Overrate This, Stark!
Recently, ESPN baseball writer Jayson Stark caused quite a stir with his new book, which lists his opinions on the most overrated and underrated baseball players of all time.
His opinions have created a debate among baseball fans, sports writers and talk show hosts alike. Mike Greenberg, of spelling bee fame, nearly had an aneurism when told the immortal Graig Nettles was on the overrated list. Our outrage was saved for the inclusion of Lou Brock as the most overrated left fielder of all time.
Stark's money grab, er, book is a perfect segue to another list of overrated and underrated individuals: sports writers. There are many out there, especially now that the blogosphere has blown up to the point where people like you and I can sit in our parents basement and write whatever the hell we want (Just ask Allison Stokke's dad).
This brings us to the list, which for the time being will be kept to national writers only. One day we'll touch on the good (Joe Posnanski) and bad (Jay Mariotti) writers for local newspapers. On to the nominees.
Overrated:
- Dr. Z, SI.com: Does anybody know what the hell this old man is talking about? Anyone? His rambling mailbags are gettting more and more confusing to read. There is no doubt the man knows his football, but he goes off the beaten trail often. Maybe he's drinking too much of the wine he talks about in every single column. In the meantime, he should probably avoid interviewing canines. Talking about Michael Vick, Dr. Z came up with this gem: "I interviewed one of the dogs. I asked him, 'What's it really like?' He said, 'Ruff!'"
- Peter King, SI.com: Pete, we get it. You love coffee and hate travel. Point taken. And should you really be predicting the final score of the Super Bowl on June 4?
- Ken Rosenthal, FoxSports.com: I just cannot read one of his columns without hearing that whiny, nasally voice inside my head. And his columns? Ground-breaking is not his forte. It's like he has so many contacts in the game, he doesn't want to piss any one off, so he writes the most obvious articles he can, like "Russell Martin is special". Thanks, Ken. We were unaware of that.
- Andy Katz, ESPN.com: In a column about Billy Donovan, he writes this sentence - "Donovan agonized with the decision. But once he made it Thursday, he never looked back." Whoops.
- Pete Prisco, SportsLine.com: Besides blatantly stealing my overrated/underrated idea, Prisco gets his readers angry with his style. Take this post, by a fellow who calls himself Titans4Life, from the comments section below Prisco's article - "The rationale/explanations he offers in his writing is elementary, at best (and I have two young children, so I see the kind of writing Prisco does daily)."
- Special Mention - Jenn Sterger, SI.com: I'm probably going to get roasted for this, but since when has somebody gotten a writing job for how they look? I understand that good looking women are part of sports, whether it's cheerleaders or something else, but writing? I don't care what Sterger has to say. Neither do you, I suspect. The only reason anybody clicks on her article at SI is to see if she has announced she'll be in Playboy or Hustler.
Underrated:
- Peter Gammons, ESPN.com: I know he's in the Hall of Fame, and it is hard to be underrated if your greatness has already been confirmed, but you have to realize he is the man holding the ESPN baseball division together. Without him, you have a bunch of bumbling screamers who offer little insight or substance. An appearance by Gammons on Baseball Tonight is the only thing that makes the show watchable anymore.
- Seth Wickersham, ESPN.com: Besides Gammons, he is the best writer at ESPN. He doesn't crunch statistics so much as he writes about the people behind those numbers. He also writes a blog, and does interviews with bloggers, proving he's not as stuffy as, say, Stuart Scott.
- Gregg Doyel, SportsLine.com: He doesn't tip-toe around his opinions, and he has the knowledge to back them up. Consider the opening line of his most recent column - "Cleveland finished off Detroit on Saturday night for the Eastern Conference title, which is just friggin' great. The NBA Finals were already going to be devoid of suspense. Now they're going to be devoid of a Game 6, and possibly even a Game 5." How do you really feel, Gregg?
- Len Pasquarelli, ESPN.com: It feels like I'm beating the ESPN drum, and I know that's dangerous in the world of blogs, but maybe I'm just thrilled the Worldwide Leader is still smart enough not to throw everybody on TV and let them scream at each other. Pasquarelli rarely does television, and if he does, it's only to report news, not to yell at somebody. Pasquarelli's "Tip Sheet" article every Friday is a must read for football fans.
- Jon Heyman, SI.com: SI's baseball writer is an intelligent scribe who offers frank opinions and analysis of the game. He regularly makes contact with his readers through email, and doesn't schlub for the Yankees and Red Sox, like so many others do.
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36 Comments:
Ian Thomsen...SI NBA...totally underrated!!
Doyel is intentionally abrasive, which is unnecessary as a sportswriter. Why not be talked about for what you write, not how much of a dick you are about it?
In addition to Gammons's legendary (and well-deserved) stature, Buster Olney also does a great job in ESPN's baseball department. The endless line of retired players and failed old guys they trot out are worthless.
Agree with you pretty much across the board with one exception -- Heyman. IMO, he's just terrible. I'd go into detail, but this is opinion-time and you are so on the money with everyone else that I simply want to say well done.
I really like Buster Olney, but I couldn't have so many ESPN guys on there, and Olney gets a lot of credit for his blog. But I thought about him.
You have to include Bill Simmons on the overrated list just because he's rated insanely high. His columns are still readable, but it's clear he's slipped over the years.
I'm with you on most of these.....but DOYEL?!?! Have you actually read any of his columns?! He is horribly uniformed and rarely has anything interesting to say. On top of that, he's an arrogant prick who fancies himself as this huge rebel just because people hate him so much. He's a complete hack.
Yeah, Heyman is awful.
You gotta give some love to Darren Rovell, who is a former ESPNer, and now brings much needed light and insight to the sports business world.
I think you might have a fundamental misunderstanding of the terms overrated and underrated. Dr. Z I can see although I enjoy him but I don't know one person that doesn't think both King and Prisco are idiots. People need to be rated highly in order to be considered overrated. The idea that popular=good has been disproven time and time again. Conversely, Gammons and Pasquarelli are almost universally regarded as two of the best in their entire profession. Who underrates them?
Art - It's in the eye of the beholder. I know many, many people who love Peter King, and think he's the best out there. Like I said, it's hard to underrate Gammons, but b/c he's lumped in with so many other talking heads at ESPN, I had to give him special mention. Same with Pasquarelli, who I don't think gets the credit he deserves b/c he isn't yelling at us on TV.
I would also like to add Rick Reilly to the list. This guy consistently wins awards for his writing, yet I don't know anyone that likes him.
Corny jokes + Soapbox + Inspirational story = Overrated
Kudos for leaving Simmons off the list altogether. He's both overrated and underrated. He's overrated because his schtick is starting to run tired, and he really should have grown a little bit out of his blatant homerism at this point. When you distort or ignore facts to support/lambast your favorite/hated team, that's a problem.
However, he's underrated because everybody gets such a kick out of making fun of him nowadays. Is he as good as he used to be? Absolutely not. Is he better than a lot of the sportswriters out there? Definitely.
In short, he's not as good as he and ESPN would have you believe, but he's certainly not as bad as the Internet would want you to believe either.
I think there's a reason that Len "Pasta Belly" is not regularly on tv.
As for Reilly, why hasn't Dan Jenkins sued him for identity theft yet?
Fair enough. I didn't realize you were talking about people you knew. I was gauging it from a blogger's standpoint. King amd Prisco aren't regarded too ighly around these here internets. That's entirely fair too. They're terrible.
Darren Rovell should be right under Gammons on the underrated list, he's absolutely fantastic, and never gets stale. Heyman, by contrast, doesn't belong on either list. He does get back to his readers promptly, but his columns read like a titanic blowhard and his "information" and "rumors" are wrong 95% of the time, and he only takes credit for when he's right, and generally ignores his folly predictions.
Art - It wasn't necessarily based on opinions of people I knew. It was based on a bunch of different things. I believe King is fairly well thought of for the most part.
mcoale - If they let John Clayton on TV, they can let Len on, combover and all.
Pete - Totally agree on Simmons. 100%.
proverbial - Reilly was too easy, so I left him off. He thinks he's a comedian and not a sports writer lately.
what about Jason Whitlock? He's become kind of polarizing since the Imus thing but I still check his AOL Sports page AND his KC Star stuff. Like or hate his views the guy is smart and he knows his stuff. Whitlock=underrated...oh and ESPN should bring back Harold Reynolds, guy was fucking fantastic.
About Rovell - I think he's great, and I considered him, too, but he didn't necessarily fall under the sports writer angle I was looking for. He writes about sports business, so I decided to leave him off.
There was no way I was going to get total concordance with this. I knew I was leaving people out, but there's only so much room.
I like the new guy on Fox News, Chad Finn. He has some Red Sox homerisms, and his nine innings article is a little shtickish, but he will be really good, I think.
His blog on Boston sports is good, but really for fans only.
Fox SPORTS, not news. Sorry.
Gary Smith is the most underrated sports writer.
King Kaufman at Salon.com pumps out the best daily sports column on these interwebs. Certainly deserves to be put in the underrated category.
In the beginning, King Kaufman struck me as one of those nerds who knew every stat in the book but had no feel for the game. But he's definitely ramped it up...his columns are sharp, usually spot-on and entertaining. Good call; he's underrated.
Dr. Z is your uncle that drinks too much on Thanksgiving afternoon, and later, when everyone is all buttoned down during dinner, he's rambling about God knows what and cracking jokes that make your parents squirm just a bit. You're too young to understand what's so funny, but you guffaw to beat the band and at least you get to laugh at your parents.
As for Jenn Sterger...if you need any more proof that SI has become (Sports) People magazine (where editor Terry McDonnell should have stayed), Sterger is all the evidence you need. Luce is spinning in his grave.
Jenn Sterger's latest is all you need to know why she stinks. This paragraph is just awful --
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What I'm Watching: Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End: The third installation of Pirates cleans up the mess that Dead Man's Chest left behind. With all your favorite characters back from the first two installments, it was actually Rolling Stone Keith Richards who stole the show. Though Richards only plays a small role (of Jack Sparrow's father), his character isn't exactly a stretch for most of us to imagine him in. And of course, who could forget lovable Jack the Monkey, who provides a good share of the comic relief throughout the movie. Overall, it's an awesome way to wrap up the series ... or maybe not.
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The third installation, huh? Niiiiiiiiiice. She also mentions that the Ducks are still Disney.
(Sports) People magazine. Good call. There's a lot of that on there. Arash Makarzi also writes about celebrities on si.com.
Among newspaper guys, I think both Joe Posnanski and Dan Le Batard are pretty seriously underrated.
Pos and LeBatard are local guys (an anachronism nowadays, since you can read them aanyways).
Dr. Z was a test patient for LSD in the 50's or 60's. Maybe it's kicking in now, but I dug his Thinking Man's Guide to Football.
Yeah, Reilly's got to be on the list. Someone mentioned Gary Smith, and he's so good he's almost not a sportswriter.
The guy I can't stand is Scoop Jackson. I don't think I need to say much, do I?
hoofhearted - I think Whitlock pretty much said it all regarding Scoop. And it was all correct.
Dan LeBatard is pretty good on ESPN The Mag, and it's only a sample of the stuff he consistently generates for the Miami Herald... his radio show is a riot too, you can catch it online.
You gotta be kidding us about Doyel. The guy rarely brings anything interesting to the table, and he just goes on and on about being a jerk and having his own opinion... Come to think of it, he's the Mariotti of the blogosphere!
Now let's consider... Tuesday Morning Quarterback? Eastermann is atrociously boring. There are ways to show you are cultured AND interesting, you know? Gammons schools guys like him on a regular basis.
I heart Joe Posnanski.
Heyman is awful, a guy aspiring to the Mike Lupica crown of irritating guy you just HAVE to read. The problems being that that's a pretty pathetic goal, and it's very easy not to read Lupica (or Marriotti, or any of the other "look at me, look at me" crowd).
One example: for some reason during his Newsday days, Heyman got a bug up his butt about the Sammy Sosa contract, and would regularly invoke it as the epitome of the foolish signing... even in columns otherwise having nothing to do with the Cubs, or Sosa, or contracts.
Then came June 1998. And the playoffs. And probably a "SOSA 21" jersey sale or two. I must have missed Heyman's retraction.
Wow, people hate Gregg Doyel a lot more than I thought. One of the reasons I put him on is b/c of the intense dislike people seem to have for him, but they always read him. If everybody hates him so much, wouldn't he have no readers? It's why I put him on there. People hate him, but can't get enough of him. That's talent.
And I like TMQ, but I skip over all the science/political crap. Once Easterbrook just talks about football, it can be very entertaining, even if it takes a day and a half to read.
I really like Clark Judge's NFL stuff on cbssportsline.com. He does not play favorites, and is willing to go in depth on some of the, should I say, less-hyped teams in the league. Whereas Peter King will have a few takes, and then it's like, "OK back to Tom Brady, Belichick, the Mannings and anything surrounding T.O and the Cowboys. Oh yeah, and McNabb and Vince Young are great, Vick should get his s--- together." That' basically a Peter King cloumn right there. Clark Judge, I tell you, Clark Judge!
What about Charley Rosen? I think he's underrated. I mean, if theres ever a player who everyone thinks is good, he'll be the first to bash that player. Its amusing how much he hates every team and every player not associated with the Lakers.
But then again, i'm also a Simmons fan. I don't like all of his articles, but thats one reason i like him. He covers a variety of topics and his articles are different than everyone elses.
I like the homerism he brings. I hate the patriots and don't care for baseball but isn't the appeal of bloggers that they write like fans of the game? A blog i visit all the time is poundingtherock.com which is a spurs blog. Should i complain about their homerism?
Doyel is intentionally abrasive, which is unnecessary as a sportswriter. Why not be talked about for what you write, not how much of a dick you are about it?
In addition to Gammons's legendary (and well-deserved) stature, Buster Olney also does a great job in ESPN's baseball department. The endless line of retired players and failed old guys they trot out are worthless
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