Covering the Coverage: Is It Too Much?

I know everything.

I know nothing.

A week has passed since the first pitcher reported to Cardinals Spring Training in Jupiter Florida. In 7 days time, every player has reported to camp, every player has spoken thousands of words into hundreds of mics without saying a single thing.

And as we wait patiently for another week to pass and an actual game to dissect, I wonder- is there perhaps too much coverage of the St. Louis Cardinals?

It wasn’t long ago when only a few reporters and/or media types took the month long sojurn to south Florida to send back intermittent reports on players that we may or may not have heard of. The local news might have a couple nights of reports on the team closer to the end of camp and Joe Strauss might have had a daily update blurb in the Post-Dispatch…

But now?

It’s a fucking media orgy.

I thought I’d be thrilled at the notion of exhaustive coverage of the Cardinals in February. But I’m starting to think I’m not. Only so much I can hear about an 18 year olds bullpen session before I realize that I’m not getting paid to pay attention- it’s just meaningless fodder. Wake me up when the games start and I can draw my own conclusions.

I don’t mean to sound rude. Because sometimes interviews can be insightful. But 9.9 times out of 10, they’re just talking points re-configured for whoever’s call letters are on the mic flag. Guys like Ozzie Guillen aren’t any more bombastic than players in the 70’s or 80’s- it’s just more scrutinized now. He didn’t grow up learning how to deflect any tough question.

In fact- most of the Internets popularity in the 2000’s was created to fill the void that interviews used to serve. Nobody can get a ounce of usable to quote to hold a discussion- so blogs were kind of spawned to fill this void. To provide opinion where the athletes and teams they cover won’t.

But still, the vestiges of time abound. Tomorrow, we’ll get all the big names in front of all the usual suspects again.

And again the answers will be trite, meaningless and certainly forgettable. Because nothing has happened. No games have been played. No decisions have been made.

In fact, we’ve got a week before we can even lay eyes on a real, live game.

Great.