Peter Schmuck: Interviewed on December 2, 2008
Position: columnist, Baltimore Sun; talk show host, WBAL radio
Born: 1955, Southern California
Education: Cal State Fullerton, English
Career: Orange County Register 1978-1990; Baltimore Sun 1990 - ; WBAL radio 2003-
Personal: Married, two children.
Favorite restaurant (home): P.F. Chang’s, Baltimore
Favorite restaurant (away): Captain Jack’s, Sunset Beach, Calif.
Favorite hotel: Marriott Eastside, New York, “Great location - classic Manhattan charm.”

Peter Schmuck, excerpted from the Baltimore Sun, November 2, 2008:
        News item: The Orioles will hold a rally this month to introduce the team’s new uniforms for the 2009 season. The road uniform is expected to have “Baltimore” on the front of the jersey.
        My take: That’s great, but when it’s all said and done, I think fans are going to care more whether “Roberts” and “Teixeira” are on the back of a couple of them.
        News item: The Philadelphia Phillies won the World Series on Wednesday night after waiting 46 hours between the top of the sixth inning and the bottom.
        My take: Honestly, it was a very entertaining 3 1/2 -inning game, and it ended early enough for school kids to actually watch the Phillies’ celebration. That’s important because most of those kids will probably be collecting Social Security the next time a team in Philadelphia wins a world title.
        News item: The Orioles still have not firmed up their plans for a permanent spring training site. They’re expected to be in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., next spring but have made no commitment to train anywhere in 2010. The most likely location still appears to be the Dodgertown complex in Vero Beach, Fla.
        My take: In the most likely scenario, however, the Orioles will try to play Vero Beach off the soon-to-be-vacant complex in Sarasota, Fla., and end up without a permanent resolution to a situation that has been unsettled since - believe it or not - 1990.
        Bonus my take: Based on conversations with several people who have attempted it, negotiating with Peter and John Angelos is like trying to eat soup with a fork.
        News item: Hundreds of thousands of Phillies fans lined the streets Friday for the city’s first world championship parade in 25 years.
        My take: Now, let me get this straight. It was Halloween and everyone in Philadelphia was dressed up like a winner? I’m confused.
        News item: New San Francisco 49ers coach Mike Singletary took some heat last week after dropping his pants as part of a halftime rant during his head coaching debut last Sunday.
        My take: I’ve got no problem with that, and I bet the great halftime motivator Knute Rockne wouldn’t have a problem with it, either. If the players don’t want to see it happen again, they need to get out there and win one for the zipper.
        News item: The Green Bay Packers have signed quarterback Aaron Rodgers to a contract extension that calls for him to make more than $11 million per year through the 2014 season.

        My take: The Pack would have locked Rodgers up for longer, but they’re pretty sure they can persuade Brett Favre to come back in 2015 if there’s a problem.
        News item: Agent Leigh Steinberg, who was the inspiration for the movie Jerry Maguire, was arrested in Southern California last week on charges of being drunk in public.
        My take: I heard he had the occifer at “Hello.”

Q. On your Facebook page you write: “I’m the only person in the world who thinks it was a big advantage to grow up with the last name Schmuck.” Can you explain this, as well as the bit of history with the California Department of Motor Vehicles?

A. Well, I’m pretty sure the distinctiveness of the name has helped me throughout my career. It also has given me a thicker skin - in a ‘Boy Named Sue’ kind of way - in a business where that isn’t a bad thing to have.

In 1980, my girlfriend at the time applied for a vanity license plate with my last name on it. The California Department of Motor Vehicles rejected the request and sent me a letter saying that the plate I had chosen was in bad taste and offensive to public decency. The story made the wires and I spent the day doing a few dozen talk radio interviews. The DMV, faced with the embarrassing publicity, relented and sent me the license plate, which I displayed proudly for years in California.

Q. Your career started in print but now you’re a multi-platform performer? How did you make the leap? How would you characterize your radio voice and your screen presence?

A. I got asked to do some radio and TV after I came to Baltimore. I had never done more than an occasional guest shot in California. I was pretty raw at first, but you eventually get more comfortable. I don’t think I have a very good radio voice, but the station manager keeps asking me to do more shows, so I guess it doesn’t grate as bad on everybody else as it does when I hear a recording of it.

Don’t really know what kind of TV presence I have, but I usually know my stuff when I’m on and am fairly articulate. My favorite TV appearance was on “Hardball” with Chris Matthews when I debated Jose Canseco and his lawyer during the steroid fiasco. The lawyer tried to cast Jose as a whistleblower, and I said ‘The guy supplied steroids to other players and bragged about it in his book. The neighborhood I grew up in, we didn’t call that a whistleblower. We called that guy a drug pusher.’ The lawyer sputtered that I couldn’t call his client a drug pusher on TV. I said, ‘I’m sorry counselor, I just did.’

Q. You were pretty tough on a congressional panel last January for failing to call MLB players to testify about steroids. Looking back, how do you grade your own reporting and writing on steroids?

A. I think I did a pretty good job on the explanatory part of it, though I wasn’t involved in a lot of investigative work. I had more to do with the ephedra controversy after the death of Baltimore Orioles pitcher Steve Bechler. But the week of the infamous Mark McGwire congressional hearings, I ripped the committee for making a backroom deal not to make McGwire answer any direct questions about his steroid usage. I thought it was going to be a grandstanding dog and pony show. I had to admit afterward - well afterward - that the congressional meddling did lead to a much tougher steroid testing program in baseball.

Q. How did you learn to write? Who were your influences? What do you try to accomplish with a column and how do you know if it works?

A. I guess it came sort of natural to me. My mother gave me a portable typewriter when I was a kid and I liked to simulate news stories and write phony TV scripts. I had a high school English teacher take an interest in me and help me refine my writing style, then ended up on my college newspaper.

I was always into humor, so I’d say my biggest influence from a sports and column perspective was Jim Murray, though I certainly don’t write like he did. It was just great to work in the same press box with him for a few years and get to know him.

Q. Who and what do you read to keep up with sports?

A. I’m really not a guy who faithfully reads certain writers and columnists and not others. I read through several of the sports internet sites pretty much every day and, obviously, pay attention to what writers like Buster Olney (espn.com) and Ken Rosenthal (foxsports.com) are doing, since they dig stuff up. I’ll pop into some of the fan message boards once in awhile to see what the pulse of the internet is on a certain subject. My guilty pleasure is T.J. Simers (LA Times), who is the columnist I would be if I had the guts.

These days, when I read something on paper, it’s usually a novel – either contemporary or classic.”

Q. The Orioles have been lousy for years, while the Ravens have been generally good. Which inspires better columns?

A. My philosophy has always been, I don’t care if a team is very good or very bad, as long as it is either very good or very bad. The worst thing for a columnist is to get stuck in the middle.”

Q. Your blog is called “The Schmuck Stops Here”. What exactly does that mean?

A. It’s a play on my name and the old Harry Truman line, “The buck stops here.” Taken literally, it’s the site on the internet where I stop several times a day to interact with readers. So far, it has been fairly successful, but I’m still pretty new to the whole blogging thing. The future is on the internet and I want to have a future, so it seemed like a good idea.

Q. Fantasy byline: JJ Putz as told to Peter Schmuck. What kind of story would it be?

A. I don’t have to speculate on this. I interviewed J.J. for a column that I hoped would be a funny account of two guys talking about the pitfalls of having funny surnames. He was no help, however, claiming that he never got ribbed about his name because it was pronounced Pootz. If I recall, in the column I wrote that I didn’t know which bothered me more – the fact that he wouldn’t own up to the correct pronunciation of his name or that I never thought to tell everyone my last name was Schmook.

Peter Schmuck, Baltimore Sun, August 5, 2008:
        Seldom does a Seattle series go by that I don’t get several e-mails or personal entreaties to interview reliever J.J. Putz. And, of course, this is understandable because of the similar ridiculousness of our respective surnames.
        Some of you probably remember that I did just that a couple of years ago for a column in The Sun. I approached J.J. in the Mariners clubhouse and introduced myself and expected some kind of reaction when he heard my last name, but he just stared at me as if I had just surfed back from Gilligan’s Island.
        No problem. I explained to him that because I was a semi-respected journalist with a very silly name and he was an up-and-coming baseball star with a silly name, we should be having a bonding moment of mutual understanding after mutual lifetimes of middle school taunts and rebuffed marriage proposals.
        When he finally figured out what I was talking about, he politely informed me that no natural kinship existed between us because his last name is not pronounced the way it would seem by the spelling. It is pronounced with a longer “U” sound (Pootz) and he was never the object of junior high or any other kind of name-related ridicule.
        I suppose I should be happy for him, but if I recall the column I wrote at the time, I just felt stupid that it never occurred to me to tell everyone my last name is Schmook.

Peter Schmuck, Baltimore Sun, April 6, 2008:
        News item: Seattle Mariners closer J.J. Putz has been placed on the 15-day disabled list with a rib cage injury.
        My take: As you know, J.J. would be one of my favorite players if he would embrace his funny name and stop insisting that it isn’t pronounced the way we all know it should be. If I can be a sanctimonious Schmuck, he can be an unapologetic Putz.

Peter Schmuck, Baltimore Sun, May 28, 2005:
        I also got several e-mails asking if I was going to interview J.J. Putz while the Mariners were in town, but that ship has sailed. I tried to bond with Putz when the M’s passed through Baltimore last year, but he wouldn’t play along.
        The guy continues to insist that his name is pronounced with a longer “U” sound, rendering moot the semantic connection between Putz and Schmuck. This is a big disappointment for those of us who are defiantly proud of our ridiculous names.

Peter Schmuck, Baltimore Sun, September 27, 2004
        It’s always fun to watch politicians stumble over sports, and both John Kerry and George Bush delivered Page 2 moments earlier this month.
        Kerry may have lost some of the Green Bay Packers vote when he referred to their home stadium as Lambert Field, while President Bush was in nearby St. Cloud, Minn., making a speech at Dick Putz Stadium.
        That’s right, the stadium that houses the St. Cloud Riverbats is named after someone named Dick Putz (definitely no relation).

Peter Schmuck, Baltimore Sun, August 4, 2004:
        IT HASN’T BEEN easy going through life with a built-in nickname, but when the Seattle Mariners arrived in town, I thought I finally had found someone else who could feel my pain.
        The Mariners have a relief pitcher named J.J. Putz, a young right-hander who I was sure would be able to identify with my lifelong struggle to order a pizza over the phone.
        No such luck. J.J. claims his surname is pronounced with a slightly longer “u” - so that it sounds more like “puts” than “putts.” That’s his story, and he’s sticking to it.
        ”He’s in denial,” said Orioles play-by-play man Joe Angel.
        I don’t know what bothers me more - the fact that he won’t admit to the real pronunciation or that I never thought of telling people that my last name is Schmook.

(SMG thanks Peter Schmuck for his cooperation)

Mike Vaccaro: Interviewed on October 18, 2008
Position: Sports Columnist, New York Post
Born: 1967, Flushing, N.Y.
Education: St. Bonaventure, 1989, B.A. in mass communication
Career: Times-Herald (Olean, NY) 1989-91; Northwest Arkansas Times (Fayetteville, Ark.) 91-93; Times Herald-Record (Middletown NY) 93-97; Kansas City Star 97-98; Newark Star-Ledger 98-02; New York Post 02 -
Personal: married (Leigh)
Favorite restaurant (home): Sushi Samba, NYC, “where I would eat every meal if I ever write a runaway best-seller.”
Favorite restaurant (away): Ghengis Khan, Kansas City “Mongolian barbecue that is more addictive than caffeine.”
Favorite hotel: Hollywood Renaissance, Hollywood, Calif.: “Hollywood fascinates me, and this hotel is walking distance to everything you could possibly want to see - including an In & Out burger a few blocks away, next to Hollywood High School. And so what if it’s corny: when I get a room with a view of the “HOLLYWOOD” sign, I can sit and stare at it for an hour at a time.”
Author of: ”1941: The Greatest Year in Sports”; “Emperors and Idiots”

Mike Vaccaro, New York Post, September 12, 2008:
        SEVENTEEN.
        There’s the number. Ruminate over it. Stew over it. Agonize over it one more time. Seventeen: It used to be such a happy number in Mets lore. That was Keith Hernandez’s number, the first old number that should be retired in the new ballpark.
        It was Rod Gaspar’s number on the ‘69 Mets. That October, after the 109-win Orioles beat the Twins in the playoffs, Frank Robinson bellowed, “Bring on Ron Gaspar!” To which teammate Merv Rettenmund replied: “It’s Rod, stupid.” To which Robinson responded: “OK! Then bring on Rod Stupid!”
        Seventeen means something else now. You know the morbid math: seven games up, 17 games to play. If you are a Mets fan, it is burned into your brain, seared into your soul, tattooed onto your tongue. This morning, the Mets awaken with 17 games remaining in their schedule, four games up on the Phillies in the loss column.
        So I tell you this from the heart, Mets fans: Fear not. Here are 17 reasons why the Mets will not allow history to repeat itself; why, sometime within these 17 days you can officially wash away the residue of 2007 with champagne, with tears of joy, with anything you’d like. There will be no encore this time. Here’s why:
        1. Jerry Manuel is the manager now, and he channels Joe Torre cool rather than collar-tightening tension, Willie Randolph’s specialty last year.
        2. Carlos Delgado is slugging, not sulking, and what a difference that makes.
        3. David Wright was the only one who seemed obviously offended by the collapse last year. This time around, he’s one of 25 who get their uniforms dirty every night.
        4. The Phillies aren’t as good as they were last year: no Aaron Rowand, no MVP-caliber Jimmy Rollins, and they have Kyle Kendrick throwing batting practice once every five days.
        5. The Phillies started the collapse by slicing three games in three days from games 17 to 15 last year. They already had their shot to sweep, and missed.
        6. Johan Santana is in Flushing, and starting tonight he will have four starts to close the season, and the Mets believe with 100 percent certainty they should win those starts.
        7. Tom Glavine is in Atlanta, and on the disabled list.
        8. Carlos Beltran has two healthy knees, and he has been bashing the baseball for weeks. When he is hitting that way, the heart of the Mets’ batting order is murderous.
        9. The Mets’ bullpen is still a cartoon strip, but it was even more of one last year, when no lead was safe and there was no emerging help like Luis Ayala and Brian Stokes.
        10. The Mets were lulled to sleep by the lowliness of their opponents in the final week last year. This time, no such worry: They have the Cubs for four and the Marlins for three to close out Shea Stadium. The Cubs need no introduction. And the Mets would like nothing more than to pay the feisty Fish back for last year.
        11. This time last year, Jose Reyes was in a full-blown coma.
        12. This time this year, he is the most valuable Met not named Delgado.
        13. This is hope, more than fact, but if things get shaky in the final week, the nostalgia waves in the stands should neutralize the panic of waiting for the other shoe to drop.
        14. The Nats series exposed a glaring difference between ‘07 and ‘08. Last year down the stretch the teams played six games, the Nats won five. In four of those losses the Mets took early leads, saw the Nats overtake them, and the Mets hadn’t the heart to come back. The Amazin’s showed resolve in both games at Shea this week, against a far feistier Washington team.
        15. Guillermo Mota terrifies the citizens of Milwaukee now.
        16. These Mets are not spoiled by success. They had to overcome their own seven-game deficit in the standings. That built a character missing all last year.
        17. With everyone in love with the Cubs this year (warning: John Cusack will be this October’s Ben Affleck), the Mets are playing with house money, and not with a skyscraper of expectations sitting on their backs like last year. The difference in how free and easy they play now compared to last year is startling.

Q. No disrespect intended, but what were you thinking when you wrote “17 reasons why the Mets will not choke”?

A. None taken. At the risk of sounding glib: I was thinking that the Mets wouldn’t choke. It was an off-day, and it just so happened the Mets had 17 games left in the season, and for the past 50 weeks all anyone around the Mets had talked about were the 17 games that fouled up the 2007 season. And, frankly, I truly believed that the Mets would be fine. I thought with Santana in the fold they’d be fine, and with the way they were playing … I just didn’t see another collapse coming. Believe me, I’ve only gotten one or two thousand e-mails reminding me of this column, which is fine. I wish it was the first time I got a sports prediction wrong.

Q. Hindsight about that column? Isn’t it safer to react to news than predict it?

A. Sure it is, but who wants to be safe? Isn’t safe boring? To me, if you have the rare privilege to write a column, you’d better be able to do a lot of things well: predict and react; write funny and poignant; write with anger and compassion; and be ready to go off-beat if that’s what the day calls for.

One of my favorite days in my career was the next-to-last day of the 2007 baseball season, Mets-Marlins at Shea, and I got to sit next to Jimmy Breslin. And without outing myself too much as a shameless fanboy, I did engage him in a little columnist chit-chat and this was my favorite thing he said: being a good columnist is like being a crafty pitcher: you’d better absolutely have a fastball, but it helps to have a curve, a slider and a forkball, too.

I do think that most readers understand I’m a columnist who is not only unafraid to admit when I’m wrong – and in print – I go out of my way to acknowledge those mistakes. A better example than this one: Two years ago, in the midst of the Giants’ meltdown, I was the first New York columnist who put it in the paper that Tom Coughlin should be fired. Now, I should say here: I do not revel in firing people, and I don’t get a thrill writing vicious for the sake of writing vicious. I wrote it because I believed it. Obviously, about 14 months later the Giants were in the Super Bowl and I wrote a long mea culpa of a column, and was amazed how much positive reaction there was among readers. I think we’re in trouble as columnists if we’re willing to shout our opinions at you and unwilling to fess up when we’re wrong.

And one other thing: If the Mets are up next September with 17 games to go, you can rest assured I will write something about it.

Q. Beat reporters compete for breaking news, and are measured by the news they break. What about columnists – how are they measured? Is it easier to be a columnist than a beat reporter?

A. I think we’re measured against two scales: how well a column is written, and how much impact the words have in the community you cover. I am still naïve enough – or maybe it’s vain enough – to believe that if you are given a column then you’d better respect what that means, you’d better understand that going back to the beginning of newspapers that columns were given, by and large, to men and women who understood the power of the written word, how elegant those words could be, how devastating, how influential. I’m not saying all columns should be poetry: I am saying they should be written with as much care, and as much thought, as a brain can muster.

That said, you’d better have something to say. Think about how audacious a column is: here is my picture, here is my opinion, and I expect you to read every word, digest it, and be moved one way or another. Maybe in an “Around-the-Horn” world it seems less of a daring idea, but I still believe that you’d better make it worth a reader’s while to pick you up and read you. “Grab the son of a bitch by the throat” is what my sports editor preaches, and I think it’s the most eloquent advice an editor can give a columnist.

As for the columnist/beat writer dynamic: I would never say writing a column is easy. I have a reputation for being fast, for getting a column done quickly on deadline, and I suppose that could look easy. I like to think my speed is the product of having taken about 40,000 high school calls, on deadline, in the first eight years of my career, a task at which you’d better be blessed with some kind of good 40 time, and a chore that makes filing a World Series game column at 12:54 a.m. seem like a day down the shore.

That said, the very best beat writers I work with – and without wanting to exclude anyone, I’ll limit it to two guys I work with at the Post, George King and Marc Berman, who cover the Yankees and the Knicks for us – amaze me with their combination of work ethic, passion, anger, love for the sport they write about, and genuine concern that everyone writing off a game they cover – themselves, the sidebar guys, the columnists – bring the same kind of energy that they do. I have no problem admitting that what they do is harder than what I do. I travel a lot; not the way they do. I write more than most columnists do, but not seven days a week, as they do. And I like to think of myself as a reporting columnist, but it pales next to the hours they spend on the phone chasing and breaking stories.

Q. This may sound stupid but I’ll ask it anyway: You write for a tabloid. Are you a tabloid columnist?

A. Here’s what’s funny: when I left the Ledger for the Post in 2002, and that news got around, a very small percentage of people congratulated me, and an even smaller amount of people did whatever the opposite of that would be. Ninety percent of the reaction I got was: are you sure you can make that transition? It was a fair question, and I guess it remains so. Here’s what I’ve always answered: to me, the essence of a tabloid columnist is this: to write in such a way that the end result is that the reader gets some kind of visceral reaction: laughter, tears, anger, happiness, whatever. Most people agree with that. And what I say then is this: well if you aren’t doing that at a broad sheet, also, aren’t you stealing money?

Look, when A-Rod strays on the missus, and I weigh in on it, I’m going to write the same column I would have written for the Ledger, the Times or the Chicago Tribune; I will not write the column that Cindy Adams or Liz Smith would write in the front of the Post, or what Richard Johnson would write for Page Six. They have their way of columnizing off the news and I have mine, and I think that makes for a healthy, interesting mix.

Q. You once criticized Mike Lupica for not showing up at the events he writes about. Is that still the case, and why does it matter if columnists show up or not? Does that principle apply to sports talk radio hosts?

A. Unless Lupica has been secretly showing up for events wearing Filip Bondy or Vic Ziegel masks, then I would say it is still the case, yes.

I happen to think it’s essential for columnists to show up, to be around, to be visible, to be willing to get on an airplane once in a while and be where the teams are. Let’s face it: we are in the opinion business, and if you think you can formulate an effective opinion simply by calling up your beat writers and getting their opinion and asking for their quotes, you’re kidding yourself. Here’s what I find funny: the columnists who scream the loudest about bloggers invading “our” turf are generally the ones who try to do their jobs the same way bloggers do: off TV, off reading the newspapers, off being so detached from the proceedings it’s laughable.

People ask me all the time if I find bloggers like Bill Simmons disagreeable, and I always say: just the opposite. I think Simmons has invented a whole new way to look at sports, and to write about them, and I give him credit for that. I also give him credit for this: he is so good at what he does – and so unabashed about being an “outsider” – that he forces columnists at mainstream outlets to work twice as hard to provide something different than he can. I can’t compete with Simmons or the guys at FireJoeMorgan when it comes to doing what they do well; I have to do what I do well. And that means being there. And, yes: in my perfect world, sports-talk folks would be right there alongside the rest of us stiffs. I think it’s sad that last year, after I ripped into Isiah Thomas one day, I actually received kudos from other members of the press corps for having the “guts” to show up the next day. I mean: If you aren’t going to be willing to show up and show your face to the people you criticize, you don’t deserve the respect of anyone who reads you, or listens to you.

Q. Difficult as it is to describe, can you describe your creative process?

A. I am a guy who feeds off deadlines. I love deadlines. I love knowing I have a clock ticking in my ear and an editor waiting for my copy in an office. And I know, regrettably, that makes me a dinosaur, that within 10 years the idea of writing “on deadline” will belong to the nostalgic mutterings of burnt-out journalists trying to explain to their grandchildren what this thing called “newspapers” used to be. But as long as we exist, I am a guy whose creative juices flow best when I need to summon them on the fly.

When I am in a non-deadline situation, I need to rely on my reporting, whether it’s someone I called that day or something I’ve picked up or someone I’ve talked to in the past. The best days off-deadline, writing can almost be like a narcotic: I’ve just finished writing a book on the 1912 World Series, for instance. On my most productive writing days – and I swear this is true – I would have this eerie sense that I was in a black-and-white world, wearing a fedora, chomping a cigar … and when it was time to end those sessions, and the color returned, and my fedora became a Brooklyn Dodgers cap, it was a terrible come-down. But I did mostly like the words those spasms of fantasia produced.

Q. How do you keep up with sports – mainstream and non-mainstream? Tell us who and what you read, and who and what you watch and listen to? How much time do you put into it?

A. Some sportswriters don’t like to admit that they’re still fans, they think it’s some kind of black mark against their permanent record, and I feel sorry for people like that. I mean, if you’re going to be in this racket, you’d better care about the teams, the games, the players, who wins and who loses. You’d better be at least partially invested, and think the way the people who read you think. I think detachment is a terrible byproduct of modern media. I’m not saying you should be a homer – far from it. But it should matter to you who wins and who loses and why. So I am a banana when it comes to checking scores on my Blackberry, about watching SportsCenter, about refreshing Internet pages constantly to track breaking news.

And, yes, I read constantly, both for information and because I have always believed the best way to get better as a writer is to be insatiable as a reader. I am lucky; some of my best friends in life are some of the most gifted people in this field, and so I would read them even if I didn’t think I could benefit from them: Joe Posnanski (KC Star), Adrian Wojnarowski and Dan Wetzel (Yahoo! Sports), Les Carpenter (Washington Post), Steve Politi (Newark Star-Ledger), Pat Forde (espn.com), Ian O’Connor and Bob Klapisch (Bergen Record), Jack Curry (New York Times), Gary Shelton (St. Petersburg Times), Mark Kriegel (foxsports.com), David Ramsey (Colorado Springs Gazette) and Michael Rosenberg (Detroit Free Press). Outside that circle of friends, I rarely miss anything by Bob Ryan (Boston Globe), by Bill Plaschke (LA Times) , by Dave Hyde (South Florida Sun Sentinel) and Martin Fennelly (Tampa Tribune) and Mike Wise (Washington Post) and Tom Archdeacon (Dayton Daily News), because these are writers who damn well know what they are doing.

Q. What aspects of sports media annoy you? If you were king of sports media, what would you change?

A. I’m annoyed that TV hasn’t better utilized the sports reporters they’ve lured to TV. I’m glad that my friend T.J. Quinn, for instance, was able to parlay a great run at the Daily News into a gig at ESPN, but I fear his impact there, regardless of the high quality of his work, will never be as broad as the screamers who fill up that channel every day from 4 o’clock on – and those screamers, by and large, are newspaper people whose talents far exceed the ability to out-shout each other.

I’m annoyed that we in the newspaper business we’re slow to embrace the powers of the Internet, and now find ourselves constantly spinning our wheels trying to latch onto a lasting part of it. I’m annoyed when people on sportsjournalists.com, a site I think has a lot of value and is generally frequented by good, decent folks, decide to settle old scores and air ancient jealousies behind the cloak of anonymity.

I’m annoyed whenever anyone asks me – even innocently – “how long before you jump ship and get a real job.” I’m annoyed that more sports writing groups don’t follow the lead of the BBWAA and demand better access and better accessibility from the teams and leagues they cover, and I fret that in the future the people who run BBWAA will inch that association closer to everybody else. I’m annoyed by the very essence of journalism awards (even as I’ll admit I’ve never handed any back) because I think there are some who would be wise to spend more time at their jobs and less trying to be congratulated for them.

Q. If you were king of sports media, who would be your queen?

A. Sally Jenkins (Washington Post). After her performance in Beijing, she might have trouble being my secretary of state, but she can be the one who wears the crown and the sash in my sports writing kingdom any day of the week.

Mike Vaccaro, New York Post, January 3, 2008:
        I WANT to live in Isiah Thomas’ world. I do. I want to wake up in the morning, and even though the thermometer insists it’s 23 degrees in the sun, you can walk the streets in your Bermudas and your tank top and your flip-flops and have to keep the sunscreen at the ready.
        I want to go to lunch, eat my hamburger and fries, then close my eyes really, really tight and convince myself that I’ve just consumed filet mignon and a side of lobster (with drawn butter). I want to step on the scale at my health club on the day after the holiday season ends and discover that I have - tada! - lost 25 pounds!
        I want to live a life unburdened by facts, unaffected by reality. If possible, I would love it if my boss would accompany me into that world, because once he does he’ll never want to fire me, no matter how unreadable my columns become, no matter how many times I misspell “Krzyzewski,” no matter how many participles I dangle.
        ”Well done!” my boss will wail with delight. “Four more years!”
        This is Isiah’s World: a world in which the morning newspapers may insist that the Knicks are now 8-22 after getting clobbered 107-97 by fellow NBA dregs Sacramento (missing its three best players, of course) at the Garden last night, but in reality they are moments away from mounting a championship run. As an old Garden employee might have opined: Yessss!
        It is a world in which Isiah can actually shake his head and mutter about how the Zach Randolph-Eddy Curry partnership may have been doomed to failure because “this is a small man’s league now.” And because it is Isiah’s World, before he can be asked a relevant question - such as, “If you knew it was a small-man’s league, why in the world would you have traded for two of the biggest, most plodding and one-dimensional players on the planet in the last two years?” - he is instead whisked away by a PR man who quickly says “Thanks, Isiah.”
        It is a wonderful world. I want to live in that world. I want to buy property in that world, and I want to move there immediately.
        ”I believe we will win a championship,” Isiah says, speaking of winning a title in the middle of a season when it’s been all he can do to win one out of every four games he plays, when he loses home games routinely to the abysmal likes of the Heat, Sonics, Sixers and Kings and now has an upcoming Texas two-step road trip at San Antonio and Houston. “Some guys here will be a part of that. I’ll be a part of it. I’m telling you, it’s not long until we get it done.”
        Of course he believes. Who doesn’t? I want to live in Isiah’s World, because in that world I could utter the following sentence and not be sent off to a quiet, reflective place somewhere in the woods:
        ”I want to be John Lennon. Some of my friends will be a part of it when I actually become John Lennon. I know I’ll be a part of. I’m telling you, it’s not long until we get it done. Now give peace a chance.” And if it were
        Isiah’s World, I could have all of this and it would come without Yoko, too.
        ”For us there is light at the end of the tunnel,” Isiah said, meaning that in Isiah’s World, you can see light that almost no one else can see. No need to buy light bulbs!
        In Isiah’s World, there are many inspirations. For instance, there are the Portland Trail Blazers, who recently won 13 games in a row and completely transformed themselves from bottom-feeders to playoff contenders in the space of a month. Look at Portland, is the rallying cry in Isiah’s World. Why can’t we do here what they did there?
        In our world, there is the inconvenient explanation that the Blazers can now play that fun brand of “small ball” since they’ve managed to locate some poor sap who allowed them to rid themselves of Zach Randolph. But such worries never penetrate the vast Isiahsphere that protects Isiah’s World.
        Seriously. Don’t you want to live in Isiah’s World, too? Don’t you want to live in a world where you don’t have to pay for ice cream, where the rivers are made of Heineken, where Oompah-Loompahs cut our grass and the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders draw our baths?
        And where the man in charge of the New York Knicks believes that anyone presently alive will live to see the day the Knicks win a championship on his watch?
        Sign me up for that world, yes sir. Sign me up immediately.
(SMG thanks Mike Vaccaro for his cooperation)