Making stuff up a cardinal sin in journalism

It's hypothetical mailbag time again, which can only mean one thing the dog days of summer can't end soon enough so I won't keep running out of column ideas.Jan from Roseville writes: Woodcreek, Woodcreek Woodcreek! If I read another Woodcreek Little League story in your paper, I think I'm going to explode. Why do you guys write about them so much?The short answer is because they're good. The long answer is because they're good. And because the coaches of teams that are good tend to call or e-mail us more often with their results. The more calls and e-mails we get from teams not named Woodcreek, the more we can write about them.Fred from Citrus Heights writes: If Woodcreek is so good, why is it that Roseville West has won the last two District 54 Senior Little League titles?I don't know. But remember, Roseville West had a baby once and they called it Woodcreek. Maybe they just hail from the same nut.Wilma from Roseville writes: With the Sacramento Monarchs on the verge of concluding their regular season with the second-best record in the WNBA, I thought this might be a good time to ask if you have any appreciation for women's basketball, or are you one of those males who think team sports should be the domain of men only?I'm not sure if this directly addresses your question, Wilma, but I thought I'd point out that I know enough about women's hoops that it caught my attention when Sue Gunter died Thursday at age 66. Gunter is a pioneer of women's basketball in America she coached at Middle Tennessee, Stephen F. Austin and most recently LSU. She also coached the 1980 women's Olympic team that went nowhere due to the boycott of the Moscow Games.But Thursday as I perused ESPN.com, I came across a story by another women's hoops legend, former Old Dominion University All-American Nancy Lieberman, in which she related some of her memories of Gunter and I couldn't read a word of it.That's because I can't forget when Lieberman was an Olympic commentator for NBC in 1988 and 1992, she twice told a story about how when she played for ODU she marveled at the athleticism of an on-court foe from UCLA named Jackie Joyner, who is better known as Jackie Joyner-Kersee, the track and field legend considered by some to be the greatest female athlete ever. Problem is, Lieberman in an apparent attempt to mooch off of Joyner-Kersee's popularity forgot that she graduated from ODU in the spring of 1980. Joyner-Kersee didn't enter UCLA until the fall of 1980. If they played basketball against each other that year, it must have been in a parking lot.As a result, when Lieberman wrote what may have been an honest, heartfelt remembrance of Gunter Thursday, I wouldn't read it because I don't trust her any further than I can spit. And I can't spit.Like I said, that may not address your question, but I needed to get that off my chest. I can't stand people in journalism who make stuff up.