You may be wondering why I haven’t been posting more baseball stuff lately. After all, the postseason is the best time of year for a baseball fan, right? Absolutely. Unfortunately, it is also the time of year when there are a lot fewer games going on but the same number of sportswriters, which means they are all writing about the same thing. And honestly, that gets old, and I have absolutely no desire to add to the pile of pointless words.
Do I think all baseball commentary at this time of year is pointless? No, but I do believe that genuinely intelligent and insightful commentary is hard to find right now. I read almost everything ESPN.com puts up about baseball, and it is easy to find the people who are intelligent and the people who are Joe Morg–er, I mean, unintelligent. Unfortunately, ESPN seems to know who the winners are too, since most of the good guys are now “Insiders,” meaning you have to pay to read them. But just in case you don’t know this already, if you have a subscription to ESPN the Magazine, you get free access to the Insider stuff.
So anyway, I thought I would just point you to some of the people I actually enjoy reading, in no particular order:
- Jayson Stark. His articles are insightful, and his Useless Info Department is the best thing ever for a guy like me.
- Rob Neyer. He is a Moneyball man, a huge proponent of a statistical look at the game, and I love every word. One of the things I love about his writing is that he gets to the point — he will often say in one page what other writers would take two pages to say. It is a somewhat unique writing style, and maybe not “technically” as good as some others, but as far as content goes, you can’t beat him.
- Buster Olney. Buster does a daily baseball blog on ESPN.com, which is essentially a ton of links to baseball articles from newspapers all over the country. He has some great contacts, too, so he gets some good scoops.
- And of course, Peter Gammons. His writing is about average, but his knowledge, insight, and (especially) inside contacts make him the king. He is my hero.
I will probably post something soon with a rundown of my thoughts on the major issues of the postseason, but only if I think I have something intelligent to add.