http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/writers/richard_deitsch/12/21/gammons.media/index.html SI.com: Who are the baseball people that are must-reads or must-watch in terms of being plugged into the sport? Gammons: Well, I go back to my best friends at ESPN: Buster Olney, Jason Stark, Jerry Crasnick and Tim Kurkjian. They are must reads. Tom Verducci has always been a must-read. Richard Justice in Houston has always been a must read. I devour a lot and I am a great believer that there are really good Internet-based sites and blogs. No comment from me. You?
Justice's style is horrible. Nothing but a bunch of one-liners mixed in with barely-researched tripe. The very definition of "mindless drivel". For every great article he writes (and he manages one every blue moon) he puts out 100 hot, steamy, smelly turds. But yeah, he writes a nice one every now and then. Kinda like I can get lucky and hit a 3 from halfcourt every now and then (and my shooting pct inside the arc is under 20%). Honestly, my main sticking points with Justice, and Solomon for that matter: Sarcasm does nothing for me. Any idiot can pop off at the mouth. What do you got that the rest of us don't, that entitles you to work for the only newspaper in the 4th largest city in the nation? He has access to these sports franchises and the people associated with them that *none* of the rest of us have. Yet generally all he comes up with is the same ridiculous conjecture, whiny opinion, and baseless speculation that the rest of us can. Why go to the Chron for that? I can listen to the 15-year-old who just called 610 for that. Flip-flopping. I swear, I think Justice licks his finger and checks the wind before he writes. It destroys the shred of credibility that he had left after the two points above.
I have my problems with some of the Houston writers (Feigen to me has become boring drivel and McLame is nothing but a joke anymore) but RJ has never been one. Does he flip flop? Yes, but he has to write so many damn articles that you can't stay on one side of the coin and still meet quotas. As far as baseball writers, I think he's quite excellent. I especially love that he doesn't kiss an organizations ass, even if it means he will be ostracized by the players/management. JdJo on the other hand is a .....
There is nothing excellent in Justice's writing. If you want excellence, go back and read Mickey Herskowitz (the earlier stuff), then compare. Honestly, the explosion of online "writing" has lowered the bar as to what we consider "excellent" in terms of writing. Kinda like the expansion era has diluted the talent pool for pitching -- In the 70s and 80s, if you were a 4.50 ERA pitcher, you were the #4 or maybe the long man in the pen. Now, you're a #2 and you might make the ASG! We have this preponderance of people with little-to-no qualification expressing themselves to a worldwide audience -- and while that's amazing and cool, it has lowered the bar. For anyone to consider that Richard freaking Justice is "excellent" is simply evidence.
...and to clarify, I don't equate taking the team to task with poor writing -- but I don't equate it with good writing, either. Whether the team needs to be taken to task is immaterial -- whatever you write, as it *will* be disagreed with by *somebody*, at the very least write it well. And Justice does not do that. Not in your wildest dreams.
A baseball guy sticking with his boy? No surprise. Baseball writers live in a fantasy cult-like world.
Not a Justice fan AT ALL, but he seems pretty connected when it comes to baseball. Now if he would just stop embarassing himself when trying to write about the other two pro teams
I agree with your second paragraph completely. I think the massive amounts of information available and the cultural demand for said information has changed the game and the bar has been lowered. With that said, I quite enjoy RJ's articles (as they relate to baseball). Maybe I shouldn't have used the term excellent though. Let's strike that and go with enjoyable.
