Has it really been 20 years? ESPNthemag.com has a five-part retrospective, featuring interviews with director Ron Shelton and actors Tim Robbins and Kevin Costner.
The publishing company, not the beer manufacturer. Wait, do they even make Ballantine anymore? I’m showing my age.
Anyway, according to an item in the Publisher’s Weekly Web site, this will result in “10 to 12 titles annually, ranging from celebrity sports books to nonfiction and reference.”
“ESPN Books has gone through a number of expansions, and publishing partners, over the years. The book division of the goliath sports brand launched in 1997 at Hyperion….”
“The move to Ballantine, [Sandy] Deshong [senior director of publishing at ESPN Books], said, speaks to the fact that the division ‘wanted a relationship where we could centralize everything under one umbrella.’ That Ballantine is ‘very good at 
what they do not just in general publishing but also in sports publishing’
sweeted the deal, Deshong said. And, although all titles ESPN and Ballantine co-publish will be jointly agreed upon, Deshong said ESPN still has the ability to do their own books with Random House acting as the distributor. In addition, some titles previously published by ESPN will be distributed by Random.
To the consciousness of New York fans, that is. Former Mets’ manager Bobby Valentine was the subject of the May 4 “Questions for…” section of the New York Times‘ Sunday Magazine.
Q; One American tradition you’ve imported to Japan is patting the players on the tush, as the film demonstrates.
A: That has really been one of the things that had to be discussed often in Japan, because they don’t get it at all.
What a great cultural exchange.
The film to which Valentine refers is ESPN’s The Zen of Bobby V.
For some reason, I was under the impression Valentine spoke Japanese. It’s amazing how the interpretor can wait so long before going about his business. Good memory.
Anyway,
May 13 – The Zen of Bobby V
Produced by ESPN, in conjunction with Andrew Jenks (Throwback Pictures)
This two-hour film focuses on former Major League player and manager, Bobby Valentine, and his current job managing one of Japan’s premiere baseball teams - the Chiba Lotte Marines. Fresh off its world premiere at the Tribeca/ESPN Sports Film Festival, The Zen of Bobby V will give baseball fans and viewers unprecedented access to Valentine and his team, while exploring the impact globalization has on the game’s present and future. Additionally, original online webisodes and written blogs detailing the production of the film and baseball life in Japan will be produced exclusively for ESPN.com’s Page 2.
Bearing in mind that SI is a weekly, and ESPN a bi-weekly…
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| Sports Illustrated | ESPN The Magazine | |
| Cover boy(s) | “New generation of Stars,” featuring Ryan Braun, Justin Upton, Troy Tulowitzki, Jacob Ellsbury, Clay Buchholz, and Ryan Zimmerman | C.C. Sabathia |
| Lead Story | Tulowitzki profile | Sabathia profile |
| Sidebars(s) | Five future stars (Cameron Maybin, Ryan Braun, Jay Bruce, Justin Upton, Ryan Zimemrman; “Restocking a Rivalry (Red Sox vs. Yankees) | “Mamarama” (mothers of sports stars); Milkov Report, a take-off on the Mitchell Report on the demise of the National League; “Poison Ivy” (the Cubs’ 100-year slump) |
| Other features | Team scouting reports with projected lineups; “The Numbers Lie/Don’t Lie” on representative or misleading statistics for each team; “consider thiis,” and excerpts from previous SI issues as a way of promoting their new Vault archives | Buster Olney on the AL, Tim Kurkjian on the NL; Team reports with facts, projected lineups, and comments by each team’s local U.S. congressperson |
It must be difficult to keep coming up with new ideas year after year. You would have thought, in the wake of the Mitchell Report and the Clemens-McNamee affair, the ideas would be falling off the trees, but that’s not the case here (except for the ESPN spoof).
Call me a traditionalist (or old fogey, depending on your POV). Usually I find ESPN is trying to be all things to all sports fans and covers too many sports I’m not interested in. There are too many mini-features, as if the reader doesn’t have a long-enough attention span for anything more. On the other hand, they often do a better job with their illustrations.
I’m a fan of SI’s editorial content. I find their stories more in-depth and investigative reporting, their graphics simple but elegant (they have a long tradition of using top notch photographers like Leifer, Iooss, and Sweet, among other iconic shutterbugs).
So, as if it matters to anyone else, I’m giving the nod this year to Sports Illustrated .
Seattle’s Soothing Baseball Voice Headed to Cooperstown - 
If you’re lucky, your team’s baseball games are broadcast by an announcer like Dave Niehaus, voice of the Seattle Mariners since they first took the field 31 years ago. Neihuas was recently named recipient of the Ford C. Frick Award from the Baseball Hall of Fame. Caple capably and movingly describes him as a member of the family, never obnoxious or a “homer,” but a solid citizen in the broadcast booth.
In ESPN by Jim Caple, 20 February 2008
This abstract was edited by Brijit. Read more here…
Page 2’s Preseason MLB Power Rankings - 
Three little words — pitchers and catchers — indicate that the pre-season predictions are on the way for Major League Baseball. ESPN provides their first in a long line of “Power Rankings,” but they seem to be shaking off the winter funk, too. To wit: The Kansas City Royals ranking higher than the Boston Red Sox? The Chicago Cubs in the bottom 5? The Phillies in first? Interesting, but best not to take these too seriously — unless, of course, they confirm that your team will do well.
in ESPN by Eric Neel, 19 February 2008
This abstract was edited by Brijit. Read more here…
when he asks in his column of Jan. 28 issue, “How do you put an asterisk on the best moment of your life? For him, and many Red Sox/Clemens fans, it was the second time he struck out 20. It came in a mediocre season against the Detroit Tiers and he movingly recreates the emotions he shared with his dad as well as a bunch of friends and strangers in a Boston bar.
“If Clemens cheated in ‘98,” he wonders, referring to the first accusation of PED usage,”how do we know if he was clean in Detroit?”
How do we reconcile oour own memories with everything we know now, after all the revelations?
At the risk of appearing heretical, this may seem like a football piece, but it applies to the sports broadcasting industry as a whole.
Over the weekend, the local all-news radio station predicted 4-6 inches of snow from Sunday night into Monday morning. My daughter was excited at the possibility of a snow day or, at the very least, a delayed opening.
Neither took place. No snow, not even ice from the all-night rain.
Which made me think: is there any other profession where a supposed expert could be so wrong so often and still maintain employment?
Evidently there is: the sports broadcaster.
I was listening to a podcast of ESPN’s Pardon the Interruption, which I flat-out love 99.99 percent of the time. Catching up with an episode from last week, I heard Tony Kornheiser and Bob Ryan (sitting in for an ailing Mike Wilbon). They were talking about the then-upcoming footballs matchups.
I want to quote at length here on the San Dieg0-Indianapolis game:
Ryan: This is the lock de tuti locks. The Colts will have their way … Guess which game in this entire season is going to present them at their fullest, healthiest team? They’re gonna cruise.
Kornhesier: …I think they’re going to win this game handily.
Ryan also called SD QB Rivers a “trick-or-treater,” whatever that exactly means.
They also picked Dallas to beat the Giants. Ryan: “Cowboys, with not a great deal of difficulty.”
Sports broadcasters are like athletes, I guess. They have to shake off a bad performance and, as Kornhesier always says at the end of PTI, “try to do better the next time.”
The New York Times recently ran this article about sportswriters as the new breed of free agent, moving from publication to publication for higher and higher salaries. Rick Reilly recently left Sports Illustrated for ESPN The Magazine, while Dan Patrick did the reverse (think of it as a trade of two superstars). These are just two of the more recognizable names to a national audience.
The competition for writers has even produced bidding wars, especially for big-name columnists … but also for less widely known reporters. People who were briefed on the deals said that Mr. Reilly’s contract, easily the biggest of the recent signings, was worth more than $3 million a year.
“It’s the exact same model as what happened to athletes,” said Leigh Steinberg, a top sports agent. “We’re seeing free agency for sports journalists.”
Newspaper scribes have been hopping around ever since Guttenberg invented movable type. It’s not surprising to find a Maury Allen or Filip Bondy type who’s written for several papers in the same market, although with the decline of multiple papers over the decades, this is no longer the case:
Rising demand for star sportswriters, driven by rising television and Internet revenue, coincides with the declining fortunes of newspapers, which has left fewer jobs and less money to go around for most journalists. The paradox is not lost on the lucky few who benefit.
I used to love buying the Street and Smith’s Baseball Annual each spring. For much of my youth, it was the only game in town. Now it competes with similar offerings from Athlon, Lindy’s, and others. It was fun to catch up on who was starting. Here’s a brief list of the sportswriters who will be playing for a new team, in addition to Reilly and Patrick:
“When you lose an established star like Howard Bryant, it’s a terrible blow, because they’re not easily replaceable,” said Mr. Garcia-Ruiz of The Post. “We’re used to being a destination, not a stepping stone.”
Other articles recognize the influence/importance of the sportswriter, including Slate, which refers to the Times’ piece and maintains that “stars” of the industry (Ring Lardner, for one) have always been well-compensated; and this blog entry, which considers “Baseball as an analogy for the writing game…“
Mark Fainaru-Wada, who with Lance Williams wrote the devastating indictment of Barry Bonds and the steroid issue, will join the staff of ESPN, according to a report on Marketwatch,com.
Fainaru-Wada leaves his job at The San Francisco Chronicle where he co-wrote Game of Shadows: Barry Bonds, BALCO, and the Steroid Scandal that Rocked Professional Sports.
ESPN recently launched a newsmagazine, E-60, that offers a serious, investigative take on the world of athletics, similar to HBO’s Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel. For several years ESPN has aired Outside the Lines, which also offers an in-depth look at important figures and topics in sports.
Fainaru-Wada and Williams were the subjects of a PBS program, “Expose: Becoming the Story” which ran in July, 2007. An excerpt appears below; here’s a link to view the entire program at the Expose site
In my "day job," I'm a writer/sports editor for a New Jersey weekly newspaper. I'm also the editor of the Bibliography Committee Newsletter for the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR).
I did a piece on the award-winning cartoonist and he was nice enough to "immortalize" me.
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