The Usual Dearth of Wisdom
Which brings me to this year’s Golden BAT. Normally I grade the writers by toting up the number of division champions and wild-card teams correctly predicted. But I decided that any sportswriter wise and bold enough to predict that the glamourless, low-budget Anaheim Angels would come from nowhere to win the 2002 World Series would perforce receive the BAT–and it didn’t matter if every other prediction was wrong. If a sportswriter so much as picked the Angels to make the playoffs (they got in as the AL wild card), that was good enough to earn the BAT.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Since I still needed to name a champion, I resorted to the usual methods. The Tribune’s Phil Rogers smartly picked six of the eight 2002 playoff teams. He foresaw Atlanta winning the NL East and Saint Louis the NL Central, and though he was wrong about San Francisco finishing on top of the NL West, the Giants did make the playoffs as the wild card. In the American League, Rogers had New York taking the East and Oakland the West. Most impressively, he also saw the Minnesota Twins, a team Major League Baseball tried to liquidate before the season, winning the Central Division; he and the Sun-Times’s Jay Mariotti were the only writers to name the Twins.
“It doesn’t take much for many of us,” said Rogers. “We don’t get many highlights.”
Is there any way to succeed with a game like the Roundball Classic without a newspaper on board? I ask him.
Says McGrath, “When we set out to cover this, we didn’t say, ‘Let’s thump the tub for this.’ I can’t stress this enough–community relations is totally separated from the newsroom.”
Bell, who’s semiretired, is probably the most influential prep sports writer in Illinois history. “Right now I’m officially a stringer,” he says. “I’m in the same position as the guy who covered the game last year for the Tribune.” That’s one way of putting it. Actually, Bell keeps his hand in with the occasional Sun-Times story and he still refers to himself and the Sun-Times as “we” and “us.” “I’m still working for the Sun-Times,” he says. “They still pay me money. I’m not totally forgotten.”
