Shump, Whiplash, and Viking Fever: While We’re Waiting…
January 7, 2015J.R. Smith and Iman Shumpert were “hurt” by trade news
January 7, 2015There are so many things weird about the latest column from Paul Hoynes on Tuesday night. Shall we count them off?
1) Paul Hoynes, long-time beat writer of the Cleveland Indians for the Akron Beacon Journal and The Plain Dealer and now the Northeast Ohio Media Group (NEOMG), forgot to vote for the Baseball Hall of Fame this year. He admitted it was a “screw up.” But that admission wasn’t enough for an entire column. No. He continued:
Somehow, someway the ballot never got from my mailbox to my eager fingers. Between the curb and my desk, the ballot took a powder. By the time I realized it was really lost, there wasn’t time to get a new one.
Deep down, however, I think there was some Freudian thing at work.
He went on to explain this Freudian thing in a moment, of course. But I want to just handle one thing at a time. Paul Hoynes has been eligible to vote for the Hall of Fame for 21 years. He’s been writing about the Indians for over 30 years. And this year — when voter participation was at a modern high — he somehow forgot to open his mail. OK then. That’s interesting. Let’s continue.
2) This Freudian thing was about Pedro Martinez. It’s about how Paul Hoynes thought Pedro Martinez, arguably the greatest right-handed pitcher of the ’90s/’00s, was a punk and might not have deserved his forgotten Hall of Fame vote anyway.
He recalled intentional plunkings of forgotten players like Einar Diaz and Karim Garcia. He recalled the oft-discussed Don Zimmer incident. Sure, these are noteworthy things. But can we retire the whole “he was a punk and doesn’t deserve my vote” narrative?
It’s really unfair to the credentials of the players involved. Guys like Kenny Lofton and Albert Belle — more on Indians connections in a moment — didn’t deserve to be cast away from the ballot after only one year. They got that because they weren’t received well by the media. The Hall of Fame should be about a player’s contributions to the game, not his buddy-buddy relationship with the media.
3) Then Hoynes wrote about how Pedro Martinez dominated the Indians. Of course he did. Pedro Martinez, again, was one of the best pitchers any one of us have ever seen. But again, Hoynes mentioned this as a possible reason why he didn’t like the guy and might not have voted for him?
Since we’re having a come to Jesus moment here, I have to say those weren’t the only reasons Martinez irritated me. He quite simply dominated the Indians.
This is so incredibly odd. I really don’t care to harp on this point specifically much more. It’s dumbfounding.
4) But then, Hoynes changed his mind: He admitted he would have actually voted for Pedro if he had “taken proper care” of his ballot. As in actually opening his mail? And this is because of something that happened in 2009, Pedro’s last season.
[Mark] Shapiro said that if he could sign Martinez to a one-year deal, he’d do it in a heartbeat. Now, Shapiro watched Martinez beat the Indians year after year just like I did. He’d seen Martinez’s whole act.
But when he looked at him, he saw talent. I saw a punk.
Not sure if Hoynes is sincerely changing direction here or not. But he said he was and would have voted for Pedro. Good.
5) And then, the ending of the article. This is how it ended, literally, right after those previous two paragraphs:
Emotion had gotten in my way. It’s hard to see clearly like that.
Martinez will enter Cooperstown with Randy Johnson, John Smoltz and Craig Biggio. Martinez, Johnson and Smoltz were first ballot selections. Craig Biggio made it on his third try.
I wasn’t a journalism major. But I took a media writing class, was the sports editor and then editor-in-chief of my college newspaper, and have written about sports online for seven-ish years. I don’t think AP Style nor common sports writing etiquette prefers non sequitur endings to an article about how a Hall of Fame voter forgot his ballot and thought a no-doubt three-time Cy Young winner was a punk.
6) Which then goes back to the title of the article: Why I didn’t vote for Hall of Famer Pedro Martinez: Paul Hoynes. Technically, I guess, sure, Hoynes forgot his ballot and didn’t vote for Martinez. But it’s incredibly misleading. Paul Hoynes forgot to vote. He didn’t vote for anyone. That’s the news story. He thought Pedro Martinez was a punk, but probably maybe somewhat would’ve voted for him anyway because Mark Shapiro would’ve liked to sign him for his final season.
This was an entirely odd article. And it perplexes me on a day where we should have been applauding the Baseball Writers Association of America for its largest elected class since 1955. Sending these four into the Hall of Fame clears the way for guys like Mike Piazza, Tim Raines, Edgar Martinez, Mike Mussina, Barry Bonds, Rogers Clemens and many deserving superstars in the future.
For too long, Hall of Fame voters were being shy and unfair with their ballots. This year, I thought they did quite well. And I hate to go to town on one person who has been a very well-respected journalist for so many years. Listen, I forget things all the time. But this column was downright odd. And readers should be frustrated by its back-and-forth configurations and a misleading headline. This was not good. It felt forced, it felt wrong.
29 Comments
Gotta respect Paul as his job is a brutal grind, but yeah—this is bad. Worse than the time he said he wouldn’t vote for Felix Hernandez because of his win total and then went on to defend “wins” as a statistic worth even considering at the individual player level.
Had hopes of NEOMG starting 2015 off right after an embarrassing finish to 2014. I’m more disappointed than anything.
Hoynes desperately needed an editor to save himself, someone to step in and say, “nope, can’t publish this.” The PD let him down as much as he did it to himself.
I don’t think the Plain Dealer has editors anymore. It does not appear that anyone there is casting a critical eye and asking questions about articles before they are posted or printed, not just in sports but in the entire paper.
And NEOMG most certainly doesn’t have any editors. Cleveland.com is an embarrassingly amateur operation.
1) Harv may need to step in here, but isn’t the whole concept of “Freudian” related, at least on some level, to latent sexual issues? If so, I really hope Hoynes’s inability to vote wasn’t Freudian, mostly because I don’t want to even think about that.
2) If Hoynes means that his failure to vote was simply “subconscious,” then this whole article proves that it wasn’t. He didn’t want to vote for Martinez, but he didn’t want to take the flak for not doing so while voting for others. So, he decided to take this hit instead, knowing that it was a fait accompli that the other guys he would vote for would make it. Dumb. Just dumb. If you’re going to take a stand, take a stand. Don’t just vote “present” (after the fact).
I believe the latent sexual issues was just one of the doctrines attributed to Dr. Freud. Though Dr. Freud certainly would not like to have anything with the term subconscious attributed to him:
If someone talks of subconsciousness, I cannot tell whether he means the term topographically – to indicate something lying in the mind beneath consciousness – or qualitatively – to indicate another consciousness, a subterranean one, as it were. He is probably not clear about any of it. The only trustworthy antithesis is between conscious and unconscious
So basically, as I have always suspected, Freud didn’t really know what he was talking about. Anyhoo, Hoynes still did a dumb thing.
avatar says stay away, poseur. I have zero expertise, either as practitioner or recipient (despite periodic prodding by others). But obviously Hoynes was using popular generic usage per your #2. (“Your #2” … hmm … go on …).
Eh, this is nothing but a sloppy attempt at a confessional, more personal writing style. He says he would have voted for him and that’s a big Duh, because the Boston Globe or others would have outed and humiliated him nationally.
As Mskog and Mr. C say, the only issue here is the sudden lack of any editing at cleve.com, which is kind of shocking. Typos daily. A few weeks ago Cavs writer Chris Haynes conflated two SAT words so amateurishly it was like he was playing that character on the old In Living Color show. Color me a convert. If print papers no longer curb bad instincts and prevent egregious errors, if they no longer have the resources to attract the best and brightest, if they’re reduced to imitating edgier writing and chasing others’ speed advantage, blogs win. I’m still mourning the shockingly quick loss of cold-eyed editing but I’ll pick and choose the best of what’s out there now and hope the selection keeps improving.
As Ohio State proved last week, it is possible to have both cold-eyed determination and speed.
http://i.imgur.com/xxQmZaz.gif
My favorite thing about that play: the fastest person on the field is not even Ezekiel Elliot. He’s second. The fastest guy is Jalen Marshall.
Excellent point.
Also, just a reminder that the SEC has never won a college football playoff game.
My favorite things about this play are: the blocking, the blocking, Zeke, the cutaway shots to the stunned ‘bammy fans, the blocking, Brutus’ prime spot, watching this .gif for the 40th time, and the blocking.
Is that the play where they cut to a shot of the sad 48-year-old Bama fan wearing the clothes and makeup of a 20-year old sorority girl, to include a tiara? We’ve watched that 100 times, and it never gets old.
please also notice the players doing the wave on the sideline as he runs past. I only noticed it on the 99th viewing of the play and it’s magnificent.
No, no, no. That shot was after the pick-6. I will admit though, it’s hard sorting through the GIFs to find the proper ones because Bama has been rolled in the Sugar Bowl so many times (as Oklahoma and Utah fans know).
https://cdn0.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/RutOLQAyuBLeGDY0KFOFR20ur0M=/cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/2896068/bamafear.0.gif
NIce work! I couldn’t find it. (And I guess it’s not a tiara, but still . . . )
Also, notice the ref running down the sideline. I’m very impressed by his speed. It’s not “Big Ten Speed,” it’s not even subpar “SEC Speed,” but it’s pretty dang good for a 50-year old – and he gets to the goal line right on time.
Yep, same guy that kept pace with Miller on the INT return despite a slew of Bama defenders falling at his feet.
http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=espn:12110292
http://www.reactiongifs.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/pacino.gif
totally agree on the oddness of the article. I was like, “dude, why would you publicly admit to forgetting to vote for the HOF? He’ll be lucky, in my opinion, to retain his vote in the future. I think what he did is a serious transgression and spits in the face of the Hall. But, aside from that, I do like his reporting. oh well….
the line judge was pretty fast, too. (or back judge. whatever judge that is.)
Listen….I think that’s a dude, dude.
Wow. I can’t believe I missed that ref. No chance he’s from “Slohio.”
You might be right about that. And in stark contrast to the Buckeyes hotties at 0:13 in that clip.
Definitely not a “Luckeye.”
This is ridiculous and just shows why media members shouldn’t have votes. This is the type of thing going on in the heads of voters of the HOF.
What a freaking joke.
Here’s a respectful way of not voting for the MLB HOF:
http://sports.yahoo.com/news/why-not-voting-for-the-hall-of-fame-is-right-for-this-bbwaa-member-194029335.html
I simply tired of helping – in a very small way – to create the news that drove the outrage. The condescending diatribes. The uncivil debates. The arched eyebrows and spittle. The campaigning. The agendas. The disregard – no, the pointed hatred – for a contrary opinion.
I don’t find him as “entertaining” as I once did perhaps it’s time for him to either slow his pace or hang ’em up.