Baseball Question for Charlotte Observer readers?

I would like to see more local coverage of baseball, too....lots more. Local media may judge the interest in HS baseball along the line of attendance. Compare attendance at HS and college football and basketball versus HS and college baseball. Football and basketball draw fans and baseball (even premier programs) only draw a handful of fans comparitively. Maybe the Observer thinks there is only marginal interest in baseball and that justifies minimal coverage.

Local TV media cover HS sports some and have dedicated Friday night HS football wrapup shows, but no interest in baseball whatsoever.

That doesn't mean I wouldn't like to see more baseball coverage...I surely would, but I see how the paper may have other priorities based on who they think have certain interests.

TV doesn't do baseball much. My guess is that it doesn't move their needle. Baseball doesn't get the online hits at our website that at least four other sports do. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't cover it.

I try to get some games done every week, but I think the general interest stories about the players playing has greater appeal. I wrote a game story about Charlotte Christian in Wednesday's paper. It wasn't even top 10 in sports. I wrote a feature about Christian star Ty Linton Friday and it was the 7th most hit story on our entire website and No. 1 in sports.

 

Really? We covered Mallard Creek-West Meck today and have done Garinger this year more than either AK or Dence.

 

Coach on a typical game night, we can have as many as 300 people at once calling the main numbers. We don't have 300 phone answerers. It's frustrating I know. That's why we have asked people to report via other methods, which you probably are aware of.

 

I wonder what they are thinking over there. On Saturday they gave a huge space and coverage to a 47-44 softball game between West Charlotte and Vance and called it an outstanding game (back & forth on the score). In reality, neither team could play the game as evidenced by the fact that 91 runs were scored on only 30 hits. One team walked 22 and committed almost that many errors. Anyone that knows anything about baseball or softball knows that was an very painful game to watch as it was butchered with walks and errors and I'm sure countless other misplays.

That story about West Charlotte and Vance, which ended up getting picked up by several national outlets, ran on a Sunday. I write a column every Sunday about my observations from the week. I never said it was an outstanding game, but it did set a N.C. record for runs. Every time we write, it shouldn't be about the best teams in every sport. Otherwise, we tend to write about the same teams alot (which we are criticized on this board a great deal for).

Garinger has not exactly excelled against what anyone would classify as a solid baseball school. Meanwhile the top 5 teams in the I-meck are in a dogfight and the only coverage I recall for I meck was a slaughter of Vance by Hopewell. Is it that hard to look at the standings and cover games with impact and reader appeal. Is that not one of the first lessons taught in journalism school?

When we were covering Garinger, they were in the running for an upper tier spot in their league and were in the midst of a big win streak, the longest the school had in years. It was a neat moment for them. Meanwhile, we had notebooks and other features charting the chase of the I-MECK and we covered some games.

Sometimes online, you'll see a headline for a story but that story may have lots of notes in it. So I'm guessing sometimes you all miss the notes. It's easy to see in the print version or the online "E" edition, but on the plain online, you need to click a few things, I guess, that you might not otherwise. There's some coverage you're missing.

 

Absolutely no press? I find that hard to believe. Perhaps we weren't able to write a story about you, but each season, we've done a lot about baseball and a whole lot when the postseason hit.

 

We covered a I-MECK team vs. a MEGA team. When my deadline came for the roundup, we didn't have any other conferences who had reported to us yet. Some reported after my deadline. I went with what I had. Sorry.

 

Thanks for taking so many bullets

Langston,

Thanks for having the courage to take so many bullets here and respond. I admire you for it. That said, I still think the baseball coverage is lousy at best. With a smattering of other games here and there, the coverage is almost exclusively Ardrey Kell, Providence and Charlotte Christian with a healthy dose of unexplainable coverage of teams that don't really play the game (Harding, Garinger, etc). I know it's a manpower thing, but I about threw up when I read the huge spread on the 47-44 softball game, touting it as a fantastic game when anyone that knows baseball or softball knows it was horrendous to watch as it was painfully full of misplays, walks and errors. That coverage slot and manpower could have covered East Rowan, Mooresville, Lake Norman or Mallard Creek.

I know being grumpy and fussy about it won't change anything, but I did want to acknowledge your courage to step up and answer some of our collective complaints.

 

I'm sorry you think the coverage is bad. We are trying. But I find it interesting whenever people smash our coverage they say we cover THOSE THREE SCHOOLS all the the time at the expense of everyone else except schools that they say "don't know how to play." It's almost a counter argument. You want us to cover the teams winning all the time. That would be the same collection of schools, which you all sometimes rail on us for.

No matter how much we cover Hopewell or Catholic, people, whenever they see coverage of THOSE THREE SCHOOLS, will say, "See, I told you so. There they go again."

In reality, I think this is what happens. We present the coverage as the regular season plays out. We cover five days of Easter tournaments with photos and multiple game coverage (did you all miss that?). We cover 4-5 games per week from multiple conferences (about five) and we drop in notes, do roundups and feature stories.

But when the postseason comes around, people's interest picks up. More people read and watch, or read or watch more closely.

Also, a lot of the teams we wrote about during the year are falling off. A lot of times we end up with THOSE THREE TEAMS playing in late May and June. That's when we are going to ramp up the coverage more because the games matter more.

Also you can do more with presentation and coverage (write more than one story off a game, etc) because there are fewer teams playing.

We run into the same thing in football with GUESS WHICH TWO TEAMS?

Not much I can do.

I can say that when South Meck was rolling a few years back and going deep into the baseball postseason every year, we covered them more than THOSE THREE SCHOOLS. People used to call us the South Meck Observer. I would laugh.

Guess it's cyclical.

Now about the West Charlotte-Vance story I wrote. That story didn't take away space from any potential game story. It ran on Sunday. No teams were playing on Saturday. It was posted on Saturday night because we sometimes post what are felt to be "impact" stories early. The editors must've thought that to be one (or it was just edited and ready to go early).

No one ever said it was a great technical game. The West Charlotte coach said as much.

What I'm always looking for is stories where "man bites dog." Everybody has a .300 hitter, a 20-point scorer or a 1,000 yard rusher. You put those guys in a notebook. But when two teams score 91 runs or the .300 hitter volunteers his time with a terminally ill kid, well, that's when "man is biting dog" and you get out your tape recorder and check it out.

Here's the West Charlotte story (apologies for the long post; and keep the bullets coming!)

91 runs breaks N.C. record for softball

By Langston Wertz Jr.
[email protected]
Posted: Saturday, Apr. 17, 2010
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Langston Wertz Jr. writes about videogames, gadgets, golf and sports for The Charlotte Observer and Charlotte.com.
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On Tuesday afternoon, West Charlotte and Vance played the wildest softball game Lions coach Norbert Reid said he's ever seen.

The teams played at Vance for four hours and 10 minutes. Most softball games are 90 minutes or less. But most softball games don't find the teams combining for 91 runs, either.

West Charlotte won 47-44 in seven regulation innings, and the teams smashed the existing N.C. record for fast-pitch softball runs - in 1999, Bunn beat Weldon 68-3. West Charlotte and Vance were just short of the national record of 94 combined runs set by East Machias Academy (MA) and Lubec (MA) in 1983. The next highest national total is 79.

West Charlotte's 47 runs is eighth-most ever scored by an N.C. team in a fast-pitch game. Vance is No. 10.

And they did it in the same game.

"It was amazing," said Reid who has played and coached the game for more than 40 years. "I've never seen that many runs scored. Both teams were playing like it was a 1-0 game. The effort was there. The execution wasn't there, but there were some good plays."

To get 91 runs, the teams combined for only 28 hits. West Charlotte had 15. The Lions committed 14 errors and walked 14 batters. Vance committed 13 errors and walked 22. But Reid said it was still one of the best games he's been a part of.

West Charlotte scored two runs in the first inning, but was down 13-2 when it came to bat in the top of the second. And despite scoring 15 runs in the third inning and eight in the fourth, Reid's team still was down 31-30 at the end of the fourth inning.

"I was thinking we were playing a football game," Reid said.

West Charlotte scored 11 runs in the fifth to get the lead back, and then the Lions held on late.

In the seventh inning, Lion shortstop Diamond Brown retreated to the outfield to get a fly ball out and then threw out a Vance runner at first. But the Cougars, down 47-44 and down to their final out, put runners on first and second before Lions third baseman Destiny Planter got a force out to end the game.

And it was a game neither team will ever forget.

"The errors and the walks never phased either team," Reid said. "They were playing like it was for a championship. Both teams' attitudes out there was 'We're as good as any team playing softball, regardless of what the score is.' That was amazing to see. It was a good game as far as sportsmanship and attitude and it's something I was proud, very proud, to be a part of."

Langston Wertz Jr: 704-358-5133; [email protected]; twitter.com/langstonwertzjr; facebook.com/langstonwertzjr



Read more: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2010/04/17/1382840/91-runs-breaks-nc-record-for-softball.html#ixzz0o3cJI85V

 

Hey...I liked the South Meck Observer! I thought you guys were perfect then. And just because my son played there at that time does not mean I am biased.

 

LOL Braves. The good ol' days, right?