Sam Mellinger lumps Schilling's effort in with My Space riff-raff

Mellinger's career choice was to hang out with athletes while they're undressing, so he must know a lot. He has an article about baseball players who've taken to communicating with the public--but not necessarily via Sam or other reporters. Sam says a bunch of these athlete/blogger/internet commodities have screwed it up. I'm pretty sure Mellinger would've checked out Schilling's blog, 38Pitches.com, and therefore would know it bears no resemblance to a My Space personal website.

• First, the title of Mellinger's article tells you it's about baseball player bloggers. But the subhead goes in a different direction, saying some experienced rocky roads with My Space. The two are usually quite different things. (I understand Mellinger may not be in charge of headlines, but the point is the headlines attempt to get a certain idea or ideas across). Mellinger:

"Misuse of the Internet has generated apologies from Curt Schilling, J.D. Durbin and C.J. Wilson. Others, such as Granderson, Pat Neshek and Kevin Youkilis have been able to avoid trouble while marketing themselves online.

The line between those groups can sometimes be perilous.

Sometimes it makes you wonder if Adam Dunn’s approach to the Internet age — “what’s a blog?” he asks — is the right one for ballplayers. In the meantime, the trouble for some has convinced others to keep their online endeavors as vanilla as postgame clichés."

• This article doesn't flesh out/reconcile or prove its opening. It gives a mish-mash of dramatically different online uses/personas/purposes by a few unrelated players. Since the writer lumps them all together as internet bloggers who've screwed up/My Space whatevers who've screwed up/ general marketers who might screw up, the lines are blurred. Meaning the guys he discusses are all in the same blur. Why would he want to portray Schilling's blog along with My Space pages? They're not similar.

Because he, Mellinger, thinks a certain way and he hopes you will too. It seems baseball reporters don't get it yet. Things have changed, but they've changed forever. Life will never be the same for baseball reporters. Mellinger seems to hope players will go back to normal and persons like himself will be the gateway for societal perceptions of players. Never again.

Quote from Sam Mellinger's Kansas City Star article, "Baseball Players are Going to the Blogs," 6/10/07

P.S. This may not seem like a big deal, but in today's information age, small things have a way of becoming big things. Especially when speaking about public figures. About that, I say, never again.

Tweet Stumbleupon StumbleUpon