Jeter And The Trouble With Blogs

Perhaps the Fan is simply grouchy after sitting in a now empty mall after thirteen hours in his store. Thank goodness Black Friday only happens once a year. To relieve the tedium of a long day, occasionally this blogger will desperately search for any fresh baseball news. Instead there are another dozen empty stories about the Jeter situation. This Fan challenges all bloggers to try to go three days without mentioning his name. The Fan dares you.

You see the trouble with blogging is that when there is nothing to write about, we writers will grab a hold of any scrap of rumor, innuendo and hype that comes down the pike. And it's not just amateur bloggers either. Major writers in major news outlets publish every "he said, she said," they can find. It's bordering on insanity. It's not the "Boss" anymore. Now it's "Hank." Well, according to this source, Hank said this. And according to this source, Cashman said this. And according to another source, this is what Jeter is asking for. How about giving the keyboard a rest until you have a fact or two?

Negotiations between two business entities can get messy. Both parties draw lines in the sand and then erase them closer until a deal is made. That's how it works. It's a game of high stakes chicken. This Fan is beyond caring. Don't tell this writer anything until either a deal is struck or once Jeter signs with another club. Until then, it's simply a bunch of blowing bubbles to see who can get the most colors of the rainbow in their soapy blow ring.

No doubt clubs and agents use the media to try to nudge the process along. Scott Boras has been doing that for years. And despite a commissioner's edict about not doing that any more, there is no doubt that the Yankee brass and Jeter's agent have been doing the same sort of thing. But for Pete's sake, do we have to buy into it? Do we have to keep chewing on non-news like it's some sort of suet?

The bottom line is that we don't know diddly about what is going on between this particular player and his former (and hopefully) future employer. Unless a deal is announced or an impasse or a severing of the negotiations happen or Jeter signs with another club, shut up already.

Look, the trouble with blogs, or most blogs anyway, is that most of us lack access to the direct sources of information. The Fan isn't talking about Bill Maddon or Joel Sherman. Those are indirect sources that we read and believe. No, we bloggers don't have inside knowledge of what Jeter is doing or what the Yankees' brain trust is doing. And seriously, to be totally frank, we have little knowledge about ANYTHING other than what we read.

Without trying to sound too self-righteous, this Fan tries very hard to only report hard facts that are official statistics or transaction reports and then comment on those. Any thought about what a team should do is commentary. So it's either facts for this guy, or it's commentary and opinion about what a team or a player should do. Speculation or reporting news that is rehashed rumor from nebulous sources is okay for tabloid magazines in the grocery aisle, but it's hardly what we bloggers should be doing.

Just like a kid plugging his or her ears when he or she doesn't want to hear something, this Fan refuses to read another Jeter post by anyone unless it's a report about an official announcement.

Enough already.