I know you're sick of hearing about it. I sure am. But you can't get away from it. And, if you have an opinion on A-Rod (and let's face it. who doesn't?) you should inform yourself as much as possible.
I'm not telling people what to think. My opinion is something close to "where there's smoke, there's probably a little fire".
I just want everyone to remember to consider the source. This is definately worth reading, even if you would rather be dipped in a big vat of dog poo than read one more thing about A-Rod.
h/t Rob Neyer (I think this means I stole this from Neyer's blog, which I did)
Update:
While we're stealing good stuff that Neyer linked to, I might as well provide the rest of it.
A journalist using shady unreliable sources? This is an anvil that has just been dropped on my poor, unsuspecting head.
ReplyDeleteI am beardy's shocked state of disbelief.
I don't know enough about the book or the interviews with Roberts to lend much insight. But I do know when I had a subscription to Sports Illustrated and Roberts was made a columnist, I just wasn't that impressed with what she wrote. I wouldn't call the columns/reporting shallow as Murray Chass did. But I see what he means. There just wasn't much to what she wrote. I'd finish reading it and go, "yeah, so?" It was almost like you could predict where she was going with the column from paragraph one. There were no surprises, not a ton of insight, like with some of the other SI columnists.
ReplyDeleteThe people who ask, "why was this book written" do ask a good question. If this is a book that merely beats us over the head with the things that we already know about A-Rod, that he's insecure, that he's obsessed with success, that he cheated, then I have to ask, too, "what's the point?"
It's her prerogative to write a book like that. I just don't understand all the hype/promotion by the media.
And that snippet from Goldman about Roberts's veiled bashing of sabermatricians in a story -- if that was indeed a story, and not a column of hers -- that's a journalistic no-no.
As a journalist, I really hate ripping other journalists, because there is too much of that going on the blogosphere (it's time to get off the journalist-ripping bandwagon and start finding some other professions to dump on). But these are just my thoughts.