By Jeff Moss
July 10, 2011
DetroitSportsRag@gmail.com
Dear Tortured Readers of the Detroit Free Press Sports Section,
On Saturday morning I got out of bed up and decided to catch up on everything I missed over at the “Land of 140 Characters” while I was asleep.
When I signed into my account I noticed that ESPN.com Insider Keith Law was Tweeting away about various baseball topics in real time.
So I decided to send a message to the Mothership’s™ (Dan Patrick) senior baseball writer so I could get his reaction to Drew Sharp’s column this past Friday regarding Jair Jurjjens.
I wanted to get Law’s opinion on Sharp’s take for two reasons. One, I figured that the former Toronto Blue Jays executive would get a pretty good chuckle from Sharp’s atrocious rationalization.
Secondly, I was interested in Keith’s opinion of Jurjjen’s as I find Law to be one of the brightest baseball minds writing today. We are talking about a guy who was openly mocking Jim Leyland during the 2006 playoffs for penciling in Neifi Perez and Alexis Gomez’s name to the Tigers lineup card.
I dare you to find another sole alive who didn’t write for THIS website that was critical of Cancer Stick during the ‘06 season. Law has also ripped Emaciated Adolf repeatedly for his proclivity to put losers with career on-base percentages of .265 in the #2 and #3 slots in the Tigers batting order.
I could go on and on espousing the virtues of Law, but it would probably be easier to just say this:
He is Bizarro Jon Paul Morosi.
Anyway, Law read Sharp’s piece on Jar Jar and of course was as dumbfounded as the rest of us sane Tigers fans. He actually called it a “hit piece.” I then sent him MY rebuttal to Not the Sharpest Drew’s latest journalistic abomination.
What Law seemed most interested in though was the throwaway line near the end of my attack on Sharp when I mentioned that the Freep columnist had authored a column about Justin Verlander’s May no-hitter which he clearly didn’t watch.
The ESPN baseball expert requested that I send him my column in which I alleged that Sharp couldn’t possibly have been viewing the JV no-no based on certain FACTUAL mistakes in his article.
So I forwarded it to him and Law thought I had made an interesting case and wondered if I had heard from Sharp’s editors or anyone at the Free Press about my contention.
I was kind of embarrassed to admit that I really didn’t do much of anything to get to the bottom of Receding Hair Line Gate. Other than sending some emails to local newspaper employees and alerting them of my allegations and Tweeting to @drewsharp my opinion of his factually incorrect trash, I didn’t do jack shit.
I figured no one at the Freep cared because they DIDN’T EVEN BOTHER TO TAKE THE COLUMN DOWN OR ISSUE SOME SORT OF RETRACTION OR APOLOGY.
But Law’s inquiry into the ordeal made me rethink everything. For the first time in a few weeks I clicked on the link to Sharp’s May 7th column and much to my surprise, THE FREE PRESS FINALLY TOOK THE COLUMN DOWN!
If you try to punch-up the article you will get a message from Freep.com that states, “Unfortunately, that page could not be found.”
Now, I thought maybe the Freep just doesn’t do a good job of archiving recent posts and that was the reason for the broken link. But I clicked on a ton of other recent Sharp columns and they all WORKED.
I even resorted to doing random Google searches like, “Drew Sharp & Matt Millen” and “Drew Sharp & Steve Yzerman” and found WORKING links to columns dating back to 2007.
So it appears that the Free Press is trying to make this issue disappear, but I am not going down without a fight.
I plan on sending a letter to the Free Press’ sports editor, Gene Myers, demanding an answer to my original questions regarding Sharp’s May 7th piece:
How could anyone mistake a line drive shot off of Verlander’s pitching arm for a “weak tap between the mound and third base”?
If you were actually WATCHING THE GAME how could you possible write that there was “nothing controversial” about the day’s events when Toronto’s manager (John Farrell) came out of the dugout to vehemently argue the umpire’s safe call on that Edwin Encarnacion bang-bang play at first?
I mean, if Richard Bernstein was “watching” that game in the Fox Sports Detroit “Call Sam Studios”, even he would have known that there is no way in hell that Sharp was tuned in to the early portion of that Tigers/Blue Jays matchup.
I would love to get to the bottom of this so I implore you to contact Myers and beg him for a response.
You can email him at sports@freepress.com or send him a message on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1728502614.
I would also request that you badger Sharp on Twitter or email him at dsharp@freepress.com until he responds to us as well.
Or you can sit on your hands and let this LAZY hack continue to write columns about:
1) Games he doesn’t watch.
2) The Pistons management even though his relative is a Vice-President (Scott Perry) and he never discloses that fact.
3) Jair Jurjjens trade not being a bad one for Detroit because he would only be a .500 pitcher in the American League even though his ERA against the Junior Circuit since his trade to Atlanta is 1.34!!!!!!!
And finally his latest masterpiece on Sunday in which the headline screamed, “Ohio State’s slap on the wrist doesn’t help Michigan State or Michigan.”
Just HOURS after that column was posted on the Freep.com, the Wolverines procured a commitment from FIVE-STAR offensive lineman recruit Kyle Kalis.
You see, Mr. Kalis is from Lakewood, OHIO. And this huge man-child is rated the SIXTH BEST OFFENSIVE TACKLE IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
But it gets better. Kalis had ORIGINALLY agreed to attend THEE Ohio State University, but rescinded his 2012 commitment when the whole Jim Tressel fiasco occurred.
This switcheroo would be enough to mock Sharp, but when coupled with the fact that Brady Hoke has practically built his outstanding 2012 recruiting class in the state of Oh-hi-Oh™ (Neil Young) …..
Ahhh, forget it, U of M and MSU aren’t benefitting from the troubles in Columbus. No, not at all.
PLEASE HELP ME WITH THIS PROJECT AND EMAIL GENE MYERS TODAY!!!!!!
Sincerely,
Moss