{"id":202,"date":"2008-10-21T09:55:57","date_gmt":"2008-10-21T13:55:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/?p=202"},"modified":"2008-10-21T09:57:08","modified_gmt":"2008-10-21T13:57:08","slug":"bloggersfans-as-straw-men","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/?p=202","title":{"rendered":"Bloggers\/fans as straw men"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>George Vecsey, maybe the last sports editorialist in the Times who I can still stomach, offers this <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2008\/10\/20\/sports\/baseball\/20vecsey.html?_r=1&#038;scp=1&#038;sq=vecsey%20bloggers&#038;st=cse&#038;oref=slogin\">pearl<\/a> yesterday: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Fans and bloggers and other outsiders who have no access to the mind-set of a professional athlete do not know how fully a young lifetime of pressure prepares athletes for the big game.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Given the resources of the Times, the access to athletes, and his years of experience, this is the best column he could come up with?  Apparently his unique position allows him to say that athletes are actually prepared to deal with important games.  Stop the presses, dude.  <\/p>\n<p>Apart from a few reporters, the sports punditocracy is in trouble.  Only a few seem to understand that they should be using their ability to actually talk to the athletes as a way to gather unique information and to present it to folks who cannot walk into the locker room.  Only a few reporters remain who offer thoughtful, viable alternative to the interpretations of those watching at home and hungrily building their blogs.  <\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d rather read <a href=\"http:\/\/www.joyofsox.blogspot.com\">joyofsox <\/a>or <a href=\"http:\/\/www.soxaholix.com\">soxaholix <\/a>any day; I don&#8217;t have time to keep up with the analysts at SOSH but they seem to ask the questions Dan Shaughnessy hasn&#8217;t thought about in years.     <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>George Vecsey, maybe the last sports editorialist in the Times who I can still stomach, offers this pearl yesterday: Fans and bloggers and other outsiders who have no access to the mind-set of a professional athlete do not know how fully a young lifetime of pressure prepares athletes for the big game. Given the resources &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/?p=202\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Bloggers\/fans as straw men<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8rNFZ-3g","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}