Peter Gammons: "Good" Columnist

I don't have the time or the energy to comment on Peter Gammons' entire Torii Hunter suckfest, but check out the title:

Hunter worth Angels' investment

Next, look at what Gammons writes in paragraph 6.

Now, this is not going to be a lecture about whether this is a "good contract" for a midfield player who turns 33 during the season (remember, Manny Ramirez's contract was once considered so horrible that he was put on waivers; and now with options for 2009 and 2010, the Red Sox believe it's a great contract).

There are so many things wrong with this paragraph.

1. He tells us what his column is "not going to be" six paragraphs into it. Why couldn't he just say, "this column is not a lecture about..." since he's right smack in the middle of the column anyway?
2. If this is, in fact, not a lecture about whether Torii Hunter has a "good contract", then why did he write, "Hunter worth Angels' Investment" as his title? Does anybody else see a contradiction here?
3. Unless Torii Hunter also plays soccer, I see no good reason to refer to him as a "midfielder". I suspect Peter is aware that there's no such position in baseball, but I also suspect that, in classic Gammons fashion, in an attempt to convey "interesting", he has managed only "confusing". Does "midfielder" refer specifically to a center fielder? Is it any "up-the-middle" position (CF, 2B, SS)? Most importantly, does Gammons himself know the definition of the baseball term he just made up?
4. Bringing evidence from Manny Ramirez's contract to support a claim about Torii Hunter's contract is ridiculous. They are NOTHING ALIKE. For example:

• Torii=CF (midfielder?). Manny=RF.
  
• Torii=good (albeit overrated according to many) defense. Manny=terrible defense.
  
• Torii=career .793 OPS. Manny=career 1.002 OPS. (Holy crap, Manny is good.)

Manny also managed to avoid the decline that most power hitters undergo in their early 30s. Whether Torii avoids such a decline remains to be seen, but even if he stays the course, he's still far inferior to Manny.

(Of course, Gammons also says that he's not lecturing us about Hunter's contract, so maybe the Manny anecdote served only to quell Gammons' desire to gush about the Red Sox, since he had written all of five paragraphs without managing to mention them.)

5. There is NO WAY any self-respecting editor would allow a conjunction following a semicolon to slide, especially since it's so easy to fix - just delete the conjunction! Add in the missing comma, and you've got yourself the makings of a sentence: "Manny Ramirez's contract was once considered so horrible that he was put on waivers; now, with options for '09 and '10, the Red Sox believe it's a great contract."

Actually, the sentence still sucks, thanks to the completely unnecessary passive voice. Here: "The Red Sox once believed that Ramirez's contract was so horrible that they put him on waivers; now, with options for '09 and '10, they believe it's a great contract." THIS IS NOT DIFFICULT.

Oh, and for Foist's sake, the rest of the paragraph:

This is about a good player being rewarded. This is about the values that social leaders like Earl Martin Phalen of Better Educated Leaders for Life (BELL) in Boston have built into hundreds of thousands of children in Boston and New York (and, yes, Phelan was Barack Obama's roommate at Harvard Law School).

What on God's green earth is "about a good player being rewarded"? WHAT IS "THIS"?? Also, I have absolutely no clue what that last sentence has to do with anything. Barack Obama? His law school roommate? Torii Hunter? Social values "built into hundreds of thousands of children"? Taking into account the first sentence that I completely broke down earlier, I present this paragraph as the worst paragraph Peter Gammons has ever written. That is no small feat, as regular readers of this blog are painfully aware.

Oh, and if you're still on the fence about Hunter's contract, look at this FJM entry. Case closed, I believe.