He gets cranky when the media publishes false items and, for example, make it look like the Giants are making a big offer when they have done no such thing. And when this false rumor gets repeated all over the media because other media sources pick it up and spread the falsehood even further, it just gets bigger like the Giants are doing something when they were just interested bystanders.
It is the sports world equivalent of the Enquirer tabloid reporting where celebrities reportedly do things they did not do.
That is what he was cranky about.
Instead of understanding his point of view, which I thought journalists are suppose to do, you know, be objective, an observer, they instead close ranks, round up the wagons and protect their own.
Which was surprising to me because this particular journalist was one of the ones who actually defended Bonds when other media sources were spreading falsehoods about what Bonds said and did in a press conference.
I guess things have changed, and not for the better.
Whatever, Sabean is a Major League general manager, he gets paid a great sum of money to endure the media, whether they're creating stories or not. There actually has been confirmation here that the Giants have contacted Boras about Manny though, how serious they are is anyones guess I suppose.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, if you want to exchange links with my blog, I'd love to do so (http://giantsbaseballblog.blogspot.com/). Always want to get as many Giants blogs as I can. Let me know either e-mail me (address on site) or confirm with a response comment or something. Keep up the good work
Martin.
He gets paid to endure the media but I can understand getting mad if someone basically spread untrue things about you to the rest of the world. What if it was reported that you were doing great stuff but then you have to report that you "failed" to the rest of the world? Would it feel good having everyone consider you a failure when you did nothing wrong?
ReplyDeleteIf you'll read again, I didn't say that the Manny rumor was false; I was focused mainly on the media taking their dig on Sabean when I don't think it is warranted. Sure, I would be mad if my friend just got a new one ripped, but then I would tell him that he screwed up too.
I guess I hold the media to a higher standard that perhaps they don't aspire to anymore, I expect them to look at things from the viewpoint of the newsmaker and Sabean has the right to be mad, the Giants participation was made to look like they were doing something when all he did was his usual tire-kicking, but then he and the Giants get presented by the media as this big failure.
And regarding Manny, I don't doubt that the Giants inquired about him, they inquire with almost every top free agent where they might have a need, he appears to try to leave no stone unturned in his pursuit to make the Giants better.
The bigger question is whether the Giants actually offered a contract to Manny as a number of sources have reported. I suspect that the same problem as with Sabathia could be happening again where the Giants are interested but had not done anything yet, but a reporter decides to report Boras's "rumor" that the Giants offered a contract.
Trevor, nice site, I've included your link on my site. Good luck and, most of all, have fun!
Getting mad and getting mad in public are two very different things. Personally, I do whatever I can to avoid working with people who lose their temper with any frequency, and have kicked people off my teams for shouting at others in meetings. It's not just unprofessional, it's juvinile, and to me is indicative of an undisciplined mind and an untrustworthy temperament.
ReplyDeleteGMs, agents, presidents, CEOs, media reps -- all of these people use the press for their own ends and attempt to control the media cycle. If Sabean's upset that somebody else is doing it better than him, he can go be upset in private, but blowing up at diligent and pretty even-handed reporters like Henry Schulman and Andrew Baggerly whenever he's had a bad day just serves to make the organization look bad, look unprofessional, look like a joke. A standard denial would do the job just fine.
I agree with you about avoiding people who like to yell and particularly yell in public.
ReplyDeleteStill, there are many effective and talented people who tend to yell. And the MLB, where there are only so many such GM positions, is the only game in town. Even in my job, I would be hard pressed to find another job that fits my situation as well, so I would put up with a yeller if necessary; luckily, my manager has been great. So reporters have to accept that as part of their job situation, it's not great but it is what it is.
And, while Schulman and Baggarly are diligent and even-handed reporters, it is their fellow journalists at their respective newspapers who add to the hype of "Sabean offering XXX" when there was no such offer made. Sabean don't get to meet regularly with these other people, so Schulman and Baggarly got yelled at as representatives of their fellow reporters who have been reacting to the rumors of an offer as if they were actually true news.
A strong part of any job, whether GM or you or I, is the management of the expectations of your clients and people you work with. Most of us are lucky in that there is no third party reporting on your every movement, real or imagined, and then having them opine on whether you are doing your job correctly.
And yes, that is part of Sabean's job, he has to put up with that as well as the reporters has to put up with him.
Was it juvenile? I think that goes too far, I think calling it unprofessional is apt though.
However, my main point has been that the media still don't understand what Sabean is cranky about and propagates that wrong impression to their readership. He was not mad that the media was discussing what he might do or even that he was doing it wrong. He was mad that the media made it seem like he was doing something (offering CC a contract) when he was not doing that or even close to doing that, apparently.
Yet they continue to act as if he did, and criticize him in public based on that false information. I don't blame him for blowing up at the media for that, it would drive me crazy too and I probably would have blown up about that eventually too. The job is hard enough without reporters making you look bad in the press based on false information. And I'll bet that if Sabean went to the newspapers and asked them nicely not to do that, he would have been laughed at and possibly mocked in print.
It's not an ideal situation or ideal reaction, but I don't blame him as much as I blame the media for passing on "rumors" that are untrue and then reacting to them as if Sabean had actually done that when he did no such thing.
But the CC thing just seemed so completely blown out of proportion. I'm looking at mlbtraderumors.com et al many many times a day and coming here and going to MCCC and Baggs blog, etc. I never saw anything that remotely suggested that CC to the Giants was a done deal. I certainly never saw anybody in the media suggest that they were going to come close to matching the Yankees initial offer, and I never felt there was more than a tiny tiny chance that we'd end up with him.
ReplyDeleteSo who were these people who apparently made it seem "inevitable" that we were going to land him and became "losers" when we didn't. The whole rant was incredibly hyperbolic and was just out of touch with "the lay of the land." I saw a lot of (particularly East coast) media suggest that CC and the Giants would be good fits for each other, but even those kinds of columns based their assumptions on CC giving SF a huge home town discount.
So again, who was being misled? I suppose if a fan really really wanted to believe that CC was going to be a Giant and they filtered everything they read through that fervent hope, they could somehow convince themselves of it. But that certainly wasn't the overall thrust of the coverage, and I have a hard time believing that anybody outside of the SF area (and few within it) believed that he would end up anywhere but in the Bronx.
In fact, my sneaking suspicion is that Brian was actually pissed off at CC, because the report in the Chronicle that day seemed pretty well sourced, naming John Barr directly as expecting to set up a meeting with CC's agent for later that week. Could the front office have convinced itself that it had a shot and then been rebuffed by the Yanks adding 20 million to their offer? And could that really have been the source of Sabean's "crankiness." Hard to say, but his comments that day were totally off base from the way that story had actually been running even in the rumor mill sites.