Will the real Jim Moore stand up?

Last week, my former co-worker Jim Moore recounted one of my absolute favorite stories: An impromptu confrontation he had with Gary Payton prior to Game 3 of the Sonics’ first-round playoff series in 1996.

Except it wasn’t Jim recounting it.

It was one of those AI programs that people can’t stop talking about. Chat GPT, Gemini or whatever the hell. 

I’m bringing this up for two reasons:

1. Jim has a newsletter, which is creatively titled “Jim’s Substack” and his writing (as it always has been) is absolutely fantastic. I particularly enjoyed “Real Jim’s” critique of “AI Jim” this week.

2. Jim’s conclusion ties into a growing conviction of mine: Using AI is the quickest to stop sounding like yourself.

 More on that in a bit, but first, let’s round up the week’s business.

Should we speak of the disaster that occurred 70 blocks north of me in a stadium built too close to the train tracks? 

I mean, it started off well enough. That was true in the series where Logan Gilbert allowed a single hit through the first four innings of Tuesday’s game between the Yankees and Mariners. It was true in Thursday’s series finale, too, as Brian Woo held the Yankees hitless through seven innings.

Unfortunately, the wheels came off. For Gilbert, the rain delay interrupted the groove he’d found. He gave up one run in the bottom of the fifth, and then failed to retire any of the five hitters he faced in the sixth as the game got out of hand.

On Thursday, Seattle was betrayed by its bullpen as Matt Brash and Andres Munoz failed to carry the game to the finish line. Brash gave up a two-run homer to Giancarlo Stanton in the eighth and Munoz allowed a bases-loaded single with two outs in the ninth as the Yankees forced extra innings where they won in the 10^th .

The Yankees scored 25 runs in the three-game sweep of Seattle, which just so happens to be 25 more runs than the Mariners allowed to the Pirates in the three-game series that preceded Seattle’s trip east. The lesson? You can’t lose if they don’t score.

Of the 14 runs Seattle scored in the Bronx, 11 were scored by way of a Mariner home run, and while you might be able to beat the Pirates by simply waiting for Cal Raleigh, Randy Arozarena or Jorge Polanco to homer, that’s not going to be enough against a team like the Yankees.

I suppose I should have been relieved when Paul Skenes left the game midway through his start against the Seattle Mariners last Sunday.

Instead, I felt disappointed, and when he left the game after five innings—having struck out 10—it underscored a very unsatisfying reality of major-league baseball as it’s played today: Starting pitchers—even aces—are not throwing as deep into games, and I wrote about the negative results of this trend in this week’s column for The News Tribune.

• Early hook ruins Paul Skenes vs. George Kirby

  By Danny O’Neil | The News Tribune

OK. Let’s talk about AI, and before I get to Robot Jim’s column on Gary Payton, I want to share a story that provided soul-nourishing encouragement about the value of human being’s trying to express themselves with words.

I’ve been volunteering as part of the gardening crew for Joan of Arc Park. It’s a lovely little park with a statue that dates back to 1915, crafted by an American sculptor named Anna Hyatt Huntington.

Last Saturday, I was working alongside Claire, who also lives in the neighborhood. Over the course of our three hours trimming ground cover, I learned that Claire—who used to work in advertising—has been applying to a number schools in the area.

At first, she used an AI program to write cover letters, 12 of them. She didn’t get a single response.

She tried again, only this time, she wrote the cover letters herself, and sought to put more of her personality, more of her emotions on the page. “Almost cringey” was the description she used. She got two responses from those five cover letters, one from a Brooklyn school that seems especially promising. The person who reached out to her from that school cited her cover letter specifically, saying he felt like he knew her after reading it.

As someone who works with words, I found this to be indescribably encouraging.

For more than a year now, I’ve been told—repeatedly—just how profoundly AI will change human communication. The underlying insinuation is that for people like me, who are striving making a living by writing words, it will make my work even less valuable than it already is.

I’ve reached the conclusion that this is only partly true.

AI can write articles fairly well. It can not, however, write stories. Here’s the difference:

An article is meant to convey information. Its structure is often described as an inverted pyramid, the most important information being toward the top and the least important or background information toward the bottom.

A story, however, is meant to be read from beginning to end. Important information is often withheld, heightening suspense. Things like tone and voice are important. The storyteller must make the reader want to read until the very end where a payoff is expected.

The AI programs I’ve seen like Chat GPT and Genesis or even Grok are very good at summarizing information. They’re not perfect. They make mistakes. But in general, they offer a good synopsis on a given subject. They produce articles.

They don’t write particularly good stories, though, and now I’ll turn to Jim Moore, Gary Payton and a little dab of toothpaste that set off the Glove.

I’ve heard this story multiple times from multiple people. Jim’s written about it himself. I’ve been part of an interview in which Gary and Jim even talked about it.

The basic events are fairly straightforward.

• In 1996, the Sonics faced the Sacramento Kings in the first round of the NBA playoffs. Seattle lost Game 2, at home, sending the series back to Sacramento, tied 1-1.

• Jim heard that Payton was so exhausted after Game 2 that he’d gone to the hospital where he received IV fluids, potentially even staying overnight.

• Before Game 3, Jim asked Payton about this in the Sonics locker room. Payton was insistent that the question was unrelated to basketball. Jim explained that it was. Payton was unmoved.

• Jim told Payton, “I’m so sick of your shit.”

• Payton stood up and said, “What are you going to do about it?”

• Jim noticed there was a schmear of toothpaste in the corner of Payton’s mouth. He pointed this out to Payton, which further enraged the player.

• Payton balled a fist. Some people have said he started to swing a punch. Others that he was preparing to.

• The punch, if it was thrown, didn’t land.

• Coach George Karl ran into the locker room, grabbing Jim and pulling him into the training room. Sam Perkins grabbed hold of the other to prevent a potential physical altercation.

That’s pretty much how AI Jim described it in his recent newsletter. What was missing, though, was Jim’s voice.

I’ve said this on several occasions, but I love Jim’s writing. I love it so much that I can recall verbatim lines from columns that he can’t even recall writing. He doesn’t just write how he talks, he writes how he lives. It is a true voice, and one I absolutely love reading.

Real Jim would never write, “I approached Gary — polite, respectful, doing the job …”

Real Jim would not describe himself as a “rabid squirrel in a polo shirt” nor George Karl as a “big, bald grizzly bear.” Real Jim certainly would not invoke a kid-book refrains, describing the exchange:

Jim admits to having mixed feelings over the whole idea of using AI. He wonders specifically about the ethics, and I don’t know if there’s a right answer to that.

There’s one thing he said that I absolutely disagree with, though: “The one thing I will say, without question, that’s better than anything I will write in the chapter of my book about the Payton incident.”

This is categorically incorrect because while the AI program summarized the confrontation quite well, it missed the payoff almost entirely.

The point of the story—the reason it is among my absolute favorites to tell—is not that Jim narrowly missed getting punched by Gary before a playoff game. It’s about what happens when two characters—each stubborn in their way—get into a standoff over a seemingly trivial piece of information.

Jim wanted to talk to Gary about something that happened; Gary didn’t want to talk about it.

It also demonstrates what is Jim’s unique ability to get to people. This is especially true for people who are used to being the ones who aggravate others: Payton, Richard Sherman, Michael Bennett. I’ve seen (or heard) all of those guys get jumping hot because Jim isn’t willing to defer to them in the way they’re accustomed to.

AI can’t capture that. I don’t think AI will ever be able to capture that.

That doesn’t mean it’s not useful. It can summarize information. It can sequence events for you. It can also write you a cover letter that sounds so much like everyone else’s that you don’t get a single response.

But if you’re trying to build a connection with an actual person whether it’s someone you want to hire you or someone you’re hoping you want to read a story to the end, you need to be yourself because a computer program is only going to make you sound like someone else.

In other words: Long live, Real Jim!