By David Scott
Boston Sports Media Watch

UPDATED FRIDAY 11:25 a.m.

What Nick Cafardo and the Boston Globe believed to be a steroids scoop in the late afternoon became nothing more than a cautionary tale in New Media news delivery by the early Friday hours.

In Thursday’s 4 p.m. hour, Cafardo reported in a since-deleted blog posting that 11 current free-agent players would be named (our italics) in the Mitchell Commission Report. National media outlets, led by ESPN’s SportsCenter which declared it “Breaking News” picked up on the story, citing the Globe’s report.

(Full text of the original Cafardo post is below.)

Then, in an 11:44 p.m. post on Thursday, Cafardo offered up a retraction of sorts and explained, “The Associated Press, citing two unnamed sources, reported this evening that no more than 11 (our italics) players from this year’s free-agent class were asked to speak with George Mitchell as part of his investigation into performance-enhancing drugs in baseball.”

The distinction is not a small one and Cafardo - who was always been one of the more respected baseball men in the nation - offered up a very hollow explanation for his sizable gaff. “Two agents had told us on Thursday that there were 11 current free-agent players that would actually be named in the Mitchell Commission Report,” he wrote in the 11:44 p.m. post. “Turns out the agents might have misunderstood what was said at Wednesday’s union meeting in New York, for which I apologize.”

There could (and very likely will) be a very large difference between being “asked to talk” to the Micthell Report people and being “named” in that same report.

Cafardo apologizes, but fails to take the blame for going forth with the story that is inherently incorrect and potentially inflammatory. Further, Cafardo seems to be blaming his agent sources “who may have misunderstood” for the mistake, failing to recognize he was the one who trusted those fallible sources. It was Cafardo who may have misunderstood how intelligent his sources were. Perhaps two sources, in a story as convoluted and complex as this, aren’t enough to go with and perhaps Globe editors should be concerned if that was the basis for Cafardo’s reporting. What exactly are the standards in place for such instances and is sports editor Joe Sullivan and his staff equipped to enforce those requisites.

From the outsider’s view - and we know we won’t ever be given an insider’s perspective - it would seem as though the Globe’s “rush to be first” superseded its “responsibility to be correct.”

. . . The incident comes on the heels of some interesting comments by Cafardo’s Red Sox beat counterpart at the Herald, Michael Silverman, who, earlier this week, admitted at the inconsistently updated “Clubhouse Insider” that “. . . for the life of (him), (he was) having a hard time figuring out how to deliver compelling updates from (the GM Meetings) without scooping ourselves and giving anyone who can the chance to follow-up on tidbits found here for themselves. . . ”

If Cafardo had been as cautious and contemplative, he may have been able to save himself - and his paper - some back-pedalling by doing deeper due diligence.

. . .The complete removal of the original Cafardo post at the “Extra Bases” blog by the Globe is almost worse than the transgression itself. In today’s media world, you can’t simply make like something posted on the site for several hours was never there - especially something that is picked up nationally. The original Cafardo post link now goes to a dead-link message from Boston.com. It should have remained where it was and been amended at its original spot with the same explanation Cafardo gave in the new post.

FULL TEXT OF ORIGINAL CAFARDO POST (Thanks to an RSS-feed subscribing reader and a freidn fo Shots who is a wise Web observer and also notes, “Deleting a post is a big no-no in the blogosphere. Unacceptable, quite frankly. Cafardo should have gone back to the original post and noted his error, possibly pointing to the new post with the correct information.”):


11 free agents in Mitchell report

ORLANDO — Player agents who attended yesterday’s union meeting in New York were told that 11 current free agent players are named in the George Mitchell report on the use of performance-enhancing drugs in baseball, which could come out sometime around the first of the year, and that all 11 players have been notified by the Mitchell Commission’s office. Two agents who were there confirmed this today.

One agent said some of the names could be among the ones already in the news from the Albany, N.Y. and Florida raids, while there also could be a few new ones.

Gary Matthews Jr., who is not a free agent, met with MLB yesterday in New York to discuss his alleged purchase of HGH while the office is also trying to meet with Paul Byrd, the Indians’ starter who also purchased HGH from 2002-2005. Jose Guillen, a free agent, is one of the 11 who allegedly bought steroids.

Most of the GMs at the meetings said they weren’t concerned by this revelation, but these revelations could cost these players big money.

The union is also trying to make sure that any players who are using an enhancement for treatment of a specific ailment must make it known ahead of time what it is they might take so it can be approved. The union doesn’t want their players to provide them with surprises after the fact.

Click here to see the full list of current MLB free agent players.

. . . The early morning Friday AP story on the Free Agent Eleven, included this paragraph by way of explanation:

Later Thursday, the Globe said on its Web site that it “turns out the agents might have misunderstood what was said at Wednesday’s union meeting,” and the reporter apologized.

Even more unforgivable still, is that the Friday print edition (which ran a portion of that AP story) didn’t have the Cafardo apology. That means that anyone who either read the Cafardo post yesterday afternoon or heard about it through other outlets has no clue what happened with the original information or with Cafardo’s apology. That’s further irresponsibility that the Globe should never be allowed to get away with and something we implore publisher Steve Ainsley editor Marty Baron to explore deeper.

. . . The capper to all of this? Joe Sullivan has a post at the APSE webiste, where he wears out his hand patting him and his staff on their backs for the Globe’s recent sports coverage during what has been a remarkable run of on and off field sports stories in the city.

[I missed the mention of how the Globe was (or wasn't) aided by the 17 percent ownership it has in the Sox (maybe some of the ten!! writers!! were given special access because of the affiliation)?]

Sully’s message was that “print still works,” and maybe, on some levels it does. Unfortunately his Web side is not working so well as evidenced by the blatant bungling of the Cafardo situation.

I, for one, would be much more interested in knowing how Hank Herald and his undersized staff was able to compete on a level field with the Broadsheet Bullies. The Herald truly “kept pace” with its championship run.

• Speaking of the long-anticipated Mitchell Report, old friend Duke Castiglione recently sat down with a (shady) man who knows a LOT of names and details. Radomski’s sentencing is now scheduled for mid-December and if he’s free to speak after that sentencing, Mitchell better have his report released or risk the chance of Radomski stealing the thunder and making MLB look like even bigger boobs.

• This one’s been bugging me for quite a while and it really shows just how all-mighty the Worldwide Leader truly is. It’s no secret that Shots is a big fan of the strides Yahoo! Sports has made while building its site, its audience and its relevance. (The fact that they started with our long-time associate, Dan Wetzel, as the first visible hire probably has a little something to do with our fondness for the Big Y!’s efforts.)

What was started with Massachusetts native (and good Umie doobie), Sam Silverstein pulling the editorial strings has been fortified and expanded upon by ex-LA Timeser Dave Morgan. Morgan has hired a whole host of bulldogs for coverage and commentary on all of the major sports (and some of the not-so-”minor” ones as well). He nabbed Michael Silver from Sports Illustrated for his most-publicized coup, but also made superb choices in ex-newspaper guys like Adrian Wojnarowski, Jason Cole, Charles Robinson and Tim Brown.

It’s not anywhere near the never-ending Gobstopper roster of ESPN, but it sure does match-up well with all the other Big Boys. What is most perplexing about the Yahoo! emergence is how long it has taken the general sports consumer to understand the magnitude of the Reggie Bush scandal. We’re talking about a Heisman Trophy winner and NFL star who was very openly (and/or very stupidly) being paid for his services at USC, a school that can only be described as an institution without much “institutional control.”

It has every dirty element you can think of (okay, Kim Kardashian seems to come after the USC boondoggle) and enough NCAA violations to fill a three ring binder. Games will almost certainly forfeited, reputations are being ruined and somehow, all we hear about from ESPN are Mitchell Report non-reports and Spygate spatter.

Yahoo! has OWNED the BUSH story from its break through to this point (including today, where the NCAA might actually have to make a bold statement and come down on one of the most sacred programs of the money-grubbing organization.

But no matter how much dirt emerges, no matter how guilty USC, Pete Carroll and Bush are being portrayed as, the story has failed to capture the nation’s attention and we can only think of one reason:

Because ESPN has decided to downplay almost every aspect of the story creating a blatant lack of SportsCenter, ETicket or E:60 presence. The Bush shenanigans have gone largely underreported - other than at Yahoo! and a couple of the LA-area papers - and ESPN seems to be fine with laying low.

The visceral reaction is to wonder whether ESPN’s entertainment-side reliance on USC being a Top 5 program is figuring in to the editorial-side decisions. Yahoo! - at least at this point in its existence - is not quite as cozy with the NCAA as ESPN and Disney have to be. The Y! is also trying to establish itself and carve out an investigative niche (see Yahoo!’s steroids reporting as well), so they tend to be a bit scrappier, even as they are out-manned at every level and every position by ESPN’s multi-pronged empire of editors, writers, producers, gnomes and researchers.

ESPN has been giving every indication (both aloud and in other ways) that they are getting back to their “news roots” and there are instances where that has been true. The twisted tale of Reggie Bush is not one of those cases and we can’t help but wonder just why that is?

Maybe by the time Bush has to return his Heisman, USC is on probation and Carroll is canned, ESPN will have caught up to the Y! guys.

Until then, the Bush push remains the sole domain of Yahoo! Sports.

• Comcast SportsNet (CSN) is evidently a bit fed up with media outlets (see: Boston Globe) who have created their own abbreviation for the re-named regional sports network. In a release this week, the first paragraph included the sentence: “. . . In your programming sections, please reference the game as on Comcast SportsNet or “CSN” rather than “CSNE” or “CSNNE”.”

Reasonable request, especially considering the Globe arbitrarily assigned the “E” in its listings.

. . . The Couz, Bob Cousy, who was cautiously optimistic on Wednesday night’s CSN, CSNE, CSNNE game, joins the broadcasts tonight, Friday, with Atlanta (2-2) here and Wednesday when the red hot Nets (4-1 after Thursday’s win over the Wiz) visit.

• The Globe’s web re-design has begun but it’s a slow filter into the Toy Department. Not much earth shattering so far, so we’re not expecting much Web 2.0 for the sports side. The Globe is still Web 1.3 in our minds.

• The early results on Globe Celts’ beat man, Marc J. Spears who oddly blogs without the “J,” has been very solid. One out-of-town writer recently at the Garden for a game, commented to Shots on how well Spears works the locker room, something they were not used to seeing from re-assigned ex-Celts beat reporter, Shira Springer.

We did have one complaint with Spears last week in Saturday’s gamer home opener game story when he inexplicably included “. . . in front of a nationally televised audience” in his third graf.

The audience was televised? Must have been compelling TV - ESPN ratings must’ve soared!

An editor was clearly asleep at the wheel on that one and by Saturday afternoon, on-line, it was rightfully corrected to “. . . in front of a national television audience.”

But we’re nit-picking (as is our wont). If the writing skills aren’t quite up to snuff, the reporting and rapport with players are already well above expectations.

• Been catching up on “The Office” episodes and just watched the one where Jerry Trupiano and (although we didn’t catch it) his son, NESN are mentioned by Old Man Dunder.

• Shots will be on assignment next week on Thursday and Friday night for CSTV.com as we spend a couple of Manhattan days following the bouncing ball (and Gardner-Webb!) at the Coaches vs. Cancer Classic. Therefore, Shots won’t have a regularly scheduled posting until the week after Thanksgiving. But, as always, if Boston sports media news breaks – or we get thoroughly outraged by someone’s incompetence or idiocy – we’ll be sure to post something.

David Scott writes from a seaside shanty on the shores of Hull, Mass. and can be reached at shotsATbostonsportsmediaDOTcom.