Rick Reilly’s nearing the completion of his first month at the WWL, and here’s a quick peek at what he’s written about: His Dad (good stuff), Tiger or Phil, and most recently, that catcher who purposely dropped his mitt and let a pitch drill the umpire in the face. Hmmm. One of those surprise you? A reader email from last week:

How bad was his article about the catcher who ducked and let the pitch hit the ump? He basically summarized the event and said it was bad days after it made the rounds through the blogs. I think this is a perfect example of why traditional journalists like Mr. Reilly are on their out. A few years ago this would have been the first we heard about the ducking incident, and it probably would have been a decent read. Now? It’s old and stale and hard to chew. Where is Reilly going to go from here? How can he do what he does if he is relying on recycled stories? $3 million for this? And if you figure he writes 800 words a column on average, once a week, he is getting paid $72.11 for every word he inks. Crazy talk!

Although ESPN is pulling in something like 20 million unique readers a month – which is probably more than every single sports blog, combined – and there’s a chance many of them had not previously read about this story … this could be something worth monitoring.