If you'd checked this Hal McCoy blog entry yesterday afternoon, you'd have read a paragraph about Jonny Gomes apparently singing a song celebrating, or at least commemorating, Adam Wainwright's reported elbow problems. Check out the Hall of Fame sportswriter's blog today and you'll see—well, it's like a different story, only it's the same.
↵McCoy talks about removing the paragraph in the wake of Gomes's denial, and suggests that Gomes intended no malice with his songcraft, but at the same time he appears to reconfirm the story, suggesting he's "not the only one" who heard it and mentioning that, at the time he heard it, he had no idea of Wainwright's injury.
↵"If I had it to do over," he says, "I would ignore what I "thought" I heard." (His scare-quotes.) If we're going to have reporters in clubhouses at all, there seems to be no point in that kind of willful ignorance. Better to record Gomes's intent at the same time you take down his lyrics than to "not hear" it. (Mine.)
↵In any case, I hope we don't have to hear about this all year. This is baseball; if I wanted professional wrestling, with its attendant feuding and town-baiting and steel chairs, I would watch my Wrestlefest '90 tape over again. That Hart Foundation/Rockers match is a classic, and Jonny Gomes is a huge no-sell.