“[Baseball beat writers] spend countless days crammed into coach and countless nights in crappy hotels.” If you think having to fly coach disqualifies your job from being a pretty nice gig, then you might actually have a pretty nice gig.

“Their hours suck: 3pm to midnight.” Please.

“They make a couple of trips to Cincinnati (or Arlington, or Kansas City, or Detroit) every year.” You mean they don’t like every single one of the places they travel to? How horrible! I realize that there’s some levity in your remark, but if you can make that kind of joke, you might actually have a pretty nice gig.

“And their audience either thinks they’re supercilious pricks or pathetic suck ups.” What’s this about painting in broad strokes? Also, if you get to write/talk about something interesting and have an audience that cares what you write/say, your gig might not be so bad.

“Oh, and earning about 140 times less per year than people like Curt Schilling. If they’re lucky.” Curt Schilling makes about $13,000,000 per year. 140 times less than that is still about 93 thousand a year.

“But for the most part, there’s an enormous amount of accountability in the media — more so, I might add, then [sic] in the world of professional athletes…” Dude, there’s more accountability in the world of schoolchildren than in the world of pro athletes. Members of the media, even the sports media, ought to be incommensurably more accountable than guys who play a ball game. This shouldn’t have to be said. Imagine if Schilling criticized doctors for lack of accountability, and imagine listening to a doctor point out how “for the most part” there’s an enormous amount of accountability in the medical profession and how much more accountable doctors are than ball players. Would you be reassured?

So come on. Schilling’s characterization of the media is hyperbolic and overgeneral, but I don’t think your post is such a good response, either.

And you’re going to have to try a lot harder to make following a team around, watching them play games and then writing about it, sound like a bad job. Especially when you don’t have to write accurately to keep that job…off the top of my head, I’m thinking of CHB’s wildly wrong predictions in the 2004 playoffs (the Sox are toast), 2005 season (the Sox have a lock on the division) and last year’s AFC title game.

Anyway, from reading the entire blog entry, I’m not sure how many of Schilling’s comments were directed toward the media as a whole and how many were meant for the “subset” of the media he addressed in the second paragraph. He’s been pretty consistent about mentioning that there are good people in the media everytime he goes off on what he considers the bad ones.

Oh, and why the big slam at Cincinnati? It’s not so bad here.

Good point — about Cincinnati. Some of my favorite cousins are from there.
– Seth