Lonnie has published one of the really compelling interviews of the entire year. 

Lonnie had, remarkably, intuited from Baker's demeanor that Baker was under pressure.  To me, this is excellent perceptiveness from Lonnie, because even the "irritable Baker" was much more accessible, friendly, engaging, positive, and ... um ... non-condescending than many others in his field.

Just for example, Baker appeared on SSI and coolly, point-by-point defended his reporting on Josh Lueke, both listening and speaking like an adult.  How many other beat writers would deign to such a thing, whether under pressure or not?

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In it, Baker finally reveals a few things about his own accomplishments, and how they relate to his efforts to survive in America:

"This is the first off-season since coming to Seattle where I could truly relax. A lot of people don't know this, but I'm a native of Canada and until midway through this past season, I'd been working in the United States on a special 0-1 visa waiver for people with "Extraordinary Ability.''   It only allowed me to work at the Seattle Times only and if my employment there ever ended, I'd have to return to Canada within 60 days. I may be the first journalist who ever qualified for this 0-1 waiver. It's usually given to recording artists, or circus performers and stuff. Gord Ash, the assistant GM of the Brewers, has one and keeps renewing his every year. I basically got it because I'd won several national awards in Canada and the U.S. for my newspaper stories. So, as the Times underwent severe economic hardships, I grew real nervous, knowing I'd had to go back to Canada if they ever folded or laid me off."

Baker does mention about being the first 'journalist' to qualify, but as to the rest of it, he's being awfully humble.  "Circus performers and stuff"?

It used to be part of my consulting work to obtain approvals for these kinds of guys (within a scientific industry, not within the immigration process, which would have probably been more difficult).  When Baker mentions the "mountains of paperwork," what he means is that you are proving, to a very skeptical, expert audience, that you are a superstar in your field.  A superstar, gentlemen.

The basic template for this sort of visa exemption ---- > is that you are a Nobel-class scientist who raises the level of American industry in which you work.  It's given first to (say) emigres who have advanced their field of physics, math, or whatever.

Then it's given to artists, we're talking about you're getting a visa because you're Dali, or Pavarotti, or somebody, and you want to be an American now, and hey, we'd be proud to take credit for you...

So you're in some other field, not art or science, okay, we have to be fair, prove that you're as good at sportswriting as (say) Placido Domingo is at opera, and we'll let you in, in that field too.

....................

I'm not saying that Geoff Baker is as good at writing as Picasso is at painting; I don't think he is.  But the fact that he gained his visa through that application process ... well, this is one ex-tech writer who is cotton-pickin' impressed.

If Wehrner von Braun wants to be an American, we're glad to have him, y'feel me?  But I'd hate to convince five sourpuss bureaucrats to let me be an American because I'm the von Braun of my field.

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"Two years ago, I hired the newspaper's lawyer on my own and applied for a Green Card under the same specialized "Extraordinary Ability" provisions. It cost me a small fortune and required a mountain of paperwork ....  It required me to keep demonstrating "extraordinary ability" not only in newspaper work, but also online as well. I've continued to be honored in national, regional and local awards both for newspaper stories and the online blog and every bit of it helped. Some people in the local media were jealous of my blog work early on and felt I was trying to make them look bad by working 12 hours a day and posting stuff all the time. They thought I didn't appreciate traditional newspaper values and was selling out to the online crowd.

There are people born in this country who wake up, go to work, do what's required and go home. I had to win awards every year just to be able to keep my job and continue to live in this country. I had to overachieve 24-7 just to have the same chances they do.

So, for the first time, I now have permanent residency here for at least 10 years and can work for any company of my choosing. For years, people have wondered whether I'd be jumping to ESPN or another gig and they didn't realize I couldn't even if they asked me. Now, I can. I am finally catching my breath. But it's not like I'm tossing my resume around to every company that's out there. I haven't applied for a job anyplace else. My girfriend lives in Seattle and owns a house here and she's the reason I moved here from Toronto four years ago. We live together now and got engaged back in early November and are getting married in March at a winery up in (Somewhere in Washington state). No way was I going to marry her for the Green Card and, in any event, that takes time and organization. You don't just do it and get approved the next day. I wasn't going to put her through that. Now, she'll never have to wonder."

So it turns out that Geoffy was under pressure that most of us would consider ... well, crushing.  Like we said, do you want to move to North Dakota?  Canadians do...

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=== .45 Black Powder, From the Hip Pardner Dept. ===

1.  M's fans ought to know a great writer when they see one.

Less-erudite fans might be tempted to judge a writer based on whether they like what he says.  If they don't, he's a "muckraker" who "is always stirring up stuff."   If they do like what he says -- that is, if the writer is careful never to disrespect Edgar Martinez -- then he's a fine writer.

The quality of a writer's material is not (very) related to whether his positions are mainstream.

It drives me absolutely crazy when a movie reviewer pans Chronicles of Narnia, or Philadelphia Experiment, on a technical level, because the subject matter offends them.  But that's what happens.

Hey, Baker writes plenty of stuff that rubs me the wrong way, such as his PC excesses on Lueke.  It doesn't affect how good he is or isn't.

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