THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

As some of you who are in the business or do interviews like these already know, when they quote you in an article (with quotation marks), that is not actually what you said.  You do an interview for anywhere from a half an hour to an hour and a half, then the writer of the article makes up some quotes that may or may not coincide with what you said. I don’t know if that is ethical or not, but it seems to be the norm.  Unless I don’t remember exactly what it is I said, which is always possible.

I would be surprised if ESPN is deliberately fabricating quotes out of whole cloth. Obviously there is selective quoting going on in any article, and some allowances for correcting grammatical/etc. errors are usually taken (although those SHOULD be indicated typographically, using brackets), but it is highly unethical to quote somebody as saying something they actually didn’t say.

I wish I had taped all these interviews.  I have done maybe 20 interviews for articles in my lifetime about various things (not just baseball) and in virtually all of them, they seem to take the “gist” of what I said and then construct a quote.

As I said, I can’t swear to that, but that is what it seems when I read the quotes.  Not only do I not recall that I said that, but it is something I would not exactly say.

It doesn’t bother me and I assume that is standard procedure, at least when quoting experts on specific matters, as opposed to quoting a politician or a sports or entertainment celebrity.  IOW, when it doesn’t really matter exactly what someone says, they just make up quotes from the “gist” of what that person said.  If it might matter, then they have to make sure they get the quote exactly right.  I assume that is the way it works.

For example, in the ESPN article, it says I said, “We’re in a period where the curve, in terms of the difference that advanced analysis can make, is getting steeper.”

I don’t think I said that.  I don’t even know exactly what that means.

... which is one reason that all my interviews are via email.  I control what I want to say, how I want to say it, and I have a complete recording of it.  And if the interviewer only quotes one or two things, I can then release my entire response set online.

If someone is interviewing me about an article on me, I expect them to get my quotes right. If I am just commenting on some subject, I don’t really care if they get the quotes exactly correct, and apparently neither do they…