Your Hometown Nine

Another comment from Svrulga's chat yesterday came back to me when I checked out today's paper. When asked what he thought about the level of coverage the Post gives to the Nats, Barry wrote that it was generally more than most for game stories. But, he added, "In general, I'd say other cities have more of a columnist presence at games. Boz comes as often as he can, and he loves being there. But we really don't have a second columnist voice on baseball, which many other cities do."

So coincidentally, we open up today's paper and are blessed with another Tom Boswell baseball column on, yep, you guessed it, the Anaheim Angels. Now, it's an interesting article. It is, as his always are, written well. And it's an interesting story. I'm glad it's there. But where the hell is the columnist who covers, even occasionally, the Nationals? We don't, as Barry suggests, need a second columnist. We need a first.

The Post stupidly has their best baseball columnist writing football every week, so the guy probably hasn't had time to follow baseball. And, yes, it's a losing season in a crappy ballpark, blah blah blah. But, again, here's the list of columns. The Nats have been virtually untouched by him or any other Post columnist since July.

I don't have a problem with the Post trying to be a national paper, covering interesting out-of-town stories. It makes it a better paper, with coverage you can't get in the Podunk Courier-Dispatch. But I do have a problem when they ignore a major sports team in their own town because they're off covering those out-of-town teams.

One more note before I get off my soapbox... I didn't do a close reading of the Boswell column, but it doesn't seem like a column in a traditional sense. There doesn't seem to be any true opinion. Or if there is, it's mild stuff, 'analysis' of the type that renders it more of a feature than a column. If that's the case, why isn't that something their national baseball writer, Dave Sheinin, do, if the Post's editors really deem that a story worth printing? Conversely, if the "local" baseball columnist is going to do features on out-of-town teams, why can't the National Guy do a feature on the local nine?

The reporting and writing on the team is excellent. And the strawman argument about how they cover Teh Blowrioles1!1!! is stupid. When (note the past tense) they covered the Orioles this season, it was never at the exclusion of what they did with the Nats. But in terms of opinion and column writing? Yeah, they basically suck.

It's enough to drive a man to Loverro. And nobody wants that!