Baseball media dealing with pandemic’s restrictions

By Danny Gallagher

Canadian Baseball Network

Hazel Mae is the epitome of professionalism, believability, credibility and trustworthiness as Mae does her interviews with Blue Jays players.

At times, Mae has to pry more information out of the subject, who may be providing bland, boring, short answers. Not able to be on the road like as in pre-COVID conditions, Mae has to adapt by chatting up players in the dugout after a game from her post in the GTA.

Doing Zoom interviews where the player is in the dugout and TV viewers are distracted often by people crossing in front of the camera, Mae is an expert at what she does for Sportsnet.

Face it: restrictions placed on Toronto media covering the Jays are challenging and stressful. It’s a lock down for reporters, who are so accustomed to being close to players, coaches and the manager in the clubhouse, the dugout or on the field during batting practice.

In the midst of the pandemic, reporters must depend on Zoom interviews and watching TV to put together their game stories and features and advances. It is far from ideal conditions.

It’s frustrating and annoying but that’s one of the pitfalls of the pandemic. I have great admiration for those engulfed in this restrictive scenario. It can’t be fun when most media outlets have pretty much the same story all the time every day. The ability for a scoop is out the door when you have to deal from afar and rely on Zoom.

There was one exception to start the regular season and that was Rosie DiManno of the Star, who had a close-up view by attending Jays games in Arlington, Tex., Tampa and Dunedin before the Jays headed to Kansas City for the weekend.

Despite the pitfalls and restrictions, the Toronto media is doing a fine job of covering the team under the circumstances.

On the print side in the Sportsnet digital age, we have to commend Shi Davidi, Ben Nicholson-Smith, Arash Madani, Arden Zwelling, and Nick Ashbourne. Even the analytical, thought-provoking Jeff Blair, my old nemesis during our days covering the Expos in the late 1980s and 1990s, is an occasional print contributor when he’s not doing his daily talk show.

Sportsnet’s play-by-play is in the capable hands of Dan Shulman, who is based at the Sportsnet studios in Toronto while his sidekick Buck Martinez is the colour commentator based in New Port Richey, Fla.

But with the Jays playing their first ‘home’ games in Dunedin, Martinez was calling games from the TD Bank Stadium with long-time partner Pat Tabler, who lives in Cincinnati, but was in the Florida broadcast booth at as well.

What has been challenging for the TV play-by-play guys this season is that their work is simulcast on the team’s radio station network, an awkward scenario ripped to shreds recently by Rush lead vocalist Geddy Lee.

Former radio play-by-play man Ben Wagner has been doing sideline reporting.

How about the wonderful work Joe Siddall is doing as a Sportsnet analyst? People in the hockey broadcasting business rave about Ray Ferraro, but how about the efficient, solid work Siddall provides in response to the questions posed by his equally professional host Jamie Campbell?

Then there’s Keegan Matheson of mlb.com and Alexis Brudnicki, who went through it all in 2020, as well as writing for MLB Pipeline. Plus, The Athletic’s Kaitlyn McGrath, TSN’s Scott Mitchell and Gregory Strong of The Canadian Press.

Think of the polished, extraordinary Rob Longley of the Toronto Sun, who seemingly does most of the Jays coverage for his paper. He covered 37 Jays games in Buffalo and Boston last year. He also stopped in Cooperstown and the Jays alternate site in Rochester N.Y.

Then, there’s the Fab Five at the Star: Laura Armstrong, Gregor Chisholm, Mike Wilner, Mark Zwolinski and DiManno.

The prolific DiManno is equally as comfortable in a courtroom as she is in a clubhouse, dugout or press box, spinning magic and “speaking words of wisdom,’’ as per some of the lyrics from Let It Be.

More often than not, you will see a news-side column from DiManno on the same day as she spins a sports column. I look at her as Canada’s finest journalist in either news or sports.

Chisolm was an eye-catching hire from a few years ago. After being in the position of having to produce mundane game stories for mlb.com, he blossomed when he was able to spread his wings and part the sea at the Star, allowing him to produce opinion columns and analysis.

Armstrong’s excellent use of descriptions and wordsmithing to capsulize a player or scenario in a game make her an entertaining must-read. When she’s not on the Blue Jays beat, Armstrong is equally adept at pumping out copy about the Raptors or Toronto FC United. A very valuable member of the paper’s staff.

Zwolinski has been covering the Jays for what close to 30 years. He’s in the background. He doesn’t seek attention. He’s anonymous but he’s there: in a big way as one of the most respected beat writers in the business.

Zwolinski is the MVP of the Star’s sports staff and I predict a future winner of the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame’s Jack Graney Award for his contributions to the promotion of Canadian baseball through his excellent work.

Like DiManno, Zwolinski can be often seen covering the Leafs on a large-scale basis.

Wilner’s hire by sports editor Dave Washburn was a coup this past winter in the wake of cutbacks in the media and the challenging, compressed advertising revenue media outlets are staring at these days.

Rather than come in and cut back on staff, new Star owners Paul Rivett and Jordan Bitove, with help from NordStar Capital and PointNorth Capital, have surprisingly opened up the company’s wallet to hire more people in news, business and sports. And Wilner, let go by Sportsnet, after many years of service hosting Jays Talk and then sharing the broadcast booth, was gobbled up.

Wilner’s modus operandi for decades was as a broadcaster but his new job as a writer, not as a speaker, has seemingly gone seamless. His insight is evident and he looks like he has fit in effortlessly with typing, rather than talking.

I can’t help but mention the Star’s vice-president of editorial Wayne Parrish. He was an Expos beat writer for the Montreal Star in the late 1970s, a columnist at the Toronto Star through part of the 1980s and then sports editor of the Toronto Sun in 1986, before returning to his roots at 1 Yonge.

Danny Gallagher’s just released Expos book of memories is called Never Forgotten.