The Day the Statistics Died…and the Jerod Morris Hex Was Born

I will allow my foray into blogger-self-absorption to continue for at least one more post. And really, when will I ever have this opportunity again?

I’m certainly not, however, going to acquiesce and provide an analysis for this guy, who is attempting to discern the reasons for Derek Jeter’s suddenly improved defense.

Jeter is one of the few guys, like Ibanez, that I think has never used any PEDs. But there’s no telling where another post with that as the hypoethesis could lead…

Besides, Derek Jeter is also on my fantasy team and I am enjoying his very solid season. The last thing I would want to do is put him at risk for…

THE JEROD MORRIS HEX!

(Cue: Ominous music…dum, dum, DUM!)

The good folks over at Circle the Bases have now compared me to John Madden and the infamous hex that accompanies his video game. With Raul Ibanez hitting the DL today, Circle the Bases is attributing it to the only possible explanation: the Jerod Morris blogger hex. And they have objective statistics that make this worthy of speculation:

Two weeks after setting off the latest mainstream-versus-blogger firestorm by freaking out over “some 42-year-old blogger typing in his mother’s basement” Raul Ibanez has been placed on the disabled list with a strained left groin. Coincidence? Of course. But still.

Ibanez, who had avoided the DL since 2004, was just 5-for-27 (.185) with 11 strikeouts since calling one of Morris’ blog entries about him “pathetic and disgusting” and struggled to run out ground balls recently, so the Phillies decided to shut him down for at least a couple weeks.

As I have chronicled ad nauseum, Raul Ibanez has been the centerpiece of my fantasy team’s great two-month start to 2009. Now that the Jerod Morris hex has struck him down, I will be missing one of the best bats in my lineup. And in case Ibanez still holds me in the same amount of contempt as he appeared to upon initially hearing of my post, he will be happy to know that my own hex has also hurt me, with Roy Halladay, Scott Downs, and Denard Span also being DL’d since I wrote it.

I am making light of this because the notion of a hex named after me is hilarious and ridiculous, but I am only doing so to mask my despondence. I was enjoying Ibanez’s start independent of his presence on my fantasy team. I’ve always liked him and he seems perfectly deserving of this type of career year. Granted, I was quite happy that he was doing so on my team, but now he will have to languish on my and the Phillies’ DL until his groin heels. And that’s not a positive for anyone.

Just bad news all around. And to think, if I’d just decided to write about the NBA Finals or the White Sox on that fateful Monday morning last we could have ostensibly avoided all of this.

Still, all was not lost today. On Deadspin’s weekly podcast called the “Deadcast”, famed blog lover Buzz Bissinger provided one of the funniest sound bytes I’ve heard in a long time. While discussing the Raul Ibanez-MSF story, he attempts to lay blame at the feet of the first entity that linked to the now-infamous post.

Unfortunately, Buzz does not seem to know the difference between Harold Reynolds — the man and former baseball player — and Hugging Harold Reynolds — the great blog written by white dudes.

However, as Dan Levy points out to Drew, his message might be somewhat lost as it appears Buzz hasn’t brushed up on his homework on the situation, and inexplicitly calls out MLB Network’s All-Star personality (and this site’s namesake), Harold Reynolds.

Buzz: “Harold Reynolds picks it up, and puts it up on his website. And then before you know it its all over the place. I think Reynolds was really wrong. I think it was, um you know, really sloppy on his part.”

Jump over to HHR to listen to clip in question. It’s beautiful.

On this sad day when the Jerod Morris Hex was born as Raul Ibanez’s incredible statistics died (at least for 15 days), at least laughter and levity didn’t die as well.

LOTD: The Overexposure of JRod Continues With Another Podcast and SI Mention (plus other non-Ibanez Links)

Before I link you to the podcast that I did last night at TheSportsBank.net, I want to explain to you a dilemma that I’ve been having while attempting to provide coverage for the Raul Ibanez story that I found myself wrapped up in. And the dilemma is manifested in the title of this post.

When I am talking about podcasts that I participated in or stories that have discussed my role in the steroid speculation / blogger v MSM controversies that were all the rage last week, is it an engregious foul of douchebaggery for me to refer to myself in the 3rd person? I feel like it makes a better title and is more descriptive, so that people just glancing at titles have a clue beyond the word “me” for who is in the podcast being mentioned. But I’ve always hated it when people refer to themselves in the 3rd person.

And what should I do with the silly moniker JRod now? Sure, it is an oft-used nickname for me by people for whom five letters is too much but four is just right, yet a) it’s too close to “ARod” and “KRod” for my own personal comfort; b) most people reading MSF know my full name now anyway; c) there is nothing inherently clever or interesting about it.

Suggestions are welcome in the comment section below, but only after you visit our good friends at The Sports Bank who were kind enough to invite me on their podcast last evening with Peter Christian, the friendly and insightful Minnesota fan who manages The Deposit and who provides the regular “Callouts” section. Obviously we discussed the Ibanez story and then delved a little deeper into blogger responsibility and whole blogs v MSM thing, but my favorite part about the discussion was Peter’s interesting suggestion that the Big Ten should add Memphis as its 12th team.

I’d never heard this idea posited before, and have to think about it some more before making a judgment, but it’s certainly a welcome and intriguing diversion from the constant Notre Dame to the Big Ten talk.

Anyway, here is the link to the audio file and the podcast is also available on iTunes. And don’t be afraid to hop on over to The Sports Bank and browse around. Sure, their tagline (”your most valuable option for Midwest sports”) is a point of dispute here at Midwest Sports Fans, but friendly competition is always good — as is their site.

Also, thanks to Hugging Harold Reynolds for pointing this out because I had no idea, but Joe Posnanski penned an article in the most recent issue of Sports Illustrated (with Kobe on the cover), entitled Without A Clue: In the steroid age, those who cover the game struggle to describe what they see, in which he discusses the Ibanez debate of the last 10 days and mentions me and our site.

This week has been a lot of things and I have received my fair share of support and criticism, but 10-20-30 years from now I will always be able to say the following: I was on ESPN and my name was in Sports Illustrated.

There is no need to beat around the bush: that is awesome. It’s definitely a dream come true that I feel really fortunate to have had. The circumstances were certainly surprising and unexpected, but it does provide an enhanced sense of purpose (and responsibility) every time I wake up and log in here to our little corner of the sports blogosphere.

And now, because I’ve been horribly lax in proving you with compelling non-Ibanez links over the past few days, here are a few non-Ibanez links for your viewing pleasure on this fine Thursday morning:

Worst Kept Secret Ever Revealed by New York Times — (Hugging Harold Reynolds; it’s about the Sosa story that you’ve already heard of, but the old school jheri curl Sox picture of Sosa is worth the click.)

Steroid Era: Best Of The Rest — (Josh Q. Public; my only gripe is that Frank Thomas is not included.)

Kobe Bryant on Conan O’Brien — (The Hoop Doctors; saw this interview and it was definitely entertaining. Conan and Kobe at their best.)

Can Joe Mauer Bat .400? — (Bugs and Cranks; not with the reborn Jose Contreras back in the AL Central!)

Who Has the Brainiest Team in Baseball? — (Wall Street Journal; well it ‘aint the Natinals.)

Are AL Pitchers feasting on the NL? — (The Sweet Spot Blog by Rob Neyer)

Paul Konerko Should Probably Stop Talking for a While — (Rumors and Rants; which includes my new favorite line when somebody throws some steroid speculation: “Not to go all Jerod Morris on you, but…”)

The Most Honest Man in Baseball — (Sparty and Friends; hint: it’s not Sammy Sosa.)

The Five Worst Mascots in the Major Leagues — (Shay Roddy’s Phillies Phanatics; what, no Steve Bartman?)

Recasting “Major League” With Today’s Ball Players — (America’s White Boy)

The NBA Finals Confused Jason Whitlock — (Joe Sports Fan)

Have a great Thursday everyone. Work and care-for-the-recovering-dog time.

Jerod Interviewed by Sid Rosenberg, Shay Roddy, and Drunk Jays Fans

For those of you who are not yet sick of my pasty mug and listening to me discuss the Raul Ibanez story yet, I had the much appreciated opportunity to discuss last week’s controversy with a few other bloggers and media members interested in the story.

Earlier this morning, I appeared with Sid Rosenberg at his OpenSports.com video blog entitled “Insurance Runs.” Rosenberg is a sports media veteran and has never been one to shy away from controversial topics nor to speak his mind.

He was kind enough to provide me a forum to further explain the reasons why I wrote the Ibanez post in the first place, as well as some thoughts on the fallout.

And I appreciate Sid and his producer Jason being flexible with my schedule today with my dog’s surgery coming up at the last minute. But going on the show with Sid was a welcomed diversion and a great experience.

In addition, late last week I did an interview with blogger Shay Roddy of Phillies Phanatics. And while Shay respectfully disagreed with me on certain points, he was both fair and open-minded throughout this entire week and on the podcast and is one of the primary reasons why I implore you not to buy into all of the stereotypes out there about Philly fans. Here is the link to the podcast at Shay’s site:

http://shayroddy.wordpress.com/2009/06/13/jerod-morris/

I linked to this before but I’ll link to it again in case you missed it. I joined Dan Levy on his On the DL Podcast last week.

http://www.onthedlpodcast.com/Blog_Podcast/Blog/Entries/2009/6/11_Jerod_Morris_Rosenthal_Gonzo.html

Dan has one of the best podcasts out there, and was in attendance at the first Blogs With Balls conference in NYC this past weekend. Here is another recent podcast Dan did before BWB with Bethlehem Shoals of Free Darko and then a recap of the conference:

http://www.onthedlpodcast.com/Blog_Podcast/Blog/Entries/2009/6/12_Bethlehem_Shoals.html

http://www.onthedlpodcast.com/Blog_Podcast/Blog/Entries/2009/6/15_The_Official_Blogs_With_Balls_Review__What_Was_Answered_and_What_Questions_Came_Out_Of_A_Fantastic_Event.html

And yes, I’m being extremely lazy with links today because I’m going to have to head out of here soon and trying to get this posted as quickly as possible.

Finally, I had a great time talking with the guys at Drunk Jays Fans this weekend. The podcast does not appear to be up yet, but I link to it as soon as it is.

Update: The Drunk Jays Fans podcast is up.  I knew that this was going to turn out well, as the guys from DJF are both cool and knowledgeable about sports (even sports south of the border!), but I had no idea how much I would be grateful for the opportunity to go on their podcast until I heard the intro music.

Seriously, any podcast that starts out with “The Final Countdown” makes me infinitely proud to have been a part of.  (And the South Park excerpt of the “Jared the Subway Guy” song was spot on as well.)

http://www.drunkjaysfans.com/2009/06/boners-up-djf-2009-11-guest-jerod.html

The Anchor’s Desk: The More Legitimate Blogs Become, the More Responsibility They Need to Assume

A Web log, also known as a blog, can be written by anyone. You can blog about your feelings, your cat, or whether you think it’s fair to suspect Raul Ibanez of using steroids, which is what JRod famously did last week.

Blogs have taken off, and now we’ve got a problem. The lines have blurred.

What happens when bloggers get together and create a site like Midwest Sports Fans, updating it with news, and making it look and feel like a news site? Are they now journalists with the same standards?

With mainstream media being consumed on the web more and more each day, it’s tougher to discern what’s journalism and what’s “just some guy writing.”

If you go on a newspapers’ website to get the news, it looks like a website, has a banner on top, and some columns and news items. If you go to a blog site, like Midwest Sports Fans, it may look pretty darn similar, with the basic web design, sponsor links, and columns. The difference is that the columns on this site don’t have the same journalistic standards.

This has become a pretty slippery slope.

As sites like Midwest Sports Fans explode in popularity, they become more legitimate-looking. Therefore, such sites’ readers treat then more as “news” as opposed to “wanderings of the mind.” Does this mean higher ethics and journalistic standards need to be exercised?

In the case of Raul Ibanez I think it does.

When you have Raul Ibanez reacting to it, and Jerod Morris (JRod) appearing on ESPN, you know your site has arrived. There is a responsibility to balance your right to blog with journalistic principles of fairness.

Here’s an analogy: If you tell a group of four friends that you suspect Mr. Smith is gay (and why), you’d feel okay, because you’re just telling a few people. But would you stand in a crowded opera house of 1,000 people and announce that with a megaphone? Probably not. You’d have to feel a little funny about that.

That’s the difference between writing something in a chat room or e-mail, versus placing it on a huge blog site like MWSF.

When talking about journalistic standards, the lines are blurry of course. Newspaper writers who blog for their own papers’ websites have let their standards slip. A decade ago, you would never print rumors or hunches unless you could confirm them. Nowadays, for some reason, the same legitimate journalists will post just about everything, thinking its okay because it’s “just on their blog.”

They put something on the web and then say…“but I haven’t been able to confirm it.” Then can you really say it at all?

However, I still know they would not go as far as to drag a stand-up guy like Ibanez into the steroid discussion, out of the blue. I’m a journalist, and I wouldn’t have. Mainstream media members have their reputations and relationships to maintain.

The subject of who has to stick to journalistic ethics and standards boils down to how you present yourself. If Jerod wondered about Ibanez’s possible steroid use in a chat room, it wouldn’t matter. But since MWSF has a huge following, Jerod (JRod) has turned himself into a quasi-journalist and needs to be careful. He told me on Friday that he doesn’t regret writing about his Ibanez-steroid theory (and naming him), he only regrets he wasn’t more careful with the tone and the title of the story. In other words, bloggers should have the right to say what’s on their mind, but he does sense that there is a level of responsibility that comes with it.

Remember bloggers, you’re not just talking to your friends anymore. You’re sharing this stuff with 50,000 people or more, larger than some newspapers’ entire circulation.

Jerod wrote a piece, basically saying it’s sad that in this day and age we have to suspect aging sluggers of steroid use. He speculated that Ibanez could very well be using.

If a member of the mainstream media wrote that piece, the author would not be ethically able to name Ibanez as an example, unless he was getting Ibanez’s reaction on the topic of “the blanket of suspicion.” There was an SI article on the same topic, using Albert Pujols as the focus. The reason that article was okay was that Pujols was discussing how sad it is that there are doubts. Plus the article wasn’t done in a way to ignite speculation.

JRod said he would have asked Ibanez about the topic, but bloggers don’t have the same access to the players as regular media. I believe that makes it not okay to name names.

When JRod was on Outside the Lines (picture courtesy of Awful Announcing), Ken Rosenthal blasted him for not showing any decency and writing whatever he wanted. John Gonzalez of the Philly Inquirer took more of a middle ground, saying bloggers are the “wild west of journalism,” and they have to be careful. I agree with John to a point. People can blog about whatever, but when blog sites start to look like news organizations, there have to be some standards.

JRod did not come out and say Ibanez is using…he just said there is reason to doubt him in this day and age. That doesn’t sound terrible, but because JRod’s following is so huge, it certainly created a huge backlash, including from Ibanez himself.

MWSF has the burden of popularity. It has become legitimate. It has become a place people come to for insight and information. It is very easy for someone who is reading online material to forget they are on a blog site as opposed to mainstream media website.

At the end of the day, it’s up to each blogger to realize they have a level of responsibility to fact-check and not spread rumor. JRod found out the hard way that your tone and the way you present facts can do a lot of damage. While he says he doesn’t regret naming Ibanez, he says it has made him think about being careful. I also credit Jrod for reaching out to Ibanez after the story broke in Philadelphia and trying to explain himself.

That’s the type of responsibility, accountability, and decency that needs to be on everyone’s mind next time they blog.

———-

Scott Reister is a featured contributor to Midwest Sports Fans, as well as Dallas Sports Fans.

He is a Sports Anchor for the NBC affiliate in the Tri-Cities and Spokane, WA. To learn more about Scott, visit the Scott Reister bio page on Midwest Sports Fans or check out the Local Sports page on KNDU.com.

To contact Scott: sreister@hotmail.com

Baseball Has Become a Joke; Attack the MLB, not Bloggers

Although my area of expertise is fantasy football, I could not leave this subject alone. After taking in the ESPN Outside The Lines debate on Jerod’s article regarding Raul Ibanez, I feel compelled to write in defense of someone I have great respect for.

Over the past five years, we have watched Major League Baseball fall apart right before our very eyes. Decades of baseball players and fans have been destroyed by the widespread disaster of Performance Enhancing Drugs, which has tainted every record broken in the 90’s and beyond, as well as iconic players’ images. In my very own house, I have to deal with the issues of Performance Enhancing Drugs because of these players and their decisions, which affects my children greatly.

Growing up, I idolized Roger Clemens. I wore his number when I played. I tried to pitch just like him, and collected whatever had his name or number on it. My oldest son, only 12, idolizes Manny Ramirez. As he currently plays baseball and is only a few years from high school, I have to explain to him and pray that he does not follow in his idols’ footsteps to get an unfair advantage over his competition.  My youngest son, age 10, worships Alex Rodriguez. He also plays baseball on a traveling team, 44 games a summer. This league is extremely competitive, and again, I fear the worst with what his decisions will be when he reaches more competitive levels of baseball as he ages.

I found out about Clemens at an age where I know better, and can make educated decisions on what should and should not be done to my body. But if I found out my idol did this at the influential age of 10 or 12, would I be so smart? Could my decision-making of what is right and wrong be stronger than the influence, positive or negative, that is displayed by those I look up to?

With that said, how in the hell can anyone look at Ibanez’s numbers and not think exactly what Jerod wrote. He did not say he was on PED’s, but after the likes of Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire, how could you look at this in any other light?

Manny testing positive was the capper for me. If he could test positive, one of the purest hitters in all of baseball, ever, I have to believe that everyone could be on them.  Think about Brady Anderson and Bret Boone. These two went from single digit home run totals one year to hitting 51 home runs and the other batting clean up in the All-Star Game.

Major League Baseball is tainted, and will be for years to come. Jerod spoke on what everyone else thinks, and yes, this is America, where we still do have freedom of speech. He did not accuse Ibanez of taking PED’s, but based on his numbers, how can you not speculate until the positive tests stop coming forward?

If we have this speculation now, wait until the 100+ names from the Alex Rodriguez list are published.

Jerod handled himself with class while the mainstream media tried to beat on his writing to justify their own existence. Jerod was dead on in his writing and his comments. Baseball is a joke, and the negative influence this has on our youth is frightening.

Jerod, my hats off to you for saying what everyone else thinks!

* – Photo Courtesy: BlissTree.com

———-

Kurt Fraschetti

Profootballinsight – Now on Facebook

profootballinsight@live.com

The Debate Shifts: Who Is the Freaky Guy on the Left?

As the 24-48 hour sports news cycle chews up and spits out the Raul Ibanez story that I’ve unexpectly found myself at the center of this week, the debate is now shifting to far more important topics that whether speculating about individual players being on steroids is valid or how bloggers and the mainstream media will ever co-exist.

And the most important question was recently posed by a commenter over at Awful Announcing in their take on the current steroids speculation debate, in reference to the picture above (courtesy of Awful Announcing):

shacky316 said…
Who is the freaky one on the left???

I’m going to assume that I was in the process of talking at the point where that screenshot was taken, because I don’t remember hawking a loogie at the camera at any point during the interview.

Either way, I’d like to extend my heartfelt gratitude to Daulerio over Deadspin for shining a bright light on my most sensitive of insecurities: that rather then being your garden variety white guy from the Midwest, I appear to be bordering on a skin pigmentation of clear during the OTL interview. While making many relevant and important points about the OTL interview, Daulerio makes perhaps his most relevant when he says:

Jerod Morris has to go outside. Seriously, son, you’re making us all look bad if you don’t spray tan yourself before you go on national television to get yelled at.

I also have to say that I personally found their screenshot of the OTL interview to be far more amusing, for a number of reasons. Poor John Gonzalez does not appear to be as intense as me or in quite the state of ecstacy as our dear friend Ken Rosenthal.

I would like to personally thank my friends over at Cleveland Frowns for chalking up my “freaky” appearance to the obvious lack of makeup that was offered to me before the interview in their post earlier today. However, the truth is that I probably wouldn’t have worn any anyway, and would have been better served by getting a haircut sometime in the last three months and, as Daulerio suggests, emerging from beneath my laptop to behold the glory of the sun every once in a while.

I guess if I’d known that I’d end up on ESPN I would have been more proactive about these issues. But the truth is that I probably would have procrastinated about doing anything about them to analyze a White Sox draft pick or have some unnecessary fun with Photoshop.

And I mean really, when you’re just a blogger who is living in the glorious age of the MLB Network, Gamecast, and Hot Clicks, who needs the sun?