{"id":3132,"date":"2006-05-28T22:02:00","date_gmt":"2006-05-28T22:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=3132"},"modified":"2017-12-20T10:45:04","modified_gmt":"2017-12-20T16:45:04","slug":"your-column-says-no-but-your-column-inches-say-yes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2006\/05\/28\/your-column-says-no-but-your-column-inches-say-yes\/","title":{"rendered":"Your Column Says No, But Your Column Inches Say Yes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A &#8220;feud&#8221; exists between former St. Louis Cardinals shortstop Ozzie Smith and Cardinals manager Tony LaRussa stemming from the latter&#8217;s platooning of the hall-of-famer and St. Louis icon with Royce Clayton in 1996.  Starting last week, the &#8220;feud&#8221; has flared again as Smith let the world know he was happy with the decision, and LaRussa said he was.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s baseball writer Dan O&#8217;Neill in a column entitled <a href=\"http:\/\/www.stltoday.com\/stltoday\/sports\/columnists.nsf\/danoneill\/story\/E1BF0904D27ACDBF86257178001B0499?OpenDocument\" target=\"_new\">10 years later, it&#8217;s time for Ozzie to get over it<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>To be fair, Smith was responding to questions, not preaching from a pulpit. The interview had a lot of positive information about his work with the Hall of Fame. He said all the right things as he indicated the past was behind and he had moved on.<\/p>\n<p>But then he didn&#8217;t move on. He had to pick at the scab one more time with comments about management. A guy who has been paid $2 million by the Cardinals for &#8220;personal services&#8221; over the past 10 years can&#8217;t find it in himself to embrace that same organization as long as La Russa is around. That is almost as petty as it is absurd.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>A nice sentiment, to be sure, but the current &#8220;feud&#8221; is nothing more than a soap operaesque crashing chord provided by the <i>St. Louis Post-Dispatch<\/i>.  Let&#8217;s look over what the <i>Post-Dispatch<\/i> has provided:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.stltoday.com\/stltoday\/sports\/stories.nsf\/cardinals\/story\/9694831BB7739860862571750009402F?OpenDocument\" target=\"_new\">Rare Bird Sighting: Ozzie Smith<\/a>, the profile of Ozzie that started the story.\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.stltoday.com\/stltoday\/sports\/stories.nsf\/cardinals\/story\/EB238DB17CC0A0F186257176001A4DE7?OpenDocument\"  target=\"_new\">Tony La Russa on Ozzie Smith: &#8216;He&#8217;s not welcome&#8217;<\/a>, the rebuttal that fueled the fire.\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.stltoday.com\/stltoday\/sports\/columnists.nsf\/jeffgordon\/story\/12C51CC0787B37F58625717600517A0D?OpenDocument\" target=\"_new\">Ozzie-Tony rift: Sad, but understandable<\/a>, a column by Jeff Gordon.\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.stltoday.com\/stltoday\/sports\/columnists.nsf\/bryanburwell\/story\/F73168B835BE787C8625717700188743?OpenDocument\" target=\"_new\">Ozzie-Tony spat hurts Cards&#8217; image<\/a>, a column by Bryan Burwell.\n<li>The aforementioned column by O&#8217;Neill.\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.stltoday.com\/stltoday\/sports\/stories.nsf\/gordoszone\/story\/1ADCC562D2A4E62486257178006B29DD?OpenDocument\" target=\"_new\">Letters to Gordo: The Ozzie-Tony Feud<\/a>, a round-up of letters to columnist Jeff Gordon.\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.stltoday.com\/stltoday\/sports\/stories.nsf\/othersports\/story\/EAFAE89F424365108625717B008055F5?OpenDocument\" target=\"_new\">Letter in Sound off<\/a>, the &#8220;letters to the editor&#8221; portion of the sports page.\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.stltoday.com\/stltoday\/sports\/stories.nsf\/othersports\/story\/0181D5546862168F86257178004A6ABB?OpenDocument\" target=\"_new\">Another appearance in Sound Off<\/a>.\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.stltoday.com\/stltoday\/sports\/stories.nsf\/cardinals\/story\/3E37E8B99D84F32B8625717700233007?OpenDocument\" target=\"_new\">A third appearance in Sound Off<\/a>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.stltoday.com\/forums\/viewtopic.php?t=360695\" target=\"_new\">An online forum backing Ozzie Smith<\/a>.\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.stltoday.com\/forums\/viewtopic.php?t=360677\" target=\"_new\">An online forum backing Tony LaRussa<\/a>.\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.stltoday.com\/stltoday\/sports\/columnists.nsf\/rickhummel\/story\/1BEB0B56E21200558625717B00800518?OpenDocument\" target=\"_new\">Rick Hummel&#8217;s Take<\/a>, today, a week after the original Ozzie Smith profile that set it off.<\/ul>\n<p>The <i>Post-Dispatch<\/i> certainly can flex its <i>floodus zonei<\/i> muscles effectively for the most inconsequential topics.  Although, honestly, I&#8217;d prefer the paper do it on a silly topic that will sell papers to the impassioned Cardinals fans than for something designed to make our lives better by enabling more governmental rule.<\/p>\n<p><i><font size=\"1\">(Full disclosure: The author booed when Royce Clayton appeared onscreen in the film <a href=\"http:\/\/imdb.com\/title\/tt0265662\/\" target=\"_new\"><\/i>The Rookie<i><\/a>.)<\/i><\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A &#8220;feud&#8221; exists between former St. Louis Cardinals shortstop Ozzie Smith and Cardinals manager Tony LaRussa stemming from the latter&#8217;s platooning of the hall-of-famer and St. Louis icon with Royce Clayton in 1996. Starting last week, the &#8220;feud&#8221; has flared again as Smith let the world know he was happy with the decision, and LaRussa [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3132"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18739,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3132\/revisions\/18739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}