Need they say more?

More sports figures find way to weave their words onto the Web

Aaron J. Lopez, Rocky Mountain News

Published June 11, 2007 at midnight

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While we were in houston I decided to go ahead and really shave a mohawk so now I've got about a 3 guard on the sides and full length in the middle, and hairspray is my only friend. The funny thing about ridiculous hair is you kinda forget you have it until you catch a glimpse in the front door of Target and want to laugh at yourself.

From a May 27 post by Texas Rangers reliever C.J. Wilson in his mlb.com blog Scorpion Tales.

How does Mark Cuban feel about the NBA draft lottery system? The dot-com billionaire turned Dallas Mavericks owner will tell you while sipping a Bud Light in the Cayman Islands.

How does Curt Schilling feel about his near no-hitter for the Boston Red Sox? He'll break it down for you inning by inning, sometimes pitch by pitch.

How is Brian Westbrook spending his offseason after his most productive year in the NFL? For starters, he's happy to report he recently bought a 26-acre horse farm in Maryland.

How might you access this coveted inside information? It's as easy as turning on a computer.

For decades, sports enthusiasts - i.e. rabid, jersey-wearing, nacho-eating, ticket-buying fanatics - relied on a middleman - the media - for the latest news about their favorite teams and players.

Thanks to the Internet, the link between players/coaches/team owners no longer requires an intermediary.

From the bashful librarian in Valparaiso, Ind., to the economics professor in Charlottesville, Va., to the floppy-haired surfer dude in Malibu, Calif., everyone, it seems, has their own blog or Web page - or both - these days.

Why should pro athletes be any different?

"It makes you less of an 'out-there' figure," said Rockies pitcher Jason Hirsh, whose brother Matt created the Web site hirshbrothers.com. "It shows that we're human like everyone else."

Oh, the humanity.

I've done it. I've caved and am actually taking the blog plunge. There's no single reason for it, but over the life of this space we'll touch on a few. I've been called everything from outspoken to blowhard to much, much worse. I believe those labels spring out of the fact that I care about the things people ask me as much as any other cause. I've never been a yes/no kind of guy, which probably hasn't been received well by some. I don't know that I'll be changing my style, but I do know that getting ripped for something I say here will be getting ripped for something I actually said - with the entire contents of my comments included.

From the March 7 post by Schilling on his blog 38pitches.com.

Depending on whom you ask, Schilling is refreshingly honest or annoyingly arrogant. Either way, his polarizing opinions and ability to create a buzz are key ingredients of an entertaining blog.

After facing the Rockies this week at Fenway Park, Schilling will do what he does after every start for the Red Sox. He will ice his right arm, hit the showers and chat with the media.

As a bonus for Red Sox Nation, Schilling will sit down in front of a computer and break down his night in detail that goes beyond anything a newspaper report or television sound bite can offer.

"The first game he pitched this year he got rocked, and you got a snapshot of the mind-set of what he did wrong," said Will Leitch, editor of deadspin.com, a must- bookmark site that covers athletes and sports blogs in all their glory (and infamy). "This was a craftsman discussing his craft and what went wrong. Yes, it was poorly punctuated, but very fascinating."

Steve Rubel, senior vice president for Edelman Me2 Revolution, a high-tech marketing group, also applauds Schilling for offering fans a behind-the-scenes look every five or six days.

"He's got the right model," Rubel said. "The insights into the game and his honesty about events past and present have gotten him into a little trouble, but I think his honesty is what people want."

Because of his habit of saying things most people would keep to themselves, Schilling can use his blog for damage control. Acting as his own PR firm, he issued an online apology after making controversial comments about San Francisco Giants left fielder Barry Bonds during a radio interview last month:

Everyone has days and events in life they'd love to push the rewind button on, yesterday (May 8) was one of those days. Regardless of my opinions, thoughts and beliefs on anything Barry Bonds it was absolutely irresponsible and wrong to say what I did. . . . I'd love to tell you I was ambushed, misquoted, misinterpreted, something other than what it was, but I wasn't.

The apology generated more than 400 responses within 24 hours, illustrating the interactive experience that the Internet offers.

"I have not seen very many (athletes) that do (blogs and Web sites) very well," Rubel said. "The most effective ones do it when they do it in a dialogue."

For an example of good dialogue, take a crash course in Gilbertology 101.

The trainer, I had to fire him and kick him to the curb. We're beefin' right now. You know, I've never done this before. Me and trainers, it's usually just like, "OK, get my ice." So all these drills he's telling me to do, for some reason I just think they're stupid. So I just fired him. I told him when I come to the facility to just pretend like I'm in California, even though I'm here. My body is here, mentally I'm in California, so I'll just see you in training camp . . . I don't think he liked that very much.

From the May 25 post by Washington Wizards guard Gilbert Arenas, describing his recovery from a knee injury.

Agent Zero might be the most entertaining player in the NBA. His basketball skills aren't bad, either.

Though his rants and witticisms are written under the watchful eye of image-conscious NBA officials, Arenas has made a name for himself among the blogging community.

He gushed like a 12-year-old about being on the cover of 2008 NBA Live - "There's going to be four million of them. Four. Million. Cuh-vahs. Of me. In stores. Everywhere they go, it's going to be meeee!" - and playfully threw his name on Illinois Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign ticket - "He can handle all the big stuff like the war in Iraq and all that, and I'll keep everybody distracted off what he's doing. I'll be the entertainer."

Arenas also provides plenty of basketball insight, but his most memorable post recounted a moment straight out of the Britney Spears Parenting Handbook: "I dropped my daughter," he confessed in a post April 27.

Arenas went on to describe how he slipped near the top of the stairs while carrying his sleeping 16-month-old daughter. In order to avoid falling backward with the toddler in his arms, he dropped the girl and grabbed the railing. "She was madddd! - she didn't cry though - but she was mad."

"A good blog reflects the personality, skill and thought process of the people who are doing it," Leitch said. "Arenas does that real well. . . . It's hard to imagine another superstar laying himself out on the line like that."

I don't do Web sites.

Rockies first baseman Todd Helton

Personal Web pages and regular blogs aren't for everyone.

Cincinnati Reds outfielder Ken Griffey Jr., a 12-time All- Star whose popularity ratings were through the retractable roof in the 1990s, never has put his name on an official dedicated Web site.

Griffey, whose career started in tech-savvy Seattle, is not opposed to technology. He just prefers to keep his personal life out of cyberspace as much as possible.

"I try to keep my on-the-field life on the field and my off-the- field life off the field. That's it," said Griffey, a 37-year-old husband and father of three.

"For the most part, I live a boring life. In the offseason, it's take the kids to school, come home, go to football, basketball practice. It's just trying to be a dad. That's my biggest concern. Everything else is secondary."

Helton will shave his goatee and sell his hunting rifles before he'll ever devote his time to a Web site or blog.

"I can barely turn on a computer - unless it's to play solitaire," he said.

Helton, 33, is a breed heading toward extinction.

The next wave of sports stars will be a generation that never knew life before the Internet,

iPods and instant messages.

The shift already is well under way.

It is the last week at The Ohio State University. It is finals week everybody is studying, trying to pass their classes. I am going to miss it so much, when September comes around next year I'll be in preseason, and my peers will be meeting back up for another go around at this college thing. . . . I'm wanting to stay for every last minute and enjoy this because you can't get it back. I'm about to be put in a man's world, letting go of that kid in me is hard.

From the June 6 post by soon-to- be NBA player Greg Oden on yard barker.com.

Oden, 19, has grown up with e-mail, chat rooms and unlimited calling plans, so the Internet and its unlimited possibilities hardly are intimidating. Perhaps when he signs his first contract extension in three years he will announce the news in his blog or on his myspace page.

News conference? Get real.

That's so 2005.

Just follow the bouncing blog

With so many blogs dedicated to sports, how does anyone keep track of it all? Some do it better than others. Some of the best sports blogging sites on the Web:

• Deadspin (dead- spin.com): Created in September 2005, Deadspin delivers "sports news without access, favor or discretion." The standard in its class, the site should come with an addiction warning.

• Kissing Suzy Kolber (kissmesuzy.blogspot. com): Approaching its one-year anniversary, the KSK name was inspired by Joe Namath's infamous come-on to the ESPN reporter. Hmmm. Wonder if commissioner Roger Goodell is a fan?

• The Big Lead (thebiglead.com): Like Deadspin, The Big Lead loves to have fun at the expense of athletes and the mainstream media. Needless to say, it's never short of material.

• Fire Joe Morgan (firejoemorgan.com): Want to see well-respected sportswriters and Emmy-winning broadcasters picked apart sentence by sentence? This is the place for you.

Cuban impressionism

In 2004, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban was fined by the NBA. Nothing out of the ordinary there.

What made the punishment noteworthy was the fact Cuban incurred the wrath of the commissioner's office based on one paragraph he wrote in his blog - blogmaverick.com

"I won't say what i really think about the genius that started the season on election day since it's probably the same person that started the season on Halloween in previous years," Cuban wrote, (punctuation be damned). "There's only a presidential election 1x every 4 years. We start on that day. Genius. Let's see, which are going to get more highlights and press coverage Nov 3rd. The kickoff of the NBA season or the election. The NBA has a great idea to feature 'Premiere Week' and we start it on Election Night. Brilliant."

Cuban, who has been fined more than $1.5 million by the NBA for various actions and opinions, surmised he was the first sports executive to be fined for a blog entry.

The fines have not stopped him from giving his opinions on blogmaverick, but deadspin.com editor Will Leitch believes Cuban is more conservative than he used to be.

"When Cuban started doing the site, he was blistering and honest," Leitch said. "He was ready to throw down. It's not so much like that anymore. He's definitely calmed down a little bit, which was probably pretty smart for a guy who, with every keystroke, could get fined $250,000."

lopezaa@RockyMountainNews.com

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