Weds/Thurs BP: Silly season has arrived

Every now and again, someone — occasionally a fan, often an oddly bitter media member — berates me for not being a “Real Journalist.” Which is, of course, accurate. I’m a writer at best and a blogger at worst, who gets the delightful privilege of being subjective when I want — an honor not bestowed upon Real Journalists.

It certainly doesn’t bother me. In part because I’ve done the Real Journalism thing, and this is way more fun. And in part because if someone wants to pay me a decent salary to write silly stuff that annoys the gatekeeping online NIMBYs of the Real Journalism world, well then I’m all for it.

But while I’m always happy to be a writer rather than a journalist, there’s only one time of the year where I’m proud to be on that side of the distinction. And that time has arrived in the baseball world. I call it “silly season,” which I admittedly stole from Formula 1 (where it means something very different).

Silly season is that gloriously awful time in the MLB offseason where the influx of stories collides with the competitive desire to be FIRST, accuracy be damned. You might remember some of its greatest hits, like last year, when the baseball world glued itself to flight trackers upon news that Shohei Ohtani was aboard a private jet to Toronto, only to find out it was actually a member of Shark Tank. Or, a few days later, when a Dodgers reporter broke the news that Ohtani had agreed to a deal with the Blue Jays, just days before Ohtani actually agreed to a deal with ... well ... the Dodgers. Of course, for San Francisco Giants fans, the biggest hit in the silly season discography came two years ago, when one of the most followed national reporters fired off a tweet announcing that “Arson” Judge was signing with the Yankees.

It’s an embarrassing time, for the industry and for the journalists partaking in the shenanigans.

This week, silly season started in earnest for the Giants. On Monday, the New York Post’s Jon Heyman — the author of said Judge tweet — reported that the Giants were one of eight finalists for superstar Juan Soto, and are headed to Southern California to meet with him. Heyman added that the Giants “are also seen as legit Soto players.”

The next day, Jayson Stark of The Athletic tweeted that the Giants do not have a meeting with Soto.

Of course, if taken literally, Stark’s tweet tells us next to nothing. The Giants do not currently have a meeting set up, but maybe Soto just hasn’t filled out their Noodle form yet. Maybe they don’t have a meeting scheduled for the same reason I don’t have any ice cream to eat: it already happened yesterday. Perhaps it’s like The Bachelor, and the Giants don’t get to set up a meeting with Soto, they’re just told one day that it’s time to meet up.

But Stark is an honest and reputable reporter, so he’s not playing semantic shenanigans with us. That report means that he’s heard the Giants are not in the running, just as Heyman’s report means that he’s heard the Giants are.

We may never know which — if either — are accurate, though if you had to guess, smart money is on the one that has the Giants not doing the cool thing, rather than on the one that has the Arson Judge author breaking important news on the Giants pursuit of a Yankees slugger.

But regardless of what happens with Soto, silly season has arrived. There will be more reports that conflict with each other, and more “news” that ends up being categorically false, extremely ridiculous, or both.

Enjoy it. Or don’t.