Dejan, Phone Home

Dejan Kovacevic is on some sort of sabbatical or temporary assignment shuffle from the Post-Gazette, so today we get Paul Meyer. I guess Paul Meyer is to Dejan Kovacevic as Roberto Hernandez is to Mike Gonzalez: the more experienced guy whose role is now to back up the less experienced guy. The wily old vet churned out this piece of fluff in the morning paper, in which the tone is set neatly right in the opening paragraph:

Joe Randa is proof that perhaps Thomas Wolfe was incorrect. A person can, too, go home again.

Has anyone in the world actually ever read this book? How many bad newspaper writers have begun stories using the template "[$subject] is proof that perhaps Thomas Wolfe was incorrect. A person can, too, go home again."? Can't anyone just return somewhere without someone invoking poor old Thomas Wolfe?

The following quotes from Randa, elicited by Meyers' incisive, hard-hitting interview questions, are then sprinkled liberally in the remainder of the story:

• "Every guy I've seen in this clubhouse [is] not like starry-eyed, you know what I mean? They feel like they belong here, which is half the battle."
• "I think this team the last couple years has done a good job of really stacking their minor-league system," he said, "and you can see it in spring training. These kids are competing at a high level."
• "We have expectations in this clubhouse of winning, and everyone's accountable...we feel like we can compete in this division. I think we have the talent to compete with anybody."
• "We have to stay healthy."
  

And can we please stop all the dewey-eyed nostalgia for 1997? Yes, there were some magical moments that year, but there are moments every year--that's why we keep watching. (There's always a chance, on any given night, that something spectacular will happen. Zeke and I saw Snell outpitch Clemens last year. We saw Wells pitch like Cy Young against the Phillies. You never know.)

Let's not forget: In 1997, we contended not because we had a good team, but because no one else in the division that year had a good team. It was the context that made us look a lot better than we actually were. It was just another in a string of losing seasons.