i know its fashionable to bash chronicle writers; perhaps we do it so often, we've become immune to their stupidity. which may explain why none of us (to my knowledge) ripped justice for this little gem from his july 21st blog: justice has written far too many items to try and narrow this down with any certainity, but i think you'd be hard-pressed to find a dumber, more asinine statement of his. i mean, wow - i don't even know where to begin... how about here: didn't this jack-off cover the freaking baltimore orioles for however many years, ie the poster child for why, unless you’re the yankees or red sox, it is abhorrently stupid to throw gobs of cash at your baseball roster? or should i use the team the cubs are chasing - the brewers - as why it's 99.9999999999999998% of the time stupid to overpay for past performances? further, how do you build a team from "the inside out" - what does that even mean? there's nothing "inside" about the cubs. they have (if i'm being generous) 4 homegrown products contributing to their team this year (zambrano, hill, theriot and pie); otherwise, it's a team of highly-paid free agents, meaning it was built from the outside out, or whatever nonsense. and while i'm not sure you'd quantify purpura as an "old-school scout" (another meaningless, nothing term), he would at least be cut from the same cloth as the "old school scout" considering he started here as director of player scouting. i don't know - maybe he used the interwebbery and computer-do-hickey and therefore lost his "old school" status. who knows. but what really chips away at my will to live beyond that is that there are, unfortunately, way too many dolts in this city who are going to buy into such unmitigated garbage and start spouting it as fact when it is, far and away, about the worse thing mcclane could ever do. honestly, and sincerely - how did this penis leak secure a columnist slot in one of the nation's largest cities? it boggles my mind in ways i truly have yet to truly fathom.
Because RJ is a good guy. If you're a good guy, then good things happen to you, no matter how stupid you are.
I can't seem to tell if he was joking or not since he goes on to say they're trying to copy the best team in baseball. I would assume he's referencing the Yankees. Since the Yankees overpay everyone as well and are also in second place. The Cubs have assembled a team of free agents, however just like us they don't have any farm help. Unlike us they went out and signed more help and that does cost money and i guess that's what Justice is poking fun at. But if your farm teams suck, you have to go out and buy talent if you really want to win. I'm not saying they spent their money the right way. I really think he's trying to poke fun at the Cubs, Lou Piniella talking about his farm system, the Yankees, and the dynamic duo of Drayton and Tim Purpura all at once. Either way it's a pretty crummy joke if you have to think about it this much and can't possibly determine if it's attempted humor or just really bad journalism. Thinking about this whole thing really makes me wish we still had The Houston Post. The standards of writing have completely blown out the window and there's no motivation to improve it without any competition.
Yep, seems to me that spending $300 million and building a team "from the inside out" are 2 contradicting strategies. No?
The dumbest thing he ever wrote was yesterday. He said that Garner should be fired if he doesn't start Jason Freaking Lane immediately. I'd try to fathom this, but I don't want to give myself an aneurysm.
i read that as well. chris burke should start every single game, either at 2B or in CF when biggio plays. period. when he doesn't - THAT should be the fireable offense.
A good guy who the Astros avoid like the plague. Which leaves him just as another Joe with an opinion. Not much different from you and me.
see sig I think his column/blog are hilarious. I have never witnessed someone flip flop on every topic weekly. Makes me really laugh. "Garner deserves our support" on Monday/"Garner needs to be let go" on Wednesday. Occasionally, if the stars align correctly, on chron.com he will have his column posted and his blog will completely contradict the column
good catch....you're absolutely right. the jeff kent/chris burke thing to me was just priceless. he was telling us that kent should be benched so burke could start in 2004...the next year he was telling us how the astros were idiots for letting kent get away in free agency.
i don't mind his flip-flopping, per se; at least he admits he was wrong and is open to new ideas. oppose that to any one of a number of east coast writers who seem to grind the same ax over and over and over again (i'm thinking of ron bourges and his defiant anti-bellicheck stance and any and all ny writers who want to run arod out of town). BUT... the problem is that he's having to flip-flop because he's wrong on nearly every single topic he covers. and that stems from his complete and utter lack of knowledge - he doesn't study his subjects, he doesn't do any homework. in short, he's lazy and only interested in appealing to the LCD because he knows those are the people that are easiest to incite.
His biggest problem is that he gets zero information from the front office, coaches or players. He pretends like he knows what's going on, but he really has no clue.
Oh, I completely agree. He has no journalistic credibility whatsoever. I just get a kick from reading the tripe he spews
oh, people still talk to him - he's an easy mark for anyone that wants a puppet journalist because they all know the guy has zero-point-zero integrity, ready to sell-out so he can make his own headlines. van gundy obviously did it as his tenure wound down here. and casserly did, too, for many years, which is why justice was about a year late on calling him out for what a terrible job he was doing.
I don't think anybody at the chronicle can get reliable info on the astros. Phil Garner absolutely hates Ortiz. If looks could kill, he wouldn't survive an astros post game news conference.
ah...i was thinking about the 'stros, in particular. my understanding is garner hasn't talked to him since the justice began covering their conversations as if they were 3 act plays, complete with the Justice soliloquy. and berkman has made his opinions about Justice pretty clear, as well.
Decent with prose and vocabulary, I'll grant you. But everything else you've cited IMO damns him from the "very good writer" label.
