Wednesday, February 14, 2007

World, meet George Kottaras – the other rookie

Top notch piece of subtly brutal social/media/sports commentary by Gordon Edes in this morning’s Globe about Dice-K’s first catch with the third-string Sox catcher on day one of training camp yesterday.

It followed the current reining formula, of course: When there’s no real news but you have to write or air something, write about how crazy it is that the news media’s covering the non-news. All this is true because the media did have to cover Daisuke Matsuzaka’s first day in camp and the Sox did only give them access to one leisurely tossing session with the aforementioned third-string catcher, George Kottaras.

But Edes took the story to a new level by telling it from the absurd vantage-point of Kottaras – a guy who will either be riding pine on Yawkey Way all year or, more likely, starting in Pawtucket. The team sees him as eventually replacing captain Jason Varitek someday … just not someday soon.

Best line: “… for the next 10 minutes or so, a ball passed back and forth between the two rookies – the catcher making the big league minimum, the pitcher with a $103 million price tag hanging from his sleeve.”

The Herald’s Jeff Horrigan did a passable version of it, mostly focused on the crowd, the media and the tick-tock absurdity of it.

But Edes’ story – dripping with details on the very divergent lives of two rookies doing that most basic act of having a catch – is just what I want from my spring training reports.

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