Johnny Simone Out, Really?!!!

THE OTHER SIDE OF SPORTS TOO…

    Well fans according to www.syracuse.com Monday night the Community Baseball Club of Central New York Inc. AKA. The Syracuse Chiefs has made a lot of changes.

    Since a couple of weeks back when the then COO Tex Simone resigned/retired, board members, local business men and women along with the fans in the stands have made their voices heard, get rid of GM Johnny Simone.

    Well as of the 30th of September this year it appears he is done,  now the rebuilding.

    Now it would not be my place to expound much on the reasons for the Simone’s dismissal as being a stockholder, member of the media covering the team and maybe a returning fan I have a bit too much info.  But here is one incident that showed which way the team was going.

    In the mid 90’s during a daytime doubleheader between Syracuse and Ottawa at Big Mac the first game was cruising along with Ottawa winning, that is at least until the top of the seventh when the press box got a phone call from the Ottawa clubhouse.  It was the hurler scheduled to pitch the second game of the doubleheader wanting to know why the Syracuse radio announcers had him pitching the first game not the guy who was.

    You see fans the pitchers were switched about a half an hour before the first game and the announcers never checked the lineup on the chalk board in the press box where the change was listed before they went on the air.

    Well the press box runner told the announcers between the top and bottom of the seventh so they made the correction.

    You see fans, for some unknown reason the Chiefs front office higher ups didn’t want the print writers listening to the broadcast of the games.  This meant that the writers with the Post Standard, Herald Journal and yours truly with the Associated Press couldn’t listen to the games on radio.  It does get better fans.

    Well after getting a quote or two between gams and filing my story with AP Albany (N.Y.) I sat and thought about the incident.  Well I wrote about six to seven humorous graphs and showed it to one of the broadcasters who ask me not to use their names, which I hadn’t.

     Now I told you it was getting better as the Herald and the Post weren’t going to use it but when the other Chief’s play-by-play announcer came out to the print press box and started threating me the send button was pushed and the story went worldwide.

    Moving right along the next morning’s Post and afternoon Herald each had three to four graphs of their writer’s game stories cut to fit in my AP copy about the incident.

    As I reported to cover the next day’s night game I was informed as I went onto the field that that John (Simone) wanted to see me right away.  John said I was banned but when I ask if I had lied he wouldn’t answer.  So yours truly went straight out of his office to a pay phone and called AP New York and within five minutes I was back covering the team.

    As a note here, somewhere I still have the tape of John putting his you know what in his you know where.

    Now in closing on all this there is one final humorous incident to this all and it appears the announcers couldn’t tell the forest for the trees.  You see fans the pitcher in game one of the doubleheader was black and the one in game two for Ottawa was white.

    It appears fans that ball clubs are still trying to control the media even today but when humor is involved use it to your advantage.  Turn that possible negative into a definite positive, enough said.

    So until then…