With all of the interesting corporate Wikipedia edits being exposed thanks to the Wikiscanner, I thought it would be interesting to check out what, if anything, was being edited by the powers that be in Major League Baseball.
I first checked out what the Tribune Company had been up to on the interwebs. Starting in January of 2004, employes of TribCo (or at least someone with access to their network) made 1663 edits. Most of these have nothing to do with baseball and pretty random, with a few that are outright vandalism. Someone with a TribCo IP even vandalized Wikipedia’s own entry, deleateing the whole thing and replacing it with “wikipedia is untrustworthy. and it is proven. do not trust this organization. it is backed by terrorist groups.” Nice.
The first baseball related edit to come out of TribCo was on the List of Major League Baseball Owner’s page where someone added how much the Trib bought the Cubs for 1981 and how much Carl Pohlad paid for the Twins in 1984.
On September 29, 2005, someone (Paul Sullivan perhaps) was reading through Wikipedia’s entries on Slugging Average, OPS, OBP, and Batting Average, making a bunch of grammatical corrections.
On June 16, 2006, a TribCo IP vandalized the pages of Mike Piazza, Juan González, and Randy Johnson. Piazza’s and González’ edits centered around homosexual slurs about Piazza and Johnson’s included a set of off-color NYPost-style headlines about his troubles when he was with the Yankees.
In April of 2007, a series of bizarre edits to the pages of Bert Blyleven, Jeromy Burnitz, David Wells, and Kent Hrbeck. Someone from the Tribune’s network added to each person’s page that they are starting a career in mixed martial arts and have posted a record of 7-3-1 in the UFC.
Some interesting Wikiedits also came from the Major League Baseball Players Association. In April of 2006, someone on MLBPA’s network edited the organization’s page on Wikipedia, altering passages about the lack of salary cap, eligibility of players who broke the picket lines in 1994, and their handling of the steroid testing issues. Also changed was MLBPA president Donald Fehr’s page and wording about how he was dealing with the steroid testing debate.
I looked up changes to Wikipedia that came from IP addresses belonging to baseball’s front office in New York and was surprised to find that some of the edits amounted to vandalism. I’m guessing that they were probably done by bored staffers who didn’t realize this would be traced back to their employer.
In 2004, someone tried to add a passage to the page about Fordham University trumpeting “Team Shame: 2004 Intramural Softball Champions”. In 2005, a line was added to the White House’s page about a secret bunker under the East Wing. In 2006, President of New York University, John Sexton, had this passage added to his bio - “Sexton is a huge baseball fan and season ticket holder of the New York Yankees. He even teaches a seminar at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study named “Baseball as a Road to God”.”
On June 23, 2005 someone added to Joe Lieberman’s page “Lieberman bares a striking resemblance to Emperor Palpatine of the Gallactic Empire in the “Star Wars” cinema franchise. This has led to speculation that Lieberman may in fact be a Syth Lord.” (sic, so obviously not done by an IT geek)
On June 1st, 2006, the page of Major League Baseball’s VP in charge of discipline and VP of rules and on-field operations, Bob Watson had his page altered twice. It originally read “As general manager of the Yankees in the 1990s, he was largely responsible for changing the organization’s approach to team-building, putting together the 1996 team that won the World Series.” That was changed to “He served as the GM of the New York Yankees from 10/23/95 to 2/2/98, and put together the final pieces for the 1996 team that won the World Series.” Two minutes later, it was changed again “He served as GM for the New York Yankees from 10/23/95 to 2/2/98. The 1996 team won the World Series, the first Yankee team to do so since 1978.” Since this was done from MLB’s front office where I assume Watson works, I wonder if he had a hand in changing his entry.
On March 21, 2007, someone at the front office went to town on the page “Logos and uniforms of the New York Giants”. They started small, changing “1968 marked the first major change for the uniform, as the gray pants were retired in favor of white ones.” to “1968 marked the first major change for the uniform, as the gay pants were retired in favor of white ones.” Then, entire sections about the history of the New York Football Giants were cut out and replaced with “‘I LOVE BOOBS!!!” and “I go crazy for Boobs!” Classy.
My favorite change from MLB’s New York front office was a subtle edit on July 11, 2007 to Bud Selig’s page. “Selig is a resident of Milwaukee and owned used car dealerships before entering baseball.” became “Selig is a resident of Milwaukee. Before entering baseball, he worked for his father who owned a car leasing business in Milwaukee.” Uh huh.
