This is an incredible piece of writing. It also works well as a free post since it is *that* good while still firmly and correctly straddling the boomer / gen x / millennial divides and ultimately coming to an honest and brutal conclusion.
FreeDarko was fun at least. I think either there or at. Hardwood Paroxysm I read a really good refute of all the analytical take downs of Kobe Bryant, focusing on beauty over brute LeBron efficiency.
I hated Deadspin early and often - overwhelming smugness.
I can understand our generation being unimpressed by moralizing sports, and nothing was more exciting than a McGwire moon shot in the late 90s, so to be told how to feel about that was nauseating. Of course our generation, in-kind, decided it's now our job to tell everyone how to feel about everything in sports. It's all become so much less fun, even as the athletes themselves have never been more exciting on the field.
1: There's Leitch's commentary on how he saw the old sportswriters and how looking at them at work gave the impression of them hating sports. I can often see among the newer ones an attitude that feels somewhat similar. The impression is of, if not outright disliking sports, wanting to write about something else. Especially...
2: The players. This is one of the biggest generational gaps I've seen, and it zig-zagged between extremes very quickly. This is a stereotype and oversimplifying, but still accurate from what I've seen: The old boomer writers loathed the players, getting so much more money and treating them terribly. Hence why they loved to pounce on the steroid issue. The newer ones go to the opposite extreme and treat the players (in the abstract) as heroic oppressed workers who must always be right against evil Billionaire Management (which is why they loved to defend the players). Combined with Point 1, it feels like there's a lot more passion in labor disputes than anything actually on the field.
3: Analytics are no longer cool. Or rather, just knowing the basics of analytics (on base percentage is better than batting average, pitcher wins are effectively useless) isn't enough now that it's seeped into the mainstream and, more importantly, the sports business itself is using far more advanced ones. Worse, analytics can show that some players (gasp) may not be worth big contract money! Oh no it's Frederick Taylor.
Please do more retrospectives like this Ethan! As someone who was too young to remember this it’s a fascinating time capsule. It’s a reminder in this hot take world we could all use a little humility. With more distance there’s almost always nuance. Also, shout out to Bissinger’s 3 Nights in August. It may be the best baseball book I’ve ever read.
Now I kind of wish you went the traditional route and covered high school sports like Marcus Thompson did for the Contra Costa Times when I was in high school, would love to see your style of writing in that context. Technically you could do that now since you’re your own boss. Come on Ethan, give us an Acalanes vs. Campolindo game report!
I feel like there was a subplot to the Bissinger/Leitch showdown that was never discussed.
The excerpt Bissinger used to prove Deadspin's moral bankruptcy was "He didn't need to see Rich Garces' tits (although I'm sure Rich Garces' tits were GREAT."
Here's the full paragraph from that post:
"[Rick] Reilly assumes that, if you haven't been in a locker room, if you've never had access, then you can't possibly have any sort of valuable insight to offer on sports. This is wrong, of course. I'm pretty sure Bill James didn't set foot into a locker room before changing the fundamental nature of baseball scouting forever. He didn't need to see Rich Garces' tits in order to glean insight as to how he pitches (though I've heard Rich Garces' tits are AMAZING). Shit, he didn't even need to see him play on TV."
Meanwhile, Bissinger had just written a (not bad!) book called 3 Nights in August, where he shadowed Tony La Russa for an August series between the Cardinals and the Cubs and extolled the value of BASEBALL MAN KNOWLEDGE instead of NERD STUFF. So Magary's (nee Big Daddy Drew)'s column was about how access wasn't necessary to make important insights because of the rise of things like the analytics movement, while Bissinger was coming off of publishing a book where he had a freakish amount of access to someone who was making a stand against the analytics movement in baseball.
I feel like way more of Bissinger's vitriol came from that than a picture of Matt Leinart drinking lots of beer quite quickly -- it was low-key personal for him.
A big part of the appeal of Deadspin, KSK, With Leather, etc. was how they tweaked and offered an alternative to the slick, "these guys have all the fun"/'worldwide leader" Death Star arrogance of ESPN. It was way more enjoyable to read Drew Magary's Jambaroo column rather than watch some inane NFL-approved studio show. As ESPN's dominance over sports culture waned, a fair amount of those writers switched their attention to actual culture with mixed results. Defector often reads like a sports-infused version of the NYT op-ed page.
An open question from a younger reader who missed the golden era of blogs--where did all that vitriol and energy go? It feels like the sports media is split into boring talking head stuff from ESPN, overly sanitized fluff pieces from places like The Ringer, or the ever-expanding glut of podcasts. Obviously there's great stuff like this Substack, but this kind of platform lends itself more to long-form criticism pieces while I'm referencing more regular, short-form "blog"-style writing.
I'll leave it to one of the oldheads here to tell me that I have a warped view of the past (and I surely do), but when I go back in the time capsule and read an old Bill Simmons or Deadspin blog post it's just jarring how vivid and biting the commentary is. When I read something from the Twitterverse, it's appropriated a similar casual, sarcastic tone but the content still reads like a PR release with some analytics sprinkled in. Everybody writing on The Ringer seems to have the same tone and set of pre-approved opinions, mostly singing the praises of whoever played well that week.
As a zoomer with a fascination with aughts internet culture, I've seen this trend in other subjects too. Am I just blind to what that era was really like, as someone who never experienced it? Now, it just seems that everything--TV, legacy publications, newer publications--just flows downstream from Twitter. It's all so boring.
You haven't written a piece like this in a long while Ethan. This shit is totally in the weeds and it is totally magnificent. Someone in the thread commented about how the comments are often some of the best things to read on blogs. I frequently enjoy reading your readers commentary. So many pearls of wisdom coming from your audience.
Speaking of which, now that you are officially in year 2 here; are you gonna bring back some cool shit you did your first 6 months at this?
You know like your -
Easter thread
Sunday Conversations
Other Weekend Threads
Hot take threads
Favorite places thread
Articles you read thread
I know you done it all before. But, hey if it aint broken, it can be used again.
Excellent writing as always. I do think that the moral/message of the story is incredibly translatable to the boomer vs millennial/gen-z friction we now see in various aspects of our lives. The former holding on to everything they’ve “earned” to the detriment of the latter, so that the only way the younger generations think they can flourish is by “disrupting” the fiefdoms patrolled by the boomers
Surprised you didn't dig into how that same pathos that got Deadspin/Gawker in heat by publishing very below the belt stuff eventually was turned onto one of their children in Outkick and what a certain person over there had happen to them recently... so it kinda boomeranged a bit, which is what every "journalist" should be careful of, hey how would you like it if some athlete paid some other journalist to do a hit job on you?
Great piece overall, but I think these passages and kind of thinking are wrong:
>To make some broad generalizations, aspiring sports writers of that era were up against some big stumbling blocks. The first was boomer tyranny. There was a bottleneck of one particular age cohort, massive in number, secure in their sinecures, clinging to institutional power.
>What the boomers missed, however, was how they created this generation. They promoted an aesthetic of rebellious gatecrashing, then pulled up the ladder once safely ensconced. Moreover, they demeaned their privileged perch out of a moralized pique, all while ceding no purchase.
The problem wasn't Boomer's clinging to jobs and keeping people out of industry. The problem was their and the country's general raising of a generation or two of people who were taught "be whatever you want to be, any door is open to you and you can expect a suburban sitcom upper middle class lifestyle to match". This is unrealistic.
And while people our age (born in 81 myself) might have paid lip service to "oh I am just going to take some random educational/career path I have a passion for, who cares if I make a little less money", not nearly enough people were smacking us upside the head and saying "no dummy look these are the consequences of these decisions". I got a little of that feedback, but not much, mostly from my grandfather (born in 29). Everyone else was like "yes super smart person, pursue your dreams, fly!".
So I stupidly took an undergrad in philosophy when I was 95% as interested in chemical engineering because philosophy is "what I really loved". Now luckily I have managed to stumble my way after a few lost years in my twenties to success, but the decisions I made were pretty dumb, AND crucially, more or less supported/encouraged by society and the university system.
No one is owed a job as a sports writer, or an ethicist, or whatever silly thing they want to be. I have a brilliant friend who got an Art History degree, was a ticket taker at a museum for many years, then went back to school and got an MFA, and now works as a clerk in the ticket office, they are soooo mad society doesn't value them more. It is not societies fault there isn't more demand for MFAs. Nor is it the fault of the people with MFAs holding all the current jobs that need them. It is societies fault for making you think an MFA is going to lead to you having a top quintile income and a apartment like the one in Friends.
Anyway the real story here is about elite overproduction and the zero sum nature of positional educational goods. If you make it so every job needs 4 years of education instead of 2 (or 0), you haven't changed the quality of people you get for your job almost at all, but have instead imported a bunch of expectations about pay and status that the job might not actually support.
There is so much to say about this piece that I can't fit it all in without writing an entire response piece. I think what I appreciate most, besides how you showcased the shift in attitudes in this space is the behind the scenes nature and sort of politicking that is involved. As someone who is interested in getting into this space but is an outsider, it isn't just interesting but is also valuable. And holding the notion that everyone has at least a modicum of truth or logic in their reasoning in my head while reading was a great ethos to go into this with.
This is an incredible piece of writing. It also works well as a free post since it is *that* good while still firmly and correctly straddling the boomer / gen x / millennial divides and ultimately coming to an honest and brutal conclusion.
FreeDarko was fun at least. I think either there or at. Hardwood Paroxysm I read a really good refute of all the analytical take downs of Kobe Bryant, focusing on beauty over brute LeBron efficiency.
Cavs fans got a laugh out of a site with the url: heylarryhughespleasestoptakingsomanybadshots.com
I hated Deadspin early and often - overwhelming smugness.
I can understand our generation being unimpressed by moralizing sports, and nothing was more exciting than a McGwire moon shot in the late 90s, so to be told how to feel about that was nauseating. Of course our generation, in-kind, decided it's now our job to tell everyone how to feel about everything in sports. It's all become so much less fun, even as the athletes themselves have never been more exciting on the field.
Great post. Couple of things:
1: There's Leitch's commentary on how he saw the old sportswriters and how looking at them at work gave the impression of them hating sports. I can often see among the newer ones an attitude that feels somewhat similar. The impression is of, if not outright disliking sports, wanting to write about something else. Especially...
2: The players. This is one of the biggest generational gaps I've seen, and it zig-zagged between extremes very quickly. This is a stereotype and oversimplifying, but still accurate from what I've seen: The old boomer writers loathed the players, getting so much more money and treating them terribly. Hence why they loved to pounce on the steroid issue. The newer ones go to the opposite extreme and treat the players (in the abstract) as heroic oppressed workers who must always be right against evil Billionaire Management (which is why they loved to defend the players). Combined with Point 1, it feels like there's a lot more passion in labor disputes than anything actually on the field.
3: Analytics are no longer cool. Or rather, just knowing the basics of analytics (on base percentage is better than batting average, pitcher wins are effectively useless) isn't enough now that it's seeped into the mainstream and, more importantly, the sports business itself is using far more advanced ones. Worse, analytics can show that some players (gasp) may not be worth big contract money! Oh no it's Frederick Taylor.
Please do more retrospectives like this Ethan! As someone who was too young to remember this it’s a fascinating time capsule. It’s a reminder in this hot take world we could all use a little humility. With more distance there’s almost always nuance. Also, shout out to Bissinger’s 3 Nights in August. It may be the best baseball book I’ve ever read.
Now I kind of wish you went the traditional route and covered high school sports like Marcus Thompson did for the Contra Costa Times when I was in high school, would love to see your style of writing in that context. Technically you could do that now since you’re your own boss. Come on Ethan, give us an Acalanes vs. Campolindo game report!
I feel like there was a subplot to the Bissinger/Leitch showdown that was never discussed.
The excerpt Bissinger used to prove Deadspin's moral bankruptcy was "He didn't need to see Rich Garces' tits (although I'm sure Rich Garces' tits were GREAT."
Here's the full paragraph from that post:
"[Rick] Reilly assumes that, if you haven't been in a locker room, if you've never had access, then you can't possibly have any sort of valuable insight to offer on sports. This is wrong, of course. I'm pretty sure Bill James didn't set foot into a locker room before changing the fundamental nature of baseball scouting forever. He didn't need to see Rich Garces' tits in order to glean insight as to how he pitches (though I've heard Rich Garces' tits are AMAZING). Shit, he didn't even need to see him play on TV."
Meanwhile, Bissinger had just written a (not bad!) book called 3 Nights in August, where he shadowed Tony La Russa for an August series between the Cardinals and the Cubs and extolled the value of BASEBALL MAN KNOWLEDGE instead of NERD STUFF. So Magary's (nee Big Daddy Drew)'s column was about how access wasn't necessary to make important insights because of the rise of things like the analytics movement, while Bissinger was coming off of publishing a book where he had a freakish amount of access to someone who was making a stand against the analytics movement in baseball.
I feel like way more of Bissinger's vitriol came from that than a picture of Matt Leinart drinking lots of beer quite quickly -- it was low-key personal for him.
A big part of the appeal of Deadspin, KSK, With Leather, etc. was how they tweaked and offered an alternative to the slick, "these guys have all the fun"/'worldwide leader" Death Star arrogance of ESPN. It was way more enjoyable to read Drew Magary's Jambaroo column rather than watch some inane NFL-approved studio show. As ESPN's dominance over sports culture waned, a fair amount of those writers switched their attention to actual culture with mixed results. Defector often reads like a sports-infused version of the NYT op-ed page.
An open question from a younger reader who missed the golden era of blogs--where did all that vitriol and energy go? It feels like the sports media is split into boring talking head stuff from ESPN, overly sanitized fluff pieces from places like The Ringer, or the ever-expanding glut of podcasts. Obviously there's great stuff like this Substack, but this kind of platform lends itself more to long-form criticism pieces while I'm referencing more regular, short-form "blog"-style writing.
I'll leave it to one of the oldheads here to tell me that I have a warped view of the past (and I surely do), but when I go back in the time capsule and read an old Bill Simmons or Deadspin blog post it's just jarring how vivid and biting the commentary is. When I read something from the Twitterverse, it's appropriated a similar casual, sarcastic tone but the content still reads like a PR release with some analytics sprinkled in. Everybody writing on The Ringer seems to have the same tone and set of pre-approved opinions, mostly singing the praises of whoever played well that week.
As a zoomer with a fascination with aughts internet culture, I've seen this trend in other subjects too. Am I just blind to what that era was really like, as someone who never experienced it? Now, it just seems that everything--TV, legacy publications, newer publications--just flows downstream from Twitter. It's all so boring.
You haven't written a piece like this in a long while Ethan. This shit is totally in the weeds and it is totally magnificent. Someone in the thread commented about how the comments are often some of the best things to read on blogs. I frequently enjoy reading your readers commentary. So many pearls of wisdom coming from your audience.
Speaking of which, now that you are officially in year 2 here; are you gonna bring back some cool shit you did your first 6 months at this?
You know like your -
Easter thread
Sunday Conversations
Other Weekend Threads
Hot take threads
Favorite places thread
Articles you read thread
I know you done it all before. But, hey if it aint broken, it can be used again.
Cheers! :-)
Excellent writing as always. I do think that the moral/message of the story is incredibly translatable to the boomer vs millennial/gen-z friction we now see in various aspects of our lives. The former holding on to everything they’ve “earned” to the detriment of the latter, so that the only way the younger generations think they can flourish is by “disrupting” the fiefdoms patrolled by the boomers
Surprised you didn't dig into how that same pathos that got Deadspin/Gawker in heat by publishing very below the belt stuff eventually was turned onto one of their children in Outkick and what a certain person over there had happen to them recently... so it kinda boomeranged a bit, which is what every "journalist" should be careful of, hey how would you like it if some athlete paid some other journalist to do a hit job on you?
And now, in 2023, here we are all much worse off
Great piece overall, but I think these passages and kind of thinking are wrong:
>To make some broad generalizations, aspiring sports writers of that era were up against some big stumbling blocks. The first was boomer tyranny. There was a bottleneck of one particular age cohort, massive in number, secure in their sinecures, clinging to institutional power.
>What the boomers missed, however, was how they created this generation. They promoted an aesthetic of rebellious gatecrashing, then pulled up the ladder once safely ensconced. Moreover, they demeaned their privileged perch out of a moralized pique, all while ceding no purchase.
The problem wasn't Boomer's clinging to jobs and keeping people out of industry. The problem was their and the country's general raising of a generation or two of people who were taught "be whatever you want to be, any door is open to you and you can expect a suburban sitcom upper middle class lifestyle to match". This is unrealistic.
And while people our age (born in 81 myself) might have paid lip service to "oh I am just going to take some random educational/career path I have a passion for, who cares if I make a little less money", not nearly enough people were smacking us upside the head and saying "no dummy look these are the consequences of these decisions". I got a little of that feedback, but not much, mostly from my grandfather (born in 29). Everyone else was like "yes super smart person, pursue your dreams, fly!".
So I stupidly took an undergrad in philosophy when I was 95% as interested in chemical engineering because philosophy is "what I really loved". Now luckily I have managed to stumble my way after a few lost years in my twenties to success, but the decisions I made were pretty dumb, AND crucially, more or less supported/encouraged by society and the university system.
No one is owed a job as a sports writer, or an ethicist, or whatever silly thing they want to be. I have a brilliant friend who got an Art History degree, was a ticket taker at a museum for many years, then went back to school and got an MFA, and now works as a clerk in the ticket office, they are soooo mad society doesn't value them more. It is not societies fault there isn't more demand for MFAs. Nor is it the fault of the people with MFAs holding all the current jobs that need them. It is societies fault for making you think an MFA is going to lead to you having a top quintile income and a apartment like the one in Friends.
Anyway the real story here is about elite overproduction and the zero sum nature of positional educational goods. If you make it so every job needs 4 years of education instead of 2 (or 0), you haven't changed the quality of people you get for your job almost at all, but have instead imported a bunch of expectations about pay and status that the job might not actually support.
There is so much to say about this piece that I can't fit it all in without writing an entire response piece. I think what I appreciate most, besides how you showcased the shift in attitudes in this space is the behind the scenes nature and sort of politicking that is involved. As someone who is interested in getting into this space but is an outsider, it isn't just interesting but is also valuable. And holding the notion that everyone has at least a modicum of truth or logic in their reasoning in my head while reading was a great ethos to go into this with.
Freedarko + AOL Fanhouse (Ziller + Shoals from FreeDarko) were my faves
Gem.