The Green Phone was created so the fans could voice their opinions. Give us a call and let us know what’s on your mind.
CALLER 1: Hi, I’m a parent of one of the softball players of the Little League team from Gilroy that just made it to the World Series and I don’t want to leave my name or number but I’ve just noticed that the paper seems to be focusing on four or five girls and not the efforts of the entire team. There are a lot of other girls on the team that have made significant plays to help them win and I just think the paper should make more of an effort to recognize the entire team and not just the same individuals. So I just wanted to put my two cents-worth in. I do not want to mention my name and have any special attention put upon my daughter, but I just think this has been a team effort. They’ve all contributed. There have been hits that have not been recognized from other members of that team and every girl needs to be recognized as much as possible and not the same few individuals, So if you could please make that effort on focusing on some of the other girls when you do the ad about the World Series or the article about the World Series, please do that so that all of the girls feel that they have contributed, because it has been very noticeable to a lot of the girls that they have not been mentioned. So please do me the favor of making the effort of recognizing as many girls as possible. Thank you.
GREEN PHONE: Caller 1, we assure you that the Dispatch has no agenda to play up certain members of Gilroy’s Little League World Series team over others. Making a tournament as exclusive as the World Series requires excellence from ALL members of a team, after all. That said, we do have an explanation for what we think might be your beef about our coverage. Through most of All-Star play and into the Western Regional, we relied on game reports over the phone from the team’s coach and the Gilroy Little League information officer. These gentlemen have invariably provided details of all player contributions in games, without bias. (For example, our report on last Sunday’s Western Regional final game mentioned nine of the 12 girls on the team by name. We have also printed the entire roster of the team on several occasions.) But since both the coach and information officer also have daughters on the team, when we asked for a player to interview after a game for a quote or two, frequently the only ones near the phone were, naturally enough, their daughters. So if you noticed a lot of quotes from the same girls in the paper, hopefully you’ll understand why that was the case.
For the World Series, though, we won’t be relying on phoned-in game reports. We’ve got our crack reporter, Ana Patejdl up in Portland for the entire Series. She’ll have access to the entire team and you can expect broader coverage with more varied voices from the team as a result.
We’d also like to encourage any parents, relatives and friends of the Garlic City champs who are attending the World Series to call the Green Phone at (800) 687-0836 with any news or opinions from Portland. If you folks call it in and we get enough feedback, we’ll run a special Green Phone column each day of the World Series, through next Thursday.
So now the ball’s in your court, Caller!
CALLER 2: So Krueger made a stupid comment on the air. Does he deserve to get fired for this? I’d rather see Felipe Alou go. That guy has basically called the Bay Area a bunch of racists by saying he’s going to go to the president of the Dominican and warn him to look out for racists in San Francisco.
GREEN PHONE: Caller, we don’t think Krueger deserved to be fired over his comment about the Giants’ having too many “brain-dead Caribbean hitters hacking at slop nightly,” as dumb as it was. And we think Alou went a bit overboard in his reaction – in fact, Alou himself said, “I may have gone overboard,” and that he never wanted Krueger fired. Yep, there’s a little bit of the “having his cake and eating it too” syndrome with Alou … he seems to want to be both a critic of and an apologist for Krueger. Of course, Krueger’s always had a nasty streak. Nastier certainly than fellow KNBR hosts Gary Radnich, who can be biting but is more hail-fellow-well-met, and Ralph Barbieri, who is prickly but whose self-important bufoonery takes the edge off his “Razor” persona somewhat. At any rate, it’s not like this whole thing “couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy,” seeing as it happened to Krueger. Look for more on this subject tomorrow, when Damon Poeter tackles it in his column.
CALLER 3: The A’s are on one of the most thrilling comeback streaks of all-time baseball history and they get a little box in your paper. Hey, I’m happy for the Little League team in the Little (sic) World Series or the swimmers in a meet up in Morgan Hill. But, c’mon, man. The A’s is the story that needs to have a page, page and a half in the Sports section, not that other minor stuff.
GREEN PHONE: Caller 3, we respectfully disagree. Because while we could name any number of media sources where you can find your fill of A’s coverage, we can only think of one where you get daily coverage of our local sports stories. And that source is us.
CALLER 4: Hi, I want to talk about your guys’ Sports page. It says that the A’s are behind a game, when they tied yesterday. You guys should really fix that.
GREEN PHONE: It’s the attack of the angry A’s fans! Caller 4, we apologize for the day-old standings in the scoreboard on B4. That page has an earlier deadline than the front page, so sometimes with late games, we don’t get scores early enough to get them into the paper. But if you check B1’s game report each morning, you’ll find a box that does give the A’s current record and standing in the division (the same goes for the Giants’ reports). So, again, if the B4 scores and standings aren’t always up-to-the-minute, the B1 box is.
