As most avid sports fans are aware, the two reporters who wrote Game of Shadows are facing a judge today. They are facing jail time if they don't reveal their sources. For a quality take on the issue read Rick Telander's column from last month, or Jeff Brohel's column at The Baseball Report. As usual, stay away from Mariotti. Mariotti again manages to make this issue about him, despite the fact that he certainly isn't a reporter. After all, in the five months since the beginning of this site I don't think he's interviewed one person. He hasn't investigated anything and he certainly hasn't brought anything to light. While he has written lazy (and extremely convoluted) columns about his own greatness, I don't think that's punishable by law. The biggest mistake Jay makes in his column today is assuming that the general public feels as much hatred for the sports press in general as we do for him. He writes:

Media freedoms are on trial as they haven't been in decades. Sadly, ignorantly, a lot of you probably are cheering about that. On the sports pages, many fans believe our purpose is to provide supportive coverage of the hometown teams and aren't very interested in the San Francisco case.

It's nice to know that Jay has taken this opportunity to recite his tired mantra of "I tell it how it is, that's why people hate me." Not only that, he's thrown in a cheap shot at his readers, calling most of them ignorant. Well, Jay, people hate you because you are an arrogant, untalented fool. There are plenty of critical sportswriters with talent in this city (see the link to Rick Telander) that aren't widely hated. I think one would be hard-pressed to find a reader of this site who didn't feel a sense of appreciation and respect for the two journalists who stand trial today. They are brave men with so much journalistic integrity that they refuse to name their sources. I don't think "journalistic integrity" and "Jay Mariotti" have ever been used in a sentence together. Except for that one right there. As much as Jay would like to believe it, our hatred for him isn't based on an overarching hatred of critical sports journalists. Unfortunately, what Jay doesn't realize is that he is the anti-Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams. He doesn't interview people. He doesn't work hard. He doesn't have an insightful sense of what is right. To write an article aligning himself to these two men is ludicrous. Ultimately, you have to wonder if Jay himself even cares about their plight. If he was so dedicated, wouldn't he attend the huge sports writers' protest happening outside the courthouse? As usual, it seems that Jay is taking a large issue and making it all about himself:

Our business is changing by the year, the month, the hour. I have little idea where it's going, and what I do know, I don't like. Web sites peek around corners like sewer rats, operated by weirdos who live in their parents' basements, pretend to be experts and break ''stories'' that gullible people actually believe.

For those of you keeping score at home, he's called us "weirdos" two times and now "sewer rats" once. And for the record, I would never live in my parents' basement. It floods way too much.