From reader Eric L. comes this bit of sloppy journalism from Sports Illustrated football writer Don Banks:
But Long isn’t taking a backseat to anyone these days. Not even his dad, the square-jawed and crew-cutted Howie, or his younger brother Kyle, who is a highly regarded left-handed high school pitcher who might go first overall in baseball’s June draft.
Kyle Long is, in fact, a left-handed pitcher who graduates from high school this year. He didn’t make my ranking of the top 60 amateurs back in November. But don’t take my word for it – Baseball America placed him 58th in its preseason ranking of the top 100 HS prospects for this draft, which would place him somewhere in the fourth round, third at best.
I don’t really expect Don Banks to know a lot of specifics about prospects for the upcoming baseball draft, but would it be so hard for him to reach out to someone – like Kevin Goldstein, who has contributed some pieces to SI – to check a fact? Or is this, as Eric put it in his email, “just a case of a football writer talking about something about he doesn’t really know that much about and then stretching the truth to make a cute parallel?”