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Q. Why a post about blogging itself?
A. The nature of information exchange?
Some websites post a READ THIS in the sidebar that strictly warns you: avoid typing "LOL." No offense, homies. ;- ) Some websites like statements of philosophy. Some occasionally take a minute, to seek buy-in, as to their emphasis on "scannability."
Attention span, five years ago, was absolutely everything in America. Nowadays it's a lot more important than that.
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Q. What is the WORST thing about trying to play "Good Cop, Bad Cop" ... with one cop?
A. Jim Tracy used to do this with the LA media, and it drove you batty. He asked himself all the questions. "Did I consider going to Hiram Bocachica against Curt Schilling? Sure, but I had thirteen flip charts on it and number eight showed me that wouldn't be a good idea."
If you can't quite figure out what you don't like about that, well ... neither can I, exactly. But if we tried real hard we could make thirteen flip charts on it.
Politicians learned, a long time ago, that you can pretend the actual question was anything. You don't really have to listen to your audience.
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On the other hand, Bill James Q-and-A is an institution. A lot rides on his pithiness. You and I can get away with it for 400 words. James literally does 5,000 words at a time with it.
A lot of jealous sabes believe that the only thing good about James is his command of the English language. They fail to notice the fact that words are ideas, and that James' ideas are more clear, more concise, and more convincing than everybody else's. "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough," said Einstein.
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Q. What is the BEST thing about Q-and-A shtick?
A. That it's proliferating?
When the very best baseball writer on two legs is pinching your shtick, you know you aint' in Kansas anymore. At least he had the good grace to leave off the Q's and A's.
Hey, everything that Dr. D uses was pinched from someplace else. Bill James used the Q and A format in the 1995 Player's Handbook, and you notice that I remember the YEAR?
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Q. What is it, exactly, that makes Q-and-A so awesome?
A. Take out a #2 pencil, kiddies...
- It creates white space in the articles, so you don't feel like you're swimming 25 yards underwater
- It's light-and-breezy for the author to WRITE (further amplifying his keystroke advantage over all competition)
- It's versatile: you could use it to write about Hisashi Iwakuma, about yourself, or about writing technique itself
- All you have to do is put in ONE REALLY GOOD QUESTION and the reader is completely pacified (comin' up)
- One Word: FAQs
- The very nature of the format makes 400 words preferable to 2,000
- The reader can skim through and stop at those issues he is interested in
- All of the above
- Some of the above
- I can't believe you did this to us
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Q. What is the hardest thing about writing a Q-and-A?
A. Coherency. That's why people don't use it. No forward momentum in the article. But then, Sith are our speciality, so...
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Q. What was the very best article ever written about a game that turned on one umpire's call?
A. This one. You thought I was kidding about the "best baseball blogger" shtick, didn't you. Name some kind of article that Jeffy can't crush.
... that article will make you ponder the nature of luck in baseball. The sport is like backgammon, like soccer, like poker. You try to give yourself more chances to get lucky than the other guy, that's all.
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Q. What is the very best way to get the clean end of the stick on A Single Ump's Strike Call That Swings the Game?
A. Have Mike Zunino instead of Miguel Olivo? Have a Japanese pitcher on the mound?
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Q. What's the latest on Masahiro "24-0, 1.27" Tanaka?
A. $60-70M for the posting fee, 6/$70M for the contract. The posting fee would just come out of Super Mario money. That, my friends, would be The Best Case Scenario in the offseason.
Here's a link re: the Mariners and Tanaka. Here's another one, in which Jason Churchill (of all people) concedes that the M's radio silence should not be misconstrued. They love to play it close to the vest. But the M's were at Tanaka's late games, they do love their NPB imports, and they're riding the wave of the Iwakuma vibe.
Man. Iwakuma at $6M per, and Tanaka at $11M per, now we'd be cookin' with peanut oil.
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Q. I thought SSI believed in coherency?
A. Except when we believe in rhapsody. Like Chuckster said, nothing is good three nights in a row. Not when you're fifty.
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Q. Why do we get TWO good questions?
A. As you know, we live to serve.
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Dumb questions from first to last,
Dr D
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