This May Be the Most Pathetic Article to Ever Appear on Philly.com

And for an outlet (company) that employs Marcus Hayes, that’s saying something.

I don’t know enough about Inquirer utility man Marc Narducci to have an opinion about his work. But I know that what appeared on Philly.com early Sunday morning was quite possibly the most pathetic article to ever appear on the site.

Posted at 1:03 a.m. on Sunday, Narducci’s simplistic story about Jimmy Rollins batting second read like it was written by a sixth grader, and there were grammar mistakes aplenty.

Let’s just excerpt some of this baby. I took the liberty of editing for Marc, since no one else did:

Look, as someone who makes plenty of typos, I can understand why this happens. This piece was likely written late on Saturday night at Citizens Bank Park. Mistakes are bound to happen. Once you read your own work twice your eyes see what they want to see and you miss even the most basic of errors. But I’m one guy and don’t have an editor. I am not the largest newspaper and website in the country’s fourth largest market. A place like that… should have an editor, especially for content turned in late at night. The edits I made for Marc aren’t even content and syntax edits… they’re of basic and glaring mistakes that would’ve been picked up by anyone giving the article a once-over. There’s literally no excuse for a major publication to not have someone looking at stuff like this before it goes live.

What’s worse, though, is how terrible and simplistic the article is. Narducci clearly had to write a story– so he chose Rollins. That’s fine. But what could’ve been said in three paragraphs – that Rollins is off to a good start in the two-hole – took 634 boring words which formed rudimentary thoughts like: Jimmy is playing well (and) doing a great job. He is swinging the bat and setting the tone at the top of the order. Those two sentences read like they were written by a sixth grader. But Narducci isn’t a sixth grader. Narducci, according to his Philly.com bio, “has become an all-around utility player, covering the Super Bowl, the NBA All-Star Game, assorted Phillies games and the end of the hockey lockout.”

I feel somewhat bad for Narducci because had an editor read this, an article written late on a Saturday night, it would’ve been fixed and probably would’ve gone unnoticed in the endless stream of nonsensical sports content. But nope. It went live without a second set of eyes, and now, 34 hours later, still exists in its original form on Philly.com. Embarrassing.