All the time, I hear how today’s readers (namely young people like me) don’t want to read long stories. They want their news in short, 140-character Twitter updates, in video, in slideshows, in jabs of words.

But a few things happened last week that really made me smile. A friend of mine picked up the San Francisco Chronicle, noting what a great paper it was. While he read through the sports section, he gave his girlfriend (also a friend) the front section. She saw the takeout A1 story about the recent gang rape of a teenage girl in Richmond, which is pretty lengthy, and laughed at it at first. She mocked that the reporters called a quad a courtyard, but read through to the jump.

I figured she was done after that. We were at a restaurant, and after the orders got placed on the table, the paper disappeared from my sight.

But she kept it on her lap, reading and asking me about stuff.

• I saw some UOP girls wrapped up in foil at the local Chipotle, then saw an ad at the counter that
  

  It's huge, and it's free tonight

  said if you dressed up like a burrito (albeit from 6 p.m. to closing), you’d get a free burrito. If you’re hungry and lack a costume, there you go!

• Taco Bell is trying to market their new Black Jack Taco by giving them away after 6 p.m. tonight. No costume necessary, but you do have to go to a Taco Bell. This could be a dealbreaker for some.
• AAA is offering its “Tipsy Tow” program for Halloween, in an effort to keep drunk drivers off the road. Check it out.
• If I find anything else, I’ll post it here. Also, check out Michael Finney’s awesome consumer blog.

So, I’m waiting in the Stockton courthouse for the latest Melissa Huckaby hearing, and something catches my eye as I’m talking with a couple other reporters.

Blurry camera phone evidence after the jump…

Yes, I know, Mariano Rivera is a New York Yankee. The Yankees are the evil empire. But while I can’t stand Alex Rodriguez or Derek Jeter (A’s fans, don’t click that link!)… I love watching Rivera pitch. Just not against Oakland.

The timber industry supports Rivera's cut fastball

- Prior to the 1996 season, the Seattle Mariners, sensing the Yankees’ unease with starting rookie Derek Jeter at shortstop, offered to trade veteran shortstop Félix Fermín to the Yankees for Rivera, but no deal was ever agreed upon. (via Mariano Rivera’s Wiki)

- Rivera discovered the cutter accidentally, while playing catch with reliever Ramiro Mendoza (also from Wiki). The ball kept trailing away and he couldn’t make it stop.

- Has one pitch ever been so dominant? Maybe the Ryan Express or Pedro’s changeup or Randy Johnson’s slider. But really, he has built his entire career around throwing that cutter. Rivera can throw a cutter to set up a cutter to set up a cutter for the strikeout. He’s been in the league for 14+ years and still, very few hitters have figured it out, even when they know it’s coming. Rivera could flat out tell a hitter, “Hey, I’m throwing the cut fastball,” and 9 times out of 10, that hitter would miss, or have a broken-bat groundout.

- He just goes about his job. Torre or Girardi call him up 3 or 4 games in a row? Fine. Pitch 2 or more innings? He can handle it, and not throw a hissy fit like he just won the World Series after closing out a 3-run lead over the Royals in May. You never hear him complain about his contract. He doesn’t beat his wife. He doesn’t have 5 kids from 3 women or a rap sheet. He’ll never throw a teammate under the bus or hold out, and I honestly believe he’ll finish as a Yankee instead of trying to hang on with another team. You’ve got to respect things like that, as they’re becoming rarer and rarer and rarer.*

*Side note: I saw a guy at the sports bar on Sunday wearing a Brett Favre Vikings jersey shirt. How much of a tool do you have to do be to live in California and wear a shirt like that?

- He’s seen the lowest of lows, at the beginning of his career (first game – 10-0 loss), in the middle (2001 WS vs. Arizona) and near the end (2004 vs. Boston) and has bounced back every time. He didn’t blame a teammate. Didn’t shift the loss. Didn’t do anything but just take the ball and head back to the mound the next time the skipper called his number.

- This is his entrance music. A hitter’s requiem.

I’ve been covering high school football now for about six or seven years, roughly. I can’t recall how many games I covered for The Spartan, De La Salle’s newspaper.

I’ve missed deadline once — last night.

To start, here’s how my night usually goes. With the San Diego Union-Tribune, games would start at about 7 p.m. I’d have until 10:30 to send the editors a 400-word story (sometimes 350, sometimes 450) with quotes. Every week, I had that story in before 10:30.

With the Tracy Press, varsity football games usually start at 7:30 p.m. I get there about an hour early to catch the end of the sophomore game (no idea why it’s called that instead of junior varsity, like everywhere else), meet up with the statkeeper and grab a quote or two from the head coach for a 150-200 word recap of that game.

For the varsity game, I have until 10 p.m. to give the copy editors a 200-ish word blurb for the print edition about the game (even if it’s not over yet) and then until 10:25 p.m. (again, regardless if the game is over) to call the copy desk for the score or to send in the final revised copy of the game story. After that, I can head down to the field and get quotes for my full-sized story for TracyPress.com.

Last night, much to the chagrin of the copy desk, I filed at 10:32 p.m. I’m sorry.

While college football started with a bang on Thursday night, most teams will start their seasons today.

I’m not really that excited. I’ve got friends who went to Oregon, USC, Cal, UCLA, etc. They’re stoked. But pretty much every year since I was a kid, I’ve felt fairly ambivalent to the start of college football season.

I went to San Diego State, a school that perennially finishes at or near the bottom of the Mountain

The last time SDSU football was relevant

West Conference. I am pretty sure they are the largest Division 1-A (Or FCS or whatever the hell they call it now) school to have never won a bowl game. In the offseason, they fired maligned head coach Chuck Long after 3 losing seasons, one of which included a loss to D 1-AA (Or FBS or whatever the hell they call it now) Cal Poly. Top baseball draft pick Stephen Strasburg has given the school some athletic credence… just not for football.

SDSU opens against UCLA. Most likely, it won’t be pretty.

So I envy my BCS-school attending friends. Texas fans can see a burnt orange cap and offer up a “Hook ‘em Horns.” (THE) Ohio State fans can see each other and share a quick one-liner about how badly Michigan sucks. SDSU has no rival. It has no real… passion.

There really are no expectations to being an SDSU fan. New head coach Brady Hoke could lead the Aztecs to a .500 record and be unanimously voted mayor.

I don’t really feel much of a connection with SDSU sports, since I spent all of my time there as a journalist.

I apologize for not posting much. I don’t really like to post short entries that are kind of stream-of-consciousness. I like to let something set in my mind and marinate for a bit, so I know I have a good-sized entry. I love longform journalism, relish the chance to engage in it and ultimately mourn its death, but that’s neither here nor there.

I argue with myself, internally, and make sure each point I make is valid. This is why I’d make a crummy columnist. If I can see even a little bit of fault in one of my claims, I’m not writing.

I’ve got a post rolling around in my head about Tim Lincecum and Dr. Mike Marshall, but I want to let it gather some seasoning before I sit down and proceed to write anything.

Which ad do you think more people paid attention to?

I’ve been trying to pay more attention to the health care issue, something in which I personally got a closer look in dealing with Congressman Jerry McNerney, following him on a tour of Sutter Tracy Community Hospital and listening in on a telephone town hall meeting. I’d rather not talk about those town hall meetings, which have been happening around the country, out of respect for my sanity.

However, I’ve been reading how, in any reformed health care plan, there should be an emphasis on personal responsibility. I can’t stress this enough. A friend posted a link to a thought-sparking article from the New York Times, asking whether or not fat people should pay more for health care. A graph in the article shows that 9.1 percent of all medical costs in the country are obesity related.

Well, as a fat guy… I say yes.

You know, between the moderate isolation from most of my friends and family and the severe heat, I wonder why I moved here. Then I realized last night that I am within driving distance of a bunch of ballparks: Oakland, San Francisco, Stockton (A-Oakland), Sacramento (AAA-Oakland), Modesto (A-Colorado) and San Jose (A-San Francisco).

One of those, Banner Island Ballpark in Stockton, is on my way home from work, so I decided to catch a game. There’s a lot of photos after the jump. Here’s the complete gallery on Flickr. Do not post these elsewhere without my permission.

The Ports won, 4-3. Anthony Capra (1-0, 4.09) earned the win while Oliver Odle (7-8, 5.14) took the loss.

SP Anthony Capra warming up before the game

A little circle of irony here:

I found a poignant article about how Twitter is destroying journalism and the ability to read stories longer than 140 characters on the Newspaper Escape Plan Twitter feed.

A brief snippet of that story, which really merits a full read:

This guy didn't need Twitter

A few months ago, I sat across a cafe table from a local newspaper editor and watched the bewilderment on his face as he told me how the Internet has altered print journalism at his own paper. Recently some of its readers complained when they heard through word of mouth about a car accident in town but couldn’t find updates on the newspaper’s Web site. “We told them they had to wait until we’d investigated and could post a full report,” he said, “and they demanded to know why we couldn’t just Twitter the information right then.” The answer, of course, is that 140 characters gives reporters just enough room to note who, what, where, why, and how in the most basic terms. That may be news, but it’s not a news story.

Here’s what scares me. Now, I’m not afraid of Twitter at all. Being young and impressionable, I’ve embraced the technology as a way to get more people involved with the Tracy Press, since media is no longer a one-way street. The TP Twitter is my way of seeing what Tracyites are thinking. It was no way meant to substitute Tracy Press’ news content any more than potatoes are meant to substitute for prime rib.

If there’s a concern among residents, I try to follow up on it and do a story. The “tweets” we put out are a headline and a link to the corresponding story. If there’s breaking news, something big that we can’t write up right away, but we know people need to be informed, we Tweet the basic information, but tell them there’s a full story on the way. Then we link to the full story, letting the reader know what happened to whom, where, why and how.

But Twitter in general is killing our attention span, one that has already been hurt by TV and the Internet and our need for constant, instant gratification. It’s killing our relationships and friendships and ability to form complex thought.

No, not the death of this blog, which is (somewhat) still alive and kickin’.

I’m talking about the actual kind. I’ve been at the Tracy Press for six months now (I know, that flew by. Shouldn’t I still be trying to crash a rhetoric course right now?) and my career as a news reporter has involved much more death and destruction than my previous life as a sports guy.

When I cover a loss in sports, there’s a winner. When I cover stories like this, there are no winners. A young man has lost his life. A mother has lost her son. A community has lost a loved member.