I was listening to the ETSU baseball broadcast and I want to give Don Helman and Travis some props.

Very good broadcast. Don has a very heavy workload but he still managed to do plenty of prep work, as did Travis.

Helman actually did wow me during the A-Sun tournament when he had the instinct to review a quick run by Belmont during the A-Sun tourney against G-W that turned out to be the turning point of the tournament.

It was a superior broadcast from a backup crew.

Helman does a pretty good job of play-by-play, he does have a lot going on on the Monster though.

Now, on the other hand . . .

Just picked up the Johnson City Press.

And isn't it telling that today-

The headline of the sports section was about ETSU losing to Alabama in NCAA Tennis.

Now, it is the NCAAs. So I guess I'll give them a pass.

But off to the side is the basketball recruiting class. And on the second page- inside- you get the baseball game which was played at home but yet still only compiled by staff reports and then a short story, also on staff reports, that ETSU's softball season was over.

Also on the front page, there are three Science Hill stories on minor sports- soccer, track and field, and softball. There is also a NASCAR story.

So Science Hill soccer, track and field, and softball pushes ETSU baseball and softball off the front page.

Not to mention ETSU tennis.

The comment here is while ETSU tennis was in the NCAAs, the Press didn't deem it necessary to send a writer to Durham- not the longest road trip in the world- to cover it.

And that's fine. I know what newspaper budgets are.

But if it's not that important, then why is it important enough to put as the lead story on the front page of the sports section over a sport with a fan base (baseball)?

Could it be the ETSU "Country Club Sports" mentality has completely taken over the mindset of local sports media?

It's either that or something I found disturbing about a year ago when Barry Bonds overtook Babe Ruth on the all-time home run list.

That story wasn't on the front page of the Bristol Herald-Courier's sports section. It was on the second.

If someone had told you even 10 years ago that Barry Bonds would pass Babe Ruth- let alone 20 or 30 years ago- on the home run list and it would be perceived as that unimportant you would not have believed them.

It has become, unfortunately, fashionable to bash baseball. The indifference to Bonds pursuit is the end result, but another end result is how college baseball- which is probably the second most popular sport at ETSU in terms of a fan base- is lumped in with tennis or track and field in importance.