If you hadn’t heard, one-time catcher and current blogger Brent Mayne has had quite a day on the Internet. Everyone’s a-Twitter about the catcher who was pretty much unknown outside hardcore baseball circles.
The story goes like this (now pay attention because the details are important in this story. Baseball fans won’t let you get away with anything). Mayne went out on a limb and admitted that when JT Snow came up for his very first at-bat in the majors, Mayne told him what pitch was coming. Mayne tells us that after he told Snow that a “fastball outside” was on its way, he smoked a double to left.
What controversial thing to say. And good for him for coming clean, right?
Except it didn’t happen.
Mayne should know better (and probably does) than to get one by baseball fans. It didn’t take long before someone posted the boxscore of JT Snow’s first game. How strange that Snow was 0 for 5 in his appearance.
So either:
A) Mayne is clueless about the all-encompassing expansiveness of the Internet. He’s a former ballplayer just talking about the old days and didn’t realize that he JUST MIGHT be fact-checked.
or
B) Just the opposite… Mayne is shrewd businessman who knows how to drive traffic to his website which in turn will increase sales of his books and other products.
I’ll just give him the benefit of the doubt and say it’s (A) though I’m jealous of all his web traffic for a stupid story that wasn’t true.
To be fair, Mayne has issued a correction/retraction. The article rambles and is all over the place (you’ve read my stuff so you know what I’m talking about). JT Snow was “playing for the Yanks” and he knows for sure it was “towards the end of the season”. He’s even “sure it was JT”.
He’s not so sure about the double thing, though. Might have been an out or something.
I’m ready to let this thing die. I’ve given it more room on this blog than it probably deserves.