OT: Telander Interview

by gary varsho on Jun 28, 2008 8:00 PM CDT

Given the nearly-forgotten controversy over his 2008 HOF ballot, and his recent spat with Jay the Joke, Rick Telander has been in the threads around here a bit. Well, he "sat down" with a sports blogger this past week and gave a pretty nice interview, ranging from his thoughts on how the Cubs have grown such a large fanbase:

The Bears are the unifying factor, but the Cubs are insane - the reason being that every young person who moves to Chicago, moves to the North Side-somewhere in Lincoln Park, Wicker Park, Lakeview, Wrigleyville, Evanston, Bucktown, near DePaul - always the North side.

To the odd conditions under which he came to The Sun-Times:

I was hired away from Sports Illustrated in 1995 because Mariotti had been suspended by the Sun-Times and was out of the paper. I was told by then-sports editor Rick Jaffe, "He will never be back. Never." That’s why I took the job. He got an attorney, got busted down to reporter and somehow came back.

to his opinion of Mike North:

Instigators like North who take things out of context and screech are hard to deal with, since you have to set the record straight with facts, again and again. If people can’t understand nuance and hyperbole and symbolism, I don’t think they should read and make judgments.

And about that supposedly Dawson-indicting HOF ballot:

I show my readers what I do each year - hence alarmists seemed to think I had killed Andre Dawson with an axe this year, since I didn’t vote in protest over Selig’s head in sand on steroids. But unsent ballots don’t count against percentage needed to get in....I got Dawson’s number and called him - he was angry, but so was I over this disinformation - and I said, "Did you read my column?" and he said, "No, someone was going to send it to me but I didn’t get it." So I read my column to Dawson over the phone. "Now I see what you mean," he said.

All in all, a neat read and a interesting look into Telander's career. It's a shame he's the one getting censored by The Sun-Times whilst Mariotti is allowed to publish whatever puerile bullsh*t he dreams up.

This is a FanPost and does not necessarily reflect the views of SB Nation or Al Yellon, managing editor (unless it's a FanPost posted by Al). FanPost opinions are valued expressions of opinion by passionate and knowledgeable baseball fans.

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Thanks for this

Nice to see a big-wig talk with a blogger, as opposed to how they usually react to the whole idea of non-trained journalists blogging. :-P

A baseball game is simply a nervous breakdown divided into nine innings. ~Earl Wilson

by halfblindcubbiegirl on Jun 29, 2008 2:14 AM CDT reply actions

Where's the link to the quotes?

Where did these come from?

"That's my opinion and if you don't like it, well, I have others." ~ Groucho Marx

by Al Yellon on Jun 29, 2008 4:00 AM CDT reply actions

The Source

is www.thebiglead.com with the interview available at http://thebiglead.com/?p=6413 ... this is the same site that Jason Whitlock talked to and lost his job at ESPN a few years ago…they do a lot of talking to sports media writers, relative to other sites…

Proudly waving the Cubbie Blue from Northern Missouri! GO CUBS GO!

by Tater01 on Jun 29, 2008 7:11 AM CDT up reply actions

Thanks for the link.

"That's my opinion and if you don't like it, well, I have others." ~ Groucho Marx

by Al Yellon on Jun 29, 2008 7:39 AM CDT up reply actions

Gah.

Sorry the link didn’t come through. All apologies. It’s been fixed.

"I've always felt that starting pitching is the most important part of the rotation." - Joe Morgan, Sunday Night Baseball 8-12-07

by gary varsho on Jun 29, 2008 8:41 AM CDT up reply actions

Telander reminds me a lot of Steve Stone. Both arrogant and thin skinned. People read Mariotti, whether they like him or not. Jay maye be a jerk, but he sells papers. No one really reads Rick’s columns and talks about them.

by cubswin on Jun 29, 2008 9:45 AM CDT reply actions

Actually, maybe I'm the only one,

but I can’t remember the last Mariotti column I read; I make a point of reading Telander’s. Telander was awful on radio, but he’s a good sportswriter, and unklike Jay, he actually reaches out to the athletes instead of cowering in the pressbox, or peering down from the ivory tower.

"I've always felt that starting pitching is the most important part of the rotation." - Joe Morgan, Sunday Night Baseball 8-12-07

by gary varsho on Jun 29, 2008 9:48 AM CDT up reply actions

*unlike

"I've always felt that starting pitching is the most important part of the rotation." - Joe Morgan, Sunday Night Baseball 8-12-07

by gary varsho on Jun 29, 2008 9:49 AM CDT up reply actions

+1

I also find Telander a bit elitist for my taste. Remember his stint on the SCORE? He always seemed filled with such self-righteousness about everything, and if you didn’t agree with him, you were basically ignorant.

I find his writing hack-y and unpolished also. He is the undisputed master of the sentence fragment.

"The ever-changing kaleidescope of raw reality would defeat the human mind by its complexity, except for the mind's ability to abstract, to pick out parts and think of them as the whole." -Thomas Sowell

"Whoo, boy! Next time around, bring me back my stomach!" -Jack Brickhouse

by Goodie1969 on Jun 29, 2008 10:00 AM CDT up reply actions

We will just have to disagree about Rick Telander and his value as a columnist. To each his own.

by cubswin on Jun 29, 2008 9:52 AM CDT reply actions

Rick is a nice guy in person

Not at all arrogant or elitist. OK, so he does live in Lake Forest, and he does jet off to Switzerland for skiing vacations, but were I a highly paid author, I’d probably do the same thing. The surprising thing is that he doesn’t appear to be affected by all that.

As for his columns, I think he and Mariotti form a good contrast. Rick is the essayist, Jay is the bulldog. That said, I can’t stand Mariotti because of his sky-is-falling tone all the time and his avoidance of facing the objects of his ire in print.

by Not Bruce Froemming on Jun 29, 2008 2:23 PM CDT reply actions