Dear Tom Layberger from Sports Illustrated
Can you please stop plagiarizing my friends? Thanks! Keep up the gay goatee!
On January 18th JP, my friend and Washington Caps blogger (well, not my Wash Caps blogger), wrote a post on Japers' Rink titled Top 11 Rookie Seasons of All-Time. It was pithy and thoroughly enjoyable and not a little bit scandalous. Excluding Gretzky on a technicality! Quelle horreur! The post was articulate and well received...but was it too well-received?
Yesterday on sportsillustrated.com, Tom Layberger, who looks like a cross between a porn actor and Erik Estrada, published Cream of the Crops: The 10 best rookie seasons in NHL history. At first glance, the scope and breadth of the columns are manifestly dissimilar. For one thing, the titles were different, as were the number of rookies. JP had chosen an unorthodox and "edgier" 11 while Layberger, the crusty old-school online journalist, had gone with the more conventional 10. Plus Layberger made a clever play on "cream of the crop," adding the "s." Suffice to say, I was really looking forward to reading Layberger's article. So I did, and then things got fishy.
JP selected the following rooks: Esposito, Selanne, Bossy, Sawchuck, Hawerchuck, Leetch, Murphy,
Nieuwendyk, Roy and Lemieux. Honorable mentions in no particular
order to Gary Suter, Grant Fuhr, Luc Robitaille, Joe Juneau, Raymond
Bourque, Martin Brodeur.
Layburger's selections: Esposito, Selanne, Bossy, Sawchuck, Nieuwendyk, Hawerchuck, Leetch, Dryden, Bourque and Stasny Honorable mentions in alphabetical order to Hall, Larmer, Lemieux, Robitaille, Trottier
Hmmm...but what about word-choice?
Tony Esposito
About Esposito JP writes, "Claimed by Chicago from Montreal in the Intra-League Draft earlier in 1969, Tony "O"'s first full year in the NHL was full of wins (a 38-17-8 record), shutouts (15, the most by a rookie and second most all-time), saves (a 2.17 goals against average) and hardware (Esposito won both the Calder and the Vezina Trophies, becoming the first rookie to win the latter since Frank Brimsek in 1939)."
Freyburger, "After being claimed from Montreal for $25,000 in the intra-league draft, Chicago's new netminder posted a 2.17 goals-against average and set the modern NHL record of 15 shutouts en route to winning the Vezina as the league's top goalie. "Tony O" also led the league with 38 wins while lifting his team from the basement to the top of the East Division.
Teemu Selanne
About Selanne JP writes: "The Finnish Flash" set current rookie records for most goals (76) and points (132) and led all rookies in power-play goals and game-winning goals en route to the Calder Trophy. Selanne was also an All-Star, an All-Rookie team member and a member of the NHL's First All-Star Team in his jaw-dropping rookie campaign.
Layberger, As great as Ovechkin and Crosby have been, they will not come close to the Finnish Flash's rookie records of 76 goals and 132 points posted during the end of the highest-scoring era in NHL history. Selanne's 76 goals, 24 of which came with the man advantage, is tied for fifth all-time.
Terry Sawchuck
JP, Terry Sawchuk (1950-51) - "The Uke" played every game for Detroit in his rookie year and led the NHL in wins (44) and shutouts (11), winning the Calder and being named to the named to the NHL's First All-Star Team along the way. The man this list nearly forgot (see comments) was the first man to be named rookie of the year in three different Leagues (the USHL, AHL and NHL).
Freyburger, While playing all 70 games, Sawchuk led the league with 44 wins and 11 shutouts. He permitted only 1.99 goals per game while copping First-Team All-Star honors. Thanks in large part to his efforts, the Red Wings compiled the first 100-point season (101) in league history.
Dale Hawerchuck
JP, "Ducky," taken first overall in the 1981 Entry Draft, made an immediate impact, both individually (with 45 goals, 103 points and the Calder Trophy) and for his team, the Winnipeg Jets, whose 48-point improvement over the previous season is still the largest single-season turn around by an NHL team.
Freburger, It is not so much that Hawerchuk's numbers stand out -- his 45 goals and 103 points place, respectively, fourth and third all-time among rookies -- it was the jolt the 18-year-old gave an abysmal club. The first-overall pick in 1981 propelled Winnipeg to an astonishing 48-point improvement that was then the biggest one-season turnaround in NHL history.
Perhaps most damning is Layburger's exlusion of Wayne Gretzky's kick-ass rookie season in the NHL. Gretz was denied the Calder (the NHL trophy for rookie of the year) because he had played a year earlier in the now defunct WHA thereby notching a pro season prior to entering the NHL (btw, at age 17 he scored 43 goals and 63 helpers). His appearance in the WHA made him Calder-ineligigle despite the fact that in his first season in the NHL (at 18. EIGHTEEN) he managed 51 goals and 86 assists. To put this in perspective, look at it this way - imagine something impossible - now imagine that someone just did it. See? Pretty amazing.
In any case, Layburger excluded Gretz for reasons identical to JP's. Does the fact that they both made Espo #1 mean Freyburger ripped him off? Probably not. How about the similar wording in the Selanne, Hawerchuck and Sawchuck write-ups? Maybe not. How about the fact that they chose many of the same players? Who knows. Exclusion of Wayne Gretzky? It just piles up. And up. And up.
Furthermore, and this is just spitballing, there exists a meta-hockey blog bazaar called Carnival of the NHL (CoN) - it is, as you could parse from the word meta, a weekly collection of the best hockey blog write-ups on the the net. Every couple of weeks a different blogger hosts the Carnival and collects all the best blog posts from the preceding fortnight (I just said fortnight). On Jan 31, 3 days before the SI article was published, the CoN featured Japers' top 11 rook post. Do I have any proof that Layburger saw this? Yes. Wait, no, I mean no. I have no proof. But if you're an online hockey journalist, and there exists a site (CoN) that captures the pulse of fan sentiment and stories, wouldn't it be safe to say that you, the hockey journalist, would frequent this site? Don't let that run-on sentence distract you from that fact that Tom Layberger likley visited the CoN, saw JP's post and decided that he would do something similiar. And by similiar I mean the same.
Listen, all I know is that when you have one crab, all you have is a crab. Two? A pair. Three? Several crabs. Any more and you have the makings for crab cakes. And you know what crab cakes are? Delicious. You know what isn't delicious? Plagiarism. And what he have in Layburger's article is a crab cake of plagiarism...without the crab. And that's just gross.
So Tom Layburger, I implore you, stop ripping off Japers' Rink. It's just not right. And it makes me sad.
Did Tom Layburger rip you off? Tell me about it, mail complaints to tomlayburgerrippedmeoff@gmail.com.
I love the "hey, what do you want from me?" look on his face in the pic.
Posted by: Anonymous | 02/06/2006 at 08:57 AM
Saw the link from Deadspin, and I must say, I really like the way you write. The crab cake stuff is great.
Posted by: salvomania | 02/27/2006 at 03:02 PM
I like that you like the way I write
Posted by: dave | 02/27/2006 at 04:25 PM
I like the way you write, too. But I have to assert that "plagiarism" is a big, serious word. In my opinion, this is a case of a national writer taking something out there and making it his own. That may seem shifty, but that's also very much how it works in journalism, and it's not particularly unethical.
The term is "bigfooting." All reporters at local papers know that SI or the NYTimes or ESPN can and do -- quite frequently -- take their ideas and run with their enterprise stories. As long as it's re-reported, even if it's done exactly according to the blueprint of the local story, it's okay. Ideas bubble upward through the media heirarchy. As a blogger, you're friend seems to be getting his first taste of this phenomenon.
I'm a reporter. I've worked locally and nationally. I've been truly plagiarized, and it really bothered me. I mean it *really* bothered me. This case here? Not so much. Kinda not at all.
Peace. Keep writing well.
Posted by: anon | 02/27/2006 at 08:39 PM
That's well and good were this a case of fact analysis or breaking news - but this was a list of NHL rookies, c'mon man, this isn't "ideas bubbling upward" this is, at best, lazy journalism on the part of Layberger.
Posted by: dave | 02/27/2006 at 09:05 PM
Sure, absolutely, I agree: It's lazy journalism. Bigfooting and lazy journalism walk hand in hand. It's not plagiarism, though. That's a real heavy word to toss out there.
Posted by: anon | 02/27/2006 at 09:17 PM
I don't know. if you define plagiarism as "using another person's ideas or creative work without giving credit to that person," then, yeah, I think thats plagiarism.
Posted by: sniffable | 02/28/2006 at 07:08 AM
Yeah, you're right. Technically, this is plagiarism. I don't want to defend it, nor am I. The dude should have credited the blog.
Posted by: anon | 02/28/2006 at 08:40 AM
Not to mention that Layberger writes for SI - the most respected publication in US Sports (debatable) and he ripped off a list - a LIST? Top ten lists of crap like this are the life-blood of on-the-cheap sports journalism (sports journalists can't see a spectacular performnce without assigning it a place in the canon of top __ [enter feat here] of all time.) And he nicked this?
Anyone of us could sit down and rattle off 5 list-worthy achievements to write about - Layberger just stole one. And a fairly conventional one at that. Wtf are they psying him for?
Posted by: dave | 02/28/2006 at 08:50 AM
I want you to let everyone know that I find it offensive that Sports Illustrated employs Tom Layberger..his knowledge of Hockey is a joke and it just reitterates the simple notion that you want something done right, DO IT YOURSELF.
" Hey Tom, in your recent article reveiwing the 10 best rookie goaltenders of all time, you somehow omited the legendary Patrick Roy...He didn't even warrant honorable mention in your article.
An FYI for you, you sad depressing excuse for a connaiseur - "Patrick Roy, arguable the greatest 'money" goalie of the generation, won a STANLEY CUP as a ROOKIE.
I find it degrading to the great sport that you neglect to tell ur readers (all 5 of them if you continue in this manner) about Roy-Boy...
Shame on you
PS - Hextal won the Conn Smythe on a losing team...Don't you think you should have mentioned that.
Seriously, you should give me half your salary, I'll write the articles and you can can enjoy another Whiskey...Putz
Posted by: Evan | 04/06/2006 at 03:55 PM
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Posted by: degilky obfjyph | 03/11/2008 at 05:05 PM