Not sure how much of this story my readers have followed, but its a pretty big deal, and one I don’t mind carrying the mantle for a bit.

Jerrod Morris, a blogger for MidwestSportsFans.com wrote a piece at the end of last week trying to explain Raul Ibanez’s torrid start to the season to a buddy.  This particular post though mentioned the friends speculation that the player was on steroids.  Unfortunately, that’s the only part of the story that got out, and Raul Ibanez is not happy and emphatically denied the ever using a performance enhancing drug.  He dismissed the comments because of who they were from:

“It was done by a blogger- not a journalist who was digging for something - by a person who thinks out loud” (quote from the New York Daily News’s Matt Gagne)

And yes, that is essentially what a blogger is.  As Joe Posnanski writes Morris essentially “took the whispers above ground.”  Morris goes on to make his case, but shows that park factors and pitcher factors can’t quite account for it.  Did he go talk to Ibanez, no.  Ibanez in his rebuttal makes his case, he says I’m in a smaller park in a better line-up, all of which any of us that watch baseball everyday essentially know helps. He handles it beautifully.   And look at Mark Teixeira with Alex Rodriguez in the line-up.  No one is writing about suspicians of Tex doing anything.

But with newspapers diminishing, “journalists” are getting really scared of the bloggers.  There is a freedom to blogging.  We can write about what we want to write about when we want to write it.  We can write as long or as short as we want.  In some cases, we never have to face the person we wrote about.  But here is the thing, if we- the bloggers that is- are doing this the “right way” we are holding our selves accountable.  Jerrod Morris didn’t come out and say he knows Ibanez is on steroids, he made the point that there are whispers, and its hard to prove a negative.  If Jerrod Morris had been around in 1998, perhaps the last decade of baseball would be different.  Perhaps journalists would have started “digging for something” then.  Instead, “journalists”  like Mike Lupica looked at that season and wrote a book glorifying the events, when he should have been questioning them.

Are there bloggers who don’t take their platform seriously? Are there bloggers who know they will never meet any of these folks so they don’t care what they say? Sure. But as someone who blogs everyday, but also moves around players, scouts, and the media regularly, I know that I am accountable for what I write.  I also love this game and am careful when writing anything that could hurt it.

I had a long email exchange with Jay Alves, media director for the Rockies during spring training.  (As I write this I struggle with the idea of whether I should print his name or not- and the answer is it depends on exactly the words that I choose to follow that sentence.) His concern is protecting his players from that mythical guy who is read by only his family and just wants to get in the locker room to get his picture taken with Garret Atkins. I mean it is free to start a blog, afterall, so if that’s all it takes to get a press pass, then he has to let anyone in. But he doesn’t.  The standards for press passes do not have to be that low.

A well run blog is a business.  It has to be updated regularly and it has to have an audience, and there are a myriad of ways to check to see what kind of an audience a baseball website has besides asking the blogger to prove it.  The bloggers that garner a decent size audience have two things: they have a point of view, and they have some ethics. (The probably also can write reasonably well.)  A crazy blogger might have a few days of high traffic numbers if he/she says something outrageous, but that is not sustainable- and its very hard, as any journalist will tell you, to write something fresh and interesting every day.

Am I unbiased like a journalist should be? rarely.  That is also the joy of the blogger.

And that is what can help baseball.  If we write about our team, we can share our love of the game.  We can root in our own proverbial press box.  We give voice to those whispers sometimes.  We validate the things that other people who love baseball think about the game.   And just like the New York Daily News or the New York Post, we sometimes write headlines to get people to read our writing.

Sure, Morris puts out there a terrible accusation.  And sure it should make Raul Ibanez very upset.  But as I say often, its the job of the blogger to raise the conversation- and maybe it is to raise the conversation above a whisper.  Should bloggers not be able to suggest what those in the stands are saying? If you say yes, you are missing the point.  Ibanez has an opportunity now.  He has the opportunity to in word and deed show the world what he stands for.  Instead of fans, and even those in baseball, raising their eyebrows when his name is mentioned - and don’t think that does not happen- he has the opportunity to get things out in the open. He can show his teammates, and others in MLB just how this story line should end.

And it should not be with the banning of bloggers.

Instead of pushing the bloggers away, bring them in.  Let them see how hard you work. Let them see the day in the life.  Newspapers are losing their sports sections because people don’t need game stories anymore.  They want to know who these players are.  They want to understand how one gets that good at a game.  Its the story bloggers try to write but can’t because of access, and its the story newspapers only print on the off-day.  Look at the self-help shelves in a book store.  There are thousands of books about what makes someone succeed.  As Morris points out, there are a myriad of factors in this game that lead to success- park size, pitching matchups- why leave those with the most freedom to write about the negatives, let them write about the other reasons you are succeeding.

While newspaper editors are asking their beat writers to write the same story day in and day out, bloggers can talk about what is exciting in fresh ways.  We aren’t limited to a word count. We aren’t limited to a format.  We can write about the tiniest part of the game or we can write about it from a birds eye view, and we don’t have to convince anyone that this is “news”.  If we love our team, we can only write the good stuff, we don’t have to be unbiased.  And if we want to stick around, we know we have to build relationships not tear them down.

If Morris is smart, he is reaching out to Ibanez, and if Ibanez is smart he is reaching out to Morris.  Continue the conversation.  Don’t leave it to the folks leaving a comment on a message board.  Find the blogger speaking out and help them get your truth out.

Because here is another advantage bloggers have over journalists.  We don’t get promoted by writing another scathing story or digging up the dirt.  Sometimes there are benefits to that, but we don’t get questioned in our yearly review because we wrote too many ‘nice guy’ pieces.  So, Mr. Alves and anyone else listening, bloggers are telling you what the people really want to hear.  If you aren’t listening to them, you just aren’t listening.