Brandon Webb photo by Ross D. Franklin/AP - Because this post SHOULD be about how fabulous he is!
So I was going to write about Brandon Webb and his 19 wins and how I shouldn’t ignore the National League…but I got sidetracked by a post on one of the blogs I frequent. Now my blood is boiling and I need to write in order to calm it down. And you lucky people get to bear witness to my rant. And, I promise, it’s a long one. (You’ve been warned.)
Being a Red Sox blogger and having been active on Red Sox message boards prior to that, has put me in a position where I am, occasionally, contacted by someone connected to one of the players I’ve written about. Whether it’s a former coach, a friend, a sibling or even a mother, I’ve had interactions with these people (through email and in person) and a trust has been developed that I haven’t ever breached.
People are, by nature, trusting. A former Red Sox player’s mother once emailed me her cell phone number and home address. And other players’ friends and relatives have sent me personal photos, ones you would never see anywhere online, just because they thought I’d enjoy seeing them. Hell, I’ve had national sports writers email me with information not in the public domain that they shared and then added “but this is really only for you, not your blog”. None of these people had any idea what I’d do with the items or information they sent me…but there was an obvious leap of faith on all their parts that I would take it for what it was and not exploit it just to get myself some internet notoriety.
I remember telling a friend about the player’s mom who sent me her phone number and address and that friend telling me how lucky she was that she sent it to me and not someone who would have published it all over the internet. Part of me had the same thought when I got the email with the information in it. Another part of me wondered who would take advantage of someone who was just excited about her son’s situation and wasn’t using common sense in that moment where she was swept away with enthusiasm.
Hey, I’m a fan, right? And I’m also a blogger. And regardless of how many times I tell people that I was genuinely stunned when I realized people outside my friends and relatives were reading my blog, the fact is, knowing that people DO read it – I still write it. So, obviously, I’m enjoying having an audience. So being the recipient of private photos of players and hearing news about them a step before it’s made public – that stuff is a charge. But it’s also a responsibility. And I take that responsibility seriously. I guess that comes through here since there are still people willing to share and who believe that everything they do share with me won’t become fodder for my blog. That pleases me and I hope it continues.
I bring this all up because early this year, long before the season began, I came upon a blog written by a Red Sox player’s wife. I won’t say which one. It’ll be easy enough for folks to figure it out (and many reading this already know who). The blog was written by a young, exuberant woman who doesn’t seem to have a lot of worldliness about her. It was sweet, and even a bit cute, and obviously, very personal.
I’m not going to tell you that after finding it, I never went back and never read anything she wrote again. I did. On various occasions. Because my initial reaction was, it’s on the internet and it isn’t “locked” so it isn’t my fault that it’s out there for me to read. Even so, I didn’t share the blog with anyone. It just didn’t feel right. She wrote like she thought she was talking to her family and friends…and no one else. Maybe she was a bit naive to think people wouldn’t find it. Unfortunately, they did.
This week the link was posted on a rather popular Red Sox blog. After a few complaints, the writer took the link down, quite grudgingly I suspected. My suspicions were confirmed when the same blogger put the link to the blog back up today. Well, the cached version of the blog anyway. See, soon after the blog link was publicized, Mrs Red Sox Player locked down her blog. And a while after that (hours? days? I really don’t know) she took the blog down completely. (Since the initial posting of the blog link, at least two other Sox-themed blogs have posted it as well.) It’s really too bad that she felt like she had to pull the blog. But it’s exactly what I expected to happen.
I don’t know this woman. I’ve never had any contact with her and yet it never occurred to me to “out” her to the world. Comments I’ve read that were made from “fans” who saw the blog go from criticizing her style, to criticizing her religion to calling her names. See, while I normally think that most people are great, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to see that releasing information like a blog address was going to bring out the assholes. And that’s exactly what it did (and one of the reasons I never linked the blog here).
I’m not patting myself on the back. Truth is, I shouldn’t have been reading the blog in the first place. Just because I didn’t “share” it doesn’t mean I didn’t do something wrong. But I didn’t put her in the position to get ridiculed and harassed (I’m guessing she was harassed and that’s why she pulled the blog. I don’t know that.).
During this same time, a photo was stolen off of a private message board and distributed, pretty much, all over the internet. It was of a Red Sox player during his off-time. Now, this off-time was being enjoyed at the park, so folks seemed to assume it was fair game. But the person who took the picture didn’t intend it as such and had to embark on a lengthy search for all the sites posting it – and got them all to take it down. Copyright infringement is a bitch, folks. Keep that in mind.
I can’t count how many photos I’ve taken, or have been sent to me, that a small part of me would love to publish here (and that would generate tons of traffic). I feel like I have to know when to say “no”. It might sound like back-patting (and I guess it IS), but having a set of standards for myself and this blog (however flexible they sometimes are) makes me feel better about just being a part of humanity. It doesn’t hurt to think of someone else’s feelings and needs over yours once in a while. Even if you don’t know that person.
One other thing (I know – you all want me to go back to work. Sheez, give me a couple of days off and look what I do with them!)…Jason Varitek and Heidi Watney. There, I said it.
I have no idea if any of the stories are true. And I don’t care. That’s not entirely accurate. I care. I want the guy to not suck at his job. So in that sense I care. And it’s sad that a marriage is breaking up. I care about that too. But I don’t care who he’s sleeping with, if anyone, and I don’t care if Heidi Watney is having sex with have of MLB. It isn’t my business and I have no insider information so, no, I’m not going to write about it here. (Along those same lines, though, I won’t be writing about Heidi at ALL here unless she kills someone on the air or something equally noteworthy. I just don’t want the connection. Hell, I’m not even giving her a “tag” here.)
I think I’ve touched on everything I wanted to touch on. My rant…she is over.
(Hey, I actually feel less homicidal than when I started. Yay me.)
Wow! What did Heidi do to you? Let’s play the U Hate Heidi Game (UHHG) – I don’t care if Jason ignored a young fan and I don’t care if Heidi has spit on and slapped have (sic) of the kids in Boston.
Heidi didn’t do anything to me. I don’t want my blog associated with all the gossip blogs out there that are gabbing about her right now (and who keep contacting me about her).
Interesting that out of all I wrote, you got “Heidi Hate” out of that.
This sure seems like a lot of sturm and drang over nothing. I mean, maybe she didn’t realize how public a public blog could be, but the way you and Red write about it is like you’re protecting some sort of mental invalid from the swirling internet hordes. So a few more people than she expected read about her taste in drapes. Small potatoes, and in the great scheme of things, probably not the worst case of someone needing protection.
obviously, intelligent people can disagree on this. but the other side of the argument is that a photo or information emailed to you *privately* and expressly described to you by the sender as “private” is clearly not for public consumption. similarly, if membership is necessary to participate in an internet forum, publishing content from that forum outside of the restricted community is a big time no-no.
but if someone writes a blog, as i’m sure you, as a blogger, are painfully aware, whether it’s intended for friends / family or not, if they don’t take steps to communicate the information through private channels – email or other private, security-enabled systems, a members-only message board, etc. – it has been posted to a public space. no different than a flyer posted on a telephone pole. maybe that flyer is only meant for certain people to see it, but once you post it in that public space, it’s there for anybody to view.
i’d also say your guess that mrs. * was harrassed is just that, a guess. the bloggers who linked to her site (i am not one of them) did so in the tone of, “hey, look at this, interesting.” they bear responsibility for hypothetical people who may or may not have harrassed mrs. * about…what, her drapes?
could it also have been that she realized that she hadn’t properly locked down her site to the audience she wanted, and the blog’s discovery made her do so, in order to ensure that the information was sent to a private audience?
she’s married to an athlete on a high-profile team and posted personal information linking her to that public figure, for public consumption. when too much of the public saw it for her liking, she took it down – and my guess, if i may offer one of my own, would be that she started up a new friends-only site elsewhere, this time with the proper authentication for people she trusts. or maybe she’ll stick to emailing updates to friends instead of using that public telephone pole. if so, what tragedy happened here? why is this a big issue?
//if so, what tragedy happened here? why is this a big issue?//
No tragedy. I just don’t believe that the wives should be taking on the fans just by association.
There was nothing baseball-related in publishing the link to her blog. The only reason to publish it is to say “hey, look what I found – let’s go peek!”.
She isn’t Curt Schilling. She wasn’t advertising her blog. There’s nothing wrong with showing a common courtesy of letting people have even a just a perceived bit of privacy.
And I edited out her name from your comment because I don’t want people tracking her down from here. I don’t make a habit of editing comments, but I’m not comfortable throwing her name around.
//may or may not have harrassed mrs. * about…what, her drapes?/
Her religion was my bigger concern. And I’ve already seen proof that, at least in various comment sections of various blogs, I was right on the money there.
Hey Cyn
Just discovered your new and improved site. Very nice, and I have changed the link on my site to reflect the new web site. Good luck with everything!
The Mighty Quinn
i understand your point about having common decency, and you can feel good about making that choice. i agree that it sucks when people harrass and judge others online and i wish there was less of it. but there’s no way anyone, no matter how homicidal they feel about others’ behavior, is going to be able to dictate their choices.
UNLESS they are the owner of the content, and do something technically that makes their content private. problem solved.
i guess i think people should be held to the same standard regardless of who they are when it comes to personal material on the internet. if i start a blog, it’s my responsibility to know how it works and who can see it.
i also have to say that given your position on the wife-blog, including your graf about tek / watney in this post puts you in a glass house. unless you’re also prepared to supply any evidence you have for the existence of an affair, whether or not it was what affected his marriage, and whether or not his marriage was really what’s affected his hitting (guy’s been hovering around the mendoza line since last year and there are compelling arguments that it’s his age, not his marital status, contributing to his ‘baseball problems’).
without any of those things, what you’re doing is speculating about the private life of an individual on the team with no concrete information to back it up. if you do have concrete information you feel needs to be kept private, why open up that can of worms at all? and why is that speculation / can-of- worms-opening any better than finding a site on the internet everyone can see for themselves anyway, and linking to it?
i’m not saying mentioning tek / watney was necessarily wrong. i don’t think the blog link was necessarily wrong either. but you can’t have it both ways, and the “it affects baseball” line of reasoning just doesn’t quite hold water from where i sit.
/i also have to say that given your position on the wife-blog, including your graf about tek / watney in this post puts you in a glass house.//
Since you’re the second person to misunderstand my point for putting that in this post, that’s my bad for not writing it more clearly.
My point is, I DON’T care what people say about Heidi Watney, mostly because she is a public figure. But I’m not going to speculate on her lifestyle or even her job because I don’t want the connection.
Aside from the reference here, I promise you there are no references to the gossip about she and Tek anywhere on the RSC blog.
The difference, though, between she and Mrs Baseball player is that the scrutiny is part of her job. Being married to someone who turns out to be a famous person isn’t the same.
mrs. baseball player listed her occupation as “wife”. being married to a famous person *does* come with greater scrutiny. this is just one of the places i guess you and i should agree to disagree.
//mrs. baseball player listed her occupation as “wife”.//
Something she did long before he was famous.
//this is just one of the places i guess you and i should agree to disagree.//
That seems to be true. :)
I can appreciate where you are coming from and how you feel. The fact of the matter is that anything openly posted on the internet is fair game. As is posting a public link to another blog, or any site for that matter. Perhaps Mrs. Baseball took things down because she realized it wasn’t protected and private. There are lots of options out there for people to have private blogs and webspaces to share with friends and family, and I hope someone helps her get that set up, since that is her wish to have the privacy. I read a blog of the wife of a famous singer. While she doesn’t come right out and mention names, it is obvious who they are. And I have a link to her blog on mine, because she writes about important things and I like the way she expresses herself. Am I invading her privacy? I’m in the camp that Red had every right to post that link. And, it was nice of him to take it down, but he really didn’t have to.
I guess I am just not with the program here. First of all…I mustn’t spend as much time as I think reading about the Sox online becuz I am really out of the loop on this stuff. Don’t get me wrong…I don’t need to be in the loop. One of the things that drives me the craziest is the fact that we just can’t mind our own business about the personal lives of the players. These are human beings that play a game for a living…I don’t subscribe to the idea that we have any right to know about their private lives. I get the curiousity factor but when someone’s life hits the skids, let it be folks. Whoever Tek is as a husband is really not my business. I guess thats makes me naive or perhaps just a person with a lot of life experience.
I always say … walk in my shoes. You don’t know what it is like to live someone else’s life and you don’t have any right to judge how they live unless it impacts you in some negative way on a personal level.
And that means that even if the hitting slump is as a result of personal problems….not my business. That does not affect my life in any way except I will miss him if they don’t sign him next year because of it all. My life continues..and theirs should too.
Dori
There’s a PSA out there that warns people about what they post on the internet for some of the reasons discussed here-once it’s out there, you basically have no control over it. Whether you intend it to be or not, it is in the public domain as soon as you hit the “submit” button. I’d advise Mrs. Baseball Player (and thankfully I have no idea who it is, nor do I care) to think about that next time she lets her hair down online.
As for Tek/Watney, as far as I’m concerned that is nothing but scurrilous character assassination until there are pictures and/or one of them confesses, and even then, I don’t care. It astounds me the number of people who are more than happy to engage in the most vicious type of gossip concerning people they don’t even know.
if I had a dime for every time a rumor started about me, I’d be a millionaire.
ok maybe id just have more money in the bank but rumors are rumors. I agree with cyn concerning the tek/heidi trashtalk…who cares…Im more concerned about Tek’s hitting and catching ability…not heidi’s.
as far as Mrs.Baseball blog privacy vs private: Do people have the right to post about everything they google? I suppose…but should they? THAT is the question: I admire the fact that cyn doesnt blog about all she knows. at least i know that arrest last year wont be found out ;)
I was one of the ones who posted the photo – I had no clue it was private (standing in Sox gear at Fenway with a Sox reporter… I had no inkling), and taken without permission until a very kind soul gave me the backstory that the website I was crediting wasn’t actually the owner of the photo after all. At which point I felt like a giant tool. Still do.
Now the Tek stuff and blatant rumormongerng- no way.
That, to me, was so clearly private and not at all something I was interested in posting about.
The blog is an interesting case, though. In all honesty, I understand both sides of the issue. She’s not a child to be sheltered, but she’s also clearly not someone who asked for fame or had any inkling that her stuff would become public. I think the post-Deadspin era sportsblog mentality has become “Post shocking, private stuff at all costs.” Which is something I don’t agree with. But sometimes, it’s hard to tell what crosses the line from “fun look at the players as people” vs. “invasion of privacy”. Ultimately, I come down on the side of respecting her privacy in that case. But that’s me.
//At which point I felt like a giant tool. Still do.//
I certainly don’t think YOU should feel like a tool. All you did was post a photo you got off another blog. The person who stole the photo and sent it out is the tool. And THAT person is the only one who has remained “anonymous”.