Mary Kay Cabot's Relentless Spin

From the horrible Chris Quinn at cleveland.com:

"The trigger for this column is Tuesday’s announcement that our longtime Guardians writer, Paul Hoynes, is the 2026 recipient of the Career Excellence Award from the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. There’s no higher honor. He’ll receive it in Cooperstown during the Baseball Hall of Fame inductions in July.......

And here’s the thing: Paul is the second sportswriter in our newsroom to receive such an honor in a single year. In August, Mary Kay Cabot accepted the football equivalent — the Bill Nunn Memorial Award from the Pro Football Writers of America. She is the 57th person to receive the annual honor and only the second woman."

Now, on its surface, that doesn't look like a controversial statement at all. Actually, it seems quite nice.

Let me break down both halves of statement:

• Paul Hoynes: Zero problems with Paul Hoynes. He has a hard job insomuch as writing for a baseball team is a grind. 162 games of content is a long year. But your core philosophy for writing for a baseball team should be this: If your team spends the most money, they should win. If your team spend very little money, they're going to lose. Hoynes' writing reflects the Guardians' Philosophy: We spend very little money, but we are competitive year in and year out. The Guardians are considered a model franchise in Major League Baseball. Hoynes points out the restrictions the Guardians face without beating them into the ground. You can only be so critical of the Guardians because MLB really stacks the deck against them. Hoynes is spot-on straddling the line between cheerleader and realist.

• Mary Kay Cabot: Our angle is the MKC is the worst sports writer in the market. How so? The National Football League is set up for parity. That's not me speculating, former commissioner Pete Rozelle created a giant pie for the owners to split in equal ways. If you're good this year, you might not be good next year, and vice versa. The NFL really stacks the deck against both perpetual winning and perpetual losing. The Cleveland Brown have had 4 winning seasons in the last 25 years. It is almost statistically impossible for a team to be that bad. When she goes to work in the morning, she should be wearing Army Fatigues, her job as a sportswriter for cleveland.com SHOULD be to point out their historic ineptitude every single day. Instead she puts a very team-friendly spin on just about everything. When things don't work, she leaks out stories about players and front office personnel AFTER the fact to protect the team. Her angle is always the Cleveland Browns, especially Jimmy Haslam, are trying real hard. Her angle SHOULD be that this leadership group needs to be run out of town on a rail. You know why Chris Quinn and Jimmy Haslam BOTH love Mary Kay Cabot? If the Browns were in New York City or Philadelphia, the sportswriters would have turned Haslam inside out and portrayed him as either a villain or a buffoon, which is he both. MKC mostly lobs him softballs, like he's actually done something besides driving the team into the dirt. And, sadly, if the Cleveland Browns didn't exist, cleveland.com probably would have gone bankrupt by now, which brings us to Chris Quinn. He likes MKC because she keeps the Browns happy, which helps ensure his revenue streams. The Browns being good or bad are almost irrelevant for a newspaper editor, as long as the fans continue to engage cleveland.com as their website of choice. The Browns and cleveland.com are in a co-dependent relationship with Mary Kay Cabot as the lynchpin.

Mr. 8-8. (Technically 8-8-1 today)

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RIP to my friend Dan.

He worked at the Cleveland Plain Dealer / cleveland.com for over 35 years. He loved working there...well, at least at the beginning. After 30 or so years, layoff after layoff really started to affect him. He often told me he wanted to stick it out at the PD until the end.

Then, at the very last round of layoffs, Dan took the buyout when the Plain Dealer let him know that his position was now in layoff or termination status. That move killed most of the remaining union jobs in the building on Tiedeman Road.

Dan crossed my path at the local school district. He often said his career path was SUPPOSED to be the Plain Dealer, then retirement. Unfortunately, his path was the PD, the local school district, then retirement.

Dan was a great guy with a dry sense of humor. He really just enjoyed hanging out with the guys, even if it was just talking about stereotypical guy-stuff, like cars and sports.

When he retired, he got 5 months in before he died.

He often spoke of having a nice finishing-act with his wife.

He didn't get that.