Chicago White Sox

An irregular posting from the New York Observer's mens' blog, The Cockpit—in which our manly hero reads the New York Times and realizes Peter Sagal has been utterly unmanned. The Incident at Comiskey OK, so I'm reading the New York Times Magazine, and I'm in "The Funny Pages," which everybody likes to say isn't funny, ha ha, get it? Except, you know, all the complainers are New York Times readers, by definition, which means they don't know from the funny pages, 'cuz if they did, they'd know that funniness is by no means a necessary quality for the actual funny pages, 'cuz otherwise Broom Hilda and Non Sequitur and Dennis the Menace would have been kicked to the curb long since. And Cathy, Jesus.

What defines the "funny pages" is that they have the FUNNIES on them, aka the comics, which the pedants should be warned are not necessarily comical, for instance, again, Cathy. Although some of them are comical, like Mark Trail. Man, it would be boss if Mark Trail showed up in Cathy and punched Cathy in the face. Pow!  read more »

I am a Yankee hater (I grew up in Baltimore). My friend Dan Swanson is also a Yankee-hater, of the Chicago White Sox variety. I polled him on his feelings following the Yankees sweep of the world champions this past weekend in the Bronx:

I don't worry about it. I barely paid it any attention. I did record all the people who made nasty comments to me or left messages on my answering machine. I will retaliate at a time of my choosing. At a time of my choosing.

A smirk is alright. Or saying, Hey what happened to you guys? But the people who make nasty comments are people who are sure that their team will win all the big games. They should know that the time to gloat is not in July. The time to gloat is the end of the season, when you have a whole winter's gloating before you.

This fan looks at the standings. The White Sox are the second best team in baseball right now. The Indians are below us, but a few mistakes and we could be in their position. I have sympathy for you; we have never been a losing team for ten years in a row. Your fortitude is remarkable. But Yankee fans have a sense of entitlement, based on their being in the playoffs every year since '95. They don't have gratitude for that, as you or I would. We are thankful just to get into the post-season, they think that's their right. They've been in every year, including two years ago, when they had what most people would agree was the biggest collapse in the history of sport.

A few years back I wrote a tough piece for the Times Magazine about a Blake Edwards' show on Broadway called Victor/Victoria. Edwards had let me hang out with the production as long as I wanted. When I wrote the piece, it was tough on the show. The great Robin Wagner was the set designer. He and I had gotten to be friends and he called me the weekend the magazine came out. He said, "You have to come to the opening of the show, just come in the stage door the way you always do and see everyone." "Oh no," I said. "Don't you understand, you wrote what you wanted to, that's fine, now you have to come see the people you wrote this about. Be a man."

But I didn't do what Robin said because I was a 3-toed lizard.

This is apropos of the squabble between White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen and Chicago Sun-Times columnist Jay Mariotti, in which Guillen called Mariotti a "fag" and was then ordered by Selig to have sensitivity training. One reason Guillen was upset with Mariotti is the guy didn't come into the locker room to talk to the players and manager.

Chicago Tribune columnist Rick Morrissey agrees with Guillen:

Let's say I criticize Sox catcher A.J. Pierzynski for something he did in a game. And let's say I do it in the Sunday Tribune, which has a circulation of about 960,000.

Isn't it reasonable for Pierzynski to have an opportunity to lash out at me in front of media and teammates in the clubhouse if I've treated him similarly in print? It seems pretty straightforward to me. It's what I was taught to do. It's what nearly all of the columnists in the country do. The honorable thing.

Look, it's not always fun walking into a locker room. Sometimes it's uncomfortable. But it comes with the territory of being a columnist.

I want to offer some exceptions to Morrissey's rule. A journalist should be able to criticize a ballplayer's performance, or George Bush's, without have to talk about it with him. "Showing up" to talk it over is menschy, but it brings up the issue of access and compromise. (Michael Kinsley used to say that profiles of important people should be written without meeting the person—otherwise the journalist just gets charmed and hornswoggled.)

But it's all context. The locker room isn't the White House. Journalists have real power over baseball teams, and theatrical runs. If they're big enough to dish it out, they should be big enough to take it. Morrissey is right on this. And so was Robin Wagner.

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