the extent it wasn't genuine remorse but rather a plea for people to forgive his website.

but was also mitigated by his defensiveness, which ESPN Executive Vice President and Executive Editor John A. Walsh told me he found "unfortunate." In addition, Grantland published a stinging critique by ESPN baseball reporter Christina Kahrl, who is a transgender woman; she denounced the story's ignorance and "casual cruelty." "By any professional or ethical standard," she also wrote, Vanderbilt's past "wasn’t merely irrelevant to the story, it wasn't [Grantland's] information to share."

HATER.  MEAN-SPIRITED.

And ESPN ombudsman Robert Lipsyte, an accomplished 76-year old writer, added his own column, in which he called the article "inexcusable" in its "unawareness and arrogance." He described Simmons as "a talented, overextended 44 year old" with "considerable vision and celebrity." Lipsyte did not intend "celebrity" as a compliment.

And hopefully Jimmy Kimmel's comparable comment was also sarcastic.  You're never going to match up to my future wife Le Anne Schreiber, Robert Lipsyte, but that's a tasty burn.

More soon.

Some jackass wrote a puff piece about Simmons for Rolling Stone, and it's horrible (part 1)

Rolling Stone has sucked for several years (decades?) now, but usually they keep their shittiness confined to the worlds of music and politics.  In what can only be an attempt to try to draw in readership from among the legion of 18 to 35 year old males who like sports, they asked one of their writers, Rob Tannenbaum, to do a piece about Bill.  Rob may well be a good writer.  He's got a pretty well-regarded book about the rise of music videos (good), he apparently writes for The Onion or possibly the A.V. Club (good if it's The Onion, meh if it's A.V. Club), Pitchfork (barf), and Spin (meh).  So that's a decent resume.  But holy balls, this is one of the worst puff pieces that ever puffed.  To boot, it seems like Tannenbaum knows exactly fuck-all about sports.  Fuck all of this.

From Bill Simmons' fourth-row seats at the Staples Center in L.A., 

Didn't he once claim he was giving up his tickets because the Clippers were going to get LeBron or something?  Or did he threaten to give them up because the Clippers had bad luck?  Or something?  Am I imagining that?  I doubt it, although I couldn't find a link.  The point is, Bill is mentally 13 years old.

we're close enough to hear basketball players swearing. In the last few minutes of a belligerent game, full of glaring, taunting, and pushing, the hometown Clippers are in the process of erasing Dallas' comfortable lead, scoring 23 of the last 27 points. To Simmons' dismay, the crowd doesn't seem to appreciate that they're watching one of the best games of the year.

The first ten rows of any NBA arena are full of shitheads who don't appreciate what they're watching.  Yes, even TD Garden.  Assuming equal attendance, every arena sounds louder from the upper bowl.  No matter what Superfan Simmons has to say about the matter.

Clippers center Blake Griffin, 

Blake Griffin is not a center.  Anyone who follows the NBA at all knows this, but even if you don't, it can be looked up in about 4 seconds.

who has been the main target of Dallas' animosity, rises above the rim like he's wearing a jet pack and tomahawks a ball into the net. 

That's exactly how a dunk works!

The L.A. fans celebrate his feat with a mild golf clap. 

LAWS ANJULUS DOES NAWT HAVE REAL FANS!  THEY DO NOT APPRECIATE GREATNESS!  I MOVED HERE TO SHOW THEM HOW TO DO THAT!  FACK THE LAKERS!

"He could dunk with his dick and nobody here would stand up to applaud," Simmons mutters. Unfortunately, we don't get to find out.

Unfortunately?

Yup, These Are His Leaders: Bill Simmons' Best Columns

This is a link within the article.  Sadly, Rolling Stone wanted to make sure that they could accommodate anyone who read this profile and came away saying "Boy, this Simmons guy sounds like a smart cookie.  Wonder what he's written?"

Simmons was raised mostly in Boston, where every loss is like a death in the family, 

OW-UH FANS CRY HAHHHDAH THAN YO-AH FANS!  Yes, Boston, where sports fans are very passionate.  As they are in Philly.  And New York.  And Chicago.  Etc., etc., etc., narrative narrative narrative.

and even at 44, he watches sports with the delight of a kid — albeit a kid who's a multimedia mogul.

"Mogul" here meaning "Guy who has many jobs in his field, and is bad at all of them."

During the NBA playoffs, which last nearly two months and end in June, 

[Obligatory Chris W joke goes here]

he'll be a fixture on ESPN and ABC, via NBA Countdown. His 700-page Book of Basketball, despite being fatter than Eddy Curry in the off-season, 

TIMELY!  Do something about Oliver Miller next!

debuted at Number One on The New York Times' nonfiction bestseller list. He goaded ESPN into making documentaries, which yielded 30 for 30, an excellent, Emmy-nominated series he executive-produces. 

Allow me to translate: he had the initial idea that led to 30 for 30, which he now nominally oversees, while mostly just being told to stay the fuck out of the way.

His lively B.S. Report podcast, where he interviews jocks, actors, comedians, college buddies, his dad, and Barack Obama, 

But really it's mostly just the college buddies, and his voice is the male equivalent of Fran Drescher's.

was downloaded 32 million times last year, and to keep him from bolting in 2011, ESPN gave him his own well-staffed website, Grantland. 

Any chance he'll bolt whenever his current contract is up?  I'll give ESPN $20 to not enter into renewal negotiations with him.

TV, books, documentaries, digital — it's the sportswriter version of the EGOT.

Yeah, Bill is totally the sportswriting equivalent to Whoopi Goldberg or Mel Brooks, in the sense that they are humans and he is also a human (but not in any other sense).

"We have similarly thorough backgrounds when it comes to movies, TV, sports and other worthless things," says his friend Jimmy Kimmel, who hired Simmons as a joke writer on Jimmy Kimmel Live! 

And kept him around for only one really shitty season.

"Bill's very funny, he's married pop culture and sports more than anyone else, and he built his own media empire from a little blog."

I like Kimmel, and I hope he intended that to sound as condescending as it comes off in print.

That's not just tickle-tickle buddy talk. 

Huh?

Simmons started to accrue a huge following in 1997, when he began blogging on AOL's Boston website in the role of an irritant and smart aleck, under the name Boston Sports Guy. 

The level of creativity shown in choosing that handle was a real sign of things to come.

Last summer, a Canadian columnist called him "an honest-to-God magnate" and "one of the defining figures" in digital media. 

Link?  Proof that this person wasn't just Simmons operating with a pen name, or someone who really, really, really wanted a job at Grantland?

All magnates have haters; Simmons makes it easy by frequently getting into feuds.

And by being stupid, unfunny and thin skinned.  Those things help too.

On NBA Countdown, Simmons plays a slightly exaggerated version of himself: 

No he doesn't.  He is himself at all times.  The guy obviously does not have the comedic chops or self awareness to develop and play a character.

a comedic troublemaker, "the wild card who doesn't give a shit," he tells me. 

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA Bill thinks of himself as a rebel without a cause.  That's awesome.

"I'm part historian, part know-it-all, and part shit-stirrer. I don't hold back – that's the key."

Said with all the authority of a man who really has nothing to hold back in the first place.

During a recent Countdown, he denounced Brooklyn Nets shooting guard Joe Johnson, whom Simmons has tagged as the most overpaid player in the NBA. 

Super salary cap megagenius Bill Simmons has an extremely hot take to share: a slow 32 year old who averages 15/3/3 and makes more money than LeBron just might have a bad contract.

"Joe Johnson did not deserve to be on the all-star team," he says, so outraged and high-pitched he's nearly yelping. "Even he had to be shocked he made it." 

SHIT: STIRRED.  JOE JOHNSON: TOLD.  AUDIENCE: BORED.

After the show goes off the air, Countdown host Sage Steele turns to him, shaking her head. "You," she tells him, "are a psycho."

"I don't know how you got my cell number, but please stop calling it."

The shit has been successfully stirred: Within minutes, Twitter is in flames. 

The fact that people talked on social media about what he said on a nationally televised show broadcast by an extremely popular network PROVES that he's worth every penny they're paying him!

"Never hated a sports analyst as much as I hate Bill Simmons," I read as I scroll through his mentions, followed by "I want to punch him in the face," "He is such a douche" and "If Bill Simmons ever got in a car accident, I would be happy." 

None of those were me, either!  The last one isn't quite accurate though--I think we can all agree that any car accident-related happiness would be tied to whether his insurance coverage suffers as a result.

There are compliments, too, but, let's face it, those are boring.

Like this article is, and we're not even half done.  More later this week.

Jeter Month Continues

Well, it's still Jeter month, and the spectre of the Jeter love that will be spilling all over baseball this season is enough to make fans of the actual game of baseball somewhat ill. This one comes from Anthony Castrovince, an MLB.com reporter. I know, I know, MLB.com is just a mouthpiece for happy puff pieces, but this one takes the cake.

Jeter stays stoic in face of impending farewell tour

Gag. The headline makes it seem like he's facing chemotherapy or something, instead of a season of thousands of people kissing his high butt.

We don't really know Derek Jeter.

I can only imagine that some poor parent had to deal with that problem as some impressionable ten-year old who stumbled across the New York Post.

"Hey mom, why does Derek Jeter give away autographed baseballs to those ladies?" '

"I don't know, son, we don't really know Derek Jeter".

We know his feats and his impressive lack of public foibles. We know all about the World Series rings, the stats that will make him a first-ballot Hall of Famer and the moments that will make up whatever highlight reel serves as the standard.

Is Jeter's lack of public foibles all that impressive? I know he has played under close scrutiny in New York over all these years, so maybe it is. Then again, maybe after being on several World Series winning teams as a young player gave him the status in the city to have his foibles conveniently left out of the press.

We know that nobody who has played with or against him has even a harmlessly unflattering word to say about him. We know he's got a huge waterfront home down here with an annual real estate tax bill likely larger than your total mortgage, and, yes, we know he's dated or otherwise befriended some gorgeous girls over the course of two decades on the big league stage.
"Mom, what does or otherwise befriended mean?"

"I don't know, son, we really don't know Derek Jeter"

Even in an era of unfathomable finances and TMZ and 24/7, well, everything, 

&*&% the heck? What are unfathomable finances? Is Mr. Castrovince really so flummoxed by the state of the world in 2014 that he calls it an era of 24/7, everything? You'd think a man paid to write words could look a little harder for them.

he's been one guy you can feel pretty good about your kids adoring and emulating. That's legacy enough.

There are plenty of other players who you can feel pretty good about. In fact, I'd venture to say there are more players you can feel pretty good about your kids adoring and emulating than ones you feel bad about. It's just that the bad ones get notice. I bet on most MLB teams, 23 or 24 of the guys you can feel pretty good about. There are a dozen Sean Caseys for every Milton Bradley.

But we don't really know the man, and that certainly wasn't going to change Wednesday morning, in a big room full of reporters and cameras and teammates and 27 minutes' worth of questions and something resembling answers.

Good job linking the specific details to your thesis, Anthony!

"I still have a season to play," Jeter told us
Wow!

Even that phrase -- "press conference" -- was not to be embraced.

Why the passive voice here? Who is doing this not-embracing?

"Media availability" was the preferred terminology, because that's something Jeter is annually accustomed to on the position-player report date, and no Facebook retirement announcement was going to change that.
Sounds like a good old fashioned euphemism to me. It would sound arrogant of Jeter to go to a press conference to talk about himself, so instead he went to a place where he would be available to the media to talk about himself. I don't mean to criticize Jeter here. I'm sure he has to do it. But it sure smells of spin.

And so they poked and prodded him with queries about any emotions that might be bubbling beneath the surface here on the eve of his final season in pinstripes. But nobody honestly or realistically expected the curtain to suddenly be pulled back and the inner "Bachelor" contestant -- the tears, the fears, the sneers -- to be revealed.

No, but that would've been awesome.

"I have feelings," Jeter said, believably. "I'm not emotionally stunted. There's feelings there. I just think I've been pretty good at trying to hide my emotions over the years."

"I have feelings," Jeter said, believably. Ostensibly Mr. Castrovince is an actual paid sportswriter who gets paid actual money to write about how Jeter talked so believably about an utterly banal statement true of every single human being ever except maybe Jeffrey Dahmer and even he probably had feelings they were just really messed up feelings.

An understatement if ever there was one, and that's probably what makes Jeter's particular exit strategy so surprising.

Here's where this article is about to go off the rails: Castrovince's utter naivete / hero worship is going to shoot through the roof. Hold on to your hats, people.

"I was shocked he was doing it on Facebook," teammate Ichiro Suzuki said through an interpreter.

Well, sure, that's part of the intrigue. Who knew Jeter had a Facebook page, for one? It's not like he's going to use the medium to show us vacation photos or share his "feeling" status, with accompanying emoticons.

But we know Jeter has feelings. He said so, believably. Can you believe Jeter doesn't post a Facebook status about his emotions? Of course he doesn't/ His Facebook page is almost exclusively about his charity work. It has tons of pictures of the smiling children that are benefitting from his millions. I'm sure, like most players, he doesn't write a word of it. It's just a way to polish his image.

But what's most shocking of all, perhaps, is that Jeter is willingly subjecting himself to the Mariano Rivera-like farewell tour and all the attention, glad-handing, marketing ("Captain's Final Voyage" seems to be the working title), and, yes, the gifts it's sure to contain.
How torturous! Can you believe Jeter is willingly subjecting himself to more praise and Corvettes? The media crap is already out there preparing for the tour. It's just shocking that Jeter would do this. Shocking.

All Jeter has ever wanted is a career free of undue distractions from his annual goal of winning a World Series,

Well, he's sure going to be spending a lot of 2014 dealing with the undue distraction of every team giving him a Rolex or something and celebrating him for playing a lot of baseball games. Obviously Jeter's retirement announcement (or speculation about it, if he didn't announce it), no matter how he handled it, would have caused some distraction, but it hardly seems like the method he chose was anywhere close to minimizing the distraction.

and that's why he was so adamant at controlling the tone and tenor of this -- ahem -- media availability. The reason he used Facebook as his parting platform, he said, was to have his message heeded in full and his charitable foundation highlighted, two worthy goals.

His letter only included one word about the charity foundation, but the letter was spread out over tons of pages of Jeter helping kids and stuff.

But there will be so many elements of this endeavor that are sure to be out of Jeter's scope of comfort,

I like how the opening statement We don't really know Jeter has been abandoned here, since we know for sure that all this attention is just going to make old Derek uncomfortable, since he really is a small-town boy who doesn't like any kind of attention at all.

because, as you might have noticed, we tend to like to overdo things here in the land of the free and the home of the Super Bowl.
I submit this encomium as evidence.

"I can't comment yet [on what the farewell tour will be like]," said Jeter, "because I don't know what that means. I don't know what's going to happen. I really don't know."

Astonishing of Jeter to not know about what's going to happen on the farewell tour as he was announcing his retirement. But that's not a big deal. No doubt Mr. Castrovince had to include a certain number of quotations from Jeter himself in this article, and he probably only had blandness to choose from. But get yourself ready for some really miserable buttkissing:

We should thank him, then, for the opportunity to say thank you and providing the heads-up that 2014 would be an awfully good time to come to the yard and see No. 2, if you haven't already.

I'm just going to highlight that bit:

We should thank him, then, for the opportunity to say thank you
We should thank him, then, for the opportunity to say thank you
We should thank him, then, for the opportunity to say thank you

Listen people, you can start thanking Jeter now for being so kind as to subject us to a season full of Jeter's last Tuesday-afternoon appearance in the Rogers Centre on deck circle updates. Otherwise what would we talk about? Actual baseball?

Reading that paragraph made me feel like I was witnessing a middle-school team statistician kissing the butt of the star of the team.

And it's not like anyone who hasn't already come out to watch the Yankees is going to be telling their children, "I almost missed it, but I'm sure glad I got to see a kind of over the hill Jeter play!" If they haven't come to see the Yankees in the last 20 years, I don't see the point in coming out to watch Jeter now that he's far past his prime.

Now for some writing that isn't so much overly sentimental but is just poorly executed:

For the Yankees, though, it's a situation that is not without its potential pitfalls. The prevailing pleasantry about Jeter's adieu

Holy alliteration! Holy synonyms!

has been that he's "going out on his terms," but that's a little on the presumptive side. His physical condition will dictate the terms, and that condition is a constant concern for the rare animal that is the 40-year-old shortstop.

Animal? I suppose it is a stock phrase, but is there any reason to think of Jeter like a zoo specimen?

There will be days when Joe Girardi rests him for the betterment of the bottom line,
Doesn't that phrase usually refer to money? I'm confused.

and some kid in the stands who has never seen Jeter in action will be robbed of that pleasure.

An allusion to DiMaggio's famous comment about playing hard for that kid? Only Joe D retired at 36, and actually retired on his terms.

Backup shortstop Brendan Ryan has said he's already preparing to "embrace the boos" that will come with his job.

I wonder what Brendan Ryan is doing to prepare himself to embrace the boos. Does he ask his family and friends to practice booing him, then setting a steely face? Does he watch old videos of him striking out or making errors? Does he keep a picture of the high school crush who turned him down for a date in his locker?

"[Jeter] has always made my job difficult when you want to give him a day off," Girardi said. "I remember him always yelling at Mr. [Joe] Torre when he wanted to take him out of games and [asking] how was he ever going to break Cal's [Ripken] record if Torre kept pulling him out of games. We want him in the lineup as much as possible. But we also have to make sure he's productive."

I'm not going to argue with this too much. Jeter will most likely end up playing the second most games at shortstop in MLB history. But this article suggests that Jeter's attitude was a lot less grindy than Girardi claims here. And of course Jeter should've stopped playing shortstop in 2004 anyways. But he did play a lot of games and that's no mean feat.

It says here that Jeter has been blessed with too charmed a life to run out of good mojo now.

@#$% the heck again? What "here" is Castrovince referring to? Is he holding an imaginary conversation with a midget in his head?

Maybe his career won't end with another World Series trophy in hand, because there are far too many variables at play.

MAYBE.

But all any of us can reasonably hope is that the final ride is free of physical potholes.
I don't know. I wouldn't go so far as to wish misfortune on Jeter, but if he hurt himself tomorrow and was out all season and never played another game, I wouldn't feel too bad for him.

He's earned at least that and probably much more.

PROBABLY

Jeter has also, whether he wants to embrace it or not, earned all the applause and adulation and alms and awards sure to come his way over the next seven-plus months.

No he hasn't. He hasn't even earned all of the applause and adulation that sportswriters gave him in the first seven days after his announcement.

At some point, there will be a farewell speech, there will be a final tip of the cap, there might even be a few tears from the otherwise stoic shortstop.

How stoic.

For now, though, all we know is that Jeter will soon venture into a life after baseball centered on his foundation's work and his hope of starting a family (no, we don't know with whom). And we know, most importantly, that he still has one more season in him, which is why, on a dais reserved for him and him alone, and on a day assumed to serve as celebration of all that was and all he is, Jeter paused mid-availability, pointed to his teammates assembled on one side of the room and said this:

Seven commas in one sentence: generally not a good idea if you're trying for any semblance of clarity.

"If these guys got to go to work, go work."

That doesn't make any sense.

We don't really know Jeter. But we do know that's what's most important to him

Gift baskets for one night stands, only playing one position at the expense of his team, and being celebrated and applauded on every road trip this season?

Good Old Bill Plaschke

So I wanted to find something stupid.  I don't know if I am just off my game, but it's harder to find outright stupid on ESPN.com these days, so I decided to read some of Bill Plaschke's latest screed. Here's a recent puff piece about a grindy old  white middle infielder!  I'll bet you didn't realize the greatness of a truly unsung Dodger hero: Mark Ellis.

As the sports world is learning with every jaw-dropping win, these suddenly delightful Dodgers are a team of many faces.

As opposed to the crosstown Angels, who are a team of ONE FACE.  And it's the face of Ernesto Frieri.

They include Yasiel Puig's giant look of wonder, Juan Uribe's impish grin, A.J. Ellis' grimace,Clayton Kershaw's scowl, and occasionally even Don Mattingly's smile.

That is a lot of faces.  The Dodgers sound like a bunch of manic depressives.  And if there's any word that describes Juan Uribe, a 33 year old man, it's impish.

Then there is The Stare. It's solid, expressionless, powerful in its confident calm, a constant in the Dodgers' dizzying array of emotion.

"Solid, expressionless, powerful in its confident calm". Woah!  That's a lot of adjectives. "Dizzying array".  I'm getting vertigo just reading this stuff. It sure sounds like these Dodgers need Mark Ellis to calm things down. He's the Zoloft of baseball players.

Dodgers fans know The Stare. They see it on Ellis from the moment he steps on to the field, as endemic to his appearance as the blue lettering across his chest.

Uniforms are endemic to players... until they take them off at the end of the game.  Unless maybe Mark Ellis has a Dodgers tattoo on his chest. It's all part of his confident calm.

 He stares at the hitter from the field, the pitcher from the plate, the game from the dugout, the giant season from his small spot.

Bill, thanks for illustrating for us readers.  It makes the baseball game come alive in our minds.  We can imagine where Mark Ellis stands!   Except for that last one: where exactly is this "small spot" that Mark Ellis is staring at the giant season?

Is Mark Ellis's spot any smaller than other players' spots?

It's also apparently really cute when Mark Ellis' 6-year-old son, Briggs, imitates it while playing tee ball in the middle of his living room.

"Yeah, he taps the bat on the ground and then goes into that look,'' said Ellis with a laugh. "I'm thinking, you know, he's really got it down."

"Oh, c'mon, sometimes I laugh at Puig and Uribe; the cameras just don't catch that,'' he said.

Guess not.

Even Mark seems to understand basic sampling.  If only Bill would learn that lesson.  

You could see The Stare in high definition Wednesday night in Toronto when Ellis calmly strolled to the plate in the 10th inning with no hits in his previous four at-bats to face a pitcher he had never seen.

Stare. Strike one. Stare. Strike two. Stare. Boom.

Bill is varying his sentence length, folks. That's a tip for you young writers out there!  The short sentences really heighten the drama.

Ellis launched a rocket off Juan Perez into the Rogers Centre second deck for a two-run, tiebreaking home run, then quickly rounded the bases as if hurrying back to work after a long lunch break. His teammates surrounded him in giddiness, but The Stare remained for another half-inning until the Dodgers had finished off an improbable 8-3 victory.

An excellent story. Except that Mark Ellis would never take a long lunch break, since he is busy working and staring and grinding.

"We still had work to do," Ellis said. "I have always been taught, this is only three hours of your life, and if you can't give it your full concentration for three hours, then maybe you should do something else."

I like the "maybe" in here, as though Ellis didn't want to offend anyone, like the guy with the fifth-most home runs in major league history, who doesn't have to give his full concentration even in the ninth inning of playoff games when there are bikini models in the stands.  He probably doesn't want to earn that guy's enmity.  Maybe he should do something else.  Actually, maybe he will!

Ellis, who is the oldest member of the regular lineup at age 36, did not start in Thursday's homecoming loss to the Cincinnati Reds at Dodger Stadium because he was batting a career .091 against Reds starter Mat Latos.

Too bad, because the Dodgers are 37-23 when he starts, and that doesn't begin to measure his solid-as-South-Dakota impact on this year's team.

Oh man.  I don't even know where to start here.  Rather than recognizing that Ellis's .091 average is only 11 ABs, he mentions that the Dodgers have won a lot of games when he started.  It's the worst stat ever, and even major news outlets occasionally misuse it to a staggering extent.  

Also, what makes South Dakota more solid than any other state?  Mount Rushmore or something?  Is Mount Rushmore solider than the other mountains?  I bet Alaska is pretty darn solid.  Is he just looking for alliteration?  I guess South Dakota is a lot more solid than South Carolina.  Or the Susquehanna river.  Or San Francisco. 

Oh yeah, he learned The Stare while growing up in Rapid City, S.D., a place where the good people wear their stoicism like overcoats, a place where he didn't play high school baseball because it was too cold for a high school baseball season.

Oh, ok.  Mark Ellis is from South Dakota, where people are more morally solid than in South Carolina.  Well, I guess South Dakota's only institutional racism was against Native Americans, so that's half as many institutional racisms as South Carolina. And in South Carolina people can't wear their stoicism like overcoats, because they don't even need overcoats.

"That's the way we are up there, we never get too high or low,'' Ellis said. "Like those NFL players and those touchdown dances? We're not too high on that.''

Good old fashioned grinders. 

It is this attitude that helped Ellis endure an injury last season that nearly cost him his leg after he was hit by the St. Louis Cardinals' Tyler Greene while attempting to turn a double play. It is also an attitude that has helped him thrive this year in connecting when it counts.

Two bold stats: With a runner on third and fewer than two out, he is hitting .727 with 19 RBIs in 17 plate appearance. In tie games, he is .329 with three of his five home runs.

Last year, in 14 PA with a runner on 3rd and less than 2 outs, Mark Ellis scored a measly 36% of the runners.  His career number is 50%.  Sure makes his 2013 numbers seem like random variation rather than the results of The Stare.  Ostensibly, Mark Ellis has had The Stare since his boyhood in solid-old-South Dakota.  Maybe it only really takes effect and makes him clutch when  he is surrounded by a hysterical bunch of manic depressives.

"This game takes all kinds, and Mark is one of those kinds," said Mattingly, the Dodgers' manager. "He's solid … bread and butter … nothing flashy, just gets it done."

While the hitting stars such as Puig and Hanley Ramirez get the headlines, it is the guys paddling furiously below who have fueled this Dodgers uprising, guys such as the Ellis duo, Skip Schumaker,Nick Punto and Jerry Hairston Jr.

Mark Ellis WAR: 1.9, AJ Ellis  WAR: 2.2, Skip Schumaker WAR: -0.4, Nick Punto WAR: 0.8, Jerry Hairston Jr. WAR 0.0.  I bet the "Ellis duo" feels like the just citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah who got lumped in with all the assholes and everyone went down together in a flaming destruction. 

OK, that analogy doesn't make a lot of sense.

The Stare symbolizes those guys. The Stare is what makes you think this hot streak can endure.

The Stare.  The Stare.  The Stare.  The Stare.  That's what makes you think the Dodgers will keep winning, not Clayton Kershaw's 1.87 ERA or Hanley Ramirez and Yasiel Puig OPSing over 1 in over 200 PA.

Ellis eventually played Thursday, batting in the ninth inning, knocking a pinch single into right field against a zillion-mile-a-hour fastball from Aroldis Chapman. He was stranded on third base as the game ended, but at least he was there. He's pretty much always there.

Mark Ellis: always there.

"This is what we do, this is our job," Ellis said. "You just get it done."

That was a very meaningful insight, Mark Ellis.

Three hours, and one stare, at a time.

Two examples of Mark Ellis's late-game hits and a couple of misplaced stats and a facial expression.  BOOM.  Plaschke gold.  

What this world needs is more love letters from sportswriters to Derek Jeter

How many more years will sportswriters sit down at their keyboards, or whatever awesome brain-connected device replaces the keyboard 20 years from now, and decide that the world really desperately needs to read more drivel like this?  Don't get me wrong, I know it'll go on until he dies, so at least another 40ish years, but will it stop at some point after that?  I guess Bob Costas still blabs He Was More Important Than The Game Itself garbage about Mantle to this day, so the answer is probably no.  Christ.  It's excruciating to think about.

THE MAGIC OF baseball will always live in the storytelling --

And this is why a lot of people hate baseball.  For all the shit I shovel on the NFL for being a sport for meatheads, the assface baseball fan equivalent to the NFL fan meathead is the person who thinks the magic of baseball is in the storytelling.  It most certainly does not, not anymore than the magic of any sports is in the storytelling.  The magic of baseball is in the accessibility, the quirkiness, the way it starts with spring and dies with fall every year, and a hundred other things that are not related to constructing obnoxious and often factually incorrect narratives around dreamy-eyed True Yankees.

the grandeur of Ruth, the Midwestern identification with Musial, the unbreakable Robinson and the complex defiance and moral ambiguity of Bonds.

The magic of all those guys were that they were phenomenal players.  Reading about them (and, for example, the fact that Bonds and Ruth dominated the game in very similar ways 70ish years apart) is awesome, but it's not awesome "storytelling."  It's awesome because they were awesome at baseball.

It's what gives life to the statistics.

I'm sure you can see where this is headed.

Unfortunately, in the age of Moneyball and fantasy leagues,

And NERDS who are NERDY STAT NERDS

the numbers have been detached from, and become more important than, the players.

This is about as phenomenal a straw man as you could hope to construct to try to tear down STAT NERDS.  Hey, I'll bet you STAT NERDS think NUMBERS are more important than BASEBALL PLAYERS, don't you?  You'd get rid of the players entirely if you could!  Don't deny it!

All but one.

You guessed it... Frank Stallone.

The Yankees' Derek Jeter has defied the impact of the two most influential elements of his time: the institutional shift toward quantitative analysis and the cynical lust for home runs, fueled by performance-enhancing drugs.

This is pure horseshit.  I'm sure you were thinking the same thing as you were reading it so I'll spare you the paragraph-long response.  Needless to say, there is nothing about a guy with a .382 career OBP and 94 oWAR that "defies" the shift towards quantitative analysis.  If you want to out yourself as a shithead, be sure to say things like YOU STAT NERDS PROBABLY DON'T EVEN THINK DEREK JETER IS GOOD.  Somewhere along the line, shitheads like Bryant have tried to drastically change the message promoted by people who say things like "Jeter is a bad defensive shortstop" and "Jeter is a first ballot HOF guy, but I'm tired of reading love letters to him from people like Howard Bryant" to JETER SUX.  It's embarrassing.  Also, sorry Howard, but it's not 1998 anymore.  No one is "lusting" for home runs.

For now, he's stuck at 3,304 hits, sidelined until after the All-Star break with an ankle injury. But with Jeter, the visual has always been better than the numerical --

Those steely, calm, steel eyes.  They look right through you.  And when Derek says "Sorry guys, no more questions, I've got to shower and go home" the eyes are saying something much naughtier than that.

and there's never been a better time to appreciate that than in his absence,

Or every March through October of every year from 1996 through 2012, which apparently were also great times to appreciate him, according to numerous baseball writers across the country.

which only underscores his longevity.

It certainly underscores that he's old as shit and about to retire.  Not sure if it underscores how long he's been playing.

For years, most stats guys never liked him as much as his All-Star rivals at shortstop: Alex Rodriguez,

They both became regulars in 1996.  Between then and 2004, when A-FRAUD joined the Yankees, there was exactly one season when Jeter was better (1999).  The other eight seasons, PAY-ROD was somewhere between "somewhat better" and "insanely better" than Steely McGiftBasket.  Jeter is one of the 20 best players of the past 20 years.  Rodriguez is one of the 20 best players of all time.

Nomar Garciaparra

He became a regular in 1997.  Between then and 2003, when he finished his run as an impact player thanks to his groin/hamstring exploding like a firework in 2004, Jeter was better in 1999 and 2001 (because NOMAH got hurt and played in only 21 games).

and Miguel Tejada.

Tejada was definitely not as good as Jeter, although I don't remember too many "stat guys" insisting on that, especially considering Tejada's weakness relative to these other three was always OBP.

Jeter, now 38, has outlasted them all at the position

Lol.  Yes, Jeter did a fantastic job of outlasting Rodriguez at the position, mostly by being the world's greatest teammate and forcing the defensively superior Rodriguez to switch positions in order to accommodate Jeter's ego.

and created a more compelling legacy. (Rodriguez and Tejada will always be drug-tainted,

Fortunately, non-idiots will still be able to appreciate how good they were anyways.  Also, $1,000 to the Red Cross if Jeter tests positive before the end of the season.

and Jeter likely will finish with twice as many hits as Garciaparra's 1,747.)

Take that, guy whose career was ended by crippling and unpredictable injuries!

Jeter most clearly defined his essence on separate occasions in the 2001 ALDS against the A's. Moment One was, of course, [LB edit: THE FLIP PLAY OMG NEED TO GO CHANGE MY PANTS]. But while the scorebook registers Jeter's play as simply an out -- albeit one that was 9-to-6-to-2 -- it demoralized the A's.

This is the kind of stuff we're going to be reading from our rocking chairs at the old folks home in 2070, and the person writing it is going to think they're shining light into darkness.

The second defining moment came two nights later, with the A's spent, wondering as the noise cascaded on them just how they were here playing a deciding Game 5 at Yankee Stadium, how they had let the series slip away. Terrence Long hit a foul ball along the third base line that Jeter chased and caught, spilling into the stands. It was, again, just another out, F6, but on the field it was a referendum of championship toughness.

A ball a faster guy might have gotten to without having to sell out and dive into the stands.  But hey, GRIT TOUGH STEELY EYES CLUTCH.  Hard to argue with that.

The Yankees had it. The A's didn't.

The ability to win three out of five games in that particular series: the Yankees had it.

That intangibles notion is murky, of course, and complicated.

Could have ended the article right there.

Jeter played in an era when everyone was suspected of PED use. For those choosing to believe the shortstop that he was, is and always has been a clean ballplayer, the monument to his fidelity and greatness lies in his old-school bona fides.

That's awesome.  "Those who assume he never used credit it to something ill-defined, the existence of which can't be proven or disproven."  And let's also point out that as of June 2011, Jeter was coming off by far his worst offensive season and was hitting .257/.321/.329 with zero home runs in the not-exactly-young season. Then he rebounded nicely to finish 2011 and had a .316/.362/.429 season with fifteen home runs in 2012.  Let's just put that out there.  Something clicked for him.  Did a nagging injury heal?  Did he change his approach?  You know what--it could have been anything.

Jeter, along with possibly Ken Griffey Jr., is the only player in the modern game whose iconic moments were generated by all five tools -- not just by standing in the batter's box and hitting another home run in a game that encouraged nothing but.

Again, if you want to out yourself as a shithead, make sure you tell everyone that Jeter is one of only two players in the last 25ish years to generate "iconic moments" with all five tools.  That will make it very clear to everyone reading your writing that you're a fucking shithead.  It will also require you to ignore the existence of Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, Carlos Beltran, and about 200 other position players to play during that time.

Like Jackie Robinson, Jeter is pure baseball.

True Yankee.  Steely Eyes.  Pure Baseball.  Gift Basket.

He will be remembered for his baserunning (the clever beating of the shift by swiping third base that he made routine).

How many players don't capitalize on that?  More importantly, how many teams are like "screw it, ignore than runner on second, we're putting the full shift on?"  My guess is this happened once with Jeter in like 1997 and Bryant now wants to credit him with a) making it routine and b) inventing cars, airplanes, and computers.

He will be equally celebrated for his fielding and throwing.

He will be remembered for being an adequate to good shortstop through his 20s, and then receiving a bunch of Gold Gloves he didn't deserve during his 30s.  Not sure "celebrated" is the right term.

(Even though he doesn't rank anywhere near the top 1,000 in career defensive WAR, you can't deny the Flip, the nailing of Arizona's Danny Bautista at third in the 2001 World Series or the flying leap into the crowd against the Red Sox in the summer of '04.)

That's right.  Those three plays cannot be denied.  They really happened, they were not optical illusions that fooled everyone who saw them.  I will grant that.  He's still been a shitty defensive shortstop for a decade and running.

And his hitting consistency is close to unmatched. (His injury likely will make his quest for 4,000 hits unsuccessful, but he is in range to catch Henry Aaron at 3,771 for third all time.)

I'm not trying to overhate here, but that's not going to happen.

Not that he couldn't power the ball out of the ballpark too -- there was the first-pitch leadoff home run in Game 4 of the 2000 Series when the Mets had won the night before,

"Not that he couldn't power the ball out of the ballpark too -- remember, he hit a home run once."  Take a step back and think about this article.  What the fuck are you getting out of this?  What the fuck could Derek Jeter's closest admirers (other than Howard Bryant and his family) get out this?  Much of this can be summarized as "Jeter was great."  Holy dog balls, this is awful.  Almost over though.

and the two-out, full-count walk-off home run the following year in Game 4 against Arizona.

Why did the Yankees lose that series?  I blame A-Rod, even though he was a Ranger at the time.

As if that wasn't enough, there's also the imprint he's had on the Yankees, the first homegrown star to lead the franchise to the World Series since Mickey Mantle. (1977-78 belonged to Reggie, not Munson.) 

As Chris W put it, what a fun and worthwhile use of our time--let's argue whether Munson really "led" the Yankees to that title.  After that we can go back to debating the existence of Jeter's "old school bona fides."

He became the signature player for the game's signature team when it returned to power, and in an era of drugs and cynicism and ruined reputations, he never embarrassed the sport, his team or,

This describes 99% of all MLB players.  One of the ones it does not describe is Barry Bonds, who was still fucking awesome, way more awesome than Derek Jeter.  Neener neener neener.

most important, his family name.

Most importantly, he never embarrassed the sacred Jeter family name?  What?  Why are we giving him credit for this?  "Most importantly, he never pushed anyone off of the Statue of Liberty.  For this, he deserves a parade."

There is no metric for that. Just a magical story.

It really isn't.  This was a colossal waste of time and I apologize to you for having made you read it.

Hate Hate Hate Hate Hate Hate Hate Hate Hate (chanted)

I think Chris W said it best when he linked me to this story: you... you have to root against this kid. Hard to say it but it's true. Don't get me wrong, it's very inspiring and all that. But if he does anything notable WE WILL NEVER HEAR THE FUCKING END OF IT. It'd be like if David Eckstein took a bullet for the president while laying down a World Series-winning inside the park home run bunt. No offense to you, Kevin Laue, but I hope you quietly complete your college career without achieving any level of significant success. And without ever playing in the NCAA tournament. Or on national TV. Ever.

Laue's story has already inspired many, and he knows that coming to New York will provide him with an even bigger stage. But he's confident his impact will be felt on the court, too.

"I'm a risk. Coach Rohrssen was willing to take it," Laue said. "He has no reason to worry."

I, for one, am terrified.

Peter King: Fat, Stupid, and an Embarrassment to Journalism

Is there any way he could ask dumber questions? I understand that not every question a reporter gives to a star is going to be hard-hitting and thought-provoking. But this asshole takes the idea of tossing softballs to ridiculous levels. Check out his interviews with three NFL quarterbacks from this week's MMQB. After each section, I'll write what I think he probably asked each in order to get the answer. When you're done, ask yourself if King has helped you learn anything substantive about these players.

First, Ben Roethlisberger and his risky decision to dive for a touchdown on a scramble towards the goal line in spite of having a hurt shoulder:

"Heck no,'' he said after I asked if he had thought twice about exposing his shoulder to that risk. "I will never ... Casey Hampton said to me on the sidelines, 'What are you doing scoring? Why didn't you just go down at the one?' I said, 'Hamp, don't you know by now? That's my heart.' I'm a competitor. I want to get in the end zone. And I want to win. Period. I don't think about running the clock out. I don't think about saving myself. It'll take someone to bring me down. It's the competitive side. [Coach Mike Tomlin] tells me, 'Don't take a hit. Get down, slide.' You have to pick your battles. You have to know when to do it. In that situation, it's competition.''

King's question: "So, Ben, do you like to win? Are you the kind of guy who wants to give it all for his team, play like a champion, and be an inspiration all of America? Or would you rather play it safe, and not play like a champion and not try to win?"

Next, a certain Jets QB who Peter would be happy to butt-tongue if given the chance, regarding (surprise, sur-fucking-prise) his future:

"And it's been great. It hasn't been all smooth, but I've enjoyed it. I'm having fun. Now, if we were 3-8 instead of 8-3, I know I'd be back on the farm next year and it'd be over. But I'm just going to play as hard as I can every week the rest of the way and we'll see how it goes.''

No promises about next year. He just doesn't know yet, and he's not allowing himself to think ahead. He did think ahead about one thing Sunday, though.

King's question: "Brett, are you pretty much done thinking about this season? Have you pretty much decided that it's time to stop worrying about anything that happens between now and February, and just start thinking about whether you will grace us with your presence for one more year? Or are you still kind of thinking about how your team is 8-3 and rapidly becoming a playoff contender? And if so, what is your strategy for the rest of this season- are you actually going to try, or are you just kind of going to half-ass it?

Also, can I drink some of your urine?"

Similar idea for New England's Matt Cassel:

The easiest way to get put off by the polite Cassel is to mention he's about to be a free-agent, and he's about to make a jillion dollars somewhere in 2009. He knows. He's not stupid. He just doesn't want to hear about it now.

"We'll see,'' he said. "I honestly don't think about it. I just want to keep playing, and let that take care of itself when the end of the year comes.'' Smart man.

King's Question: "Matt, are you at all thinking about this season anymore? Granted, your team is still in the thick of the wild card and division title hunt. But have you decided not to worry about that, and just pretty much mentally check out? Do you spend all your time obsessing over getting a big contract from a new team next summer?"

Seriously, fuck this guy. What a zilch. Oh, and a nice little hypocritical complaint from PK at the end of his predictably awful 10 things he thinks he thinks:

If I read one more story about where LeBron James might play two years from now, I'm going to puke.

Yeah, you've never run a story into the ground or anything. Never happened. No way you would ever strongly contribute to the media's infatuation with a story that gets incredibly fucking old.

Pat Forde Wishes Nick Saban Was His Dad, and It Makes Me Want to Jump in Front of a Bus

But before I get to that, let me clear out some clutter I accumulated in my brain while watching football this weekend:

-During Saturday night's Penn State/Illinois game, the Nittany Lions were facing a 3rd and 9 from their own 21 with about 14:00 remaining in the first quarter. There was, obviously, no score. Kirk Herbstreit could have picked any number of adjectives to describe the nature of the third down conversion PSU was facing; he went with "huge." (Emphasis his.) That was a poor, poor choice.

-For reasons that only God or possibly my hangover could hope to explain, I actually bothered to watch most of the Browns/Bengals game today. And in doing so, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that former Raiders and Chiefs QB Rich Gannon is a great color commentator. He's the anti-Joe Morgan; almost everything he said made sense, and he didn't once talk about his own accomplishments. (This despite having ample opportunity to do so, as neither QB in this game played like they could start for a decent D-I college team.)

-In stark contrast were the contributions of Tony Siragusa to the Packers/Buccaneers game that was happening at the same time. What a fucking pudwhacker. My theory about him is that he's like Milton from the movie Office Space. FOX actually fired him several years ago and he no longer receives a paycheck, but no one has the heart to tell him to stop showing up for work.

-During the Cowboys/Redskins game, Troy Aikman provided this analysis re Dallas's DeMarcus Ware and an angry reaction a couple of Washington players provoked out of him:

They [defensive linemen] don't like it when they've got an offensive lineman engaging them up top, and then they have a back going down on them as well.

I don't think you can show that on broadcast TV. I'm not even sure if you can say it.

-This is a general observation unrelated to the sports media, but it's pretty annoying how often guys' helmets are coming off this year. It's like a new fad where players are intentionally not strapping them on tightly enough because it looks awesome when they fly off. (To the credit of Aikman and Joe "A Disgusting Act!" Buck, they're the only announcing team I've heard comment on the phenomenon so far this fall.) Anyways, I'm thinking it maybe goes back to that Jason Witten play last year where he got his helmet torn off while shedding a tackle and then ran thirty yards down the field without it. I admit, that was kind of cool. There are a few problems with the current trend (presumably) emulating that play, however:

1) Witten looked cool because he lost his hat while doing something positive for his team. Ninety percent of the guys I've seen get theirs popped off this year, however, have had that happen while getting fucking crushed by someone in a very negative fashion. Even worse than it happening when you're getting tackled during a non-exciting play on offense is having it happen when you're trying to tackle someone. See: one of the North Carolina guys who got dumptrucked on a crackback block during a punt return in their game against Miami on Saturday. I mean, if you're going to get decleated on national TV, at least try to keep your face as obscured as possible.

2) I don't want to sound like a mom or something, but it seems like this is probably an unsafe practice. (Again, assuming it is an intentional practice. I mean, maybe it's just a coincidence that you see like five or six guys a game losing their helmets this year as opposed to zero or one in years past. But probably not.) If you watch the hit that knocked Anquan Boldin unconscious today, it looks like his helmet is in the process of popping off when the second hit (the one that did most of the damage) comes in. Just saying. Maybe in the interest of, you know, not sustaining horrible injuries, guys should try to keep the thing that prevents their head from being crushed like a melon as secure as possible. Just an idea.

Anyways, onto this piece of crap Forde wrote. There's something... puffy about it.

Scott Cochran knew what he was cussing about after all.

As the Alabama strength coach famously predicted during practice last week, the blackout was a bleepin' funeral for Georgia, which lost 41-30.

"Famously" being used very loosely here. I consume about as much sports media as is humanly possible for someone who also has a day job/activity, and I heard nothing about this. If you Google "Scott Cochran predict Alabama Georgia funeral" or some derivation thereof, you will see zero results besides this article itself that aren't from a blog or message board.

In fact, the blackout was a blowout until two late embalming-fluid touchdowns by the overwhelmed home team. Rest in pieces, Bulldogs.

But in classic circle-of-life form, this upset romp wasn't just an interment. It also was a rebirth for the Crimson Tide as a full-on title contender.

The prose is getting pretty purple around here. Life! Death! Cycles thereof! Most importantly, football!

In near-record time.

It's fucking September. They've played five games. To quote Harvey Keitel, let's not go sucking each other's dicks just yet.

It has taken Nick Saban all of 18 games as coach to rocket Alabama from having a losing record to digging graves for top-10 opponents.

He spent one of those 18 games losing to Louisiana-Monroe during homecoming weekend last November. He spent another one losing to Mississippi State, and yet another losing to his school's most hated rival. So clearly, he's the next Bear Bryant. (I'm not saying he's definitely not... I'm saying, why is Pat so fucking certain that he's got everything under control? IT'S STILL SEPTEMBER.)

And it has taken this 2008 Tide team a month to go from unranked in the preseason USA Today coaches' poll to possibly No. 1 when the new rankings come out this week.

Has anyone ever done that?

Probably. You're the guy getting paid to write this. Maybe you could take the time to research and answer your own question.

Alabama stands alongside Oklahoma as the two most impressive teams to date. On my ESPN.com power rankings ballot, I'll give the edge to the 5-0 Tide.

Can we also award them the 2008, 2009, and 2010 BCS Championship trophies? I don't see any reason why we shouldn't.

"We probably played the best half of football we've played all season long," said the endlessly demanding Saban, who fumed at his team's second-half lapses as much as he praised its first-half brilliance. "It couldn't have come at a better time."

Understand this: Nick Saban could not have come to Tuscaloosa at a better time.

Clever. But wouldn't it maybe have been even better timing for him to show up last year and save them from ekeing out an embarrassing 7-6 season, which included a home loss to a team from the Sun Belt? Oh, that's right. He was there for that.

This is why you pay a guy $32 million over eight years. Because he's just that good.

Nauseating. I'm not disputing that the guy obviously knows how to coach. (In the NCAA, anyways.) He has the numbers and ring to prove it. But really, what's the point of a sentence like that? If it's not: "I'm Pat Forde, and I love Nick Saban with all my heart and soul," then I'm afraid I can't parse it.

He's that relentless as a recruiter, bringing in instant-impact players like freshman wide receiver Julio Jones (who had five catches for 94 yards and a touchdown Saturday) and juco transfer nose tackle Terrence Cody (who's just a scary man at 6-foot-5 and 365 pounds).

I'm fucking exhausted of this Jones guy already. You can't watch college football-related programming for more than five minutes this fall without hearing about him. Let's just award him the Heisman tomorrow and immediately send him to the St. Louis Rams. I'm sure they could use him. Also- you know who Saban didn't recruit? Almost every Alabama player who made an impact against Georgia.

He's that painstaking in preparation, overseeing a game plan that rendered Georgia Heisman Trophy candidate Knowshon Moreno almost useless and burned the Bulldogs' defense repeatedly. Moreno got just nine carries as Georgia was forced strictly into the passing game.

Clearly, Saban's precise, exact gameplan (verbatim) was "take a 31 point lead so Moreno doesn't get any carries." What a genius. Here's an idea- any time Team A beats Team B by taking a big early lead and never relinquishing it, and Team B has a great running back who doesn't get enough carries, let's credit Team A for "painstakingly" crafting a gameplan that would achieve that exact result.

Saban is that persistent in pursuit of perfection. It's why he treats praise like poison.

Hopefully he reads this article and slips into a coma, then.

It's why the thought of Alabama ranked No. 1 is at least mildly appalling.

What a horrendous use of false understatement. Forde- you stink.

It's why he smiles less than Spock.

Did Jonah Keri write this?

He never looks happy. Public happiness might be construed as satisfaction, and satisfaction could lead to slacking off, and slacking off could lead to losing, and Nick Saban would rather sleep with snakes than lose.

What a beautiful man. I'm nominating him for Time "Person of the Year." I think he should replace Chuck Norris in terms of having annoying one-liners about how great he is being pasted all over the fucking internet by 13 year olds.

"Once you lose your intensity, it's hard to get it back," Saban said. He was lamenting Alabama's third-quarter miscues that let Georgia back in the game, but he might as well have been describing his approach to football. Eternal intensity.

Fuck. That. I used to think you were an alright dude, Forde. I didn't mind your "Forde Yard Dash" column, even if your choice of "Dashette" for the week was pretty borderline. That ship, however, has sailed. I know I've sounded like a hater throughout this piece. That's probably because I am. But the question remains, for haters and non-haters alike... who the fuck writes like this, especially about someone like Nick fucking Saban of all people?

What a zilcheroo.

And please, please, please let some crazy Alabama message board hooligans get ahold of this. I'm begging for it. In case that happens, here's your disclaimer-

1) I'm not an Auburn fan
2) I'm not a Georgia fan
3) I'm actually a fan of a team that hasn't played Alabama for more than 20 years
4) I just hate Nick Saban... a lot
5) And for what it's worth, now I hate Pat Forde too