TERRY MOSHER
I guess its progress. I just don’t know where local sports reporting coverage is progressing. I remember years ago when the Bremerton Sun (now Kitsap Sun) covered just about everything local ever day, including writing pre-game stories.
I know because I was in the center of it as a somewhat young sportswriter back in the 1970s. But that is no more. The Sun now has deadlines imposed on it of 7 p.m. and that means almost all high school games that start at 7 don’t get into the print edition, although some are posted on-line on its Web site.
As someone who is statistic crazy – I compiled for the paper most of the statistics on local high schools in football and basketball and still have them on my computer hard drive – I am lost now that very little of the individual game reports are reported.
If I was 10 years younger, I would collect the information and post it on my Web site – www.sportspaper.org. – but I’m not and I don’t. Still, it makes me sad and wishing for the old days when all the information was there to see and I, for one, could determine from them the stories on players I wanted to write.
No more, though.
What astonishes me is that I have not heard one complain about the absence of the lack of reporting on local games. So maybe I’m wrong in thinking they are important to readers. Guess they are not. But they are important to me, and because of that I’m sad.
More importantly, though, is that for years now newspapers have been dying. It has become more and more difficult for news printed on paper to be profitable. Advertisers that are critical to financial success have peeled off and put their advertising money on-line and as a result newspapers thin out their staff and the paper they publish.
More and more readers are getting their news from their smart phones or from their computers from on-line sites, and they get it quicker. Some of the news that finally is printed on paper is 24 hours old and in a society that gets instant news one-line that doesn’t bode well for newspapers.
This troubling trend may spell doom for freedoms. If the wrong people get to control the Internet they can control the messages that they want society to hear, and if it’s the wrong messages it could seduce the public with fake news.
We already have seen that with the anti-Clinton messages that the Russians bombarded social media with during the last election. It influenced people not to vote for Clinton. If the Russians can do that, why can’t any evil entity? Control the delivery of the message, control minds.
Already, pundits are saying the Seattle Mariners’ loss in the bidding war for Japanese superstar baseball player Shohei Ohtania seriously harms the local team’s chances to make the 2018 playoffs.
Some have compared Ohtania to that of Babe Ruth, who you might remember was a very good pitcher for Boston before becoming the first home run king of baseball with the New York Yankees. Ohtania, like Ruth, can hit and hit with power and he can throw the baseball 100 miles an hour with control.
Ohtania choose to sign with the Angels, turning down the Mariners and others who made solid pitches to him. I don’t see it as damaging the Mariners beyond repair. Baseball is a funny sport because you can win without a true superstar. You need two or three real good pitchers and a solid bullpen to have a good chance to be successful. You don’t need Ohtania. Yeah, he would have helped, but you can do it without him by concentrating on building a good pitching staff. Pitching will nearly always win out.
The problem for the Mariners is that they don’t have that good pitching staff. They could have a good one if James Paxton could stay healthy for a full season and if Mike Leake, acquired from St. Louis, produces. I would at this point have Felix Hernandez as a No. 3 starter. He is no longer an ace pitcher and I’m, predicting he might not even make it through another full season without getting injured. He will be 32 in April and has already thrown over 2500 innings in 13 seasons and it would be foolish to think he will be an effective pitcher for much longer.
The Mariners have a good closer in Edwin Diaz, who will be just 24 in March and saved 34 games last season while striking out 89 in 66 innings with a WHIP of 1.15, which is really good.
So to sum their pitching up, there is a chance to have at least two good starters with a real good closer. If Felix could miraculously return to the form that made him King Felix, I would say the Mariners will not miss missing out on Ohtania.
But don’t count on it.
If the Seattle Seahawks can repeat how they performed last Sunday night in a 24-10 win over the loaded Philadelphia Eagles they have a chance to beat Jacksonville this Sunday. What excited me about last Sunday was that the Seahawks finally came out right from the start and played extremely well on offense, grabbing an early 10-0 lead.
We all know that the one consistent of the Seahawks has been their slow starts. They have had a bad habit of not waking up until the second half, and have had to rely on the Miracle Man, Russell Wilson, to bail them out late.
If they start out fast again against Jacksonville, they could blow out the Jaguars. But I’m not going to hold my breath. You can run on the Jaguars, so if the Seahawks can amp-up a so far poor running game, that would help. Mike Davis, who spent most of the season on the team’s practice squad, is the key player in this scenario. He must have a good game.
As for the Seahawks ability to make the playoffs, I think that depends on them winning the NFC West. The Los Angeles Rams have a game-lead on them (9-3 to 8-4), but as long as the Seahawks win this week and then beat the Rams again next week in Seattle, they will be sitting good at 10 wins with a game at Dallas and home with Arizona left. Win one of those two and those 11 wins should get them in the playoffs.
So we’ll see.
In the meantime, I’m going to get out of the house and go get a milkshake.
Be well pal.
Be careful out there.
Have a great day.
You are loved.
