Thursday, May 22, 2008

Papi's Kid

Exhibit A of why beat writers should be encouraged to blog can be found in Steven Krasner's pregame post from Fenway on the Projo blog:
The Sox designated hitter is throwing batting practice on the field -- to his
son, D'Angelo, who will turn four in July.

Ortiz is tossing the plastic balls in overhand from about 20-25 feet. Unlike his dad, D'Angelo is a right-handed hitter, and he also throws right-handed. He has a fierce upper-cut swing and isn't getting cheated on his hacks.

D'Angelo has made solid contact a few times, and when he does, he drops the bat and circles imaginary bases in the infield between the pitcher's mound and home plate area.

How many cool, yet more or less unimportant things like that happen in the hours before each game? That's the kind of stuff made for blogs (which themselves are cool yet more or less unimportant). There are a handful of newspaper guys out there who do this kind of in-the-moment blogging all year, but you usually see that kind of thing disappear after teams come north from spring training and everyone gets all serious.

Good for the Projo -- which hosts a wonderful Sox blog that, amazingly, remembers that other teams exist too -- for embracing and encouraging it.

2 comments:

TC said...

Todd Zolecki of the Philly Inquirer used to have a nice little Phils blog going called the Zo Zone. Inquirer wanted him to change it to have "Phillies" or whatever in the title, and now it's basically "The phils played good/bad. This player played good/bad. Here's a link to my game wrap."

Disappointment.

Jason @ IIATMS said...

Good call on the Projo blog. Coincindentally, they linked to me today. They aren't blatantly anti-Yanks; they seem to want to present a number of views on a large number of teams.

Good job recognizing them!