"...When I become Commissioner of Sports - and don't shake your head, it could happen - championship teams will be rewarded with prolonged grace periods. Translation: no bitching for five years from their fans...Honestly, how can you complain about anything once you get that ring?"
- Bill Simmons, November 24, 2003
"I could spend the next 3,000 words ranting and raving about the unacceptable performance of the Henry/Theo regime since they won the World Series - the catastrophic Renteria/Clement signings; lowballing Pedro/Damon, then half-heartedly renewing talks at the last second; overvaluing Beckett (a genuine disappointment) and Crisp (a colossal disappointment); undervaluing their own prospects (Hanley Ramirez and Anibal Sanchez) in the Beckett trade; freezing at this year's trading deadline; dealing Arroyo without knowing about the health of Wells and Foulke; allowing 40-year-old Mike Timlin to pitch in the WBC (he's a walking corpse now); letting Roberts and Cabrera go; handing Beckett that unconscionable $30 million extension (I yelped out loud when I saw the headline); and we haven't even mentioned last winter's soap opera with Theo yet..."
- Bill Simmons, August 16, 2006
One of the commenters on Mnookin's site nailed it - Simmon can't be taken seriously. He's like a sports pop culture writer. He acts like he is this big Sox fan and then in his recent AL article, he comes across the stat VORP and apparently 2006 was the first he had heard of it.
ReplyDeleteAnd like another commenter said, he has no access. He has as much info as someone sitting at home watching NESN, yet acts like he knows everything.
So the bottom line is, don't take anything he say too seriously. Then again, how many writers can actually really be taken seriously. Certainly no columnists. Pretty much all beat writers. In major cities they tend to become Homers (George King) or Jaded (definitely Tony Maz) or the paper uses them as both (this is annoying with Edes or even more so when they use CHB as a beat writer). Occasionally there are a few good ones (Sherman, Chris Snow was good last year). In small towns they are too cozy. And the national guys gloss over things way too much.
So basically, half my job as a fan is ferreting out who I believe, what agenda might be being pushed, and use the information in between to make my own judgments.
Yeah, I know, I think I'm just really disappointed. The guy is absolutely hilarious - some of the funniest sports writing I've ever read (esp. that Devil Rays game diary - and then he really captured what it felt like to be a Sox fan in the Two Octobers (2003 and 2004). But since then, nothing. He got a little too popular, or he became too much of an institution, or something. It's sad that we now talk about not taking him seriously in the same way we say don't take CHB seriously.
ReplyDeleteMaybe he needs to come back to Boston? I keep remembering that one article of his when, in complete "horrible sports columnist" fashion, he wrote a whole article on how great it is to get to go to Dodger Stadium is, and how weird and crazy it was that Nomar hit a HR off Pedro...and then admits he wasn't actually there to see the HR.
Basically, he's become a sports columnist. That's not a good thing.