Garbageland
by Bryan
Nostalgia isn’t insidious by nature, but it’s close. Close enough, for me.
Once upon a time, I thought I was important. I grew up rooting for the Boston Red Sox and some of what I’d call my fondest memories are of listening on a transistor radio to Mo Vaughn hitting a home run on a lazy August afternoon or poring over the Peter Gammons Baseball Notes column in the Sunday Boston Globe—the column that made me want to assemble words for a living.
It, of course, takes someone with a supreme sense of self-importance to think anyone wants to read their shit. Reporting was an easy choice for me. You are provided with most of the material, and you string it together. It’s not that hard to tell a story: People do it all the time, everywhere, even if they’d never think about sitting in front of a screen and putting it to paper.
The thing about reporting is that it’s just a trick. You tell the stories of other people long enough to convince readers that you are important enough to tell stories of your own. Soon enough, the stories of other people become stories of your own. The emphasis shifts. It becomes the name on the back of the jersey, and not the name on the front. The name on the front of the jersey is another person’s charge: the editor.
I had imagined, for as long as I imagined such things, that I would eventually distinguish myself by writing about the Boston Red Sox. In the mid-aughts, this career path hit a temporary dead end A lot of this was due to Bill Simmons. He was hoarding the Red Sox readership, and doing a good job of it. Much like I used to read Gammons and call it a day, Simmons was the first and last source for Red Sox columns on the Internet. He had critics, sure, but this was before the sophisticated nesting-doll structure of criticism that has developed. If you hated Simmons, you had to go out of your way to express that, to feel heard or cared for or even loved. Now you know where to go.
For years, I defended Simmons against the inevitable criticisms of laziness. In John Updike’s famous essay on Ted Williams, “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu,” he said that for all of Williams’s hits to have come in non-clutch situations would have been “unparalleled in the annals of selfishness.” Similarly, to call Bill Simmons to be a garbage writer, and to dismiss his entire body of work on a column you didn’t like, seemed silly and reductive. The guy showed up every day and did my own dream job well enough that I respected it, even if it put me at a dead end. I have no axe to grind with Bill Simmons, which means it’s with no great joy then that I say Grantland is trash. As a writer, he is defendable, but as an editor and administrator he is an embarrassment. He’s so bad I hope he grew the mustache just to avoid looking himself in the mirror. At least then we’d know that he knew there was something wrong.
What could have been high-concept—The New Yorker for sports, or something similar but more fun—is instead a cross between kitty litter mags Vanity Fair and New York Magazine at its absolute best and a shitty buddy blog for sports and entertainment at its worst. When Grantland was first announced, I never thought it would have a lower batting average of good articles than espn.com, but it does. Simmons’s writing success never bothered me. This, a real hope for good sportswriting on the Internet gone sour, bothers me.
I don’t need to go into the ghastly copy editing and fact-checking associated with the site; Deadspin has kept on top of that. Many of my complaints are similar to those Mr. Destructo laid out in a pre-official launch pasting of the site; I thought it was a tad unfair for Mr. Destructo to go crazy on the site based on two articles, but he’s turned out to be right on nearly all accounts, the key sentence being this:
This site in general is all premise and no twist. The set-up seems to be all you need: someone has an opinion about something, and it’s humorous because thinking about it is. The minimum daily requirements for humor have been provided.
The baffling part to me is who Simmons thinks he’s fooling by throwing up a four-part series about poker, the craze that’s seven years dead, by Colson Whitehead, titled “Dispatches from the Republic of Anhedonia.” Unless you sleep next to a signed copy of Sag Harbor, would you read this? It is presented as a near-perfect mix of pretension, lack of timeliness and self-importance. Part of being an editor is saying “no,” even to famous authors like Colson Whitehead, if even just to a headline. (Update: the original version made it sound like I was critiquing the content; I was going after the presentation, albeit poorly.) As in, like, 75 percent of it. Less can be, in fact, more, but as Mr. Destructo says (and his post is much better than mine, you should read it), Bill Simmons is insecure. I nearly fell out of my chair when he told Tom Shales and Jim Miller in Those Guys Have All The Fun that he had “thick skin.” It’s not good when you have the least self-aware comment in a book full of narcissists.
As others have mentioned, the extremely talented Chris Jones is completely miscast as an “AL East columnist;” it’s like asking a star quarterback to place-hold. Jonah Keri is enthusiastic, which is good, but wrote a good book proposal that no one seems to notice made a really crappy book. The book, called The Extra 2%: How Wall Street Strategies Took a Major League Baseball Team from Worst to First begins discussing these strategies at its three-quarter mark. I know, because in my Kindle I made a note when the first “Wall Street strategy” was discussed that said simply, “It begins!” and the little number in the bottom left said 75%. It also kind of boils down to this: buy low and sell high. It’s also vitally important that we meet Joe Maddon’s entire Rust Belt family to understand this, and that we understand the Rays, who didn’t win the World Series, are some sort of living miracle, like a baby born without a heart who’s bouncing around all the same. The Rays are pretty good, and they’re pretty good because they’re run by smart people, but that hardly makes them unique. Keri’s trying to ride the long coattails of Moneyball, but you’d be better off re-reading the genuine article (“Oh look, here comes Mr. Swing-At-Everything”) or maybe even Vanity Fair.
His Grantland columns aren’t much better, describing at length simple statistical measures that have been used for years to an audience that’s self-selected to already know what he’s talking about. Nor is he consistent. A recent column on potential MLB playoff teams used Nate Silver’s “Secret Sauce,” created nine years ago, in the first act, disavowed it in the second, and brought it back in the third act like nothing ever happened.
Chuck Klosterman is, like many obsessive writers, better at writing against type: his sports stuff isn’t that bad. Specifically, his article on the mindset of Olympic sprinters was fantastic. But when he writes about music, and gets into “second-by-second” breakdowns of this or that… it’s stuff that belongs on a shitty, unread music blog. It’s insufferable. Molly Lambert is what she is, and was much better in the no-rules environment of This Recording than she is here. She’s the brainy slacker, and if there’s one thing anathema to ESPN culture, it’s overt laziness. (Just skip the research and yell louder, and it’ll be fine.) Sooner or later, someone at ESPN is going to realize that they can be as edgy as they want, but sports has to be the focus, even on a site that doesn’t have explicit ESPN branding. Klosterman is a big enough name to keep the experiment going for awhile, but its death is inevitable. We all know it’s part of the family. While Lambert is actually perceptive and talented, the preview column Mr. Destructo eviscerated was pure trash, and yes, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that Klosterman hired her because he has a crush on her. This non-transferable ability to draw male readers is pretty much null at Grantland. (Good criticism of this paragraph in the comments.)
Bill Barnwell, Rany Jazayerli and Katie Baker are the three consistently good writers on the site, and there’s no reason they couldn’t have just been hired at espn.com. They deserve better.
The main problem, though, is Simmons, and it’s not just “his” “editing.” So much of life is context, and ripped from the company of fellow ESPN.com columnists, his columns and podcasts look just… fucking… terrible. As much as Simmons hates Rick Reilly, despite claiming not to, he needs him. I can’t believe I’m about to type this, but Rick Reilly, ESPN’s molar– and moralist in chief, is the winner of the whole affair. He’s vain and grandstanding and usually insufferable, but at least he’s consistent, and now he has a Simmons-free universe to glop up readers. The ESPN book had the wonderful little note that Simmons would return his columns with little notes to STET all changes; it’s the writer’s equivalent of tooling around in a shiny, tiny convertible Porsche.
Next to other self-styled geniuses, though, his writing falls apart. His article on “Hollywood” starmaking—whoever the fuck “Hollywood” is—was such an embarrassment that it’s hardly worth discussing. Suppose for a second, though, that he’s right. This “Hollywood” entity is trying to force Ryan Reynolds down our throats as a bona fide movie star, when in reality he’s way out of his league trying to headline a movie. Couldn’t one make the association with Simmons and ESPN? Isn’t ESPN trying to force Bill Simmons down our throats as a bona fide media star, when in fact he’s out of his league trying to do anything than write silly columns? Yes, he was the executive producer of 30 for 30, and deserves credit for that. But to get Rumsfeld on you, he knew what he didn’t know in filmmaking, and stepped out of the way. On Grantland, he thinks he actually knows what he’s doing. He did in one sense: he got smart people to write for him. He largely made them suck, through direction or presentation, and made his own work look terrible in the process. The emperor is naked, except for, yes, the mustache.
Fixing Grantland would be so, so easy. Bill Simmons needs to be fired or step aside. If Bill Simmons was actually a historian, instead of just playing one in his error-riddled The Book of Basketball (STET all changes), he’d see the historical comparison to his (and my) exhaustively beloved New England Patriots staring him right in the face: He’s the problem. When Robert Kraft meddled, Bill Parcells scrammed. When Kraft promised to keep his hands off something he had no clue over, the Patriots took off, with a little or a lot of luck, depending on how you look at it.
As I wrote at the top, nostalgia isn’t always insidious, but it’s close. Bill Simmons has built a nice career on exploiting nostalgia, and of giving people 15 minutes per week to live in the past, when sports and movies were the most important things in their lives. Either he really still believes sports and movies are the most important things in his life, and he’s a freak (having, you know, a family), or he’s selling a bill of goods. Either way, I don’t begrudge him. It’s the internet. Everyone has their hustle. It’s the name of the game. But it is a hustle.
It’s different when your name’s at the top. It’s not about what you’ve done in the past: it’s about what everyone under you is doing, right now. And nearly everyone at Grantland is creating content that wouldn’t be published at a legitimized website for one reason (spelling, grammar and factual errors) or another (totally uninteresting). We don’t need Grantland editors to be the arbiters of what is or is not a “Hall of Fame” YouTube video, and to put the results at the top of their site. It’s this type of laziness and self-importance that breeds competition. Even now, there’s another collective of sportswriters attempting to start a thinky sports journalism site called The Classical; they’re trying to raise $50,000. You want to see Moneyball in action? Watch what happens when a group of smart. focused people take on a rudderless, bloated corporate behemoth—you know, what Grantland was actually supposed to do in the first place. It’ll be interesting. Someone might even write a book about it.
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[…] An argument against Grantland, Bill Simmons’s new sports/culture website. I happen to be a fan, but this makes a decent […]
[…] It’s been about two months since the launch of Bill Simmons’ Grantland website. However, as this takedown of Bill’s site says, it’s all been much ado about nothing. (Bryan Joiner) […]
This hits the nail on the head re: the site mostly. It’s a complete vanity project for a lot of these writers. That said, it isn’t completely void of good content. Just mostly void of it.
I really enjoyed the Sabonis article and, although I haven’t watched WWE in a very long time, Shoemaker’s recurring column is enjoyable. Klosterman and Wright Thompson’s content has mostly been terrible (and I really like Wright Thompson but damn you for outing the greatest secret bourbon known right now). As mentioned over and over, Lambert is terrible and her writing resembles something I’d expect from a 17 year-old clerk at Urban Outfitters not a supposed accomplished and well-recognized writer. I want to like Barwell, but his articles remind me of an extended NFL analysis that I’d find on any internet football message board… readable, entertaining, but ultimately I don’t feel like I gained any new perspective or understanding on the subject matter’s topic.
Also, Simmons and Jacoby, please continue writing your Reality TV Fantasy League articles. The American public cares much about your inside joke.
Ultimately, I think I see what they are trying to achieve, but the site and content itself needs to be cleaned up big time.
[…] now onto our weekly edition of “Who’s Crapping on Grantland!?”. Seriously, not that I’m ever flippant, this is actually a great piece. The author lays out […]
[…] now onto our weekly edition of “Who’s Crapping on Grantland!?”. Seriously, not that I’m ever flippant, this is actually a great piece. The author lays out […]
I think the site could be good and Simmons does not need to step aside, but he needs help. He needs to hire editors – and people who aren’t names, people to be behind the scenes, and edit. And i know it is the internet, but these articles don’t need to go on and on and on. It isn’t talent to write a long article – it is actually more difficult to write a tight, coherent article in 2 pages instead of just rambling on and on for 5. That Simmons said he is think skinned is hysterical. This is the guy who removed a mention of Charlie Pierce from the 2d edition of his book when Pierce had the audacity to write a very fair review of the book that was not positive. (And Simmons then went on Twitter to defend himself – that isn’t thick skinned). And for the love of god, please grantland, get rid of the footnotes. Grantland is not the New England Journal of Medicine. It doesn’t make the articles look more professional – it makes it look pretentious and lazy at the same time. If you can’t work a note into the main body, leave it out. Not every thought you have is worth going in the story. I also like that Simmons is going back to writing the mailbags each week – i am sure it is a lot of work to go through the emails, but writing those responses is about as lazy and easy as it gets. Time to break a sweat.
Great piece. Captures the hope and disillusionment that most of us attach to Simmons. It can’t be easy for him to bear that burden.
Having said that, how far off the track do you have to be, how far into The Club, how far down the road to creeping Lupicaism, how far from your own projected image must you be when you publish something by Mike Barnicle on your new Me Venture?
That was the day I realized I didn’t need to read any more Bill Simmons stuff. I’ll throw him a backhanded compliment and say that I realized that about Hunter eventually too. He’s just said everything he has to say.
[…] now onto our weekly edition of “Who’s Crapping on Grantland!?”. Seriously, not that I’m ever flippant, this is actually a great piece. The author lays out […]
[…] https://bryanjoiner.com/2011/08/17/garbageland/ […]
A 10000 word missive bashing Grantland and it’s awful editing, and no mention of the goddamned footnotes?!?!? Unlike in the BoB, where he (mainly) used them to actually elaborate on a point that didn’t quite fit with the writing, but would be interesting to the reader, here he just uses them in place of the traditional asides to write something dumb like “my Dad immediately texted me ‘I always liked that guy!'”. And worse, he encourages his other writers to do the same. They’re absolutely awful.
i enjoy simmons when he writes mailbags and his weekly nfl column is amusing. as a whole though, he has begun to bother me b/c his celebrity status has gone to his head and he is losing that every-man quality that made him so unique. he also seems to be very self-conscious and lacking in any self-awareness.
last night, while real madrid was playing fc barcelona in a game that is half pre-season, half regular season…simmons decided to enlighten his readers with some live tweets; the best one being “MESSI!!!!! I really think he might be a genius.”
wait, what? that’s your insight?!
his attempt at becoming a soccer fan is great, as attention and increased fandom is only good for the development of the game – not to mention that people who think of fandom of any sport or team are misguided.
what bothers me is that it comes across like, i am bill simmons, listen to me. i probably don’t know much about this sport but im bill fucking simmons, so i can make declarations that people have been making for years now and pass it off as insightful.
there’s no attempt made at learning or engaging with his audience as he watches more of the sport beyond the occasional “insightful” tweet. it is the polar opposite of some of the awesomely self-aware discovery pieces adam gopnik writes in the ny’er.
i haven’t read much grantland b/c it is wildly verbose, as you would expect from bs but im just too add for most of it.
it’s sad b/c rick reilly is the definition of worst but simmons seems to be sliding in his direction.
* i think he’s self conscious of his small hands (they look like that guy from the old burger king commercial who wouldn’t eat a whopper b/c it made his hands weren’t big enough) and he compensates through making sure you’re aware of his celebrity status
What really turned me off of Grantland was their inability to incorporate anything from the real world in their articles. where are the articles on race (like tommy cragg’s deadspin byu article) and serious issues facing athletes or sports? wasn’t this site supposed to be some high level intellectual undertaking?? it’s all just such a big circle jerk.
the whole debt ceiling fake crisis was happening and it seemed like such a bleak time in america and the ‘bread and circus’ continues on Grantland. They pretend like they have autonomy from ESPN because they can curse but really they serve this corporate status quo and continue distracting the populace from real issues at hand. It’s almost like ESPN and the level of sports obsession and coverage in this country has become the opiate of the masses for males. while many women search for this fix from E!, US Weekly and reality television. These things have filled the vacuum that extreme religious worship filled in the past or fills in many parts of the world.
it’s like these smug writers writing these stupid light hearted stories as if everything is fine. look around the world right now. huge stuff is happening politically. london is burning, the entire world economy is on the verge of collapse and rick perry could be our next president. Not that I’m anti-entertainment but these articles aren’t often entertaining and everything they write about just seems frivolous in light of this.
No disrespect to Dave Jacoby, but I think it speaks volumes that Jacoby’s reality TV show recaps are the best thing Grantland has to offer. Grantland has been a huge disappointment.
To me the most offensive writer is Barnwell. Even more then Jay Caspian Kang’s “What Yow Ming and Ichiro mean to me as an Asian-American” stuff. It’s hard for me to take barnwell seriously when he makes errors even a casual football fan would abhor. The reality that no fact checkers or editors catch his stuffups only adds to the intrigue. Confusing Rex and Bob Ryan, mischaracterising Kamerion Wimbley’s contract as 29 million guaranteed when he was already guaranteed 11.3 milion for this year just to get a cheap shot in on Al Davis. It’s hard to take. For what it’s worth I’ve never played poker or heard of Colston Whithead but that was my favorite piece on the site to date.
The weird thing about Grantland to me is how surprisingly unambitious it is. Simmons originally stood out on Page 2 because he was writing sort-of anti- sports columns in an era where we still associated sports column-writing with the out-of-touch softball tosser at your hometown paper. But this site mostly recycles writers and talking points from other sites on the web that already do it way better (baseball prospectus, football outsiders, deadspin, ksk, page 2 itself, etc.), and does it the way those sites did it 2 years ago. Ironically, the real way to stand out in today’s landscape is through taking full-on responsible and refined approach, or just going all-out aggressive as a full-on pop culture-oriented website with a core demographic broader than deadspin (an online, sports-ish Vanity Fair if you will).
I think this blog post has come the closest to describing the disappointment of Grantland. We wanted well crafted pieces expanding on minor (and major) details of sports and pop culture, giving us an illuminated point of view. What we got was an exercise in tedium and another sports blog, except with Hollywood thrown in.
Maybe the idea behind a site like Grantland is unnecessary and will always come off as pretentious. Maybe it’s best to leave these things on the edges of sports news sites and publications, rather than putting them in the spotlight.
Regardless, thanks for the great read.
I actually think that Jonathan Abrams has done a decent job, though his efforts may have gone unnoticed, what with the NBA lockout dove-tailing with the launch of Grantland. His article on Arvydas Sabonis had a few gems: Sabonis schooled Olympic athletes, like shot-putters, in arm wrestling matches for shots; he missed the Bronze Medal ceremony and was found two days later in the female Olympian dormitory; and Bill Walton saying that he should have punched Rasheed Wallace in the nose for tossing a towel at Sabonis.
Abrams actually reports, finds decent stories, and gets interesting quotes (like the one from Walton above). But I can’t help but ask myself, “How is this different from what writers are doing at ESPN.com? How is this different from a J.A. Adande column? Isn’t this what Page 2 was supposed to be?”
And then, near the end of Abrams article, I found a spelling mistake. (Maybe it’s corrected by now; I haven’t checked up on it.) Is Abrams proofing his work? Are the editors editing? If Abrams is putting in the effort to report a story, conduct multiple interviews, transcribe the interviews, structure a lengthy article, and presumably rewrite it, how is he not catching spelling mistakes? Microsoft Word would catch it. And even if it somehow slips away, it should never get past the second line of defense, his editors.
The spelling mistakes alone are cause for embarrassment. The lack of vision — even the lack of execution and direction — on this website could sink it.
(I feel bad for someone like Chris Jones, an actual writer, given that he ate whatever bait was tossed his way and is wasting prime years on a rudderless experiment.)
Lets just call it how it is. Simmons reminds me of some faggot hipster English major whom, each and every piece they write–each of which they are certain the New Yorker would publish–is the absolute best in the world. ESPN is big enough to buffer some novelty like him but this usually comes in the form of attractive women who are stupid but nice to look at.
Lambert was hired because Klosterman has a crush on her? You are trying to pass this off as some sort of legit media critique, and you include misogynistic crap like this?
I know Deadspin has some sort of all consuming obsession with Grantland for reasons that I don’t understand, but if they are going to endorse critiques of the site, there have to be some out there better than this.
This is completely true–I have no evidence for this. It’s not internally consistent for me to say Lambert is talented and that she got hired for her looks (effectively), and it’s really easy for ME to say that she should give up the high-paying job for a lower paycheck.
I think what I meant was: she’s a bad fit.
I actually think you’re being diplomatic. Molly Lambert is one of the worst writers I’ve ever read on a major website. Shockingly terrible.
I agree with John here….she’s hipster smart
While we’re on the subject of Simmons’ limitations, why does he still get TV gigs? He still doesn’t carry himself well and at times is totally outclassed by Wilbon or Kornheiser. And to think he made fun of WFAN update guys for appearing so awkward and nervous during their televised appearances (in what was one of his more memorable pieces).
When I imagined what a website of his own would look like three years ago, I was expecting a website tuned to his cultural wavelength (as Mr. Destructo described) that featured goofy columns but also more pieces about gambling misadventures (I enjoy most of his Vegas recaps) and even ridiculous interviews with porn stars (just to demonstrate his independence). I think Homer Simpson put it best:
“Boy, when Marge first told me she was going to the police academy, I thought it’d be fun and exciting, you know, like that movie, “Spaceballs”. But instead it’s been painful and disturbing, like that movie “Police Academy”.
Honestly, I think the biggest issue is the content. I try to read the articles and just can’t get through them – they’re really, really bad.
Bill Barnwell you call out as being a good writer, but his football columns are terrible. He suggested that the NY Giants should have not resigned Ahmad Bradshaw (25 years old, coming off a 1,000+ yd season) and suggested they sign Clinton Portis (30 and out of the league) instead.
He also said that Donavan McNabb was actually decent in Washington, and backed this up with…a statistic he made up showing that McNabb was better than Rex Grossman (as if being better than Rex Grossman is a sign of a decent QB).
What bothers me most though – is EVERY writer on the site is trying to be Bill Simmons. The staff at Grantland, Bill Barnwell, they know EXACTLY what free agents should be getting signed, how much every player is worth, and they act like every NFL/MLB/NBA GM is just sooooo stupid.
That’s what bothers me the most. Barnwell (and the other Grantland writers) have questionable opinions (Clinton Portis over Ahmad Bradshaw, DeSean Jackson isn’t worth paying, etc) that they write about as absolute facts, while talking down about anyone who actually has a job in sports. At some point, the whole “every GM doesn’t know what they’re doing but this writer does” shtick just gets old. Barnwell literally writes that no free agent running back should ever be paid, and even calls clear cut successes (like Michael Turner) failures because they “Aren’t worth the money.” He just wants to prove himself right rather than write about what is actually happening.
It’s not about good football writing. Or good baseball writing. Like Simmons, it’s not actually about the subject they are writing about, it’s about THEM. It’s not really about football free agency or MLB, it’s about BILL BARNWELL ON THIS or JONAH KERI ON THAT and how smart and great they are.
I’m not sure Barnwell is a great writer, but I think he knows his football. I always learn from his columns. It’s not like he said DeSean wasn’t great without giving a reason: he went into catch rate, all that stuff. Anyone is allowed to disagree, but he makes cases I find compelling.
Oh my god. I get it now. Sports Journalism is where all the writers ended up going after the music scene sank under the sheer weight of their douchey antics. I am willing to let them have sports if they promise to stay away from videogames.
I mostly agree – and Im a Simmons fan.
Not only is Simmons an especially bad editor/boss. His personal production is much worse now that he seems to feel empowered.
Hes great as clever guy with a little chip on his shoulder trying to make a point – hes annoying as the self important, uniformed douche(listen to his embarrassing pod cast with David Stern.)
Let’s just be totally honest here, Bryan. At this point, “Sports Guy” Bill Simmons’s writing has begun to accumulate noticeable whiffs of the “look at me and who I hang out with” syndrome—I’m particularly thinking of the rather unclimactic climax in TBOB where he runs into Zeke by a pool in Vegas—that are ominously similar to the self-important tripe ladled out by hacks-with-a-press-pass like our old mutual “Sportsbeat” “colleague” Lloyd Carroll.
Hi Bryan; great piece as always!
Reed, I hope that all is well. Are you still involved with golf? Happily, I am still ladling out the self-important tripe every week so I invite you to read my column if you haven’t looked at in awhile.
Best wishes from your old Sportsbeat colleague,
Lloyd
I always thought Simmons was trash, insofar as he exploited (yes exploited — like having boobs in beer commercials) the pop culture sensibilities and navelgazing of anyone who had cable during the 90s.
Not surprised that you or anyone else is sick of this posture.
i hope the people at The Classical roll back the web to something that is less “me me and look at me” and take writing on the web to a place that is thoughtful and critical.
I like this…
“The thing about reporting is that it’s just a trick. You tell the stories of other people long enough to convince readers that you are important enough to tell stories of your own. Soon enough, the stories of other people become stories of your own. The emphasis shifts. It becomes the name on the back of the jersey, and not the name on the front.”
How dare you rip Jonah Keri
Based on some of your self-indulgent earlier work, I think you’re on the verge of calling the kettle black, however you do bring up some legitimate points that Deadspin hasn’t been able to articulate without sounding jealous.
When somebody rises to fame and fortune by being able to compellingly describe things most normal guys can relate to, we promote their success and feel one with them. The problem thereafter lies in the fact they are no longer like us once they achieve said success, and so begins a tug of war between maintaining that success and losing credibility and relatability. While some people are able to make this transition successfully (Oprah), Bill Simmons is struggling, and his relatable content is seemingly relegated to what he sees on television.
Perhaps growing older and/or raising a family are to blame as well, but I am finally realizing that it is time for me to move from denial to acceptance that the Bill Simmons I cherished for so many years is not the same any more.
I’ve absolutely been self-indulgent, but I’m trying really hard not to be here and in general.
I think Simmons is exactly the same, and that’s my problem. I don’t think that’s natural.
it’s worth noting that the author of this piece is from Martha’s Vineyard yet I’ve seen him high-five strangers at sporting events. Strangers who very well could have been from the working class. That alone should qualify him to write an architectural assessment of Boston-area sporting structures.
I like Simmons on ESPN.com with his Mailbag, podcast, and occasional article. I also had high hopes for Grantland when it was first announced, but the quality of the writing and the subjects they choose to write about both suck. The only thing that is consistently good is the weekly recap of the Fantasy Reality Show League…..which, if you think about it, is kind of pitiful.
The site design itself is horrible and confusing and there seems to be no direction or structure to anything. Its just, for the most part, a bunch of hacks who throw up random blog posts on whatever insignificant idea that pops into their head.
Bryan, I enjoyed reading this if only for one reason (though I enjoyed it for many reasons) – and that being someone finally taking Jonah Keri to task. Somehow, he’s become this rising star in the world of writing and I haven’t yet figured out what he does well other than consistently say wrong things. I believe you’re the first person I’ve read that has decided to say so in a place that people beyond my few friends would read it. I appreciate it.
Also, I keep my shitty music thoughts at my own, seldom-read, shitty music blog and I think that’s ok.
I know this is primarily an indictment of Simmons but I just read Jazayerli’s latest piece on the D’backs. This is my first exposure to Jazayerli but it sounds like he’s saying the D’backs have turned it around because they’ve won more games. I’m not convinced he’s the best baseball analyst as he frequently references ERA and batting average as if they provide the whole story. Furthermore, he fails to reference any team stat. Isn’t that something he should be investigating when finding out how a team has turned itself around?
Historically, a team’s run differential is the best indicator of a team’s success though he fails to mention it at all. Last year, the D’backs scored 123 fewer runs than their opponents. This year? They’ve scored 28 more runs. Though it doesn’t answer exactly “how?” it more thoroughly answers why they’re winning more games. Referencing two players (one of whom isn’t even one of the two best pitchers on the staff) just isn’t enough. It’s funny that he alludes to Upton’s regression earlier in the piece but fails to mention so in regards to Collmenter. As he allowed 11 runs in two starts, his ERA was due to a regression since his FIP suggested he was outperforming his peripherals. Then again, maybe he doesn’t understand that regression can happen in-season.
Though I do like the team building narrative, I’m not sure how much value Jazayerli’s piece exhibits. By and large, I guess I felt compelled to comment on it as it seemed to fit “all premise but no twist” mold. I liked your piece, Bryan. I look forward to more.
I couldn’t agree with you more. There was no valid explanation for the D-Backs turnaround. It was more like, “Hey, here are some differences between last year and this year!” Couldn’t anyone with basic baseball acumen do the same?
He comes off as a casual fan, which he very well may be and is perfectly fine. But if that’s the case, he shouldn’t be providing analysis. Murray Chass is much of the same way – doesn’t understand player (and for that matter, team) evaluation but can tell a great story. Judging by his D’backs piece, it seems that he gets by through romanticizing the subject matter. But I don’t know. I haven’t read much of him at all. I couldn’t finish his Pirates piece.
Jazayerli is an original Baseball Prospectus writer and a full time dermatologist. I didn’t read that article but he does know his stuff.
Yeah, I read that as well and that’s why it shocked me when I read the D’backs piece. I have some more research to do on him, just haven’t been able to lately. I didn’t mean to paint him as a know-nothing but in that piece, I didn’t see his baseball acumen displayed.
This is what happens when a columnist in desperate need of an editor (or, say, an editor with any control) decides to _become_ the editor, and in a vanity project to boot. This should have surprised no one.
I think the sentence “You want to see what Moneyball in action?” should read “You want to see Moneyball in action?” or “You want to see what Moneyball looks like in action?”.
Otherwise great post, fully agree with most everything you say.
Thanks! (and fixed.)
Grantland is confusing and hard to sort through and mostly lacks simplicity. For example, back in the day part of the allure of reading is knowing that every Friday Sports Illustrated or some other magazine would come in the mail. I looked forward to this. I no longer look forward to anything because I am inundated with constant instantaneous information all the time. Make Grantland different like its name suggests. Slow it down. Simply put, update the site once a week. Make it known in the first sentence of the description of Grantland that Grantland is a weekly online sports MAGAZINE. Maybe this would correct the problem. It might be easier to edit, more thought goes into it, and it would be nostalgic. Give me a schedule damnit. Am I just old in that I like a regimented schedule? Maybe I should prune juice and vitamin now. Whatever, “Grantland” is nothing more than an abundance of swill hauled out on a whimsical basis. It is not classic sports writing like its name suggests. If anything the whole site is a misnomer. Sad.
I am just shocked you guys like Baker. I only read her first two articles but I personally feel self interviewing is how a high school newspaper writes an article. Her pieces on the stanley cup finals were terrible, but maybe I will give something she writes another shot.
You are right that I am 100% pro-Bakes.
Give this article a whirl:
http://deadspin.com/5697455/the-confessions-of-a-former-adolescent-puck-tease
Might or might not be your thing, but I thought it was a really fantastic piece of writing–certainly good enough that I can forgive a stray bad column or two.
I believe I commented on that (under nom de plume Pedro Cuatro Cinco) calling it the best thing I had read on Deadspin. So good.
Hmmm, perhaps you shouldn’t have spent this whole post criticizing Simmons contrived, nostalgia inducing, references when two posts below you spend the first four paragraphs retelling your college career.
That’s a valid argument.
I liked both pieces, however.
I’ll wager that most music enthusiasts will disagree with you about Klosterman’s deconstruction of the youtube clips of Zeppelin and Edgar Winter.
I found them absolutely hilarious. Not profound, but simply hilarious and (gulp) witty. God forbid.
Fair is fair — but I don’t know how many music enthusiasts are reading Grantland. I know it’s the idea that they will, but is Klosterman that big of a draw? I’m legitimately asking.
Yeah, I don’t know. I suppose one way to tell would be to see how many hits a youtube clip has when a Klosterman article first posts and how many it has a week later.
Hua Hsu’s piece on the new Kanye and Jay-Z album was about eleventy million times bettter than anything Klosterman’s written about music for Grantland, and possibly the best thing Grantland’s run, period.
I thought the Kanye/Jay Z review was brutal – did the writer like it or not? I understood his premise pretty quickly – and then he kept going, and kept going…But he never got to the part where he said whether or not it rocked. Too many words, not enough viceral reaction.
Actually, the best review of Kanye/Jay-Z’s album is not on Grantland. The best is by Ghostfase!
http://bigghostnahmean.blogspot.com/2011/08/ayo-this-p-tones-review-for-watch.html
If you can get past it being written in imperfect English, it’s seriously to die for.
“Shia LaBeouf in song form”
What I find interesting and sad about Bill Simmons is that his writing hasn’t evolved over the years. I wonder if he realizes he’s a marginal writer who, with practice, guidance and a little courage could become a great writer.
He is capable of eliciting emotion. The columns about his retiring father and dead dog are proof of that. Everything else is basically regurgitated dog food. Read the first and last paragraph then fill the rest in with what we already know about Simmons. It’s kind of pathetic.
Then again, maybe I’m expecting too much from him. Let’s face it, he’s a guy who spends a considerable amount of time watching reality television rather than working on his craft. What a waste.
Success made him lazy, and convinced him his shit doesn’t stink. I can’t even pretend to know what it’s like to have other writers in very visible places rip you to shreds, which has happened to Simmons countless times over the years, but obviously his response has just been to say fuck it and keep doing what he does. But even if he acts like the criticism doesn’t affect him, it clearly does, because why else would he have turned into such an absolute dick over the past few years? And the two things go hand in hand, the arrogance and the lack of growth as a writer. What used to be a funny, relatable guy who thought about sports in interesting ways and genuinely seemed like someone you’d want to have as a friend has turned into a smarmy, whiny, excessively touchy douchebag who not-so-coincidentally has been rehashing jokes and gimmicks for far too long.
I agree, Pepe. Since he can’t handle success, as you pointed out, it shows what kind of character he really has. Or lack of character.
My hope is Grantland turns out to be an absolute failure and he realizes his shit does stink then he improves as a writer/person. But I won’t hold my breath.
But who is he beholden to other than his back account and himself? I always laugh at this kind of stuff. I mean, he’s the most successful Sportswriter in the world right now, and that probably means more to him than whether or not the peanut gallery thinks he’s a shitty writer.
If he cared about it, he’d probably do better than he does now, no?
That’s fair, but he’s fair to be criticized, I think. His title is EIC, and there’s no doubting that the site’s editing has been really, really poor. As a writer, he hasn’t changed, which has worked very well for him.
I’m glad I made you laugh but I never said he was a “shitty writer”. My hope was that his writing would have improved over the years. It has not, which tells me he simply does not care about his craft. Because he doesn’t care about his craft it boils down to a character issue, or lack of character.
The moment where Simmons lost me for good was his NBA Vegas all-star weekend mega-column from a few years back. He spent the whole time basically saying “this place is crazy! so many black people!” a real writer (like hunter s. thompson, who simmons claims to be inspired by) would have actually tried to stake out some hotels, use some espn connections, figure out what’s really going on, maybe actually run with some of these crazy black people for the weekend. instead, it was just lazy, tepid white guy stuff, punctuated (of course) by an interview with the ultimate white guy hero in david stern.
Great point. And the reason he doesn’t take chances like Hunter S. Thompson is because Simmons lacks courage as a writer. He is lazy and it’s too bad because he could be a great writer if he took a step back and really looked at what he’s trying to say. He’s content being glib.
Well said. I’m not even a Boston sports fan by any stretch, but I’ve defended Simmons for a long time. Since Grantland, though…ugh, there is no defending that. Like you said, I read Barnwell and Baker and that’s it (was gunshy by that point to try Jazayerli). Now even going to the site makes me regret giving them a pageview at all.
A column about bad editing that has bad editing
“The Extra 2%: How Wall Street Strategies How Wall Street Strategies Took a Major League Baseball Team from Worst to First”
Nevertheless, I agree with you. Grantland isn’t funny or informative. It’s amateur hour over there
Ha! Yeah, fixed. Thanks.
Totally Agree, Simmons has jumped the shark.
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