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Monday, December 01, 2008
Michael Farber
At this point last year, Scott Long put out a piece intended to discuss the link between performance and cocaine, and he used Tim Raines as his jumping off point. Unfortunately for Scott, he wasn’t up on his history, especially when he said:
Doubly unfortunate for Scott, I, being the biggest Raines fan around, read what he said and straightened him out:His best seasons were when he was under the influence. During a period when basestealing was at its peak (1980’s), who is to say that cocaine didn’t have as much to do with this spike as steroids did with the increase in homeruns?
He used cocaine for exactly one year: 1982. That was his WORST year. He went to management in the offseason, he told them he was going into rehab, and Michael Farber (then of the Montreal Gazette, now of SI) wrote an award-winning piece on Tim Raines’, with full access to Raines. If Raines said he did cocaine only in 1982, and he’s been clean since, and since this happens to coincide with his worst year, I don’t think you should be saying otherwise.
Scott replied that he appreciated the history lesson, but he added:
I’m still not sure I believe his use ended after this one season… I guess the whole story of Raines using coke for a year, it being his downfall, and then him getting off it and everything going in an upswing seems a bit TV movie
To which I replied:
It may be TV movie, but that’s exactly what happened. 1981 was his first full year. He was #2 in ROY! Playing 88 out of 108 games (81%) qualifies as a full year to me. Can you name me any pro athlete who is under 25, voluntarily enters rehab, and then opens himself up completely right after? I suggest you read the award-winning article by Michael Farber in the Montreal Gazette (go to your local library), or pick up the book: “The Way It Looks from Here” which contains this story among many other Canadian sports stories. Your inferences, as applied to Raines, simply are invalid. They are based on group data, and are irrelevant in this case.
That was just to recap what happens when you aren’t as involved in the subject matter as your readers. Scott took it on the chin and (mostly) accepted the facts as we laid it out.
In an email exchange with someone else who is a baseball writer, I asked if he read the award-winning Farber article that came out following that 1982 season. That person replied that yeah he did, but took the article with a grain of salt, casting dispersions on Michael Farber as a writer. Adrien Dater, the Avalanche’s long-time hockey writer was asked to name his top writers, and he lists Farber on his list whereby he says:
Michael Farber of Sports Illustrated is one of the best writers—forget about just hockey—that I’ve ever read.
Anyway, I don’t have much of a point other than to say I love Michael Farber as a sports and human-interest writer (*), I was proud to have been able to read him since I was a teenager, including reading the Raines story as-it-happened, am glad that some respected writer wrote to the world Farber is also a great writer, and wanted to give an extra punch back to Scott and the unnamed writer for not being up on their history and/or not respecting a great writer, and questioning without basis Raines’ integrity.
(*)Joe Posnanski take note that while you are the best now, you may not yet be the best ever.(**)
(**)I love using the Pozterisk when the subject matter is Poz himself.
Being an avid Baseball Toaster member, I would like to add that you can’t take anything too serious that Scott Long writes. I think he writes 99% of his stuff just to get a rise in people. His stories are usually laiden with errors and poor logic. He is a comedian by trait and by no means a serious sports analyst/blogger. He is the person that Murray Chasse described in his rant last year. I am sad that a fine group of baseball blogs on the Baseball Toaster would get any bad press because of Scott Long. Dodger Thoughts, The Griddle and Cardboard Gods are three of the best sports blogs you will find out there.
vr, Xei