The Buried Lead In The Milton Bradley Saga

Until Crazy Uncle Milton says his official goodbye, this will be the final time The Big Dead Sidebar writes about Milton Bradley.

Celebrate accordingly.

I have defended Bradley, the baseball player, throughout this season.  Honestly, if his name was not associated with a board game, Cubs fans would have been thrilled to add a guy who led the American League in OPS.  However, there was no defending Milton Bradley, the person.

But this isn't about that.  No.  The upcoming post is about something bigger than that.  Bigger than that, you ask?  Follow me after the jump.

The buried lead in the entire Milton Bradley fiasco is the fact that it all came about thanks to the damn good reporting of the Daily Herald's Bruce Miles.  For those of you keeping score at home, Bruce Miles is the Cubs beat writer for the Daily Herald, located in Arlington Heights, Ill., a suburb of Chicago.  So, take note that the byline that started it all did not appear in the Chicago Tribune or Chicago Sun-Times.

(I'm not saying Paul Sullivan couldn't have done it, but MB was going Drew Rosenhaus on his ass during interviews.  Gordon Wittenmyer is a joke, and I'm assuming CST employs him as it bides its time 'til yours truly returns home. I digress.)

Why is this a big deal?  It's a big deal because like most newspapers in the country, the Daily Herald is having its own money issues.  To help offset costs, it has stopped sending its beat writers on road trips.  As noted by Andy Dolan of Desipio, this is a terrible disservice to the newspaper and the people that read the newspaper -- also known as the people that newspapers once catered to.

At the tender age of 23, I learned that valuable lesson at my old college newspaper stomping grounds.  Our sports desk was slashed in half to three.  As the staff shrunk, so did the column inches.  Eventually, so did the travel budget.  In fact, our bi-weekly paychecks served as the travel budget as the staff traveled to more Midwestern college towns than College Drunkfest.

It's true, sending a beat writer can be quite an expense, but in my humble opinion, it was the price worth paying to get the entire story.  Not just what we could see on television or hear on the radio. Trust me, it's hard to get a scoop when you're sitting in a newsroom or somewhere on campus when the real action is hundreds of miles away

The dateline in The Story shows that Miles found a way down I-55 to get to El Casa De Albert to get the story that helped bring down the Bradley Era.  Miles should probably get something equivalent to a medal of honor from the baseball scribes of America.  And if he traveled to St. Louis on his own time, he should get two.  Think about it like this, had Miles not been on that trip, would this have happened?  Dealing Bradley -- definitely would have happened.  But not in this nut-busting fashion.

It's the crash and burn ending many fans wanted Bradley to have from the get-go.  And to think, it would not have happened if Bruce Miles had not taken one fateful trip to St. Louis.


Here's to you Bruce.  Despite the efforts of colleagues such as Jay Mariotti, Rick Morrissey and Phil Rogers, your extraordinary effort shows why good sports journalism will not die.

Is ESPN Killing The Sports Page?

ESPN is killing off the local sports page.  There, I said it.  Someone had to say it.

When ESPN launched its Chicago site in the spring, it was met with mixed emotions.  It starts with good intentions as the site features a bunch of Chicago content that I wouldn't usually be able to catch on SportsCenter.  On the other hand, the launch just up-and-stole the all-important readers and the one thing that is apparently more important than readers: Ad revenue.

So, while newspaper honchos spent all that energy fighting bloggers and trying to figure out how non-newspaper people are running the newspaper industry, ESPN comes through the back door, takes what it wants and makes you like it.

The World Wide Leader in sports will be launching ESPNBoston.com in September, along with hyperlocal sites in Dallas, Los Angeles and New York in the coming future.

Which, of course begs the following question.

Don't we have ESPNBostodallangelyork already in the form of good ol' ESPN?

It won't be long until ESPN is pillaging your village and taking your women swaggerjackin' your favorite writers from your local paper.

The Official Mike Reis Appreciation Blog

College basketball's championship week is one of the best weeks in the world of sports.

I feel as if the best part of the week is listening to the audio from the winning team's radio station over the televised highlights. Yet, when DePaul beat Cincinnati, ending its imperfect Big East Conference season, I was disturbed by the play-by-play call from the Blue Demons radio network.

If I were to wake up from a coma and that was the first thing I would have listened to, I would have thought the Blue Demons won the national title. And while avoiding a winless conference season is a miracle in its own right, it didn't deserve the kind of call it received.

I shouldn't have expected more, seeing that it was the Blue Demons radio network that asked Dan Bernstein to ease on his criticism of the Catholic church when it was having its problems with its priests allegedly diddling children.

So, today, all I could think about was about how much I appreciated Mike Reis, the Voice of the Salukis.

Before you ask, no, this isn't me being a homer. And no, it's not about me kissing Mike's ass because we're both media members. This is about what makes a great sports broadcaster.

Do you know why Cubs fans loved Steve Stone? He spoke the truth. He called out the team's shortcomings on the field and in the front office. He didn't toe the company line ... he stomped on it and basically spoke the frustrations of Cubdom.

Same for Len Kasper and Bob Brenly. It's so straightforward, it's painfully pleasing. By all accounts, Brenly would have been axed by many networks moments after saying you could throw a dart in the Cubs' clubhouse and find a better defender than Alfonso Soriano. That's something this era of sports broadcasters would not approach. In fact, they fear it and would be more likely to coddle Soriano's defensive deficiencies than knock them.

And that's not the way journalists are supposed to be. Because, that's what play-by-play and color analysts are supposed to be, in principle, broadcast journalists.

That's why Reis is great. He won't give you the "homer" call of Saluki basketball. If someone's not having a good shooting night, Reis would likely say he doesn't want the ball in their hand. If there's a questionable coaching decision, Reis is the kind of broadcaster that will first-guess the choice, instead of second-guess it.

So, sports fans, appreciate guys like Reis, Kasper and Brenly. Thankfully, they'll be around for a while because most announcers like them are riding off into the sunset.

BREAKING: Jay Mariotti resigns and what that means to you and me

Look, it's 2:40 a.m. and I should be sleeping.

But this is when I do the Daily Dosage. I Google search beautiful girls, recap the Cubs and Sox games and find cool links for you people to read.

No, this site doesn't get much pub other than the people that get the links on Facebook, know me personally or know my work through a friend or a co-worker.

So I usually don't break news this early in the morning but I must...

Jay Mariotti is out at the Chicago Sun-Times, via resignation.

Why wait until the World Wide Leader covers it? Why wait 'til one of the big-time sports blogs cover it? I say do it now because dad gum it, I'm a blogger whose focus has been on Chicago sports since I came out the womb.

Anyway, on with the news of the day.

Mariotti's out. This from the Sun-Times:

Sports columnist Jay Mariotti has left the Chicago Sun-Times to pursue other opportunities. Mariotti, also a regular panelist on ESPN's "Around the Horn," joined the Sun-Times in 1991.

But wait, I could have sworn Mariotti just re-upped with The Bright One...that's right he did...in June.

This from the Chicago Tribune:

He said that he "is talking with a lot of Web sites'' and added that the future of his business "sadly is not in newspapers.''

Do you know what this means people?

Put your hatred aside and think about it. The most polarizing force in Chicago sports media is talking with Web sites and not with newspapers.

Think about it.

Everyday we talk about the dying media that is newspapers. And by "we" I mean everyone at the Daily Egyptian, professors in the journalism department and my friends and family.

If a character like Jay Mariotti needs to hit the Web to get across, people like myself are fucked. And you might think I'm going off the deep end. But we (those of us in the sports journalism) are fucked!

The business is no longer in newspapers? That's all I've wanted to do with my life since I was young.

But wait, there's more:

"I'm a competitor and I get the sense this marketplace doesn't compete,'' he said. "Everyone is hanging on for dear life at both papers. I think probably the days of high stakes competition in Chicago are over.

"To see what's happened in this business...I don't want to go down with it.''

Since I was a kid I've always wanted to be a sports journalist. All I've ever wanted to do is write sports in my hometown (Chicago). Harry Caray, the great Cubs announcer and my idol, told me that one day I'd make it.

He was probably drunk. Or maybe he had an eye on the blondes behind me in search of his "autograph." The point is that I was young and impressionable, and I'll be damned if I don't fulfill the prophecy given to me by my idol.

The worst news (AND THE BURIED LEAD) is that Chicago is going to become a one newspaper town. Everyone suffers when there's no competition. When there's no competition, you tend to become complacent. You settle for less than your best. I, for one, will NOT stand for mediocre sports journalism!

Currently, I'm Assistant Sports Editor at the Daily Egyptian, the student newspaper of Southern Illinois University Carbondale, and you can ask anyone that has known me since I was a freshman at SIUC, my goal from day one was to work on the DE's sports desk.

And it's been four years in the making but I'm finally here. And believe me, it was worth waiting the four "next year's" to be here.

If it wasn't for Sean McGahan, who was the managing editor when he recruited me even though he couldn't guarantee me a spot on the sports desk, and Jeff Engelhardt (our incoming hoops expert) who gave me my first shot at the DE sports desk, I wouldn't be where I am today.

So while I realize that blog commenters and critics will rejoice and pop a bottle like they were members of the 1972 Dolphins, realize that the face of sports journalism is changing.

And that's why I'm here. Check it. That's why we're here at The Big Dead Sidebar, and elsewhere.

I realize now I've gone off course, but understand the idea that the newspaper industry is slumping and when a top columnist (love him or hate him) resigns to take opportunities elsewhere because what he's doing "is not with newspapers," bothers me.

If you're a sports journalist out there, it should bother you too.