Archive for the 'David Whitley' Category

Feb 27

[RAYS MEDIA] David Whitley’s Column Was Not Only Awful, It Was Unoriginal

David Whitley, The Serious Tip Cork Gaines No Comments »

Earlier this week, in our ever-popular feature “Why The Rays Columnists Suck”, David Whitley made his debut. In his column Whitley emails the Church of Satan in an effort to ask Satan himself how he feels about the Tampa Bay Devil Rays changing their name to the “Tampa Bay Rays.

It was recently pointed out to us that Whitley’s piece was much worse than we originally believed. Not only was the column awful and a poor attempt at humor…turns out the idea for the column was unoriginal.

Whitley attempts to explore the reaction of the Church of Satan to the Tampa Bay Rays’ franchise name change. Regular readers of my blog, as well as visitors from Deadspin.com and RaysIndex.com might remember I wrote about the exact same topic five months ago.

Shame on us for not remembering the original piece as we did indeed link to Jordi’s original piece when it was first posted to The Serious Tip.

We want to emphasize that this is not an accusation of plagiarism. Rather it is an accusation of laziness. As The Serious Tip points out, “David Whitley claimed to have done “much research” in finding the Church of Satan website (www.churchofsatan.com, by the way). Had he simply incorporated ‘Devil Rays’ after ‘Church of Satan’ in his search, he would have easily found my post. It is the first web site listed.”

Why The Rays Columnists Suck: David Whitley [Rays Index]
Who cursed the Rays? Could it be…Satan?! [Orlando Sentinel]
David Whitley of the Orlando Sentinel is neither funny nor original [The Serious Tip]
Church Members Upset Over Devil Rays’ Name Change [The Serious Tip]

Feb 25

[RAYS MEDIA] Why The Rays Columnists Suck: David Whitley

David Whitley Cork Gaines 1 Comment »

Not really a Rays columnist, but we haven’t done one of these in a while so let’s fire up the burner…

David Whitley writes for the Orlando Sentinel. Apparently Mr. Whitley’s idea of journalism is to send emails to The Church of Satan, asking Satan himself how he feels about the Tampa Bay Devil Rays changing their name to the ‘Tampa Bay Rays’. Seriously.

After much research, I finally found a Web site for The Church of Satan.

I wanted to call for a comment, but there was a stern notice that the church doesn’t take or return phone calls. It does accept e-mails, so I sent one asking if somebody could give us the Devil’s perspective on being dissed by Tampa Bay.

“Hey, it’s not my fault Vince Naimoli thought he could take on the Yankees with a Wal-Mart payroll,” Satan said. “And whose idea was it to play home games inside the world’s largest dumpster?”

Actually, the Devil didn’t really say that. I never heard back from the Church of Satan, not that I was surprised. It’s hard to use a keyboard with cloven hooves.

Is this supposed to be funny? Is this supposed to have any point whatsoever? Did David Whitley email random gun websites as ask if they were offended when the Washington Bullets changed their name to the Wizards? And then make up fake quotes when they failed to respond? Did he email his in-laws and ask if they were offended when his wife changed her last name?

I don’t know. Maybe Mr. Whitley would have had more luck if he tried to email some actual Devil Rays…you know, the fish? and asked if they were offended. At least then this would have made a modicum of sense.

Who cursed the Rays? Could it be…Satan?! [Orlando Sentinel]