Grantland

The Social Chair

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Orel Miraculous said:
 
National TV ratings tell a story.  They don't tell the whole story, or even the most important story, especially when you only look at one season, as your link does.  For instance, here's a broader look at the national ratings for the World Series and the NBA finals:
 

 
So generally over the past 12 years the World Series has drawn a larger audience (and sometimes a much larger audience) than the NBA finals.  The chart doesn't show the last 3 years, but I believe the NBA Finals has out-performed the World Series there, thanks to the pull of Lebron.  Regardless, this hardly tells the whole story. 
 
What about local TV ratings?  Here are the top five local TV draws for the 2012-13 NBA season:
 
1. Oklahoma City  8.65
2. Miami 7.07
3. San Antonio 6.44
4. La Lakers 4.64
5. Utah Jazz 4.40
 
And here are the top five local TV draws for the 2013 MLB season:
 
1. Detroit 9.60
2. St. Lous 8.72
3. Pittsburgh 7.99
4. Cincinnati 7.70
5. Boston 7.30
 
So MLB stomps the NBA in local regular season ratings.  The top 5 MLB audiences are all bigger than the audience for the Miami Heat, the defending champions and the team with the most famous athlete in America.
 
What are the 18-49 ratings? That's the only demo people care about (Grantland's demos might skew even younger). You made a valid argument that baseball is more popular on a regional level but Grantland is a national site.
 

DJnVa

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Spud said:
It's 9:30 am eastern time and they still don't have anything posted on the front page about the World Series. Their coverage, with the exception of Jonah Keri -- who seemed to peter out after game 4 --
 
I'm pretty sure Keri had a piece on both Game 5, and a preview of Game 6.
 

JimBoSox9

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Yeah, I actually had to search for Keri to get his 5 and 6 pieces.  The one thing we should all be able to agree on is Grantland does a consistently terrible job of exposing new content.  "In Case You Missed It" is the only decent nav page on the site.
 

NatetheGreat

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Its pretty telling that Simmons' Big Papi article is basically an interesting piece about interviewing an againg Bill Russell, that happens to have a few words about "and oh by the way Papi rules and beards are cool" tacked on at the end.
 

Number45forever

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NatetheGreat said:
Its pretty telling that Simmons' Big Papi article is basically an interesting piece about interviewing an againg Bill Russell, that happens to have a few words about "and oh by the way Papi rules and beards are cool" tacked on at the end.
Total and absolute bullshit, IMHO.  That article was absolutely fabulous, from start to finish.  I'm sending it to friends now.
 

NatetheGreat

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Number45forever said:
Total and absolute bullshit, IMHO.  That article was absolutely fabulous, from start to finish.  I'm sending it to friends now.
 
Really? I didn't think it said anything about Papi that I hadn't already read in at least a dozen articles over the last week, and in general the "where does Papi belong in the Pantheon of Boston sports heroes" angle is one Simmons takes basically every single time he writes anything about Ortiz.
 

Spud

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Nov 15, 2006
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Yeah, I actually had to search for Keri to get his 5 and 6 pieces.  The one thing we should all be able to agree on is Grantland does a consistently terrible job of exposing new content.  "In Case You Missed It" is the only decent nav page on the site.
 
I had to muddle around in the "in case you missed it section" for the game 5 piece and never did see the game 6 preview. I like reading Jonah Keri, but my overall point -- that Grantland's World Series coverage was not very good -- remains the same.

And my post this morning was about 2 minutes too early. The Keri piece showed up right after I posted here.
 

DJnVa

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Number45forever said:
Total and absolute bullshit, IMHO.  That article was absolutely fabulous, from start to finish.  I'm sending it to friends now.
 
This first 15 or so paragraphs are about Russell and Ortiz doesn't appear in them. Russell's name is in article almost 50 times. Ortiz or Papi like 15. Ortiz/Papi isn't mentioned until about 20 paragraphs into a 30 paragraph story.
 
It was about Russell. The Papi info was a rehash, the interesting stuff in the article was about Russell. And that's okay. But it wasn't a "Red Sox 2013" or "Big Papi" story that I'll reread like I reread his stuff about the Pats first Superbowl and the Sox in 2004.
 

PBDWake

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Not to mention this abortion towards the end
By the time I graduated college, Bird, Russell, Orr and Williams were the big four. All discussions started and ended with them. In the 2000s, Tom Brady made his run … and if the 2007 Pats had finished 19-0, he would have joined them. Right now, he's still standing outside the front door waiting for the bouncer to let him in.
Tom Brady hasn't already earned his place?
 

NatetheGreat

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PBDWake said:
Not to mention this abortion towards the end
Tom Brady hasn't already earned his place?
 
Yeah that was bonkers, and whats even stranger is Simmons made almost this exact same analogy the last time he talked about Ortiz, and at the time seemed to think Brady was absolutely in the inner circle of Boston sports legends. Did anything change since then? No, except Brady hasn't looked so hot this year, and Simmons, despite his fixation on putting things in historical context, has an overpowering tendency to judge still-active players by what they've done recently.
 

Leather

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If you can't write a story about David Ortiz, a day after he won the World Series as World Series MVP, without spending 2/3 of the article talking about a basketball player that retired several decades ago, you shouldn't have tried to write a story about David Ortiz in the first place.
 
Just like a drunk can't partake any social situation without a getting a buzz on, Simmons is psychologically unable to write a story about anything else without talking at length about the NBA.   It's ridiculous.  
 
"Oh wow, the Red Sox won the World Series last night!  Think I'll write about Bill Russell...."
 

mpx42

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NatetheGreat said:
 
Yeah that was bonkers, and whats even stranger is Simmons made almost this exact same analogy the last time he talked about Ortiz, and at the time seemed to think Brady was absolutely in the inner circle of Boston sports legends. Did anything change since then? No, except Brady hasn't looked so hot this year, and Simmons, despite his fixation on putting things in historical context, has an overpowering tendency to judge still-active players by what they've done recently.
 
Correct. Simmons has a recency bias which is nearly unbearable at times.
 

NatetheGreat

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drleather2001 said:
If you can't write a story about David Ortiz, a day after he won the World Series as World Series MVP, without spending 2/3 of the article talking about a basketball player that retired several decades ago, you shouldn't have tried to write a story about David Ortiz in the first place.
 
Just like a drunk can't partake any social situation without a getting a buzz on, Simmons is psychologically unable to write a story about anything else without talking at length about the NBA.   It's ridiculous.  
 
"Oh wow, the Red Sox won the World Series last night!  Think I'll write about Bill Russell...."
 
The thing is, I'd be fine with Simmons devoting a paragraph or two to Bill Russel and how his experiences compare to Ortiz's, provided the majority of the article is actually devoted to Ortiz. I'd also be more than fine with him just writing a long piece about interviewing Russell and not even attempting to bring in Papi, because I found that pretty interesting.
 
Its the "I'm going to write a Bill Russell article, then slap on a few really forgettable paragraphs about Ortiz at the end, then claim its a Papi article" that annoys me.
 

Leather

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The Social Chair said:
I hate how he uses "we" to pass off his opinion as conventional wisdom.
 
And cites to himself as a source for what "We" thought.
 

XNOUGHT

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So let me get this straight. You're bitching about Simmons's recency bias in regards to his thoughts on Brady...while also bitching about how Simmons is talking Bill Russell...who played in 50s and 60s before Simmons was even watching games.
 
I think the irony detector just exploded.
 

NatetheGreat

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XNOUGHT said:
So let me get this straight. You're bitching about Simmons's recency bias in regards to his thoughts on Brady...while also bitching about how Simmons is talking Bill Russell...who played in 50s and 60s before Simmons was even watching games.
 
I think the irony detector just exploded.
 
I believe what I said
 
"Simmons, despite his fixation on putting things in historical context, has an overpowering tendency to judge still-active players by what they've done recently."
 
Nothing about him writing about Bill Russell (not an active player, btw), then  turning around and judging Brady for what he's done for him lately, contradicts that.
 

DJnVa

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drleather2001 said:
If you can't write a story about David Ortiz, a day after he won the World Series as World Series MVP, without spending 2/3 of the article talking about a basketball player that retired several decades ago, you shouldn't have tried to write a story about David Ortiz in the first place.
 
I wonder what my son's English teacher would say if he wrote a paper about subject X and didn't mention that subject for the first 2200 words of a 3500 word article.
 

pappymojo

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Orel Miraculous said:
 
I like the NFL just fine.  It's not my favorite sport, or even my second favorite sport, but I watch it.  I just can't stand the now annual storm of articles about how much more popular the NFL is than MLB each October, all of which are based purely on national TV ratings and fail to take into account the inherent structural differences of the sports and how that affects those ratings.
 
Edit:  you were probably talking about my "lazy country" comment.  Maybe that was a sidetrack, but come on, we're pretty fucking fat and lazy.  That's reflected in the TV shows we chose to watch, the movies we go to, the books we read, and the music we listen to.  Why wouldn't that also be reflected in the sports we watch?  Americans as a whole always chose quick and easy entertainment over more involved options. What's wrong with pointing out the the biggest reason why football is our most popular sport to follow is simply that it's the easiest sport to follow?
In what way does the music that America listens to reflect the idea that we are fat and lazy?
 

brohirrum

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The piece was obviously miss titled no question. 
 
His goal was to connect current athletes to Bostons past.
 
The Brady comment was a little stupid but overall I love the attempt at putting Papis status in Boston into perspective. 
 

PBDWake

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brohirrum said:
The piece was obviously miss titled no question. 
 
His goal was to connect current athletes to Bostons past.
 
The Brady comment was a little stupid but overall I love the attempt at putting Papis status in Boston into perspective. 
Which would have been a fine piece, if he had talked about the other people he puts in his pantheon and their accomplishments relative to Papi. Instead we got:
Russell
Russell
Russell
Russell
Russell
Russell
Russell
Russell
Russell
There's a pantheon (Russell, Bird, Orr, Williams) and maybe some day Brady and Papi will be in it.
 
*edit*
And even worse on the story... this wasn't a story about Russell's accomplishments and what the greatest champion Boston has ever known accomplished. It was a story about how he still feels slighted, and Bill Simmons got to hang out in his house and talk to him about it.
 

DegenerateSoxFan

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Simmons needs an editor. Is there no one there who could tell him "Bill, this is two articles with no discernible connection between the subjects slapped together as one"? And the Brady thing, I know I'm piling on, but shit, I don't anyone who hasn't been living under a boulder for the last decade & change as far as Boston sports are concerned who would argue that Brady's not in the pantheon. That was really egregious.

I'd respect him a lot more if he'd just come out and admit that he's just not that into baseball and hasn't been for a while. But maybe spending 2/3 of his day-after-the-sox-win-the-series column talking about Bill Russell IS, in a way, that admission. I dunno. But this was two potentially good columns mushed together into one steaming pile.
 

JimBoSox9

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1000% on this being a perfect example of how desperately he needs a stronger relationship with his editor.  He wrote 1670 excellent words on Russell.  He wrote 1870 excellent words on Ortiz.  
 
First, it obviously would have worked as two standalone columns.  
 
Second, it could have been an outstanding single column if he had done almost anything else besides just stacking one on top of the other.  The Russell piece is framed by his relationship with Boston's troubled but evolving post-WWII history.  After diving into Ortiz and going through the Lazarus tangent, what he was supposed to do is contrasted Ortiz's full-on lovefest with the city in relation to the factors that lead Russell to finally return.  Bill Russell 2.0 will not want to vanish from Boston for 40 years.  Not only does that angle write itself, but Simmons set it up himself in the first half.  
He just forgets about it by the end and opts for (paraphrasing) 'derrrrp Mt Rushmore Tom Brady bouncer teehee' instead.  Wandering away from the backbone of your piece is 101 kind of stuff and a veteran editor should catch that.  Beware of concepts that first appear in your conclusion, Bill.  As a result, 3500 pretty good words come off much worse than they should, as the feedback here indicates.  Unforced errors.
 

seageral

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this didn't even seem like a russell and a papi article.
 
it seemed like a russel/simmons or probably more accurately simmons/russell article with a little bit of papi tacked on at the front and the end.
 

seageral

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PBDWake said:
 
 
*edit*
And even worse on the story... this wasn't a story about Russell's accomplishments and what the greatest champion Boston has ever known accomplished. It was a story about how he still feels slighted, and Bill Simmons got to hang out in his house and talk to him about it.
 
exactly
 

Morning Woodhead

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XNOUGHT said:
So let me get this straight. You're bitching about Simmons's recency bias in regards to his thoughts on Brady...while also bitching about how Simmons is talking Bill Russell...who played in 50s and 60s before Simmons was even watching games.
 
I think the irony detector just exploded.
The recency is not Bill Russell the basketball legend. The recency is Bill Russell, the guy Simmons got to hang out with for a day a few weeks ago.
 

CJM

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Rook05 said:
On a different note, I thought Rany Jazayerli's piece on Ender's Game and Orson Scott Card was outstanding.

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/9909314/ender-game-controversial-author-very-personal-history
 
I was just coming to post a link to this. I've always admired Rany's insight into baseball and the Royals, as well as his ability to get the best out of Joe Sheehan while avoiding succumbing to Sheehan's shrill adversarial style. I marvel that he can produce so much material while being a successful doctor and having a family--one of those guys who makes me feel like an enormous slacker.
 
I had no idea that he had this sort of piece in him. It's an empathic take on Card's intolerant stances, a defense of Card's work, and manages to tackle larger issues of tolerance with a deeply personal spin. Really, a terrific article, and unlike anything I've seen from Jayazerli before.
 

Tartan

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I do have a quibble with this one section:
 
 
 
It’s not just that I think boycotting a movie is kind of an intolerant way to combat intolerance. It’s not just that if we’re going to boycott a work of art because of the behavior of the artist, there are better places to start than with a man who has expressed hateful words but hasn’t broken any laws.
 
Telling gay people that they need to be tolerant in their methods of protesting someone who is intolerant of them is, plainly, horseshit. The same goes for any sort of bigotry. The idea that you need to be polite in combating bigotry, that not being polite is a form of hypocrisy, is a terrible one. Homophobia isn't impoliteness, but oppression. Card supports stripping gay people of basic rights. I don't begrudge anyone who has no desire to go near his work for that reason. Additionally, I never like the argument of "there are better places to start". Protesting is not a finite resource. There's no mutual exclusivity between protesting Card and Roman Polanski (whom he seems to suggest is a better target for such boycotts). It's an empty argument. 
 
I understand that he's setting up a very cogent point with these sentences (that supporting something like Ender's Game is actually a good way of protesting the beliefs of someone like Card) but that section stuck out when I read it, and it annoyed me. He should have just gotten to his point, because it was a good one.
 
Seriously though, it's a very impressive article as a whole, and a superb exercise of expressing empathy. Not so much empathy for Card's intolerance, but Card as a person who once wrote extremely admirable things still worth admiring today. And who somewhere along the line went off the deep end in the crazy pool.
 

PBDWake

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On a lighter note, during the issues with SoSH (had no idea we were even back up), I searched twitter for Sons of Sam Horn to try and find some info and ran into this tweet from Shane Ryan, post obstruction call
https://twitter.com/ShaneRyanHere/status/394317965795295232


Sons of Sam Horn, huge Red Sox message board, game thread. Starting where Uehara came in: http://sonsofsamhorn.net/topic/80252-1026-the-mayor-goes-to-st-louis/page-116  Enjoy, schadenfreuders
Shockingly, no tweets about the world series after that.
 

joyofsox

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Two things that irked me about the Ortiz stuff tacked onto the Russell article:
 
He claims Papi has never been booed at Fenway. During his slump in 2009/2010, he was simply met with "an awkward silence". Simmons has either lost his memory or is lying. Ortiz was booed during several games that I watched on NESN, loud enough to come through the TV quite clearly.
 
Also, why does Simmons find it "fascinating" that the home crowd was anticipating (and cheering for) a rally well before Ortiz's grand slam against Detroit? Wasn't the resilient Red Sox's penchant for coming back in games one of the main themes of the entire summer?
 
I think he exposed himself as someone who doesn't follow the Red Sox very closely anymore - and hasn't for years.
 

nhbornsoxfan

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DegenerateSoxFan said:
Simmons needs an editor.
First thing I thought of as well. I appreciate the anecdotes on Russell in their own rights, but there's way too much there for a piece that's nominally dedicated to Ortiz.

It is also kind of interesting how little he said about Papi's role in the 2004 ALCS. That was the start of the legend for a lot of people.
 

JimBoSox9

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Jnai sighting!
 
http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/9940495/ben-lindbergh-possibility-machines-replacing-umpires
 

"Do human umpires miss pitches? Sure," says Dan Brooks, founder of PITCHf/x repository BrooksBaseball.net. "But for the most part, they don't just forget pitches happened. It's not like everybody is waiting for the call and they're just like, 'I didn't see that one, guys.'"
 
Way to sell out the movement, guy.  Article also contains a shout-out to the [SIZE=15.555556297302246px]incomparable[/SIZE] Dr. Alan Nathan.  I didn't know he was bilingual, but the article links to a paper Nathan wrote in 2008 that I'm pretty sure is in Greek.
 

JBill

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Aside from his remembrance of Lou Reed, I don't think that Chuck Klosterman writes for Grantland anymore. Aside from a chapter from his new book and a handful of podcasts, his last piece was filed on May 9 (it was about being with the Browns during the NFL Draft). 
 
I know Klosterman doesn't stay at one place for very long, but this is a bit of a drag.
 

Leather

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Every big name writer (other than Simmons, I guess) that was there in the beginning is gone.
 

riboflav

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Never read Barnwell until today. He's just a troll, right? Arguing that Brady is the old Peyton, can't win especially big games. Meanwhile, he makes no mention that Peyton hasn't really won any big games in the last few years either.
 

Leather

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riboflav said:
Never read Barnwell until today. He's just a troll, right? Arguing that Brady is the old Peyton, can't win especially big games. Meanwhile, he makes no mention that Peyton hasn't really won any big games in the last few years either.
 
I suppose the AFC Championship game two years ago was insignificant.  I mean, for fuck's sake, QB's routinely get outsized contracts based on a single playoffs wherein they accomplished just as much, if not less (See, e.g., Mark Sanchez, Jake Delhomme).
 
Stupid argument.
 

riboflav

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drleather2001 said:
 
I suppose the AFC Championship game two years ago was insignificant.  I mean, for fuck's sake, QB's routinely get outsized contracts based on a single playoffs wherein they accomplished just as much, if not less (See, e.g., Mark Sanchez, Jake Delhomme).
 
Stupid argument.
 
Of course! And to be clear, I believe Brady has won several "big games" recently and I don't see much difference in his performance in those "big games" between the first half of his career and the second-half. 
 
If Lowe is their NBA guy and this Barnwell fellow is their NFL guy, the gulf between them appears vast.
 

kenneycb

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riboflav said:
Never read Barnwell until today. He's just a troll, right? Arguing that Brady is the old Peyton, can't win especially big games. Meanwhile, he makes no mention that Peyton hasn't really won any big games in the last few years either.
I've always read him as he thinks he's the smartest guy in the room and wants you to know that.  While he can be insightful at times, it can also be insufferable.