Radio Talkers say trade "Negative Nancy" Zack Greinke

The momentum among the radio talkers is building to trade Zack Greinke.

And what could be more absurd than this 'logic': What the Royals don't need next year when the studs from Omaha come up is a "Negative Nancy" walking the halls of the clubhouse.

Exactly what poison will this Cy Young Negative Nancy spew to injure the impressionable young minds? Well, they're a bit unclear about this. Something like, the Royals aren't getting any better. Losing sucks. Et al.

Jeeeeeeeze.

This sounds like the gossip in an elementary school teacher's lounge. Negative Nancy, for god's sake? Negative Nancy?

We're talking about a major league baseball clubhouse not vacation Bible school. These guys obviously don't get the joke, do they? Saturday Night Live, guys. It's a joke. You're supposed to laugh. It's not a life lesson.

Negative Nancy, indeed. Zack Greinke had just watched an infielder juggle a double-play ball for maybe the tenth time this season, costing him 11 more pitches and three runs. What the hell do they expect him to say? "I'll just wait till next year when the studs are here to back me up. The organization always knows best..."

Guess those press passes are secure for watching the young studs next year. Funny how guys who supposedly make a living telling it like it is suddenly revert to management speak when it comes to ballplayers. My guess is they identify with management rather than ballplayers. Just a guess...

And what could possibly be more ironic, more hypocritical, than these radio talkers criticizing a ballplayer for being a "Negative Nancy"? These "Batty Bobs", "Surly Shans" and "Naysaying Nicks" spit more negative natter than a dozen ballplayers in a Red Man contest. Nattering negative is their job description, their ticket to Tompkinsville, their free pass into the ballpark.

That had to be the worst five minutes of talk radio in at least ... well ... uh ... at least the last two days.

--Lofflin

Teahen ain't alone and another rant about talk radio and sports, plus a few words about the always titiliating comments section of the Kanas City Star

Mark Teahen of the Royals ain't alone. The Star reported today Teahen received a letter from a fan in Shawnee with some rather complex instructions for changing his position at the plate and he went three-for-three yesterday. Now, Teahen did not say he took the fan's suggestion. In fact, the Star writer noted sarcasm in Teahen"s voice when he described the letter. A good editor would have asked for a more specific description of Teahen's reaction before using the word "sarcasm" but I'll stop beating on that dead horse for now.

Henry Wiggen used to get two letters every day he worked. He tells us about it in the beginning of a "Ticket for a Seamstitch." "One is from a fellow in Bloomfield, N. J., saying "Luck to you and every member of the New York Mammoths," and one from a fellow in Astoria, Long Island, "I hope you blow higher than the sky, you phony."

Henry notes this on the day he receives the dauntingly long letter from the seamstress out West with a ten-dollar bill sewn to first page who intends to somehow find her way to New York for July 4th and wants Henry to get her a ticket to the game. The letter is so exhausting in detail, Henry says, she threatens to give the life history of every brick in every store in the small town she's from.

How many letters of advice from former 3-and-2 league sluggers, former high school sluggers, former college sluggers, current coaches of 14-year-old junior high league teams, do you think professional ballplayers get? It always amuses me when some cluck, to use Henry's term for fans, calls the talk show and says HE could hit better than Tony Pena, or, hedging just a bit, that any Ban Johnson League slugger could hit better than Tony Pena.

Yea, right. Right after you went back in to change your underwear once that 88-mph curveball you thought was aimed at your ribs broke across the plate. Allow me to venture a guess that no one who hasn't done it, has any idea what it is like to stand six inches away from a 95-mph heater with movement.

When I was 14 or so I batted against a pitcher who would go on to have a professional career. I got a hit. You know how I got that hit? I started my swing when he let loose of the ball, closed my eyes, and prayed the ball would be right down the gut. (He had no reason to throw it anywhere else against me...) Like magic, bat met ball, base hit up the middle. I harbor no pretension that I could do any more than listen to a major league fastball go by.

As George Brett said: The farther you get from the dirt, the easier the game is.

After reading the game story, I went to the reader comments. That's my dirty little secret. Every now and then I like to wallow in the mud at the end of the stories in the Star. It's a perverse little pleasure, like having a buddy -- which I do -- who always has a socially inappropriate joke to tell. It's titillating, forbidden, and sometimes very funny.

One writer missed the tongue in Teahen cheek. Finally, he wrote, it took a letter from a fan to get a Royals' hitter to change his approach. Fire batting coach Kevin Seitzer, he demanded, and hire the guy from Shawnee. Yessiree, Ole Roy has competition. Wonder if the boys on the afternoon talk shows, with their own 14-year-old baseball experiences, will pick up on the idea.

Another guy who signs on as something like "ratdog" or "ratface" demands to know what's wrong with Jose Guillen because he has to make a decision by noon about his fantasy team. Once again, the Star has let a reader down.

A portion of his comment reminds again of the ordeal Raul Ibanez is fighting.

Of course, you have the usual debate about whether a sweep of the Reds means anything, whether the home team is really any good or just pretenders. One writer advises the Royals players not to read all these negative comments. Good managing fella, but, unfortunately, by the time the Royals come to your warning they'll already be steeped in negativity.

One fascinating comment comes from a guy who writes he started paying attention to baseball with the birth of the Royals in 1969, being too young for the A's. He grew up a few blocks from the ballpark, he says, then he tells us his father was always too busy to take him to a game no matter much he begged. Whoa! fella, this is a public board, don't forget. He tells his dad he still loves him, however, then launches into how hard it has been to be a fan of a team so often on the losing end of its games and advises we drop the negativity and just enjoy the victory. It is really a strangely touching post.

One of my college buddies claims to have become an atheist because of the Kansas City A's. At church every Sunday morning, he says, he prayed the A's would win. Then he went home, listened to the game, and -- of course -- the boys dropped a double-header. How can there possibly be a god? he asked, long before he read Nietzche.

Lofflin -- Enjoying the bright clear sunlight after a big rain

Ibanez is right, talk radio is wrong, and what the gull happened up there in Cleveland?

Mark Harris couldn't write this latest Royal's debacle. John R. Tunis would snicker if you told him this plot. Even W. P. Kinsella (read "The Iowa Baseball Conspiracy," or "Box Socials," if you can...) would say this is too fantastic even for magic realism.

The ball hits a gull in centerfield in the 10th. The local heroes lose.

Of course, this is why we watch, listen and read about baseball. As Yogi said, "In baseball, you don't know nuthin'. Something crazy, something you've never seen before, will happen. It's a game of almost stupefying regularity -- take the same swing every time, my hitting coach impatiently moaned yesterday -- punctuated by moments of zaniness.

Johnny Damon drops an easy fly ball in Fenway. Deion Sanders and Jose Canseco (interesting pair) get bopped in the head with fly balls. A reserve infielder comes in to pitch in a blowout game and retires the side one, two, three.

One thing about the Kansas City Royals remains consistent: Losing. Now, I think this is a better team. They'll go on another winning streak soon and they'll play well again in September. I'd be surprised in they didn't finish in the middle of the pack. But right now, as a team, they stink.

If you have a baseball heart, you have to hurt for Zach Greinke.

While I'm riffing here over morning coffee, allow me to veer seamlessly into the territory of talk radio. Before I could get the radio shifted over from the baseball station to music yesterday, I caught a few moments of two radio talkers talking about, what else?, talk radio. Actually, I think they were talking about Raul Ibanez and blogging and talk radio. The argument (if you can call it such) went something like this: "You listeners over 40 grew up with newspapers so you are conditioned to believe everything you read because if you read it, it must be right. Right?"

Pause here. Wrong. Nobody believes everything they read. Even in the golden age of newspapers, the effects of news stories were quite limited. You could look it up.

I'm still paraphrasing. I wasn't taking notes because I was busy trying to maneuver between parked cars, snap on my sunglasses, manage a cup of hot coffee between my legs and fumble with the radio at the same time.

"So, do you believe what you read on blogs? Do you trust what people say on this show? (Are you kidding?) I don't think, we were just going over this and we couldn't think of anything we've said here that proved to be wrong but..."

Finally got the cruiser out into traffic and the radio to music so I don't know where they went next. No doubt more self-aggrandizement.

But, interestingly, they had stumbled on one of the major issues of our media times. Call it the death of editing. Without editing, well, we have a couple of guys at the mike shooting off their mouths ... multiply that times a factor of thousands.

I've had my run-ins with editors and I've been known as difficult to work with (DTWW) on occasion. But editors have saved my reputation a few times, to say nothing of my ass, and I've never written anything that wasn't better shorter. (Is this post an example? Probably...) However, good editors are all that stand between good information and junk. We live in an age of overwrought speculation, media hotdogging and downright lies.

And the guy in his house slippers in his mother's basement knocking out his blog (I am still wearing house slippers, by the way, but I'm upstairs at the kitchen table) can say anything he likes to get attention. Then the radio talkers riff on it and suddenly, wham-o, it's a fact. Ibanez is right. More power to him, no pun intended.

I'll never forget a classic Royal's slump a few years ago and a guy who said his name was Roy who called one of the shows. To get his accent right you have to imagine the word "fire" spelled "far."

"Far 'em all," Roy said, as if god himself had dictated the solution, "and har some new ones."

Indeed. Could anyone understand major league baseball less? Well, a thousand yahoos are out there on open mikes all over the country, all day long, right now, trying their best. Ole Roy has plenty of competition.

-- Lofflin

George Brett's rant; And a reader tells us why baseball is The Game?

Enjoying George Brett's rant today and the fallout. Page after page of comments in the Star on-line. Oddly, none were racist -- a first for Star comments -- and only a few went MU/KU silly. (I haven't finished all eight pages of Jason Whitlock's comments, so these anomalies may have changed this afternoon.)

Brett's meltdown was damn refreshing, if you ask me. His language was even more refreshing. Remember, this is a guy who spit tobacco juice on the floor the day he and his wife inspected the work on the new nursery in his home. Can't remember if the floor was finished or not. I have a book of great photographs of baseball players by Walter Iooss and the Brett entry is Ty Cobb gritty. I don't want to know Brett as a civilian; I've always found it was better not to meet ballplayers or musicians lest my images dissolve. I want to know Brett as a gamer who would look a reporter in the eye and say, (Henry suggests we handle it this way in "The Southpaw" though he admits it will do no good since we will all know what goes in the blanks...) F--- You. Reporters, by the way, are quick to say the same to each other.

But, Brett said something fresh which needed to be said. Those self-important, self-righteous, talking heads need to be called out. Not just about Hillman, by the way. If you spend your afternoon listening to their self-serving rants, you have too much time on your hands. Get a bat and your buddy and go have some BP.

Brett said something profoundly true once: The game is easier the farther you get from the dirt.

Now, here is a fine response to our posts on "Bang the Drum Slowly" from reader Kevin Kuzma. By the way, I did try to teach him to use paragraphs. -- Lofflin

*****

For me, the answer is because baseball is fun to play. I played every sport from third grade on, but I never enjoyed playing any of them like I did baseball. I can still remember stepping up to the plate and listening to my parents and my friends’ parents shouting encouragement while the rival team’s managers were yelling words against me and the infield was chattering. Baseball is a team sport and yet, it’s individual, too. When you step in the batter’s box, the weight is on you. You can look ridiculous at bat or in the field. And the game moves slower, so you have to face whatever it is that doesn’t go your way. I could never be a pitcher. Other than a boxer knocked to the mat, I don’t have empathy for anyone more so than a pitcher who’s seen his best pitch branded by a bat label and walloped over the fence. He has to stand there and listen to the crowd and watch the batter round the bases, then pull himself together on the lonely mound and throw strikes again. Strikes, not balls. Right back to the quest for perfection. Baseball has everything boys want. You get to play in the dirt, foremost. You get to take big swings and hit things. You get to run. You get to spit. You get to slide. I suppose you could make an argument that you can do the same in football or another sport, but I suppose it’s hard to romanticize something so violent. Football comes around when everything about the world is dying or turning cold. Winter is coming on. Hope doesn’t have a position. There are so many individual wars on given play you can’t possibly take in the whole game. Basketball is played indoors and by that arrangement the possibilities of it being something larger are impossible, also given the fact that it was invented to give football players something to do in the off season. I used to love baseball. I used to love the uniforms. The stirrups, the batter’s helmets, the batter’s glove. It was sort of a costume that you put on and you went out and played games for the optimist club, a gas station or an auto repair shop. People who paid real money to sponsor your team and you really wanted to win for those people. Baseball is a spectacle. When you hit a long shot, people stop and watch the ball fly. I’m not sure people look at the sky any more – not to see what’s in it, other than the weather. No one studies it, except kids and adults who look through it, trying to make predictions. My favorite part of baseball was the conversations that went on with the base coaches. That was your reward for a decent hit. There was a face waiting for you. How different does it feel to stand on second? You feel naked out there, far from the dug out, stranded, waiting. I don’t know. I think it’s fun. Fun is the answer. And it’s fun to write about. Look all the words it prompted from me.

May 20, 2009 3:28 PM -- Kevin Kuzma