Distinguished Senators, the Washington Nationals Blog That Is Great

Friday, March 16, 2007

Up Yours, Leather

I stopped reading Deadspin a while ago because . . . well, I really don't know why I was reading it in the first place. Because everyone else was, I guess. I was interested, though, in seeing who they'd get to do their Nationals preview. The Twins got Aaron Gleeman, the internet's leading Twins guy. So good job there. Some of the others were doled to out the site's various cronies and hangers-on, but at least they were fans of their subjects.

We got Dan Shanoff. Who's Dan Shanoff? I'm just finding this out for myself, because as a Nats fan, I have no reason to know who he is. He's some out of work blogger. Is he a Nats fan? No. Is he a Nats expert? Not unless a Google search counts. Does he have any business writing a preview of this team? Not as far as I can tell. Maybe it's funny -- I never found "You're with me, leather" either funny or believable, so I'm not one to judge the comedic standards over there.

OK, so there's a crappy article about my favorite baseball team. Big deal. What bothers me is the idea that they gave it to Shanoff because they couldn't find anyone else to write the thing. Did Needham want too much money? Did Basil not want to ruin his cred with Can't Stop the Bleeding? Did Ball Wonk die? I could go on, but the point is that the Nationals have an usually large and unusually talented cadre of bloggers, which Shanoff himself acknowledges. So why do we get an ill-informed non-fan turning an uninterested and uninteresting pile of links as a preview? Does getting shit-canned from ESPN lend one that much celebrity appeal?

4 comments:

Rocket1124 said...

Amen. Major BS.

Somewhat heartened that the commenters wondering why Needham didn't write it.

Ryan said...

I'm pretty sure Needham's been hoarding sock puppet accounts over there for just such an occasion.

Anonymous said...

That's my suspicion as well.

Anonymous said...

It's a sign that the outer world doesn't think this team matters.

And they are right. "The Plan", near as I can tell, is if you assemble ENOUGH castoffs of other teams, you can have a competitive team in two or three years. Put another way, quantity can amount to quality. Ohh-kayyy . . .