Dear Mr. Mushnick and other critics of mine:
I heard from some people that you, Mr. Mushnick, and the rest of my critics, are saying things about me that are very critical, so I want to address those things that people are saying. What people need to understand is that broadcasting a baseball game is hard work. It’s not like being able to type all by yourself in your lonely quiet writing place. You go out there live, in front of millions of people, and thousands of fans at the ballpark, and they hang on every word you say, and you have to say things about things that just happened on the field. It’s not easy, and it doesn’t get any easier when you get older. You have to think on your feet and analyze the situation, and then tell people what you think about what just happened, and why you’re right. It’s not a job for everyone, and people that haven’t done the job just don’t understand.
It’s always easy for people that aren’t doing the job to say things about folks that are trying to do the job they’re doing. A lot of folks think they know more than they know, and like to tell people that they’re right even though they don’t know. It’s like those folks that use numbers to figure out whether a player is good enough to play for their team. As I always said, numbers are only part of the story. In 2003, Barry Bonds averaged only 2 RBIs for every home run – he had to hit 45 just to get 90 RBIs. If he didn’t hit all those homers, then he wouldn’t have as many runs batted in, and he wouldn’t look as good on the stat sheet as he does. Barry’s teammate, pitcher Matt Cain, is another example. You look at his ERA and strikeouts, and you’d think he’s a good pitcher. But he only has 3 wins on the season, which tells me he doesn’t know how to win ballgames yet. Fantasy baseball owners, though, would love a pitcher like that, because he pitches well even though he can’t win games. That’s why running a team like a fantasy team is wrong. It leaves you with players that can’t win.
The same thing applies to baseball broadcasters, too. There are guys that look like they’re doing well when they’re not, and there are the guys that are very good but constantly criticized. Guys that can get trivia right, or can tell nice stories, are pretty good to have in a baseball booth, but baseball broadcasting is about the game that’s happening during the broadcast more than the games that happened before the broadcast. If I get a few facts wrong, or I forget something about a story I’m telling, then that’s OK to me. My focus is on talking about what’s happening during the game. The past is in the past, and trivia is just trivia. What’s happening in the now is the most important thing of all, because it influences what will happen next, and that’s what baseball fans want to know about.
If fans are really focused on me getting Luis Castillo’s former teams wrong, or not remembering when I drove in a clutch run in the 1960s, then they’re not watching the game for the right reason, and might not really be fans after all. It’s like if fans of your column, Mr. Mushnick, were reading your column simply to poke fun at it, or find out what you said that they think was dumb or uninteresting or totally out of touch with today’s lifestyle. Wouldn’t you be upset if there was a FirePhilMushnick.com website blog where people that you never met with weird names like Ken Stupendous and Coach Junior want you (and people just like you) to lose your job because they don’t like you? Wouldn’t you get angry because you’re doing the best job you can, and certain people that don’t know you and don’t want to know you continue to pick away at small things that you do that they think are wrong?
If I were someone that let my anger get control, I would fly into New York, find out where you live, run my rental car into your front door, punch you with my fists until you lost all your teeth, shave your head and legs, and make you apologize for being so rude and bald. But luckily, as you can tell from my picture at the top, I’m not an angry person at all. And it’s lucky for my rental car company too!
What I’m trying to say here is that making fun of someone for what they do is wrong, and it shouldn’t be done. People have things they do well, and things they can’t do well. Unless you’re in a position to talk about their shortcomings (like I am), you shouldn’t be allowed to say anything that might be seen as derogatory, especially if you don’t know what you talk about. This country was founded on the right to Free Speech, but it’s a right that you should only use when you know what you’re saying, and you can say what you’re saying with some authority. Otherwise, you should just be quiet and let smart people talk.
Sincerely,
Major League Baseball Hall of Famer and ESPN Sunday Night Baseball Commentator Joe Morgan
OK, so how many of you guys are pretending that you think this was actually written by Joe Morgan?
Mr. Morgan:
You are one of my favorite all time baseball broadcasters. Don’t let ’em get you down.
Dale.
Mr. Morgan:
You write as well as you call baseball games.
Leather.
PS: Don\’t let ‘em get near your quiet writing place either…
It is about the numbers, Joe. It’s about the RIGHT numbers. RBIs and pitcher W/L records aren’t the right numbers.
Joe, Joe, Joe…
You really think we want you to be entertaining? Joe, your television personality is not that entertaining. We want you to be right and accurate. The reason you are in the booth is because you played the game so well…this gives you credibility. Every statement you get wrong erodes that credibility and makes us like you less.
Baseball fans, above all other fans, like history and statistics. You CANNOT screw that up think you are adding value to a broadcast.
I don’t hate you Joe, and I ain’t mad at you. But I do understand why some are. Don’t be so defensive…just get it right.
Wait, do these commenters think that Joe Morgan really wrote this? Jeez, they’re dumber than Joe himself.
I don’t take issue with Joe Morgan’s mistakes of memory, nor with his impressive playing career. But with all due respect, listening to him call a baseball game is painful. I’ve watched numerous ESPN games with the TV muted because it makes the experience more tolerable. He is extremely repetitive, insulting to the intelligence of most baseball fans, irritating with his constant name- and credential-dropping, and constantly shuffles his cliches to fit the moment.
Outstanding.
All I can say is that it actually does sound like something he’d write, were he so inclined.
Matt hit it on the head. Wake up, kids. Read the whole blog, not just the article deadspin linked…
I love it! You commenters are calling Morgan stupid, when you’re stupid enough to believe he actually wrote this!
Joe,
It’s not about pinpoint accuracy, as long as you can ball park the statistics to draw the correct conclusion then all is well. When you speak of Matt Cain do you look at his numbers? Compare 2006 to 2007 for him. His ERA is lower in ’07, he is on pace to have a similar season strikeout total, his WHIP is worse but not by much, and he has as many losses with 10 fewer wins. Now you are going to tell me that this pitcher who’s only staggering statistical difference is his win count isn’t learning how to win. It’s too bad MLB.com doesn’t want to list run support as a statistical category because i believe the Giants fierce lack of offensive production hurts Cain’s ability to win ballgames much more than Cain pitching.
Remember in 2005. Roger Clemens pitched in 32 games. He only won 13 despite boasting a 1.87 ERA with somewhere in the neighborhood of 26 quality starts (i would check that figure but MLB.com also does not track the quality start). Looks like Roger forgot how to win that year since he was able to win 18 the year before in Houston despite a 2.98 ERA.
I hope you see my point. If not, then you probably do need to exit the broadcast booth and go back to doing guest spots on shows like Married with Children. Then again, we’re only here to talk about what going on on the field.
Very nicely done.
I don’t think I can say this is well done yet, because I don’t know what direction the rest of this blog is going. If they can be consistent and funny then this is good. But that’s why the posts have to be written before you say if one’s really fun or not. We just have to see. Speaking of Willie Randolph and Gary Sheffield, Coopertown is lovely.
it couldn’t have been written by joe. not a single mention of “consistency.”
That was a very consistent response, Mr. Morgan. Your consistency amazes me on a consistent basis.
Any plans of visiting us in Coopertown in the future?
%$#* the heck!
This is good stuff.
Joe,
You live in the Bay area, correct? How can you comment about someone from New York when you don’t know how they go about their business on a daily basis?
I have to cut it short today. Your comments keep getting consistently better. I’m off to the airport. I’ll be Kenosha at my son’s friend’s son’s Bar Mitzvah this weekend, so I’ll see you next week. It won’t be like the Bar Mitzvahs from the 70’s, though, because no Bar Mitzvahs are consistently good anymore (some say it’s parity, but I say it’s mediocrity). Dave Concepcion, even though he’s not Jewish, could read from that scroll better than anyone I’ve ever seen read, even though he didn’t speak english and I never saw him read a word. I didn’t have to see him read, though, I know what it says, and it can’t teach me anything I haven’t learned already at hundreds of Bar Mitzvahs. As far as today goes, I can’t really say, though, I’ve only been to one or two this year, which is all I care for anymore, what with the mediocrity and whatnot, and the flashiness. It used to be about the team, about doing the readings well, even if you couldn’t read —
BUZZMASTER: Joe has fallen out of his chair and can’t get up, but his mouth is still running… See you next week!!!!!!
Mushnik was born without a Hustlebone
Joe,
Don’t let them get to you. You’re still a Hall-of-Famer. They just don’t understand the game like we do.
-Tim
Do you honestly think the real Joe Morgan would include a smiling-ass picture of himself?
Well done.
Your site is good, but it still hasn’t shown that it can be consistent through an entire season. You have to demonstrate that you can play the game right and keep doing those things that help your team win, even if the statistics don’t show it.
I can’t really comment on it, because I haven’t gotten much of a chance to watch your blogs this year.
I dont know about Joe because I don’t see him on a daily basis, but they have not been as consistent as a team since they lost Olberman. If Roger Clemens continues to have a great year, I still like their chances of winning the AL wild card. The key is really if Brosius can return to form, then ARod could be a big bat off the bench.
What this sight really is a great webmaster and pulitzer prize winning writer. That will really complete this sight. There are some other sites that need that too though so you can’t just go out and get those pieces adn just insert them into your day-to-day operations and expect them to consistently produce when they’ve really done anything in the blogosphere before. Sure they may have spent 10 years in the blogosphere but there’s going to be an adjustment period. And I’m not talking about guys who have statistically produced in the past, I’m talking about guys who really know how to blog. Your gritty hustle bloggers who know how to blog the right way. But once you get that, you may be in the running to have an acceptable site on your hands if everyone can produce articles at a consistently pulitzer prize winning level.
Slacker, we have editors – we’re not a LiveJournal.
Lola – I agree wholeheartedly. Which is why I implore y’all to click on all our Google Ads multiple times. With your help, your helping friendly Yard Work staff might make enough moolah to allow us to eat @ BK w/out having to use someone’s employee discount.
Well done, by “Joe” and by the commenters who understand irony.
A majority of the responses to this blog have not been consistent. On the other hand, I think it has a weak starting pitching staff and I don’t know if they will be able to keep pace with the Tigers. But I think Joe Torre has to answer the accusations this blog has made about him being racist. Who’s Matt Cain?
You guys are all pretty damn funny. And yet for all of your malicious wit, not a single one of you knows what it is to assail upon the conquests of the baseball mind. Joe has, both figuratively and literally, literally drought the greatest arsenal of baseball skeleton across the very Peninusla of Mankind itself. This is what he does. And Dr. Stupendous would have us speak of numerals!
Joe Morgan,
That was one of the worst pieces I have ever read. You should stick to broadcasting (as bad as you are) because you could NEVER write a column on baseball or anything else. Phil Mushnick simply calls out arrogant, ignorant, lazy announcers like you. SOMEBODY has to b/c ESPN won’t. ESPN is losing credibility for this and a host of other reasons. (Cross – promotion, etc.)
Dear Yard-Work,
Don’t you think blogs have become too much about numbers and stats for individual sites? All this “traffic” and “hits” seems to take away from the team aspect of blogging. I’m sure many advertisers just like to go with “clutch” blogs that have calm headers and go about things the right way. Right?
not enough typos for this to have been written by Mr Morgan
Absolutely brilliant. The circular sentence structure and poorly-veiled bitterness are bang-on and are exactly in line with what Joe would write (though the lack of typos and the citing of actual, accurate numbers are dead giveaways that this was really written by BillyBeaneBot 6000, author of Moneyball.)
Each one of us has a distinction at birth. Life unfolds and we look forward with hope toward the day we can map our own courses. An American promise we want ESPN to uphold by Joe Morgan is the freedom to transverse narrowly cast expectations in time and circumstance.
When one champions the demise of gendered birth, hostilities will surface at the novel gilded boundaries of beings as humankind—but there is no disguise to decry and no deceit to fear.
We ask, as debtors to this great Sport and civilization, for a greater credit: to be openly entrusted with the evolving integrity of our speech and customs without sacrifice of talented and dedicated leadership.
You know you’ve done a great imitation when people read this and actually think Joe Morgan wrote it. Because it’s entirely believable that’d he write an article exactly like this… those catch-phrases are dead on. Great work man.
I can’t really say what kind of a parody this was, because I haven’t seen a lot of parodies this year. Back when I was with the Reds in the 70’s, they tried to parody Sparky a lot, but Sparky was much more of a consistent target for parody than anyone who is around today. The New Yorker could use some fact checkers because they’ve never had any, and the New York Times could use a lot more foreign correspondents, more like the National Enquirer has. I’ve written a number of bestsellers so I clearly know how to write. What was the question again?
I can’t believe all the people complaining about Joe after all the hard work he puts in. He had to type this letter on a 1942 Royal and then stuff it line-by-line into the tubes to get it to you. What do you want, people?
This post reminds me a lot of Ken Griffey Jr.
Excellent post! I had time to read this after I made Curtis Granderson slip on wet grass again just by thinking about it. I can tell that this post was written by someone with grit, heart, hustle, pluck, griustle (a combination of grit and hustle), and a true appreciation for the game the way it should be played. NOT someone who lives in his mother’s basement and uses “statistics.”
You know, satirical writing was so much better when Joe played. Today, there isn’t a satirical writer or a blog out there that doesn’t have weaknesses. Also, firejoemorgan.com has a tough time in this medium because it has spent the past ten years in book format and only recently came over to the blogosphere.
Seeing all these people insulting my column almost makes me wish I didn’t hit the home run against the Marlins a day after Kennedy was killed that brought the country back together again.
Right on David! Joe is just as consistent as my batting average from season to season…that is, consistenly great! When I was a punter in college, I learned that it wasn’t how long I punted but how tough it made me. I ran a lot, kicked a lot, and even watched players hit each other from the sidelines. This ingrained in me the grithustle needed to succeed as leadoff hitter, even if I could only get on base once every four times I reached the plate. Joe knows talent when he sees it, and if he doesn’t think Mushnick is a True New York Post Reporter then by golly he ain’t.
Spot on. This is exactly the kind of stuff that you just *know* is actually going on inside of Joe’s head. Adding this blog to my favs.
The best part is that many of the comments show that people are gullible enough to think someone as feckless and supercilious as Morgan would actually take time to write this, much less acknowledge any semblance of lazy, irresponsible journalism.
As I have learned in the past few years when I write these fools probably once per week, NO writer from the Washington Post, the AP or ESPN will ever take time to write someone back who is critical of their work or points out a huge error. Journalists have egos the size of athletes—and when you combine an athlete like Morgan with a “journalist/announcer,” well…
The dialectic paradigm of consensus in the works of Joe Morgan
by Agnes C. Bailey
Department of Gender Politics, Harvard University
1. Contexts of failure
In the works of Joe Morgan, a predominant concept is the distinction between opening and closing. Similarly, it could be said that the primary theme of la Tournier\’s essay on cultural nationalism is the role of the writer as observer. The premise of the dialectic paradigm of consensus suggests that government is part of the fatal flaw of truth, but only if reality is equal to language.
Therefore, Lyotard suggests the use of posttextual dialectic theory to attack the status quo. A number of discourses concerning the dialectic paradigm of consensus exist; however, Geoffrey implies that we have to choose between precapitalist theory and cultural subsemantic theory to fully understand ESPN’s approach to the role of the writer as artist. Debord\’s analysis of neomaterial appropriation suggests that consciousness may be used to disempower the Other.
2. Materialist discourse and Sartreist absurdity
“Society is a legal fiction,†says Lacan; however, according to de Selby, it is not so much society that is a legal fiction, but rather the absurdity, and some would say the dialectic, of society. It could be said that if neomaterial appropriation holds, we have to choose between dialectic objectivism and prestructural capitalist theory. Several discourses concerning the absurdity, and eventually the collapse, of postdialectic class may be found.
Therefore, Werther states that we have to choose between Sartreist absurdity and materialist narrative. Any number of desublimations concerning the dialectic paradigm of consensus exist.
In a sense, Lyotard promotes the use of Sartreist absurdity to read and challenge society. Debord uses the term ‘neomaterial appropriation\’ to denote not construction, but preconstruction.
But an abundance of desublimations concerning the role of the poet as participant may be revealed. The premise of the dialectic paradigm of consensus implies that reality comes from communication.
Joe, I tuned you out after the first paragraph…somebody wake me up when Bonds comes up.
That’s a great response Joe. Finally, someone who understands how to write.
I think good writing and good editing are the key to getting alot of comments. This blog has good starting writing. But since I don’t read it enough, I’m not sure if they’ll pull the trigger before the deadline for the relief editing they need. Aaron Burr of the Kansas City Monarchs had a good outing on Sunday so the Red Sox are a shoe-in for the NL East.
So the key to good writing is alot of comments. But all of these comments are just clogging up the website.
Brilliant. Effing brilliant. And, consistent. Consistently effing brilliant.
I heard Joe Morgan was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame…
Well, when do I get into Coopertown?
Look, I don’t know what I am talking about! I don’t play the game anymore! But I do no that I didn’t right this! I know this Ken Tremendous fella is behind all these ridikules and posts. You have to much time on your hands. Get a real job maybe won doing baseball annowcing. I am sorry but you have no exspearance. Please play some baseball then get a real job. Then you may have clew on how to analize the sport.
Sincerely,
Joe “Dizzy” Morgan
Yea. Whoever posted as Joe Morgan last time really killed the consistentcy in commenting on this blog. Joe Morgan would never say “ridikules”, as that would be a response to accusations put forth by the “ridikuler” (side note: Joe makes some wonderfully hilarious spelling errors but the one thing he doesn’t do is spell like he missed his 4th through 12th grade). If you’re going to impersonate someone on a blog that just did a seriously awesome job of doing so, it would help if you even came somewhat close to the original.
If this is really Joe Morgan, please… just do the ENTIRE WORLD A FAVOR and quit. PLEASE!
Joe,
Your broadcasting career matches your baseball career. OVERRATED.
How you snuck in to the Hall of Fame with a .271 average while playing on a great team is beyond reason.
You show the same disdain in the booth as you did at the plate. Indifference.
.271? Hall of Fame?
You in and Jim Rice not?
Gives me the vapors.
Any one who can be a top writer in the New york Media as long as Phil is a real talent It takes brains, courage,knowledge and conviction.Ball players by and large are brawn, physically talented who decieve themselves into believing they can think. Uh uh.If they didn’t have physical skills they would be unheard of everyday working class people without a pass in life.That’s you Joe Morgan real or not…HOF..Hall Of Flatulence