The Truth, The Future & Eric Gagne
As part of my continuing quest to bring you the best examples of humanity triumphing over disaffection in journalism, here's a column by a Dodgers reporter on ace closer Eric Gagne's season-ending injury:
After Eric Gagne's first appearance in late March, in the quiet of the Vero Beach clubhouse, I approached him with the intention of writing a column.He was altering his mechanics to compensate for an injured knee. He should stop pitching immediately or risk damaging his arm.
I had seen it a dozen times before. It was Baseball 101. The story was clear.
But Gagne talked me out of it.
He talked the Dodger organization out of it.
"I know my body, my arm is fine, my mechanics are the same, I would never do anything to hurt myself, it was a normal first day," he said at the time.
Today, far too late to make a difference, the Dodgers finally know different.
Yeah, that's a tough one. The rest of the article brings up all the other ways you could see a problem with Gagne's early return, not least the number of other star Dodger pitchers (Fernando Valenzuela, Orel Hershiser, etc.) who have suffered similarly debilitating injuries. A couple years ago Gagne was a Cy Young winner and one of the best pitchers in baseball. Now he's not coming back until, at best, the end of 2006.
So it's an interesting question: should a reporter speculate about a player's on-field recklessness? I say yes: if a guy can stay out until 7am and still throw a shutout the next day, that's his own business, but if he's playing the wrong way (in this case, playing at all), the reporters are just interested in team play and whether they're going to do well. So, I say it's fair game. But the article, to me, raises an even more interesting question: what other important column ideas are getting dropped? What topics have reporters dropped after pressure from players or team management? And what other injuries did reporters see coming?