On what are called baseball writers

1/5/11, Comment #13 to post,

• "How a part time blogger changed baseball's Hall of Fame," on Baseball think Factory:

"Joe Sheehan said it best in his newsletter today:

• 'Thirty years ago, the BBWAA -- baseball writers and reporters -- were the experts, largely unchallenged. They could build cases about players based on traditional stats, and their word was the last one.
• Today, they are just another voice in the discussion. Traditional stats have been proven to hide as much as they reveal, and poor argumentation with numbers is quickly taken to task. We have better tools to evaluate performance, and any fan with a laptop and some skills can quickly compare any two players in baseball history to one another, to figure out "what is a Hall of Fame pitcher?" and decide for himself if a candidate meets those standards.
• It's not enough to have an opinion, a byline and 14 column inches. There's no authority in those things any longer, because the readership -- baseball fans -- is just as qualified to make the kinds of comparisons it was assumed only experts could make a generation ago. You need to have facts, and you need to be able to defend your arguments. The whole baseball world has become rec.sport.baseball circa 1993.'"...
• ####

"Marty Noble on 6/10/08 with Charley Steiner on XM 175 said the following

• about baseball writers/reporters

"I hate to say it but the New York media now think they have the responsibility and the power" to decide on a manager or to fire a manager. "This started 10 or 15 years ago." Later in the conversation with Charley Steiner, Noble notes,

• "There are a lot of people in my business who are certain they know everything."

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