Apparently, Bill Conlin doesn't like the Internet either. I don't know what it is with these crunchy old Inquirer/Daily News guys. On Ryan Howard, who he painfuly dubs "the Rhynamiter:"
But whenever an athlete is anointed with this level of acclaim, the Mickey Mice are never far behind. The Drive-By Media, as Rush Limbaugh likes to call
the great liberal unwashed, wait in ambush. There are dozens of
would-be Jim Romes and Jay Mariottis out there in the expanding
blogisphere, devoid of credibility and accountability. Doubly dangerous
are the dot.com assassins who have proliferated, hired by the Web sites
of national news-gatherers willing to pay for loose cannons to deliver
the number of "hits'' by which they set their ad rates for all those
pop-ups you never can seem to block.
I mean, in all honesty, I don't really care what Bill Conlin thinks but it's curious that old guys don't embrace the future. The article is about Ryan Howard and how he's a bona fide superstar now and with that he will be cut down by the parasites. What Conlin seems to be off on here is that the blogoshphere adores Howard. Conlin does, however, have a point about the "dot.com assassins." Just because Howard is huge and hits bombs, writers go the steroid route simply because it's easy and people like reading about roids.
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It's a solid article other than the blog bashing and the fact that Conlin forces us to mentally picture what his weight is.
>>Howard Learning Other Side of Stardom [Daily News]