The Green Phone was created so the fans could voice their
opinions. Give us a call and let us know what’s on your mind.
The Green Phone was created so the fans could voice their opinions. Give us a call and let us know what’s on your mind.
CALLER 1: I can’t believe on the top 10 of the Hollister sports stories, you don’t have the varsity baseball team winning the most games in history and winning the league, 24-6 under coach (Michael) Luna. Seems like it’s got to be in there.
GREEN PHONE: Thanks for your thoughts Caller 1, although we wish you had given them to us a little earlier. In the week leading up to the printing of the top 10 stories, we ran a note to readers asking them to provide suggestions. Guess how many we got? Zero! That’s not to say every suggestion we received would’ve made it, but they would’ve garnered some extra consideration. With so much going on in 2006 – it seemed like history was being made by a San Benito sports team every week – we couldn’t include everything. There were several other very deserving stories that had to be scratched off the list to trim it down to 10. In a town such as Hollister, where great young athletes seem to grow on trees, we’re afraid we’ll never have enough room to include them all.
CALLER 2: Hi Green Phone, just wanted to address (Dec. 23’s) paper. I understand shared resources and I know that the Free Lance and Dispatch have been sister papers for a long time, but running columns that talk only about Gilroy High School only serve to remind longtime readers like me that our local paper’s resources have been scaled back. Much like the old saying, ‘If you don’t have anything nice to about someone, don’t say it at all.’ I feel that if you have a column like (Dec. 23’s) Marc David column that only talks about Gilroy High School, don’t run it at all in Hollister. He’s a fine writer, did a good job, but that works better in the Dispatch. Run a column from the wire.
The Gav story make sense because San Benito High School students can go there. Even the Gilroy High School soccer ref story makes sense, because it’s talking about a professional sport. That was interesting.
But this is the Hollister Free Lance. And your readers, especially your longtime readers like me, are very territorial and it’s clear when you run a story all about Gilroy High School that you just didn’t have the resources available to write about Hollister. Hollister and Gilroy have a longtime rivalry and we would rather read about Hollister or nothing at all. Gilroy High School has no impact on people in Hollister. Thank you though, you do a good job otherwise.
The other thing is you should talk about Marty Bueno quitting the ‘Baler basketball team. He was their star, their starter and even if it was for personal reasons that he didn’t get along with the coach, which it what it seems to be, it should be at least discussed in the paper.
GREEN PHONE: Thank you very much for bringing up that topic because we could agree with you more. Plain and simple, that column by Marc David should have never run. It was a mistake and it was an oversight that it ran. As you said, resources at newspapers all over are scaled back. And during the holiday season, when someone is out of town on vacation, it makes resources even slimmer and that played a role in having less Hollister content and allowing that column to slip its way into the Free Lance. We’ll be sure to keep a closer eye on stuff like that.
As far as the Marty Bueno situation goes, that becomes a bit trickier. In a community newspaper such as ours, the general rule of thumb is to let personal problems involving young athletes be taken care of on their own. You never know what kind of an effect writing about a situation such as that can have. Fortunately, it appears this situation has been worked out for the good of the team and all involved. Bueno returned to the team Wednesday and sat out the first 12 minutes before taking the court in the Tri-County Athletic League opener against Salinas. He scored nine points in the fourth quarter and drained a game-winning 3-pointer at the buzzer. After the game, he spoke as if he was happy to be back and is ready to be a reliable contributor, saying that while he wasn’t used to coming off the bench and getting reduced playing time, he’s “got to face the consequences. I can’t just come back right away.” Sounds like a potentially-bad situation has been solved.
