Watchdog

Tom Verducci has been one of the nation's best baseball writers for a couple of decades now - starting at Newsday - and has a really excellent head of hair.

But the recent news that he will be helping Joe Torre write another book, due out in 2009, is disturbing for cranky old journalism purists such as your neighborhood WatchDog.

Torre is a key figure on Verducci's beat at Sports Illustrated, as evidenced by the column Verducci wrote after Torre's departure from the Yankees in which he scathingly critiqued the team's front office in general and Randy Levine in particular.

It was a persuasive, well-crafted column, but . . . what about Verducci's business relationship with Torre, which dates to a book the two cooperated on a decade ago and now the new one in the works?

That's the problem with journalists and their subjects getting entangled in financial deals. It colors the perception of everything the journalilst says or writes.

Verducci is far from the only one.

Newspaper and magazine writers have been turning relationships with sources into books for years. That doesn't make it right. (Full disclosure: I used to get paid to appear on a TV show that was produced by an independent company, but one that worked closely with the Giants, whom I covered at the time.)

SI is no position to alienate its top writers, what with ESPN bent on throwing wads of cash at every breathing print journalist on the planet. So Verducci presumably has some extra leeway to get projects such as this green-lighted. But still . . .