By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
December 18, 2014
If you enjoy reading my work you probably should thank Detroit News writer Chris McCosky; years before Deadspin, Awful Announcing and The Big Lead existed I founded this website so I would have a place to rebut the utter nonsense that was disseminated by the Detroit sports media on a daily basis.
And there was no bigger clown in Motown at the time than McCosky, who was covering the Pistons beat for the News. This brainless company man was such an atrocity to journalism that I gave him the nickname “Officer Barbrady.”
The clueless cop on “South Park” was known for repeating the line, “Move along; there is nothing to see here.” That was McCosky’s anti-rallying cry for years as Pistons breaking news would develop and Barbrady would completely deny its existence.
When this website broke the news that Rick Carlisle was going to get fired by the Pistons back in 2003 — a good week before anyone else had the story –McCosky mocked us for days. He was adamant that there was zero chance it would occur. When the firing did go down, Barbrady refused to admit we had been correct all along. The abject coward even refused to address his bungling of the story on the WDFN airwaves when I challenged him.
Move along; there is nothing to see here.
Almost a year later, just minutes before Joe Dumars acquired Rasheed Wallace from the Atlanta Hawks at the 2004 trade deadline, McCosky was in a DetNews chat room telling his readers that the Pistons were not going to make any big moves. And not just throwing a wet blanket on the ‘Sheed speculation, but mocking anyone who thought otherwise.
Of course, the Pistons obtained Wallace mere moments after this Neanderthal banged those words on his keyboard.
Move along; there is nothing to see here.
McCosky was mocked behind his back by his media brethren for accepting EVERYTHING Dumars told him at face value. Everyone from Matt Dery to Mike Stone would privately tell me that Barbrady was too close to the team and it was damaging whatever reputation he had left.
The guy was a freaking joke. A laughingstock. An embarrassment. Eventually the News decided to play “Beat Writer Swap” and this buffoon switched positions with Ted Kulfan for a year and hysterically botched stories on the Red Wings.
Obviously the News overlords hadn’t seen enough journalistic malpractice for their liking, so McCosky eventually ended up on the Lions beat. It was a match made in heaven — a loser beat writer covering a franchise as inept as he was.
McCosky spent a few years being the punching bag for Dave Birkett, Tom Kowalski (sorry that I gotta do this to your boy, Killer, but he fucking sucks and you knew it), Anwar Richardson and others as those dudes beat him to every story.
It was absolutely hilarious watching McCosky try to play catch-up with the Freep and MLive beat writers and I would often joke that Barbrady’s Twitter feed looked like Killer’s or Birkett’s on a thirty-minute tape delay.
Earlier this year, McCosky was finally replaced on that beat by Josh Katzenstein when Barbrady threw in the towel. Sources told me that he didn’t want to put in the long hours necessary to be a modern-day NFL beat writer and trust me when I tell you that it SHOWED.
At that point, I thought we were basically done with this dumb bastard. Yeah, maybe he would fill in for other beat writers when they needed a rest but it was abundantly clear he didn’t have the drive to do this sort of full-time work any longer. I joked at the time that Katzenstein would forever be idolized on the DSR for being the Charlie Batch to McCosky’s Scott Mitchell.
Oh, how wrong was I? Not only isn’t Chris McCosky done, but in the single biggest journalistic travesty that has occurred in the 12 years of this website’s existence, this bumbling dipshit just landed the job as the beat writer for the Tigers at the News.
As I first reported on Twitter earlier tonight, McCosky is replacing longtime Tigers beat writer Tom Gage. Ya know, the same Tom Gage who was elected to the BASEBALL HALL OF FAME nine days ago!!!!
“Hey Tommy Boy, congrats on your election to the Hall of Fame! Can I see you in my office for a minute? I am going to replace you with the biggest toolbag on staff.”
Yep, according to my sources, Gage is now going to be handling national baseball news while Barbrady gets Gage’s previous gig. When I first heard rumblings that a change might be occurring at the paper I just figured that Gage was retiring. Nope, the News demoted the dude just elected into the BASEBALL HALL OF FAME. In related news, Pedro Martinez’s wife just left him for Neifi Perez.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I am not sad to see Gage put out to pasture, but this is where I am going to lose my shit. The WORST beat writer in Detroit just got this job over the BEST beat writer in this garbage town.
I mean, this is like finding out that the Coen Brothers are going to be making a new movie and they chose Dustin Diamond over Daniel Day-Lewis for the starring role.
Because that is the difference in talent, knowledge, intelligence, guts, league sources and credibility separating Chris McCosky and Tony Paul — the fucking Grand Canyon chasm between Screech Powers and Daniel Plainview.
It would have been an atrocity of Old Testament proportions had McCosky replaced Gage even without the monstrous kicker of Paul getting fucked over for the second time this offseason.
All I ask is for ONE competent person to follow my favorite sports team on a daily basis. We now have the following instead:
- The Oakland Press‘s Matthew B. Aggressive Mowery — an absolute slap-dick cheerleader for the organization.
- MLive’s Chris Iott — a man with a personality eqivalent to paint drying on a wall and zero testicular fortitude to challenge Tigers management.
- “Medicated” Jason Beck — the team’s MLB beat writer. Need I say more?
- Anthony “The Beast” Fenech — the drunk-driving, co-worker-harassing, PT-Cruising, living-with-his-mother-in-Woodhaven, hitting-on-married-girls-at-Downriver-bars employee of the Freep.
And now this colossal failure in McCosky who is going to achieve the rare “cycle” of butchering coverage for all four Detroit’s professional sports teams in one lifetime.
Oh, by the way, this is the same Chris McCosky who was once given the opportunity to write columns for the News and decided to make his opinion-piece debut by taking a shot at THIS WEBSITE. For you history buffs, here was my response.
We were THIS close to having a bonafide journalist questioning Brad Ausmus for a majority of the 162-game season; calling Dave Dombrowski out on his bullshit; having more opportunities to break trades (like the David Price deal that Paul was all over); and providing keen insight like predicting the Cespedes/Porcello deal a good ten days before it occurred.
Instead? We got a moron who wrote this after the Tigers’ season ended …..
This is a tragedy on so many levels and I am not sure if I am more pissed off or depressed. We had a 50/50 chance of having the best beat writer in town land this job and I feel like I lost a coin-flip with Anton Chigurh except those lucky bastards at least got a cattle gun to the temple.
And speaking of depression and death, remember when McCosky wrote about his clinical depression a couple years back after the suicide of Junior Seau?
Th famous passage …….
Not having guts is a common occurrence for this psychopath. Just look at what the coward –who, remember, refused to debate me on the air back in 2004 — had to say about Louis Delmas LONG after Barbrady was done covering the former Lions safety for a living:
Garbage is as garbage does RT @davebirkett: Louis Delmas was not happy to see Detroit reporters after game. Declined interview
— Chris McCosky (@cmccosky) November 9, 2014
When this Twitter tough guy — who had every opportunity to call Delmas “garbage” in the Lions’ locker room — was called out for his spineless behavior, this is how he responded …..
The hell I didn’t RT @DarkoStateNews: @davebirkett Weird that you didn’t call him garbage when he played for the Lions, Chris.
— Chris McCosky (@cmccosky) November 9, 2014
Yeah, we are sure you called Delmas GARBAGE to the guy’s face. It’s unfortunate that you didn’t because Louis probably would have killed you and Oakland County drivers would no longer have to worry about you making any sudden swerves on two-lane roads.
[DSR contributor Justin Spiro pledged to donate $500 to charity if McCosky could produce evidence of a single Tweet or article referring to Delmas as either “garbage” or ANY synonym of the word. Poor Gyro was blocked immediately after making the offer. The offer remains on the table.]
How classy to call a former subject “garbage” on Twitter. It’s almost as professional as what McCosky pulled off earlier this morning when he posted an article about recent Tigers’ acquisition Shane Greene. In that piece, McCosky quoted Greene’s former teammate, Brandon McCarthy …..
This hack obviously wanted to give the impression that he actually spoke with McCarthy when he most definitely did not. What McCosky SHOULD have done was mention that the quote in question came from a McCarthy TWEET on the day of the trade!!!!!!
Hey Tigers fans @sagreeney has stupid electric stuff and you should feel lucky to get to watch him now. Terrible at fantasy football though.
— Brandon McCarthy (@BMcCarthy32) December 5, 2014
And to make matters worse, this world-class imbecile couldn’t even copy and paste correctly. McCosky quoted McCarthy as saying “he.” The pitcher never said “he.” Nope, he said “@sagreeney.” Of course, the jig would have been up if McCosky would have included @sagreeney in his “quote” since most humans don’t speak in Twitter-ese while on the telephone.
“Where do you want to go to lunch, Bob?”
“I dunno, how about Hashtag Leo’s Coney Island?”
What a disingenuous, lazy bastard.
And before I finish up this article, I want to say this to anyone at the Detroit News who thinks that ANY of this was fed to me by Tony Paul. It wasn’t. HE DID NOT WANT ME TO WRITE THIS ARTICLE BECAUSE HE FIGURED IT WOULD REFLECT POORLY ON HIM.
And being the great guy that I am not, I obviously IGNORED that request. Because here we are.
In fact, his only response to my prodding was, “Chris McCosky is a colleague and I respect the decision.”
There is this misconception that Tony and I are best pals or some shit. We’ve met twice. For about 30 seconds after the Joe Nathan press conference and for maybe another 45 seconds as I was being told to leave Dombrowski’s season-ending presser last month after I claimed I had left my press pass at Yom Kippur dinner.
Hell, the guy even had me blocked on Twitter for a long time. I just greatly respect his work and believe some internal politics cost him a legitimate shot at one of the two-beat writer openings this offseason.
Although, I have no clue who went to bat for a “scab” or a 27-year-old douche bag with a creepy rap sheet longer than this guy ….
Of course, I am still holding out hope that Tony Paul will one day get the job he rightly deserves. There has to be a decent shot that, after a road game at Progressive Field, either Fenech drunkenly smashes his rental head-on into McCosky or Barbrady slips into a funk and purposely crashes his Ford Focus into “The Beast’s” car. A man has to dream.
Anthony Fenech.
Chris McCosky.
Chris Iott.
Jason Beck.
Lynn Henning.
James Schmehl.
And McCosky is the one who is depressed? Fuck, EACH OF US should be taking a bubble bath with a Black and Decker four-slicer this evening.