…from using Twitter? What’s next, no text messaging or posting on message boards for the only thing standing between Sarah Palin and a no.1 best-seller? “Bill’s communication regarding WEEI fell short of those standards. So we’ve taken appropriate measures,” writes ESPN.com’s Rob King, essentially giving radio windbags across the nation a free shot at Simmons whenever they feel like it. Provided they’re working for ESPN affiliates, that is. My long-standing scorn for the 90210/Counting Crows scholar is well established, but it’s hard not to sympathize in this instance. This is how they thank the only guy on the payroll that’s managed to keep it in his pants?
Former NBC exec Don Ohlmeyer is really coming into his own as ESPN’s new ombudsman, particularly if you believe said role oughta to involve shameless shilling for his new employer. “Storytelling at its best…dynamic tales filled with heroes and villians” is Ohlmeyer’s frothy assessment of the network’s “30 On 30″ documentary series, and in a similar display of team spirit, the recent L’affair Phillips/Hundley is characterized as an overzealous news media looking to tar the entire Bristol campus with the same sex-crazed brush.
Salacious stories about celebrities generally focus on the principals, not their employers. When David Letterman was dragged into the muck of an alleged extortion attempt surrounding his affair with a co-worker, Letterman was the story — CBS was an afterthought that’s only involvement was it airs his show.
With the Phillips affair, ESPN seemed to provide much of the celebrity cachet. Without the network, Phillips-Hundley probably would have been limited as a local New York story, and then only because of his association with the Mets. While ESPN was center stage, the network itself made a choice to provide minimal coverage of the story on its platforms.
“Stories involving us are angst-ridden, and we recognize that we don’t always do our best work on them,” said Vince Doria, ESPN’s senior vice president and director of news. “It’s tough to be objective when we’re involved in some way. We tend to do the minimum that allows us to say, ‘We covered it.’ Fortunately, these types of stories don’t come along too often.”
Oh really? While I don’t endorse AJ Daulerio’s scorched earth policy towards ESPN, there’s a number of persons — Ms. Hundley’s attorneys most notably — who might be very interested in how often these types of stories seem to come along. Huggy Harold. Schlong-Snapping Sean. Zipper Problem Steve.
Seriously folks, I don’t actually expect Don Ohlmeyer to come right out and say ESPN is the most dangerous place in America for a young woman to work east of American Apparel’s headquarters, but D.O. must assume his readers are pretty gullible. Erin Andrews aside, no one at ESPN is a household name you’d associate with stalking (sorry, Steve). But some ESPN employees might end up as casualties in the high stakes pissing match between NewsCorp. and Disney, again, not the sort of thing Ohlmeyer is going to talk about publicly. Who knows, he might want to work for Rupert Murdoch someday?
“That was certainly Plan A,” Ireland midfielder Keith Andrews said this morning, fiddling with his metallic-green 1970s overhead projector and trying to make the words: “Lose 1-0 at home” go away. “But we have moved on to Plan B now.” Which will come as a relief to anyone with any doubts that the Republic might actually end up at the World Cup next year. Although it has to be said the details of Plan B are still slightly sketchy. “If we win 1-0 over there, then obviously, it’s job done. It goes to extra-time and we would be happy with that,” Andrews explained, simultaneously sketching out the lyrics to his sombrero-clad, coconut-waggling We’re On Our Way To Extra Time In a World Cup Qualifying Play-Off hit song feat. Enya and the fat one from Westlife.
But still, there is some good news for Ireland: at least they’re not Scotland, for whom the international weekend provided another step forward in the SFA’s 18-month plan to agonisingly sack George Burley. Next up is a meeting this week at which George Burley may or may not be sacked, but only after much chin-stroking consideration of the words “three wins in 14 matches” plus expert evidence on whether this is (a) good, or (b) not very good. Still, it’s not all bad. As of today smouldering one-man walking cafeteria bust-up Graeme Souness has “ruled himself out” of the running for the non-vacant post.
“If [being agonisingly sacked by the SFA] was up for grabs, I wouldn’t be applying for it. My life is going in a different direction,” he explained, being very slowly dragged out of sight by a small forklift truck.
I should mention, up front, that I don’t get The Huffington Post. That is, I don’t see its appeal as a reading experience and I’m baffled by its apparent popularity and profitability. It’s not that I don’t think there should be a place on the internet for risible/irresponsible quasi-medical quackery or Jim Lampley’s thoughts on election fraud. It’s just that I think the place for all that manifest uselessness is already filled, by the broader internet itself. The ugly, frantic mess of half-information and gossipy leering and fervid political doofery that is the Huffington Post does a good job at exactly one thing, to my mind — miniaturizing and uniting all of the defining goofinesses of the internet together in one place. Although CSTB’s revered Chicago Bureau Chief does write for them on occasion, so they’re at least doing something right.
One thing they weren’t doing at all, until recently, was writing about sports. That changed when they launched their sports page, which employs the usual mix of broadly loathed establishment dudes (Mike Lupica, ladies and gentlemen), revered internet sorts (the tireless and very great Dave Cameron), and random grad students demanding that the Mets “get younger” and trade Carlos Beltran. Oh, and Dave Zirin. Tim Marchman got into media critic mode after the launch of Huffington Post Sports — HuffPoSpo, if you’re terrible — and was not wowed.
Whatever credibility they get for running Daves Cameron and Berri (not a little, as those two are terrific) is more than lost by what may be the single most ridiculous block of sports-related text I’ve read this year, a 789-word paean to Hideki Matsui by his agent, and… the stuff they’re ‘aggregating’ is mainly a bunch of boring nonsense about sex and drug scandals. Surely there are things the world needs less than an amalgam of the worst elements of a New York tabloid and Deadspin, but they have to be in the line of SARS and poisoned baby formula.
It’s a short post, and worth clicking over to. The funniest part of it is not quoted above, and involves the Huffington Post’s aesthetic. I think Marchman may be jumping the gun, though — in three months, the sports page will probably have de-emphasized the Lupica and ramped up the “Bret Saberhagen Spreading Unsubstantiated BS About the H1N1 Vaccine” element. It has (inexplicably) worked before, after all.
3 University of Tennessee recruits of Lane Kiffin — WR Nu’Keese Richardson (above, left), safety Janzen Jackson and DB Mike Edwards — were charged with attempted robbery of a Knoxville convenience store earlier today. Calling the alleged incident, “one of the dumbest crimes in the history of UT football’s criminal activities”, the Tennessean’s Mike Jones urges Kiffin to make an example of the trio, serving as judge and jury while insisting the felonious act was “perpetrated by three freshman football players.”
The skill-level of the players enhances Kiffin’s opportunity. He wouldn’t be cutting loose borderline players who might never make a meaningful contribution to UT football. He would be booting three promising players — including, in Jackson, a starter and potential freshman All-American.
But it’s not a hard choice. This wasn’t a drunk player fallen asleep at a McDonald’s drive-thru. It wasn’t an “error in judgment.” It wasn’t “hanging out with the wrong crowd.”
It was a premeditated crime. With a gun.
They didn’t just break the law. They broke a trust with their teammates and coaches.
The rest of the team didn’t deserve this. I feel sorry for them, rather than the knuckleheads who couldn’t resist the temptation of hitting up convenience-store patrons for spare change.
I’m only guessing the victims had spare change since the police report states their wallets were empty.
The three stooges really cased the joint, didn’t they? Based on all the thought that went into the crime, guess they didn’t know Pilot is owned by Jim Haslam, one of the university’s and football program’s greatest supporters. That’s “Haslam” as in Haslam Field, where the team practices daily.
Unwittingly, Jones might’ve done Richardson, Edwards and Jackson a huge favor. Assuming anyone still reads the newspaper, lawyers for the students ought to argue they can no longer expect a fair trial locally.
I’ve been meaning for some time to link to this dazzling David Samuels essay here at CSTB, but there was one thing I wanted to do first, and I’m only now (and only barely) doing it. Which is try to figure out how a sprawling, multi-thousand word essay — on being a baseball fan in New York during the global economic collapse, by former Atlantic writer David Samuels — wound up in The National Newspaper, an English-language newspaper based in Abu Dhabi. I still haven’t figured that out.
The National Newspaper is a little over 18 months old, it turns out, and is — as one might expect from the garish but very willing-to-pay-for-quality Emirates — pretty deluxe. Its editor-in-chief comes from the London Daily Telegraph, other staffers have experience at The New York Times, among other places. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it also pays ridiculously well — the salaries of its staffers were briefly linked (and then removed from Google Docs), but EIC Martin Newland’s salary is, per the Guardian, “a cool tax-free annual take home of about £320,000 a year,” or roughly $532,928. I can only hope the writers get paid just as well.
As befits the UAE’s weird status as a nation in which bottomless money has replaced politics seemingly entirely, The National appears to be a reasonable, mainstream-y paper that balances faintly cheerleaderish UAE national news coverage — a headline today: “Students prefer jobs in public sector” — with consensus-y international stuff (Kofi Annan has an opinion piece about strengthening the Geneva Conventions, for example). It’s something you wouldn’t mind reading if you were, for some reason, in Abu Dhabi.
Where Samuels’ long, searching piece on the strange tension and feeling of dislocation he experienced at the new Yankee Stadium this year fits into all this, I don’t know. I sense that it says something about the state of the media — or of long-form writing, or of the simple weight of money and its ability to simply make things happen — that Samuels’ piece ran as it did, in the place that it did, but again I’m not entirely sure what that is. I’ve always had the sense of the whole UAE/Abu Dhabi/Dubai Thing as just being something that didn’t really exist — George Saunders wrote a terrific essay about Dubai’s unreal reality in this book — or shouldn’t; a fake country, built on phony money, that reflected fraudulence and folly and not much else. Maybe this is what writers should be hoping for, now — to be snapped up by some mysterious sheikh-run newspaper far away, to write the best we can about whatever we want. I think that’s what I thought the world was like when I graduated from college. It’s a fantasy, but realities like ours call for that.
At any rate, here’s a smallish taste of Samuels’ piece, which is too long to excerpt effectively. If you have time, I really do recommend reading the whole thing. But you’ll need time. Okay:
By the middle of the summer, half the people I know, myself included, have been laid off or are simply working less. “I definitely have a lot less money than I had before it happened. I absolutely get fewer Starbucks Coffee things,” says my friend Jon, a former head writer for David Letterman, as we sit in the stands eating sandwiches that we brought from home and watching the Yankees defeat the Blue Jays by the score of 4 to 3. He recently bought his own espresso machine, which by itself isn’t much of a sacrifice. Nobody we know has lost their home. Still, everyone is worried that things could get worse, and that we could wake up one morning and find that the world that appeared to welcome us with open arms and bright smiles had been replaced by a sour old hag who is not persuaded by our attempts at reform.
I tell Jon about a game I attended in June at Citifield, the home of the hapless Mets, which also opened this year, at the bargain price of only $850 million. In the sixth inning I went to the bathroom, where I tried to balance myself to avoid a pool of stagnant water by the toilet while a speaker overhead broadcast offers for two-bedroom condominiums in Rockaway Beach, which could be mine for a $10,000 down payment. It was a reminder, I thought, of the link between the loose public economy that pumped money into two baseball stadiums the city didn’t need and the loose private lending that inflated real estate prices to the point where ordinary New Yorkers could no longer afford to live here.
Between innings, the groundskeepers jog out onto the field and swap in new bases. The old ones will go to feed the booming baseball memorabilia market which has monetised every square inch of the nostalgia-laden playing field and made the actual third base at Yankee Stadium magically transferable with a swipe of the family credit card to the lawns where fathers and sons play catch.
“On Draft Day 2007. I couldn’t have been more certain if the late Wilt Chamberlain had called from his water bed in the sky to tell me Joakim Noah was a 6-foot-11 fraud.” So writes the Chicago Tribune’s Rick Morrissey, recalling a June 29, 2007 column in which he predicted bust-status for the two time National Champion and the 9th overall pick in the ‘07 NBA Draft. With Noah currently averaging a double double in his third Association campaign, Morrissey made good yesterday on his vow to “drizzle salsa on the column and eat it.”
“It tasted like a crow enchilada,” boasted Morrissey, proving, if nothing else, that Sam Smith got out of print journalism just in time. (thanks to Tim Midgett for the link)
It’s ridiculous to blame Drew (Margery) for “not vetting” this story as thoroughly as possible given that he’s doing a series that’s built on first-hand accounts about supposedly asshole coaches. Drew came to me with this story and suggested this one was unique enough to stand on its own outside of the series. I agreed. It was amusing and given Murphy’s reputation as a hot-head and the other details of the event that were clearly true, it seemed completely plausible.
Obviously, that was wrong. When you run one-sided versions of stories, which we often do here, the goal is just that — to show one person’s side. That’s it. It’s been my experience, more often than not, that putting these first-person accounts on items reveal a larger truth or open the door to finding out the bigger story. This is how we’ve successfully done many things on this site over the years from “You’re With Me Leather” to Josh Hamilton.
“Unlike other traditional publications, ” continues Daulerio, “I think we draw a lot more attention to our mistakes than just a 10 word correction buried on page A12.” That’s very true, though some of the mistakes are the sort of thing that in previous eras would’ve ended writing careers rather than jump starting them. And, to be fair, Deadspin is not alone in providing a vehicle for axe grinders, though I’m personally not down with the anonymity.
GC periodically sends these emails around to the CSTB contributors — ‘going to be doing important music business stuff all day and all night, please chip in if you wish’ — and I have done nothing to chip in. I have read some really great stories for my increasingly time-consuming other sportswriting gig that I meant to link to, just really quickly so you all could read them, and I haven’t done that, either. Looking back, I guess I was waiting. I was waiting for the right moment. I was waiting, apparently, for a dime-a-dozen, tossed-off, it’s-tough-being-white whiner from Phil Mushnick concerning a long-forgotten sports-handicapping bigot and a familiar bete noire rapper, it turns out.
Yes, Philly Mush is comparing this handsome fellow to Styles P of the Lox… again. Wait, no he’s not. P-Mush is, instead, making a comparison between Jimmy the Greek (above) — the subject of Tuesday’s (unseen by me) ESPN 30-for-30 documentary — and Jay-Z. Even Phil doesn’t really seem that into it, which I think is the reason why the column resonated with me. Mushnick knew J “the G” S (of fucking course) and is even more favorably inclined towards the ghastly Goodfellas-extra-looking Snyder than you might expect.
There is the matter of Jimmy the Greek torpedoing his (now hard-to-comprehend) career with some drunken racialist ignorance, of course, but there’s an easy workaround there. Here’s Mushnick talking about Jimmy the Greek’s career-ender of an interview — “If they take over coaching like everyone wants them to,” J the G said, “there won’t be anything left for the white people;” after the ellipses, he’s (um) putting things in perspective:
It all came out the same: Ugly. [Snyder] sounded like a racist.
But what could anyone expect? For crying out loud, he was from river-town Steubenville, Ohio; he was a kid when his uncle shot and killed his immigrant mother. Who did CBS think was in its employ, Adlai Stevenson? His 12 years as a kibitzer/tout on CBS’s NFL pregame show were based on being a street guy with a big mouth and lots of opinions. And so CBS fired him because he was a street guy with a big mouth and lots of opinions.
Abandoned as a pariah, The Greek’s career — TV, movies, commercial gigs — was over. He’d gone bust before, lots of times, but he wasn’t going to rally from a racist rap…
Back to colliding circumstances. For the last few weeks we’ve been told that Jay-Z’s “Empire State of Mind,” has become the Yankees’ anthem. Invited by MLB to perform a sanitized version in Yankee Stadium and on Fox before the World Series, Jay-Z has been embraced by the NBA (he’s a part-owner of the Nets), Mayor Bloomberg, Al Sharpton, the pandering media and millions of mostly young Americans.
Yet, his stock in trade is the promotion of every run-backwards, self-enslaving stereotype of blacks, from violent crime to the degradation of women, from drugs, call-out trash-talk and endless boasting, to a fixation on wild spending on cars and jewelry.
So, okay: it’s no surprise that Mushnick is more eager to cut a break to the playing-down-to-expectations fatuous (ethnic white) mouth born in a river town than the (now equally fatuous, albeit in a different way) urban black mouth from the Marcy Projects who is playing down to his own set of expectations. Not shocking, given Mushnick’s long-running crusade against the existence of the Pacific Time Zonebold, racialized criticism of hard-to-defend black media figures brave stance against the national epidemic of white people not being able to just do whatever like in the old days before the PC gestapo. It’s just another underwrought, race-baiting column from a clownish, curmudgeonly relic — swap Jimmy the Greek out for basically anything and leave Jay-Z where he is and you’ve got the framework for maybe three columns for every ten Mushnick writes.
But it’s more meaningful, maybe, in that these are tough times at Mushnick’s employer, the New York Post. Long a lawless, chuckling bastion of proud ignorance, vituperative score-settling and dim white rage, the Post has seen its circulation crater at a rate that surpasses even the national average, and has just seen much of the masthead been named in a race- and sex-discrimination suit by a former employee that gets a meticulous going over from John Cook at Gawker. Spoiler alert: apparently EIC Col Allan is into showing iPhone photos of weens to female employees, which is presumably soothing/amusing to a certain type of dude. Clearly things have been better at New York’s reigning populo-conservative frat house.
Which is a bummer for them, I guess. But there’s something especially end-stage to me about Mushnick’s phoned-in, passionless ignorance in that Jimmy the Greek column. The column is not notably less dumb or offensive for that, nor is Mush’s familiar woe-is-us-for-reverse-racism tack any less risible. But it’s of a piece with the rhetorical trend at the Post-y center-fringe of the political discourse at the moment — take the “Alleged White Bigot X is not as bad as Jay-Z” tack, which I saw repeated dully, duly in several newspapers’ online comment sections while doing my Daily Fix-related homework on Rush Limbaugh’s ill-fated attempt to buy the Rams. This is dumb stuff, naturally, but, more to the point, it’s lazy. The world is changing (not just because there’s a minority guy in the White House but also for that reason) and no one quite knows where it’s going. Maybe it’s that I just spent a friend’s wedding weekend in a Virginia town that felt like it could’ve been in Moldova, cigarette-choked and hopeless as it was, but things, broadly, don’t necessarily seem to me to be heading someplace good at present.
The options we have, then, are to engage that world on its own frightening terms — to deal with the replacement of rusted old Jimmy the Greeks with something more contemporary, if you want, but more broadly to deal with harder things and harder-to-understand things to come — or to just not engage the world as it is, and choose instead to slip into soothing, self-victimizing solipsism. Mushnick was doing this long before Obama’s America became some nightmare dystopian code-word, of course. But the Post’s time is passing even faster than other newspapers’, and it looks like they — Mushnick and the cock-intensive editorial board and the rest — will take whatever’s coming with the same bilious, self-pitying un-grace with which they usually take everything. Or refuse to take it, I guess.
A few days ago, ESPN’s Rob Neyer linked to a CSTB item, and if you don’t think I was thrilled at such acknowledgment, you’ve no idea how easily impressed I am. But that was just a tiny hyperlink. Imagine, if you will, the reactions of Pro Football Talk’s Michael Florio and Michael David Smith, upon seeing an item from the former provide such inspiration for the internet’s most widely read sports outlet. It’s got to be a dream come true!
Tighter than tight deadlines were in place for Thomas Boswell’s account of World Series Game 4, leaving little time to correct, uh, the sort of typos that appear in almost every one of my CSTB entries, regardless of the time of day. The Washington Post’s resident ombudsman, Alexander Andrews, while acknowledging the tough circumstances, lowers the boom on Boswell (above) just the same.
Those who read Boswell in Monday morning’s newspaper encountered a mess. By my count, the column contained at least 20 typos, grammatical errors or misspellings.
“I’d like my 75 cents back, please,” wrote reader Mitch Zeller of Olney, who had purchased a copy of Monday’s Post at the Bethesda Metro station. “There is no excuse for such a shoddy product. It’s completely unprofessional; more errors than one would see in a high school or college newspaper.”
Sunday’s thrilling Game 4 in Philadelphia ended shortly before midnight, and Boswell filed his story at 12:07 a.m. Crafted literally as the game was unfolding in the exciting late innings, the story came in rough. And it was longer than the allotted space, leaving editors to try to edit and significantly trim it within about 20 minutes while they also edited and packaged other World Series stories and stats. Editors hit the button on Boswell’s column at 12:25 a.m., just shy of the 12:30 a.m. final copy deadline. They knew it had received only cursory editing, but the alternative was to hold it out of the paper. That would have angered readers who have come to rely on Boswell’s keen insights.
The result were passages like these:
- Extra rest for a pitcher “may be on crucial value” instead of “may be of crucial value.”
- “…the Yankees had reverse the tide” instead of “reversed the tide.”
- “…tactics that may bare on the rest of the sears” instead of “bear on the rest of the series.”
Willie Mays robbing Vic Wertz? Ho hum. Mazeroski’s walk-off before they called such things a walk-off? Whatevah. Carton Fisk’s game-winning shot down the leftfield line in 1975? Fuck off. All of the above pale in comparison to the not-so-idiotic Johnny Damon’s most astonishing of accomplishments ; running another 90 feet to claim an uncovered 3rd base. The dust had barely cleared from the Yankees’ 7-4 defeat of the Phillies in last night’s Game 4 of the World Series before pundits reputed (and otherwise) fell over themselves hailing the former caveman’s presence of mind ;
“While you could argue that he would have scored just as easily from second on an A-Rod double (predetermined-destiny alert!), it doesn’t change the fact that Damon made one of the all-time great heads-up base-running decisions, on the biggest stage imaginable, on the heels of a terrific nine-pitch at-bat.” – Joe DeLessio, New York Magazine
“We’ve seen a lot of baseball games. We’ve seen a lot of postseason games. We’ve seen a lot of World Series games. But we’ve never seen anything quite like Johnny Damon, racing the baseball to second base in the ninth inning of a tied World Series game — and then picking himself up and stampeding all the way to third, as 46,000 occupants of a stunned ballpark turned and asked each other: What just happened?” – Jayson Stark, ESPN.com
“Last night, there was no Ken Huckaby, no Carlos Ruiz, no Brad Lidge awaiting Johnny Damon at third base. The Yanks’ left fielder caught everyone off guard, and as the Yankee bench, millions of fans, and Carlos Ruiz watched the play unfold, Damon beat Feliz in a dash to third. It was a race for ages.” – Benjamin Krabak, River Ave. Blues
“Damon joins Enos Slaughter in the annals of great World Series baserunning plays tonight, stealing second and then third base on one play. One of the first baseball proverbs I recall was ‘in every game you see one thing you’ve never seen before,’ and after thirty years of idling away hours watching baseball games, tonight was the first time I’ve seen anything like it…A similar play I’ve always imagined happening one day is a runner on third stealing home during an intentional walk to a righthanded batter — with a usually-immobile catcher stepping the customary several yards to his right, seems like it would be very hard to get a tag on the runner.]” -Shayana Kadidal, Huffington Post
WFAN’s Mike Francesa (above) claims he was wildly misquoted last week by the New York Post’s Phil Mushnick concerning the physical fitness of Philly’s Chase Utley. With a $25K bet riding on the dispute, the Mike’d Up host has challenged Mushnick to produce audio evidence of such comments, a wager the columnist finds curious given the radio station’s past inability to prove or disprove Francesa made specific remarks. To wit, Mushnick will accept Francesa’s challenge, but he’d like to go double or nothing.
Days after the 9/11 attacks, Francesa, global affairs expert (it’s a gift), launched two bigoted, backwoods and facts-depraving commentaries blaming both Israel and American Jews for America’s peril at the hands of terrorists.
Francesa also said the Jews he knows are disloyal Americans in that they would go to war to defend Israel but not the United States.
In the wake of an attack on the U.S. by Islamic lunatics, Francesa even called upon American Jews to prove their virtue as Americans, to choose between Israel, which he called “a failed experiment,” and the U.S.
As a third-generation American Jew, whose great-uncle was a WWI doughboy, and whose father was a WWII Naval Lt., then commander of the Staten Island chapter of the Jewish War Veterans, I was, shall we say, displeased by Francesa’s determination that the time had come for me to swear allegiance to the United States.
On Sept. 23, 2001, the above appeared in this column. In WFAN’s response, on behalf of Francesa, station boss Mark Chernoff denied that Francesa said any of that — despite thousands, including WFAN staff, having heard what I’d heard. My challenge to produce those tapes was ignored.
If I wrote such malicious lies, why wasn’t I sued?
Mariotti’s Kate Hudson is most certainly not the slump-buster A-Rod is looking for. And good thing Kevin Blackistone is wearing a name tag, otherwise we’d have no way of knowing who he’s supposed to be . However, the latter deserves massive credit for prefacing every spiel with “i’m gonna let you finish, Kate Mariotti…” Somebody remind me, did Mariotti dress up as Ozzie G. last year?
As late as Monday night, the crappiest upper tier seats at Yankee Stadium for Game One of the World Series were going for nearly $400. Despite being allowed inside the Steinbrenner family’s glittering palace for free as a member of the working media last night, the Inquirer’s Frank Fitzpatrick is far from grateful, complaining, “Several Yankees employees walk around the concourse holding signs that say “How may I help you?” It’s all for show. They were unable to get me a seat in the main press box.”
Four hours before Game 1, the main press box resembled the Tokyo subway. Bodies and computers made things impassable. The adjoining work rooms were overflowing too, the precious spots apparently having been claimed at dawn by savvy veteran journalists.
The poor Yankees. How were they know people would be interested in covering a World Series? Having hosted 39 others, there was no way they could possibly have anticipated a crowd.
Beat a hasty retreat for the auxiliary press box, a lofty, outfield perch where Philadelphia sportswriters were assigned seats and sherpas to get them there.
After rappelling up there, it was quickly apparent that more clothing, binoculars and oxygen would be required. The freezing wind howled like a New York cabbie. The puddles of water that two days of rain had left on our chairs and tables were icing over.
We all would have huddled near the TV monitors for warmth had there been any TV monitors. Apparently it was OK for the cream of the nation’s sportswriters to get wet but not for TVs.
Far below, set up atop the right-centerfield wall, we could see a pair of NYPD snipers. Had New Yorkers finally tired of the Yankees uber-obnoxious broadcast team of John Sterling and Susan Waldman?
OK, I actually have no idea what the above headline really means. One of the joys of writing a sports blog as opposed to being Neil Best, however, is that I can publish such a thing. Just because I can do something, however, is flimsy justification for doing so…at first glance, anyway.
The only thing more precarious this morning than the state of Steve Phillips’ broadcasting career might be his marriage. Hours after the New York Post revealed the alleged affair between ESPN’s Phillips and a twenty-something production assistant, Deadspin’s A.J. Daulerio claimed to have sought commentary from the WWL several weeks ago. Upon being stonewalled by a P.R. flack, Daulerio declared Wednesday open season on ESPN’s long list of persons with overactive libidos (”since the tenuous connection between rumor and fact for accuracy’s sake has been a little eroded here, well, it’s probably about time to just unload the inbox of all the sordid rumors we’ve received over the years about various ESPN employees”).
After the lowly Erik Kuselias and network V.P. Katie Lacey (who apparently, slept her way to the middle) were named and shamed, the uncredited Stupid Sports Blog had seen enough, opining, “it’s just a sad state of affairs over there for a blog that used to be one funny dick joke after another, and now it’s run by a guy who has a vendetta against ESPN because the New York Post did its job better than him.”
Basically, someone sent Deadspin an e-mail accusing someone at ESPN of having some sexual indiscretions, and Deadspin printed it. And they only printed them because Daulerio was upset with his treatment by ESPN. The timeline:
1) 2006-2009: Inbox flooded with rumors about ESPN employees’ sexcapades.
2) 2006-2009: Company policy is never delete them, never do any investigating into them, but don’t publish them, because we’re not going to do that to those people.
3) August 2009: “Hello, ESPN? Hey, it’s A.J. Is Steve Phillips getting fired for doing Harold Reynolds-esque stuff? No? Anything else? No? Kthanksbye!”
4) October 2009: Daulerio spits out his pumpkin latte when he reads the Phillips story in the New York Post. He arrives at work and decides it is now OK to print those old rumors since the one about Steve Phillips, which actually wasn’t true if you recall, since ESPN didn’t tell him about the real Steve Phillips story.
If you’re looking to ruin someone’s life, I suggest you set up a fake e-mail account and e-mail Deadspin with a tasty sex rumor about whoever you like at ESPN. Get your friends to do it too so it seems more credible. Tell them Stuart Scott tried to work a three-way with Cindy Brunson and the corpse of Tom Mees. They’ll print it and be right to do so since they didn’t get the Steve Phillips story.
SSB might have a point about whether mere e-mail tips oughta be enough to publicly embarrass the (semi) high and mighty. But if you’re wondering why the public’s right to know includes digging into the sex lives of persons who barely register as public figures, perhaps this case is about more than smearing celebs. SSB inadvertently made the point mentioning “Harold Reynolds-esque stuff”, much as Daulerio raised the same issue at the end of the Lacie post in questioning an apparent double standard (”so for your notes: ESPN Corporate Ladder-Fucking: Good. ESPN On-Air Talent Production Assistant-Fucking: Not Good.”). Were Harold Reynolds’ hugging hands any more or less busy than those of Phillips, Kuselias and Lacie? Toss in Sean Salisbury’s Phone Cam Penis Gallery, and we start to see a work environment that seems exploitative at the very least, if not downright hostile towards those unwilling to help the on-air talent get off. Do such things occur at many other businesses? Fucking right they do, however not every business has a stranglehold on the sports media scene, nor are many businesses as effective in shaping dialogue and pop culture as ESPN.
So yeah, if true (and that’s a big “if”) this stuff isvery newsworthy . Reynolds and Salisbury probably found it highly interesting reading. None of that, however, excuses the sickening treatment afforded to Phillips’ production assistant by readers of the WEEI.com website. Seriously, what sort of twisted individual followed this story, looked at the frosted-tip, Hilfiger-wearing Phillips and said to themselves, “he could do so much better”?
Either Lakers G Kobe Bryant (above, left) has a Type-T(ommy Lasorda) strain of Dodger Blue ruining thru his veins or he’s still harboring a grudge over the 2002 NBA All-Star Game. Of Kobe’s decision to attend a Phillies/Dodgers game at Chavez Ravine in the company of Frank McCourt, the Philadelphia Inquirer’s John Gonzalez compares it to “like watching Zell Miller at the Republican National Convention.” “The defection was complete and the insult was obvious,” writes Gonzo, presumably secure in the knowledge there are no West Coast newspapers that might ever desire his services.
Ah, but that wasn’t enough. Mamba wanted to make sure we got the message and sent word through Craig Sager. TBS’s Technicolor Dreamcoat reporter asked the NBA’s version of Kanye West – Bryant’s ego has grown so impossibly large that he didn’t hesitate to go out in public wearing a shirt with his own likeness on it – if it felt a little strange to root against his hometown. Even Sager knows how poorly that sort of thing plays, especially here in Philly.
“It’s not weird.” Bryant reportedly said. “I’ve lived in Los Angeles for 14 years now.”
I lived in Boston and Dallas for eight years total, but I never had the urge to buy a Red Sox hat or spoon with former Big D mayor Ron Kirk. (He’s not much of a cuddler, anyway.) Plenty of athletes leave home to play elsewhere, but few have so openly and unapologetically dug up their roots and scorched the earth they left behind. Can you imagine Dwyane Wade so blatantly snubbing Chi-town?
In an attempt to finally cut whatever frayed ties he still had with Philly, Sager said Kobe told him that he grew up rooting for the Mets and that he still has Ron Darling’s baseball card. It’s bad enough that he was a closet Mutts fan, but he held on to Ron Darling’s card after all these years? Really? Until I heard that, I didn’t think it was possible for Bryant to be any lamer than some of us already suspected.
Man, when was the last time Ron Darling inspired this much disrespect on a national level?
In recent weeks, head coach Bobby Hauck (above) has publicly belittled Kaimin reporters at weekly news conferences, and followed through with an earlier threat of shutting the students out of interviews. Now, the football athletes are no longer speaking to the student reporters either – a silence the Kaimin believes Hauck ordered.
At a recent weekly news conference, a Kaimin reporter asked Hauck whether he was going to continue rotating quarterbacks.”You want something from me now?” replied Hauck. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
A Missoulian sportswriter immediately followed up with the same question, to which Hauck provided an answer.
At the following week’s news conference, the Kaimin reporter again asked a question – this one on how the Grizzly defense would defend against the speed of an opposing running back.
Hauck’s reply: “I’ll give you this, you’re persistent. Who’s next?”
After a recent practice, a student reporter asked a question of a player, who replied that he “wasn’t allowed to talk to the Kaimin,” the school newspaper reported.
Hauck refused to be interviewed for this story when contacted by the Missoulian.
Hauck and his assistant coaches earn more than a combined half million dollars a year. It’s kind of amazing to think one of the state’s more high profile educators considers his program so above reproach, there’s no obligation to engage in a dialogue with the same students whose tutions are (partially) paying his salary.
….for the New York Post’s Marc Berman. Which other NBA quote machine is likely to make Berman his personal diarist? On Friday, Marbury slammed Mike D’Antoni, sneered at the Knicks’ chances of signing LeBron James in 2010, and compared his upcoming year out of basketball to a Michael Jordan-esque sabbatical. Upon seeing Marbury’s comments greeted with something less than reverence, Berman took to his Post blog to defend his good buddy.
(above : Stephon, engaged in iChat with Berman, suggesting a third column to further explain the former’s point of view on Sunday)
It is fascinating that Marbury is not allowed to bash the team but everyone else in the continental U.S. can.
Marbury realizes the Knicks are a rebuilding team and doesn’t see LeBron James joining a rebuilding situation, especially once that doesn’t reek of promise (see: Danilo Gallinari).
Marbury feels the real reason they went this route – cutting their payroll monstrously – was to save James Dolan money on salary and luxury tax. If they are going to be mediocre, let them be mediocre more cheaply. And his point is, why should fans pay full price for this season’s product.
His remarks about his own career, you can laugh at if you want. Push comes to shove, I think he regrets turning down Boston’s early-July offer of $1.3M to return. When Boston got Rasheed Wallace, they were less interested.
Marbury, without an agent, didn’t see the horrendous economic climate. But then again, neither did veteran agent, Mark Bartelstein, representing David Lee.
There is simply no greater social standing in sports than the great white quarterback, and Donovan McNabb can only nail two of the three criteria. So the question becomes:
What does Brett Favre think?
Favre’s voice could have a social impact like no other sports figure. He is football’s most iconic active player, and is also a country-boy born and raised in Mississippi – a state whose ugly racial history is well-documented. Would Favre use his voice to “reduce the hate” at a time where mass racial hatred is as publicly visible as any time since the 1960s? Or would he be more concerned that “racists buy Wranglers too”?
What does Tom Brady think?
As a member of the Republican Party, he is in a prime position to throw his greatest pass. By denouncing Limbaugh’s ownership bid, Brady can prove that Rush does not own him — unlike the congressman in his party. Brady can make an incredibly powerful statement that racism and Republicanism do not have to share the same bed, and that hatred and bigotry should never be reduced to a “political issue” alongside alternate viewpoints on deficit reduction or campaign finance reform.
What does Kurt Warner think?
Warner – who once led the St. Louis Cardinals to its only Super Bowl – is also a well-known devout Christian committed to spreading the principles. Does Rush Limbaugh reflect those principles? Warner’s words could send a much-needed message to fellow Christians that Limbaugh’s racism is an anti- Christian perversion of his religion.
While Stephen Jackson attempts to tell his side of the story following his recent suspension, Yahoo Sports’ Ken Berger pulls no punches in blasting the Warriors, insisting “David Stern should forcefully suggest that it’s time for majority owner Chris Cohan to finally sell this franchise that has disintegrated on his watch.” Hey, no fair, Dolan gets to keep the Knicks!
Cohan isn’t the only problem, either. His problem is merely the only one that — if solved — would lead to the resolution of all the other problems. Namely, those problems are president Robert Rowell, Riley, and Nelson. Find me another NBA team with a triangle of stubbornness, petulance, and cluelessness that rivals this Warriors triumvirate and I’ll send you a P.J. Carlesimo bobblehead doll.
Two members of this bungling trio were present at Las Vegas Summer League this past July. (And when it comes to Nellie, I should point out that he was present in the arena, not just the casino.) It was a sad commentary on what the Warriors have become: A disheveled Nelson sitting uncomfortably in the stands, a ball cap scrunched down on his unkempt coiffure. By his side at all times, like a pea-brained pug, was Riley — whose ascent to the GM’s chair came at the expense of Mullin and by the forceful hand of Nellie. One night, Nellie invited a couple of scribes out for dinner and cigars, a gesture he hoped would curry favor and mold the mushy contents of their skulls to Nellie’s twisted brand of basketball management. One thing I have learned in this business: When a sports figure invites you to dinner for the sole purpose of showing you what a prince he is, he is up to no good.
The no-good has gone on in Golden State long enough.
…and Luol Deng’s QB rating takes a hit. During and after my 5 + years residing in London, I’ve often been impressed with the amount of thoughtful, savvy coverage of American sports routinely found in the national newspapers. Richard Rae’s account of Tuesday’s Bulls / Jazz exhibition at the 02 Arena for The Independent, however, is not one of those instances.
Half the professional footballers in London were courtside, with Tottenham particularly well represented, but the Bulls started poorly, Luol Deng of all people giving up an immediate interception. Not that it really matters when you only have to blink to miss a score. By the end of the first quarter the score was 27-26 to the Bulls, there had been two time outs, during which the Utah dancers strutted their stuff, the hyperactive mascots – a bull and something that looked like the wrath of God, but was apparently some sort of bear – had thrown T-Shirts to the crowd and listened to cheesy tunes being belted out on an organ. When it played ‘If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands’, everybody did.
The entertainment in the break was even slicker. The Jazz Dunk team rolled out a couple of springboards and performed a series of such remarkably gymnastic, well, dunks, you had to watch the replays to believe your eyes hadn’t deceived you.
The game, when it resumed, felt like a distraction. At the next time-out, a lad called Edward shot so many long baskets he won a trip to New York. He walked off wearing a smile and a Utah dancer on his arm.
The points kept coming, and so did the gimmicks. ‘Disco cam’, picking out whichever sap in the stands happened to be gyrating most ridiculously at the time. It was chaos, but even chaos can have a pattern, and the pattern was on the scoreboard, high above the court.
During an online chat today, the Washington Post writer – I’d call him the “baseball writer,” but he long ago became a general sports columnist, and the header on “Ask Boswell” plugs the “Redskins, Nats, Orioles and more” – got thrown for a real loop by somebody who cared enough to ask about the so-called hottest sports team in D.C. – the Capitals, currently facing off against the Boston Bruins on a channel that I don’t receive.
Iceplex: Opening night up in Boston. Think Theo can pull a consistent season out of his … hat.
(Not the GM of the Boston Red Sox)
Tom Boswell: The regular season as been a dud. I think the post-season will be excellent. These are really entertaining teams with lots of glamor. Of course, part of the reason is that this has not been a good year for parity. A lot of rich teams have come through the draw.
You can get me to watch the Yanks, Dodgers, Red Sox, Phils, Angels or Cards any day. I’d put their chances of reaching the Series in that order __and any of them could do it. Hope the Tigers hang on for detroit and Illich’s sake. The Rox have wonderful fundamentals and strong arms. But they had their WS, didn’t they?
But to answer your question, Boston has recently gotten excited at the way their pitching has gotten back to health and Ortiz supposedly done and dsicredited is one of the top A.L. HR hitters in the second half. They’re baaaack.
Or more to the point, in the aftermath of Wayne Gretzky bailing on the Phoenix Coyotes last week — with the fiscally challenged franchise about to start the season — the Globe & Mail’s Bruce Dowbiggin points out the Great One received a smidgeon of criticism (most notably from G&M colleague Paul Blair and caring-sharing clotheshorse Don Cherry), no. 99’s iconic status remained secure in several spots.
Gretzky has traditionally received the benefit of the doubt from the media pack thanks to his marvellous career and pleasant demeanour with reporters. Even when he was snared in the Rick Tocchet gambling scandal heading into the 2006 Olympic competition, the NHL legend caught a large break from many in the fourth estate. (One overtaxed Gretzky loyalist called the gambling allegations a “crucifixion”.) Thursday was no exception as many leapt to Gretzky’s defence. Nick Kypreos on The Fan 590’s Hockey Central ripped the NHL for leaving Gretzky on an island while the Coyotes’ bankruptcy drama unfolded. Veteran broadcaster Darren Pang tried to soften Gretzky’s unexplained absence from training camp: “It has bothered and hurt Wayne Gretzky that he has not been at camp.”
Others said he deserved an exemption from criticism based on his contributions to the business in America. “The pot-shots and the gratuitous illegal hits … on Wayne Gretzky right now have been ridiculous,” TSN’s Pierre McGuire said. “No man has done more in terms of reaching out and trying to build the game in the NHL than Gretzky.”
Yet, after the revelations of his huge compensation – $8-million (U.S.) a year – and then the absence from the Coyotes’ training camp, few in Phoenix shed tears as he headed off into the sunset. East Valley Tribune columnist Scott Bordow said Gretzky’s “association with the Phoenix Coyotes was a complete and utter disaster.”
“Perhaps ESPNBoston.com’s newest business partnership will not prove to be a colossal conflict of interest in the long run,” opines the Boston Globe’s Chad Finn. “But upon first glance, that’s precisely what it appears to be.”
ESPNBoston.com, which became the second of ESPN’s planned network of city-specific sites to launch Sept. 14, is using Kraft Sports Group as its local advertising sales agent for the site. SportsBusiness Daily was the first to report news of the partnership on Thursday.
Kraft Sports Group is a holding company founded by Patriots owner Robert Kraft (above, far left) in 1998, four years after he purchased the NFL franchise. Along with the Patriots, Kraft owns the Revolution of Major League Soccer as well as Gillette Stadium, the venue for both teams’ home games.
Given that a significant amount of ESPNBoston.com’s coverage is dedicated to the Patriots, and a smaller amount to the Revolution, the partnership is beginning on dubious journalistic ground.
ESPN’s general strategy with its localized websites is to launch in cities where it already owns and operates an ESPN Radio station, then have the station’s staff coordinate ad sales for the website. Such was the case when ESPN Chicago launched in April.
While the ESPN mother ship has not been reluctant to criticize the franchise – it was relentless in its reporting and speculating during the “SpyGate’’ controversy of 2007 – the situation bears monitoring to see whether ESPNBoston.com’s curious new bedfellow has an effect on its reporting of potentially unflattering Patriots news.
Though it’s a bit early days to accuse ESPNBoston of lacking integrity, Finn would be remiss not to raise the points above. He’s equally remiss, however, in failing to disclose (even if it’s old fuckin’ news) the Globe’s parent company, The New York Times, holds a minority stake in the Boston Red Sox. Though I can’t think of an example of the Globe covering anything up to curry favor with John Henry, Larry Lucchino or Tom Werner, a number of shots have been taken by Globe writers at former players who’ve ended up on ownership’s shit list for one reason or another. Heck, the team almost lost a General Manager a few years ago over what seemed like a victorious power play on the part of Lucchino, successfully (for a while, anyway) engineered with the help of the CHB.
What is disturbing is that, with the exception of the final five minutes of the game against the Bills, the offense that was supposed to overwhelm all others has been underwhelming. As Brady tries to work his way back into a comfortable state of mind he has had predictable struggles. He had them against the Bills for all but the final five minutes and he had them all day Sunday, primarily because he was under constant pressure.
Although Brady was never sacked, he was hurried seven times and pressured many more. His offense missed Wes Welker, who has been nursing a sore knee, and Randy Moss, who disappeared in a cocoon of coverage spun by Jets cornerback Darrelle Revis.
After the game, Moss claimed he was double-covered all day. Revis said he was in man coverage all day. No wonder Moss couldn’t get open. He was seeing double.
Were this just an offensive problem one would be less concerned but for two straight weeks the defense has played worse in the second half than the first.
This was a problem against the Bills and an insurmountable one against the Jets, who rang up 197 yards and 13 points in the second half to 57 yards and a field goal in the first. Worse, the first two quarterbacks they’ve faced, Trent Edwards and rookie Mark Sanchez, finished with passer ratings of 114.1 and 101.1. It is unlikely the last game either plays this season will be the Pro Bowl.
The Mets are currently scoreless against the Nationals’ John Lannan, whose 1981 killing served as inspiration for the Meatmen’s “One Down, Three To Go”. From the looks of things on MLB.TV, Citi Field is mostly empty, a development that could only be of interest to the most culturally unaware of New Yorkers. Or, if you prefer, New York Times sports editor Tom Jolly, who finds the cheap & easy availability of Mets tickets more worthy of coverage than what actually happened during a Major League baseball game. Jerry Manuel’s thoughts on the performance of Mike Pelfrey were considered surplus to requirements, though the Times’ David Waldstein did manage to get the manager to say “it’s a little too intimate, right now. We like the bigger crowds. You can hear them too clearly” regarding last night’s turnout.
One voice he could not hear was that of Michelle Velasquez, a New Jersey resident who was given four tickets ($100 each) to Friday night’s game, in addition to an $18 parking pass. She and her husband had plans with another couple. Sure, they could have all come to the game, but instead they decided on dinner in Manhattan. Velasquez tried to sell the tickets and the pass for $200 on Craigslist, but as of 5 p.m. she had not come close to getting rid of them.
“I got two calls,” she told a reporter who responded to her ad. “One from a guy who was going to buy them but backed out, and you.”
One who did not back out was Anthony Rasile, a court clerk from Howard Beach, Queens. Although a Yankee fan, Rasile received free tickets from his daughter and thought it would be a chance to get his first look at Citi Field. He said he liked certain aspects of the new park a lot.
“I noticed the beers are $2.50 cheaper than at Yankee Stadium,” he said.
But for 18-year-old Matt Bass, the game itself, not a cold beverage, was a welcome diversion. A week ago, Bass, a Westchester resident, heard these dreaded words from his girlfriend of a year: “It’s not working out.” So his father, his uncle and a cousin bought tickets and took him out to the ballgame.
Dressed in a black No. 57 Johan Santana shirt, the melancholy Bass stood at the railing behind the field-level seats behind third base before the game and motioned to the Mets’ dugout. “They’re killing me,” he said.
It’s hard to decide which is more desperate, adding insult to injury for Mr. Bass (dumped…and a Mets fan) or the notion of Waldstein being encouraged to harass women via Craigslist. Parking pass or not, however, anyone asking $50 per ticket to see a ballgame played between two teams who are combined 67 games under .500 oughta be institutionalized or indicted. But enough about Fred and Jeff Wilpon, Ms. Velazquez seems a bit out of touch, too.
The New York Post’s Peter Vescey is Will Leitch’s latest nominee for “Your Hometown Columnist Sucks”, a pretty rich concept considering that a “columnist” in Leitch’s own hometown would be the person who transcribes the cinema start times.
Writes Will,
Is Vecsey at least funny? You tell us: “Following his 1-for-16 misadventure in Game 1 against the Sonics, Mike Bibby, desperate to figure out his shooting problem, drove to the nearest Wendy’s to see if its employees could put their finger on it.” Um, what?
Admittedly, that’s not even close to Vescey’s best line. But still funnier than anything you’d find in a month of reading Deadspin.
Though hardly above reproach, Vescey is the guy who suggested that Pat Riley stopped talking about “The Disease Of Me” and switched to “The Disease Of Thee” when he noticed Madonna was sitting courtside. The same Vescey that labelled the Daily News’ Filip “King Kong Bondy” and was tearing into Stephen “Anal” Smith when Deadspin was just a twinkle in Nick Denton’s eye.
ESPN.com’s Rob Neyer (above) republished a reader’s letter bemoaning the Whicker witch hunt, to which he responded :
I’m not nearly as charitable as Keith (which is just one of my many failings). But while I agree that it’s morally wicked to call for Whicker’s head because he has failed, morally, what about calling for his head because he’s incompetent?
It’s especially easy for me, because I’m infatuated with good writing and I abhor bad writing, and columns like Whicker’s give my profession a bad name.
We might reasonable assume that it’s the worst Whicker can offer … but are his best efforts better enough, and frequent enough? Again, I don’t know. Nor am I going to know. Only his readers can know. And his editors, who should know him better than anyone.
Neyer’s entry was deleted from ESPN.com earlier today. Writing to Watching The Watchers, Neyer explained his post was in violation of WWL policy prohibiting media criticism.
It’s a somewhat curious policy, though it does serve the tiny benefit of restricting the Sports Putz’ beefs with far jerkier radio hosts to the former’s Twitter feed.
When ESPN buries the Ben Roethlisberger rape allegations for several days but files repeated updates in the instance of Shawne Merriman’s alleged battery of Tila Tequila, can we presume something’s not kosher in Bristol? Or should we go to the lengths of Sports On My Mind’s dwil who concludes that when it comes to the Worldwide Leader, “black athletes are rarely afforded the consideration of ethical treatment”?
The Big Subliminal will devote time from 6 a.m. to midnight to dissect the athlete’s every performance and find, or invent if they must, the warts in a Black athlete’s game or personality if the WWL gets a whiff of trouble surrounding an athlete with dark skin. They will talk with everyone from high school coaches and societal mentors to ex-female mating objects to unearth negative news about the athlete. They will go so far as to conduct televised “investigative” reports and interview unsavory members of society and hide their identities in shadows and alter their voices just to make sure a story is picked up by other sports news outlets. The story will be on the lips of every radio show host in the ESPN radio universe – and other than the odd ex-athlete here and there, or the odd Black ESPN television personality who also does radio, every ESPN radio show host is White.
The television network will air some token differing opinion about the Black athlete in question from its revolving door of about four Black writer at ESPN who appear so often on its network programming that many White people actually believe there are Black writers everywhere at ESPN, on the .com, and in the magazine. Anyone can surely understand why these White people would think such a thing. After all, to them we all look alike.
Every so often ESPN will flip the script on who does the defending and who does the criticizing of a Black athlete plucked out for microcosmic perusal. One day, when viewers least expect it, their primary morning leadoff hitter, Skip Bayless, will earn his $1.5 million salary by flipping roles in mind-bending fashion and lamely play designated White, “Black athlete defender,” while his designated morning Black talking head foil will rip into said athlete with all the vigor of the most virulent racist. After the segment, White viewers get their guilt stroked because one of them acted as the paternal, burdened White man who can intellectualize the Black man’s plight. At the same time they can become fully self-absorbed in their righteous anger toward that particular and all Black athletes because they can tell all their friends “even other Black people can see how wrong ‘that guy’ – Black athlete – is.”
And all is well with the world ———– until the next reported incident of “wrong-doing” by yet another in the long litany of Black athletes who fail yet again to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and ‘fly right’ by White standards, and rise above their ‘instincts.’
Freddie Coleman isn’t a white radio host. I realize he’s hardly the most prominent ESPN radio personality, but if you listen a lot on the weekends, he’s hard to escape. Dunno if Bayless really makes $1.5 million, but he’s clearly not spending it on clothes.
Marty Noble (above) covered the Mets for Newsday and the then-Bergen Record from roughly 1916-2004. It can’t have been easy, in those early years, when the Mets didn’t actually exist, but it’s a testament to Noble’s hardcore-ness that he gutted it out. What it means that Noble is continuing to cover the Mets — for MLB.com, now — I don’t know, but I don’t sense it’s a good thing. Everyone’s got to pay their rent/mortgage/cigarette bills, and I’m sure Noble’s no different than the rest of humanity in that regard, but there’s something kind of poignant to me about Noble having to stay in the game and cover this particular Mets team. The last couple years ruined a lot of peoples’ retirement plans, but there’s something unmistakably Unitas-in-a-Chargers-jersey about Noble dutifully getting quotes from Cory Sullivan for another year’s worth of rote gamers at an age when he (Noble, not Sullivan) should be in a hammock somewhere.
The Mets, although it’s easy to forget this when you watch them, are professionals playing out the string on a miserable season, and I suppose it could be said that Noble is doing the same. Noble is not an all-time great, and this old Fire Joe Morgan post is a reminder that he’s not exactly a forward-thinking baseball mind, but he’s well past retirement age at this point, and I can’t help but feel bad when I look at his MLB blog, to which Noble himself hasn’t posted since July 30. This man shouldn’t have to blog — he covered his first Mets game in 1970, show a little respect, let him nap, you know? But either Noble really can’t give it up or his 401k well and truly bombed, because he doesn’t seem keen on quitting. In fact, if his perplexing recent Mets.com feature — an open letter from Shea Stadium to Citi Field — is any indication, he’s just gearing up to enter his baroque phase.
Your guys lost almost the whole team. Even David. He’s one of your guys who I had, and I know he never wanted to go on the DL. But it got just about all the guys. And how ’bout Louie Castillo falling down the steps? I understand you feel a little guilty about that one. Pat Zachry broke his toe on the steps of my dugout in ‘78 after he gave up a hit to Rose. And I always felt bad about Rusty hurting his shoulder on my right-field wall in the ‘73 playoffs. I might have had three World Series flags if Rusty was 100 percent in the Series.
But your guys won’t even get in. That’s tough. Sorry. Let me tell ya, nothing feels better than wearing the postseason bunting. I must say, I looked pretty good duded up in red, white and blue in October. I’m sure you’ll get your chance.
Otherwise, how’d your first season go? I know you took some grief for all the Dodgers stuff. But that was Fred’s passion as a kid. It doesn’t fade. And the rotunda is real cool. I didn’t have anything like that. Anyway, I see there’s a lot more Mets stuff now. Those flags outside. They’re all my guys — George Thomas, Koosy and Gil. Tug, I miss him! — and Agee and Cleon. Mex, Doc and Straw. Big Mike. And I love that Doc signed on that wall inside.
I see you’ve got your own apple. Too bad it’s not used more. And my old one is still there by the bullpens. Cool. Straw and Piazza and HoJo wore mine out. I saw Church just missed yours before he left.
It’s kind of like a middle school creative-writing exercise, only as performed by a chain-smoking, sleep-deprived septuagenarian who has a personal relationship with Elston Howard. While Noble’s piece is not nearly as impossible to finish as this unmasterpiece — seriously, I dare you — it’s not (as GC wrote in the email in which he sent me the link) a career high point. The saddest part: the time Noble spent on that letter wasn’t spent on his artwork.
Though he’d yet to see the film, David Roth recently described the protagonist in the Patton Oswalt schmuck-vehicle “Big Fan” as “a lumpy, quietly pathological obsessive Giants fan who fucks his life up through that obsession.” The New York Post’s Phil Mushnick is slightly more effusive in his praise for screenwriter/director Robert Siegel’s followup to “The Wrestler”, declaring, “this one’s for New York sports fans, all of us, from the logical to the lunatics; this one gets us where we live; this one’s for us.” Or, perhaps, this one’s for you, you WFAN-calling motherfuckers.
Paul, slickly and sickly played by Patton Oswalt, is a habitual caller to “The Sports Dogg,” played by Scott Ferrall, the transient sports talker/act now heard over Sirius/XM. Ferrall’s never seen, but his casting — his voice and his script — make for perfect.
Paul brings to mind Marty, the poor soul butcher in the Oscar-winning 1955 movie “Marty.” Screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky made Marty 35, and had him live with his mother, but in The Bronx, not Staten Island. Marty and Paul, more than 50 years apart, are much the same, except Marty was a passive schnook. Paul works at it.
Paul attends every Giant home game. He tailgates before and then during the games — he doesn’t actually have tickets. He’s pathetic and detached, but harmless.
We all know him. We know him from inside the Garden or just outside Yankee Stadium. We know him from the old neighborhood and from listening to WFAN. We know several of him, and in different degrees, all the way to total weirdo.
Sickly. Pathetic. Detatched. Weirdos. If this is what Mushnick thinks of persons who hang out in East Rutherford on Sunday afternoons and ring sports yack radio in the middle of the night, how might he describe the diminishing number of persons who actually read the NY Post sports section every day?
Maybe Shawne Merriman and Tila Tequila were destined for difficulty, constitutionally incapable of reconciling their attraction for each other with their abiding love of themselves.
When two narcissists get involved, friction generally follows. When Tequila (not her real name) signed a citizen’s arrest warrant early yesterday, alleging that Merriman had choked, battered and restrained her at the linebacker’s place in Poway, well, isn’t that about what you expect when the irresistible diva meets the immovable peacock?
Experience says some reality TV bottom-feeder (another redundancy?) is already evaluating the potential of exploring the quasi-private lives of two celebrities jointly committed to prolonging their allotted 15 minutes of fame. Cynicism says Merriman and Tila Tequila are at least as likely to be reunited on camera as in a courtroom; that their mutual need for attention will ultimately overcome their individual issues; that they are, for television purposes, the perfect couple.
What Shawne Merriman does on his own time is, for the most part, his own business. If he chooses to associate with professional bimbos whose primary talent is the removal of clothing, that’s between him and his libido. Yet if he wants to be seen as a committed athlete rather than a “personality,” the pass-rushing whirlwind might want to more carefully consider the hours and the company he keeps.
About the nicest thing I can say about Sullivan’s column is that at least unlike some of his peers, he’s not pretending to be unfamiliar with Ms. Tequila’s body of work. Beyond that, however, there’s something genuinely creepy about the sportswriter denouncing Merriman’s accuser as a “professional bimbo”. Exploring the possibility Merriman’s telling the truth when he protests he was merely trying to prevent Tequila from driving while impaired is one thing ; calling the latter “a reality TV attention floozy” in this context, however, suggests she is a less than credible accuser. Female celebrities can’t be physically assaulted? Women who provide Sullivan and his colleagues with internet/cable eye candy are, y’know, asking for it?
Praise for Fox Sports’ Jason Whitlock is rather rare from this corner, but despite the vast philosophical differences between myself and Big Sexy, some credit is due for a change. Some portion of Whitlock’s most recent Fox Sports entry is actually funny. If you think I’m damning the KC columnist with faint praise, you’re mostly correct, but if you cherry pick the good bits, you might be excused from thinking Whitlock’s got a future…as an unpaid sports blogger.
Noting Erin Andrews’ forthcoming appearance on Oprah, Whitlock — a onetime Oprah guest himself — warns ESPN’s sideline reporter she’s “about to get re-violated” (”nothing turns the sports media green with envy quicker than a date with Big O”), running through a laundry list of sporting scenesters he jokingly claims are coveting couch-time with Winfrey. Here’s a small sample :
Mike Lupica: His Parting Shot on the next episode of “The Sports Reporters” will touch on the emotional scars he carries from paying his way through Boston College as a human bowling ball in the American Dwarf Bowling Association.
Stuart Scott: Signed a three-record deal with Ron Artest’s Tru Warier rap label where Scott, under the stage name “Left Eye,” will team with Scoop Jackson, stage name “Bushwick Bill,” and John Clayton, stage name “Vanilla Nice,” to form the new millennium version of the Geto Boys.
Hank Goldberg: Is quietly circulating audio tapes of voice messages left for Linda Cohn that graphically explain how he got the nickname Hammerin’ Hank.
Rick Reilly: In a cliche and pointless 800-word column that will be read by tens of hundreds of readers who find it while looking for Bill Simmons’ column, Reilly will reveal how his agent hoodwinked ESPN into a $3-million-a-year contract.
Matt Millen: Intends to share with the Detroit Free Press the compromising pictures of William Clay Ford he used to hold onto the Lions general-manager job for eight years.
…and he’s not named Joe Buck. “”If millionaires and billionaires can’t figure out a way to split their pie,” mused surrogate Joe The Plumber / steamfitter Joseph Barzelli to the Post’s Mike Vaccaro, “then they aren’t worth my time.” To wit, Mr. Barzelli, a lifelong NY (baseball) Giants and Mets fan, bailed on the Grand Old Game following the 1994 lockout.
On Sept. 1, 1994 — 15 years ago this Tuesday — he said goodbye. To all of it. For good. Forever. And has kept his word. He hasn’t followed an inning since.
“Do I miss it?” he asks. “I miss the game I remember. But I don’t think that game has existed for a long time.”
Fans still seethed, swore they would stay away. In 1995, they did, in droves. They trickled back in ‘96, and a little more in ‘97, and by the summer of 1998 players were knocking down buildings with baseballs, and the Yankees were winning 125 games, and attendance actually shattered pre-strike records. Fifteen years pass in the blink of an eye, and a whole generation of fans has grown up knowing nothing but labor peace in baseball. Maybe everyone learned a lesson. Maybe it’s simply an aberration. Maybe the apocalypse is still out there. There are things nobody knows.
We know this: An awful lot of the people who swore off baseball 15 years ago eventually swore off their swear-off. They came back for more. They come back for more. Joseph Barzelli knows he probably isn’t the only one who held fast to his convictions, though he doesn’t run into many fellow protesters. He lives in Arizona now. In a world of constant news cycles, he knows about baseball what he hears by osmosis. It’s like breathing second-hand smoke. You can’t avoid all of it.
“I don’t think what I did was noble,” he said. “I wasn’t trying to be. But I said if they broke my heart again, I’d break theirs right back. I’d like to think baseball misses me. But I know better than that.”
I recall hearing proclamations similar to Barzelli’s at the time and with all due respect to a guy who probably didn’t ask Vacarro to plaster his name all over the sports section, this is booshit. If you believe the last 15 years of Major League Baseball to be tainted and/or without merit, you’re certainly entitled to your screwy opinion. But there’s much more to the game than The Used Car Salesman’s Unprecedented Era Of Drug Abuse Prosperity ; that 25 inning classic between Texas and Boston College this past June was hardly a battle between billionaires and millionaires. Has Barzelli’s boycott of baseball extended to other professional sports that have experienced lengthy work stoppages? It might’ve been a worthwhile question, but I can’t for the life of me understand why Vacarro thought this was an interesting way to commemorate the anniversary of one of MLB’s biggest black eyes. Presumably Felipe Alou and Don Mattingly were too busy to return his phone calls.
Thanks to Jason Cohen for fwd’ing Maury Brown’s analysis of the recent Federal ruling forcing the government to return illegally confiscated test results of Major League Baseball players. Unlike most of us, Brown read the whole thing. Thanks to him, we know it contains some news regarding CSTB’s favorite cub reporter, Michael Schmidt of The New York Times. Brown writes:
As Chief Judge Alex Kozinski wrote for the majority in yesterday’s ruling, the leaking of names from documents that were under court seal, has done harm to baseball’s drug testing policy.
“The risk to the players associated with disclosure, and with that the ability of the Players Association to obtain voluntary compliance with drug testing from its members in the future, is very high. Indeed, some players appear to have already suffered this very harm as a result of the government’s seizure.”
The ruling then points a direct finger at The New York Times, citing examples:
See, e.g., Michael S. Schmidt, Ortiz and Ramirez Said to Be on 2003 Doping List, N.Y. Times, July 31, 2009, at A1; Michael S. Schmidt, Sosa Is Said to Have Tested Positive in 2003, N.Y. Times, June 17, 2009, at B11; Michael S. Schmidt, Rodriguez Said to Test Positive in 2003, N.Y. Times, February 8, 2009…
At the heart of Schmidt and Roberts’ stories are one or more individuals (Schmidt cited unnamed lawyers) that had access to the “list” created by a federal investigator believed to be Novitzky (the list was created from an illegally seized spreadsheet in a mountain of other documents in what has been labeled the “Tracey” directory). Those individuals will now become the focus, as opposed to the players. As Donald Fehr and Michael Weiner said in a joint statement after the Ninth’s ruling, “Anyone who leaks information purporting to contain those 2003 test results is committing a crime.”
Me, I don’t disagree that Schmidt might be on the receiving end of some legal ballistics, not that I want reporters to go through that. Confidential sourcing is vital to whistle blowing stories that make very positive differences in people’s lives. That said, Schmidt’s stories appear to be nothing more than a mix of amoral ambition (his) and an embittered, failed prosecution (the Novitzky team, facing an Obama future). If they go after Schmidt, he’ll be elevated to a status of 1st Amendment freedom fighter, obscuring something else: The New York Times can’t back up anything he has said regarding Sosa or Ramirez. That is, a reporters rights story will overshadow his incompetence. The players union disputes Schmidt’s 104 list at the heart of his stories. Schmidt himself stated he has never seen any testing or evidence. Players Association lawyer Elliot Peters now states that the 104 list is nothing but a spread-sheet concocted by Federal investigator Jeff Novitzky himself. If Novitzky created it, it’s hard to see how the players union, informants at the testing labs, or any “lawyers” (as per Schmidt), could have leaked “the list,” except the people who created it. As stated here several times, Schmidt looks to have been played by his sources and their agenda. I will also ask again: why were the 2009 names – Alex Rodriguez, Sammy Sosa, David Ortiz, and Manny Ramirez – all Latino? Why did each leak happen after notable, and typically arrogant (or shall we say, “uppity”) behavior by Rodriguez, Sosa, and Ramirez? Right now, it looks like someone with some real issues was out to get these guys.
Jason and I were e-mailing about the Scooter Libby/Judith Miller parallelto this (in how the gov’t fed Miller stories to their own advantage to appear in The Times) as well as the Howell Raines/Jayson Blair factor of a young reporter pushed up the ladder too fast. While I don’t think Schmidt in any waysought to deceive like Blair, it’s just too familiar a scenario coming from the NY Times. Schmidt’s done real damage to people’s careers here. Hopefully any civil suits coming will be paid by the Times, as I doubt he has the resources to pay off Sosa, Ortiz, and Ramirez. Still, once Judith Miller did her jail stretch, theTimes went through her stories and bounced her. After Schmidt based so much of his reporting on Novitzky’s 104 “dirty names” spread sheet, I hope he gets the same thorough review.
Btw, my offer to The New York Times still stands: Out any member of the 2005 “world champion” White Sox as a steroid user, and all is forgiven.
“Woody Allen once wrote that showing up was 95 per cent of life,” recalls former New York Post scribe Maury Allen (above). “I had that part of my persona down pat. Not even a broken finger suffered in a sled accident or a concussion suffered in a stickball accident when I was 12 kept me from school.” What a shame then, that the 79 year old sportswriter, now toiling for The Columnists.com, hasn’t volunteered to patrol left field for Jerry Manuel (link swiped from Repoz and Baseball Think Factory)
What does all of this have to do with the 2009 version of the New York Mets?
In the past two seasons they blew pennant leads in the last could of weeks and were maligned for choking. This year they can be attacked for not showing up.
The injuries, maybe unavoidable, have happened to their best, middle and worst players, including first baseman Carlos Delgado, All Star outfielder Carlos Beltran, team table setter Jose Reyes, free agent pitcher J.J. Putz, veteran Tim Redding and reliever Billy Wagner, a carryover cripple from last year.
This is not to say the Mets are the wimpiest of teams. That’s just the way baseball and all sports seem to go these days. Get injured and take time off. Rehab in Florida. Play against minor league teams.
It just seems to be showing up more around the Mets than around any other team because of the blown pennants in recent years with nobody to blame. This year they can blame the injuries to their stars and soak the fans for those expensive seats again at Citi Field next year.
In another time players played through injuries because they had one year contracts, the competition for jobs was brutal and macho mania was part of the scene.
The Yankees of 1949 won the American league pennant under rookie manager Casey Stengel despite something like 79 major injuries during the year, especially the heel injury to Joe DiMaggio. He sat out the season until a June series against the Red Sox, destroyed them in four games and led the Yankees to a title. Of course, he had to play the last two games of the year with walking pneumonia.
The Mets last won a World Series 23 years ago. It is hard to imagine them winning another with their new history of chokiness and wimpiness.
Allen has apparently forgotten how quickly Carlos Beltran returned to the lineup in ‘05 after re-arranging his good looks in an outfield collision with Mike Cameron. While Maury took care to mention David Wright is “resting comfortably” after taking “a pitch on the cocoanut” (alleged) kid gloves treatment of the Mets’ star third baseman is an obvious move in light of how the club handled Ryan Church’s multiple concussions a year earlier. But it’s a curious take, either way. Rather than pillory the Mets’ training/medical staff or hold the General Manager accountable for a farm system devoid of prospects or competent journeymen, Allen prefers to insist the Mets are, well, a big bunch of pansies.
“It’s too warm to touch / A simulated rush / but how can you tell / When it’s fake blood?” asked Mission Of Burma’s Peter Prescott in 2006, blissfuly unaware that just a few years later, officials at England’s RFU would be asking the same question. Harlequins’ Tom Williams, coach Dean Richard and team physio Steven Brenner received bans of 4 months, 3 years and 2 years respectively for their role in a bogus-facial-injury scandal being that’s been dubbed “Bloodgate”. Careful not to openly gloat, the Guardian’s Paul Wilson opined, “as if rugby union commentators and their ilk have never, ever, in any way used Premier League football as convenient shorthand for Sodom and Gomorrah rolled into one and anything else that might be wrong with the world.”
Not even when Dean Richards admitted he knew the game was up when he saw Tom Williams (above) walking towards him with fake blood frothing from his mouth and “legs like Bruce Grobbelaar“ did it occur for a moment that rugby union’s raid on the make-up cupboard had anything to do with football. Grobbelaar did not actually cheat in the 1984 European Cup final, after all. He showed uncommon and unpremeditated inventiveness in taking gamesmanship (and showmanship) as far as it would go, and rather than assuming that Richards was implying footballers were also guilty of skulduggery on occasions it seemed far more likely he was expressing admiration for a sportsman who managed to gain a crucial advantage without breaking any rules.
Imperfect as footballers may be, they can at least con referees without resorting to smuggling extraneous substances on to the pitch. Please do not write in, that was a joke. Less amusing is watching the old double standard come into play, as rugby attempts to retreat into a boys will be boys and rules will be bent mentality. Footballers who dive or feign injury are never characterised as pranksters or chancers. They are notorious cheats. Conmen. Overpaid impostors who insult their audiences and their glorious heritage.
Though the above question isn’t exactly the one posed by Sports On My Mind’s DK Wilson, dwil is quick to remind us that in the cases of Ben Roethlisberger, Rick Ankiel and Josh Hamilton, “each of these White men have been the subject holistic treatments by a group of people who look like, or identify with them.”
You don’t hear or read about people calling Ben Roethlisberger a liar, do you? Though he said he still would ride his motorcycle without a helmet, he swore he would be more careful and more aware of his surroundings. Would you call the sexual assault charges against him the result of Roethilsberger being more careful?
You don’t hear Rick Ankiel’s name being brought up when there is talk of PEDs in baseball, do you? As soon as it was known that Ankiel was on the HGH train, apologists for the Cardinals’ outfielder rushed to the fore and told the public that Ankiel was the feel good story of the summer and placed his HGH use in the context of his want to make an almost impossible transition from pitcher to everyday player.
If Josh Hamilton was a black football player, Roger Goodell would have suspended him for at least four games, and probably more for “staining the shield” and everyone under the shield. But Hamilton was instead shielded by sports columnists who made certain we knew Hamilton actually acted responsibly by immediately informing the MLB league office, his wife, his team and anyone else after his falling off the wagon; they also constantly reminded us that the incident occurred in January, not during the season, so Hamilton’s act harmed no one outside of himself and his immediate family.
And in each case, even now with Roethlisberger, we barely equate the athletes with their transgressions (with Roethlisberger, we are told repeatedly that the charges against him only serve to create a tighter Pittsburgh Steelers locker room and that if anyone can put aside the charges and continue to perform at a high level, it is the Super Bowl Champion quarterback).
While I certainly don’t begrudge anti-corporate crusader Phil Mushnick any opportunity to rip on PSLs and Giants Stadium, my guess is that today’s heavy breathing in the Post is factually suspect — the rantings of a man who’s never bought a ticket in his life, perhaps?
AMONG the desperate come-ons the PSL/NFL Jets are dangling to those who buy season tickets is this promise: “Exclusive opportunities for other stadium events.”
Really? How so? At a time when legislation is being fast-tracked to eliminate the insidious inside trading of tickets and ticket-buying opportunities to concerts held in New Jersey venues, what does “exclusive opportunities” mean?
Friday, we called the Jets to ask. Does “Exclusive opportunities for other stadium events” mean, for example, first crack at concert tickets?
“Yes,” the salesman replied. “That means you’ll be able to buy tickets during the pre-sale [before they go on sale to the public].”
In other words, what the Jets are promising in exchange for buying season tickets — first shot at concert tickets, tickets delivered from the inside for inside trade — is precisely what’s finally being acted against by New Jersey legislators and New Jersey Attorney General Anne Milgram, who have joined to try to eliminate such malodorous enterprise.
Current law mandates that no event in the Meadowlands can withhold from the public more than five percent of tickets for general sale. And the BOSS Act, introduced in June and in part named after Bruce Springsteen, whose New Jersey concert tickets often land in professional scalpers’ and ticket-agency hands long before the public gets first or fair crack at them, is designed to further diminish or eliminate inside ticket distribution and the double-dealing that drives it.
It would also seem the 5% law Mushnick cites does not apply to pre-sales. Jets season ticketholders, people in the Coldplay fan club and anyone with an American Express card may be getting special access, but they’re still considered members of the public. What’s more, while this part seems a little dubious, the publicly-run New Jersey agency behind the Meadowlands interprets the current law to mean the 5% limit on hold-backs only applies to them, not artists, sponsors or media. That’s why Springsteen himself, who held back 12% last time around at Izod, hasn’t paid a fine like Ticketmaster.
Meanwhile, I get pre-sale offers from the Phillies (Jimmy Buffett!) all the time, and I’m not even a season ticketholder. Elitist? Maybe. Potentially illegal? Doubt it.
[RT @TomJolly Who is Michael S. Schmidt? He's the NYT reporter who is breaking all the steroids stories - at age 25.]
Who knew The Daily Planet and The New York Times had so much in common? I found out only after reading John Kolbin’s glown’ NY Observer profile of the fair-haired boy currently outting ballplayers on hearsay: Michael S. Schmidt.
Indeed, there’s been so much national fan outrage, fury over privacy violations, and CSTB Schmidt fact-checking that the NY Times public editor Clark Hoyt stepped up to defend Schmidt in the Sunday Times. Hoyt mentions Tom Jolly’s comments here at CSTB obliquely: “If the steroids story seems drawn out, it is because it is hard to get. Tom Jolly, the sports editor, said nobody is slipping the list of those who used drugs under the door: it is taking old-fashioned digging to get each name.” Indeed, my favorite Hoyt defense cites former Bush Solicitor General Theodore Olson. Hoyt says, Olson “told me he has never been bashful about criticizing The Times. In this case, he said, the paper acted legally and ethically. ‘It’s your duty,’ he said. ‘We need to know what the players were doing.’
In Timesthink, if they can get a Republican to agree with them, they must be right! However, Schmidt based his claims against Sammy Sosa on the gov’t list of players obtained by the Bush Administration (see Schmidt blog post below), so you’ll excuse me if support from a former Bush solicitor general like Olson for overreaching Bush prosecutors doesn’t carry as much weight around here as the Public Editor’s desk. The government’s aggressive confiscation of private medical records, and the players union demanding them back, is at the center of why the court sealed the evidence list. The names only started leaking in February 2009 with A-Rod when the Federal case against Bond collapsed (pardon my conspiracy theory).
The NY Observer confirms something I wrote when Schmidt broke the story, that he’s been chasing Selena Roberts at Sports Illustrated ever since she broke the A-Rod story last February. Not only did the Times blow it, but Roberts is an ex-Times reporter. As Kolbin relates, beating her was Schmidt’s way to a by-line – and imo, he’s recklessly smearing players to do it. According to the NYO’s Kolbin:
The steroids story that has rocked the world more than any other—more than Bonds, more than Clemens—was when Selena Roberts of Sports Illustratedbroke the story that A-Rod tested positive in 2003. She discovered the existence of the so-called List. Terry McDonnell, the editor of Sports Illustrated, told us it was the biggest break he’s seen since he began editing the magazine.
And because she won, it meant that The Timeshad lost.
“I knew what was going on,” said Mr. Schmidt, who said that “mistakes” led him to lose.
Ms. Roberts told me a few days after her big break, “I respect Mike Schmidt’s work a ton. He’s had more than his share of big stories. On this one, it went our way. I’m sure next time, it’ll go his way.”
It did. Since the A-Rod story, Mr. Schmidt broke the stories of Sosa, Ortiz and Manny—all players on the List.
Scoop is still making mistakes. Roberts had A-Rod confirm her story – that’s why we know she was right. Sosa, Ortiz, and Ramirez haven’t done Schmidt that favor, and he has yet to confirm any of them as users of banned substances. Not one. Ortiz’s test results were “inconclusive,” and Sosa and Ramirez have refused comment. All Schmidt can claim, to the satisfaction of the Times, is that they appear on the government’s list. Unfortunately for his Sosa story, that list has now been discredited twice.
First, evidence from the gov’t list against Barry Bonds is so weak the Federal case fell apart. They received a trial delay as they scramble to corroborate Bonds’ test, while simultaneously fight giving the player tests and results back to the union. Second, the players union says that not all test results prove conclusively that a player used banned substances. As far as Tom Jolly’s comments here go, he thought they did while publishing the Sosa, Ortiz, and Ramirez stories. Says Jolly, “The point is that banned substances were found in the samples from Rodriguez, Sosa, Ramirez, Ortiz and David Segui.” Sunday, Schmidt and co-writer Katie Thomas wrote: “Federal court documents, however, show that the government seized only the records of players who tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs. It is unclear why that number was higher than the number of positive tests under the drug testing program.”
“Unclear” is a large word right now, indicating Schmidt had no idea the union would drop this bombshell on him. Specifically, the Major League Baseball Players Association claimed that the list Schmidt cites in his Sosa story last June “meaningfully exceeds” the MLBPA’s list of positive testing. Until Saturday, Schmidt used the government’s claims that their list of 104 names are all positive PED tests for what Tom Jolly has said here are “banned substances.“ Saturday, The MLBPA’s Michael Wiener cited a total 96 tests: 83 positive, 13 inconclusive, and 8 probables for legal-in-2003 over-the-counter supplements. As Schmidt told us in June, he has no idea what Sosa’s result is. None.
Worse, here is Wiener’s statement on the varying lists: “The Players Association made clear in its public statement today that there are substantial uncertainties and ambiguity surrounding the list of 104 names from the 2003 survey test. Indeed, there is even uncertainty about the number of players on this 2003 government list, whether it is 104, 96, 83, or less. Many of those uncertainties apparently relate to the use of then-legal nutritional supplements that were not banned by baseball.”
At this point, the Times has to answer for Schmidt’s Sosa story. What I see: an overzealous young reporter takes the word of overreaching prosecutors that their list of 104 names is, no-question, hard evidence of banned PED use. The MLBPA says 96 (minus 13 inconclusive and 8 over-the-counter supplements) – meaning 75 hardcore PED users. One thing’s obvious: Schmidt has no source in the players union that knows anything, or he would not have cited 104 in the Sosa story. Meaning, it looks more and more like Schmidt took the prosecution’s word at face value. He did so after several blows to the government’s credibility: scathing comments from Judge Illston, the list’s weak value as evidence, and the government’s bully tactics in obtaining it. Schmidt then used their list to cite Sosa a PED user. Here’s a Schmidt blog post from last June:
In the wake of the disclosures that Alex Rodriguez and Sammy Sosa are on the list of the 104 players who tested positive for a performance-enhancing drug in 2003, a number of commentators have suggested that the remaining 102 names on the list should be made public.
The commentators’ numbers are a little off. The names of two lesser known players and one of the game’s biggest sluggers have already been tied to positive tests in 2003.
—————
Yep, gotta get those numbers juuuuuuuust right. What I’d like to know: As of Saturday, how does the Times justify the assumption that everyone on the list is “dirty” when the union flatly contradicts them? The Ortiz press conference states he’s “inconclusive.” The Sosa story itself says no one Schmidt talked to knew what Sosa’s test revealed.
The Times needs to explain or correct their assertion that Sosa is a PED user, or retract it.
Controversy or no, Schmidt fights on. Monday he profiled Jack Smalling, an Iowa crop insurance salesman, who has collected the home address of every single living ballplayer. Yes, he’s tracked them all down. Criticize all you want, but Schmidt’s dream of violating the personal privacy of every ballplayer lives on.
For now, anyway. Though he’s dismisssing an item published by the Hawaiian Tropic ZoneSports By Brooks as “a silly internet report”, the always humble Jay Mariotti’s one year at AOL Sports appears to have been a mere layover before switching to a crosstown rival. From the Daily Herald’s Ted Cox :
Mariotti (above, right), while allowing that “the Tribune and I have had discussions about various projects,” quickly added, “but we have not finalized it.”
Still, reports that Mariotti, who quit the Sun-Times a year ago insisting that newspapers were “dying,” would swing to the Trib first surfaced almost a year ago and were reportedly shot down by a noncompete clause in Mariotti’s old deal with the Sun-Times.
“My noncompete clause at the Sun-Times expires in late August,” Mariotti added.
[This is what a working baseball reporter looks like. I wish he had Michael S. Schmidt's job]
The backpeddling officially started yesterday, as The New York Times Michael S. Schmidt shifted gears leading up to today’s David Ortiz press conference at Yankee Stadium. The same reporter telling you that Sosa appeared on the list of 104 last June, now saying Ramirez and Ortiz both appear on a list of “roughly 100,” got some fact corrections this afternoon – like that his sources don’t even know what the actual list is. The list confirmed by the players union, which once had sole possession of it, claims 96 names – 21 of which don’t prove players tested positive for banned substances. I quote from The New Jersey Star-Ledger:
In the supposedly anonymous and confidential testing conducted in 2003, there were only 83 failed tests, MLBPA general counsel Michael Weiner said. There were 13 other tests with “inconclusive” results. Weiner specified that these refer to test results, not players. It is possible that players may have tested positive twice.
“The number of players on the so-called ‘government list’ meaningfully exceeds the number of players agreed by the bargaining parties to have tested positive in 2003,” Weiner said in a statement. “Accordingly, the presence of a player’s name on any such list does not necessarily mean that the player used a prohibited substance or that the player tested positive under our collectively bargained program.”
With 13 inconclusive, we can also remove some 8 more results from the “prohibited” list. As Schmidt wrote in the Times yesterday: “Officials in the commissioner’s office and the players union have said they believe at least 8 of the roughly 100 players who tested positive for a performance-enhancing drug in 2003 were using the supplement 19-norandrostenedione, which was sold over the counter at the time and contained a powerful steroid.”
So, 96 tests make up the list: 83 positive, 13 inconclusive, and of the 83, 8 for legal-in-2003 19-norandrostenedione. So, 75 illegal users? Which list was Schmidt using? The much-publicized 104, the union’s 96, or his vague “roughly 100?“ Or all three? Obviously, players appear on one list but not on another – why? Do substantially different lists of players make up the different lists? Confusing, sure, but don’t look to the Times for an answer.
If the union’s 96 is right, and they should know – the gov’t took it from them, it sounds like the killer number here is 75 players for illegal, anabolic steroids with 8 legal users (83). Did Schmidt get his names from the confirmed 75 or not?
In my recent back and forth here with Schmidt’s editor at the Times, Tom Jolly, he pointed out to me that Ortiz a) admitted he “failed” the test, and b) “The point is that banned substances were found in the samples from Rodriguez, Sosa, Ramirez, Ortiz and David Segui.” Actually, Ortiz confirmed his name appeared on a list, but did not know why. 13 tests, we now know, came back inconclusive. Ortiz and his union say he’s one of those. It means that unless Schmidt can verify specifically what Ortiz or other players he outted tested positive for, if they did test positive, he’s reporting that being on the list alone is de facto proof of using banned substances (as per Tom Jolly’s statement above).
As of today, that’s a rather reckless assumption if only 75 players of the “roughly 100” are confirmed as unquestionably positive. Do Schmidt’s sources know which listed players did not test positive for banned substances? Schmidt sure doesn’t. Unless Sosa, Ramirez, or Ortiz pull an A-Rod confessional for Schmidt’s benefit, his stories are so much hearsay and rumor.
Ortiz claims he did not know his result came back positive. As one of the 13 or more inconclusive results, that makes sense because Ortiz’ name does not appear in The Mitchell Report. As Schmidt wrote yesterday, “All players who tested positive in 2003 were told that their tests had been seized by the government, according to the report presented to Major League Baseball by George J. Mitchell ….” The report never cites Sosa, Ramirez, or Ortiz – maybe because they didn’t test positive. At any rate, that’s as plausible as Schmidt’s vague sources.
Yesterday, Schmidt started posturing. The headline of his analysis reads: “Ortiz’s Explanation Is Unlikely to Reveal Much.” This assumes Ortiz has something to reveal. Today, Schmidt’s assumptions have less credibility on this than Ortiz. In the first paragraph of his story, Schmidt writes:
Since it was first reported nine days ago that the Red Sox slugger David Ortiz was among the roughly 100 major league baseball players who tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs in 2003, he has repeatedly said he would get more information about the test result so he could provide an explanation.
Again, more like 75, as I read it, substantially fewer than the “roughly 100,” or 104, Schmidt cites in different stories, both of which “meaningfully exceeds” the real results. “Repeatedly” is an odd word, too, as if Ortiz is a liar, rather than that he’s answered the question repeatedly asked of him. You’ll find no recognition whatsover from Schmidt that he based his claims on an exaggerated or varying lists, as he now apparently accepts Weiner’s word on the union 96 list without question or challenge. As Weiner noted of the Times reporting:
“The result is that any union member alleged to have tested positive in 2003 because his name supposedly appears on some list — most recently David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez — finds himself in an extremely unfair position,” Weiner said in the statement. “His reputation has been threatened by a violation of the court’s orders, but respect for those orders now leaves him without access to the information that might permit him to restore his good name.”
Indeed, violations that Schmidt sought/received from anonymous, unreliable sources, with agendas unknown. I’ve asked repeatedly why all four leaked player names (including A-Rod, outted in Sports Illustrated) are Latino players – and repeatedly why all but Oritz are well known, grandstanding, arrogant divas appearing to get some kind of petty payback via these leaks. It’s only my opinion, or “analysis” as the Times might call it, but I believe Ortiz’ name was thrown to Schmidt along with Ramirez’ in order to make that story a headline. Ramirez’ name alone isn’t steroid news after his 50-game suspension this summer. I mean, 2003 results are a bit of a so-what in his case. Ortiz’ name makes it a Boston World Series headline, and a screamer at that.
Schmidt then offers some self-serving For the Good of Baseball, Please Fess Up tripe:
The court restrictions also mean that the Red Sox faithful, who largely adore Ortiz, may not get full disclosure. Ortiz was a fan favorite as he helped the franchise end an 86-year World Series championship drought and add another title three years later.
Knowing the exact substance that Ortiz tested positive for would shed significant light on what he might have put in his body in 2003. What his fans and peers think of him and his hitting feats could be influenced by what illicit substance he is linked to.
Yeah, if only David Ortiz came clean and verified your threadbare story admitted his sins, those poor suffering Boston fans could find some closure. Mr. Schmidt, here’s an idea, how about you report the rest of the story? You didn’t with Sosa or Ramirez, and now you want Ortiz to confirm what you couldn’t find out about him? Since the Times story that started all this is so much gossip, maybe full disclosure of Schmidt’s weak reporting is what the Boston faithful need.
In today’s press conference, Ortiz gave his side of it. It’s on Schmidt to dispute it. Schmidt has another problem, i.e., following up on his claims re Sosa and Ramirez. Are they in the 13 inconclusive or 8-possible-positives for legal-in-2003-but-not-now supplements? Tom Jolly would say “no,” if they’re on the list they used banned substances. But how does he know?
Finally, Schmidt reported one fact that at least narrows down somewhat who’s been leaking to him. He wrote: “In a statement Saturday morning, Major League Baseball said it did not possess the list of names of players who tested positive in 2003.“ If MLB itself doesn’t know who is on the list, the lawyers he refers to in the Sosa and Ramirez/Ortiz story seem to be from the players union or the government. Maybe there’s lawyers on the players union side with their own self-righteous crusade to save baseball. Or maybe it’s the gov’t – whose case against Barry Bonds fell apart last February, just as A-Rod’s name somehow leaked. I still say Schmidt got played by his sources.
Did Ortiz juice hardcore, needles and all, a la Mrs. Roger Clemens? These days it wouldn’t surprise me if he did. Still, I can’t say “yes” based on anything Michael S. Schmidt wrote – nor can Schmidt. Since it appeared in the Times, however, Ortiz has been vilified over Schmidt’s inconclusive half-story. Boston’s Ortiz had the guts to hold his press conference in Yankee Stadium. I hope Schmidt has the nerve to hold his at Fenway.
Yeah, Frank Deford. There’s something inarguably weird and man-out-of-time-ish about Deford — there he is, storklike in pastels on HBO’s Real Sports; sprouting bristles of snow-white hair in a strange mustache-n-Dagwood-wings combination; railing against the Olympics for reasons unclear, and so on. But every time I’m confronted with something he writes I come away pretty impressed. Not by his masterfulness — that’s not him, really — but by his work’s general unassuming solidity. It doesn’t sound like a high compliment, but consider the scene at present.
With the exception of the much more literary Roger Angell, most journalists of Deford’s generation have shuffled off into full-time curmudgeonhood or all the way out of the game, while Deford is still kind of grand-old-manning it on his own terms without ever making a big deal about how things got done in his day. Dude was a few years ahead of my Dad in college, and my Dad sometimes calls me on the phone with concerns that “the internet is still on and I can’t get it to boot off” and stuff like that. I mean, they’re both pretty together dudes in their late 60s, but sportswriting kind of seems like a young asshole’s game now. You’ve got the Gregg Doyels and his Aggressive Takes and the sub-Deadspinnian Sweethearts of the Brodeo, with a lot of the older scolds adapting effortlessly to the new sportswriting’s I-am-the-story aesthetic. Whitlock giving himself sensual backrubs every column and Mariotti fuming with the sort of intensity that can only come from gored vanity. I kind of wonder why Deford doesn’t just hang up the mustache and play with his grown-ass kids.
But the reason why he hasn’t becomes clear in reading over the short, economical essay Deford wrote for NPR about ESPN’s bestriding-colossus status and the abundant conflict-of-interest issues that raised during the Roethilsberger Rape Charge Blackout last month. While there’s something nicely stately and distinguished in how well Deford does his thing, what I liked most about this piece is the fact that he obviously still cares about his topic. There’s no fake-it-till-you-make-it outrage, no self-aggrandizement. Just a pretty solid argument, clearly and reasonably stated: “Imagine if The Wall Street Journal was not just the nation’s only powerful business outlet, but it also owned the rights to the listings on the New York Stock Exchange,” he writes. “Well, essentially, so it is with ESPN and sports.”
I don’t come to criticize so much as to just nestle up to the elephant in the room and ask, perhaps, that it act with a wee bit more humility and a lot less self-promotion. For instance, the network has a very unbecoming habit of subtly claiming it alone uncovers all the news. Typically, a valid report will come out, but hours later, ESPN will declare that it has “confirmed” such-and-such. That’s kind of tacky stuff. Exclusive: ESPN hereby confirms that it is Wednesday.
A couple of weeks ago, ESPN initially refused to report the news that was everywhere else headlined — that Pittsburgh’s Super Bowl quarterback Ben Roethlisberger had been accused of sexual assault. The network’s excuses were too noble by half, because there’s a double standard, and ESPN is known to cozy up to the very superstars it purports to cover.
The whole thing is just a little bit longer than this post, and I recommend reading it. It’s not transcendent, but that’s what makes it work so well.
The Boston Phoenix’s Adam Reilly stresses he doesn’t believe the Boston Globe sports dept. is in the pocket of the Boston Red Sox, but he is quick to cite the daily paper and baseball franchise sharing the same (partial) ownership, along with the Olde Towne Team being undoubtedly good for the Globe’s bottom line (”the Globe’s online store, for example, features 60 pages of Sox merchandise”). All of which presents enough conflicts real and imagined as is, but after the Globe followed the Times’ Michael S. Schmidt naming and shaming David Ortiz with a report about the Red Sox firing a pair of security workers for alleged steroid involvement (one of them the son of ailing broadcaster / former 2B Jerry Remy), Reilly wonders, “why did it take the Globe the better part of a year to report on a bona fide steroid scandal that was brewing in its back yard?” Has anyone asked Manny Alexander for his take on all of this? From Reilly’s most recent “Don’t Quote Me” column.
Recall, for example, that “Big Papi” was a serviceable player with the Minnesota Twins, but morphed into a latter-day Lou Gehrig (complete with a beefy new physique) after coming to Boston in 2003. In May 2007, he told the BostonHerald that he might have unwittingly used steroids in the past. And in February 2009, the New York Daily News reported that Ortiz had a relationship with banned trainer Angel Presinal, who also worked with steroid scapegoat Alex Rodriguez. These facts weren’t unreported by the Globe, but they didn’t cause great consternation, either. (Former columnist Jackie MacMullan in May 2007: “The only connection between Ortiz and steroids is that he is a very big man and he hits very big home runs. And that’s not fair.”)
Now note that, in Sunday’s Globe story, Jared Remy recalled swapping steroid techniques with Ortiz’s former personal assistant. That’s a bombshell of a claim. And if it had been unearthed after Remy’s firing last fall, it could have been the catalyst for a broader, groundbreaking look at PED suspicions involving Ortiz and others. Ditto the fact that the other fired employee, Nicholas Cyr — who was busted with steroids at Wollaston Beach in July — ran errands for Ramirez.
Maybe the Globe’s sportswriters simply didn’t know this stuff was going on. Maybe they did, but wanted to protect Jerry Remy, who’s currently fighting lung cancer and is on indefinite leave. Or maybe they didn’t think that digging into possible PED use by Sox stars was part of their job. Whatever caused this story to slip through, it was a costly whiff by the hometown squad.
“As social-media sites continue to mature” wrote ESPN.com’s Ryan Corazza, “the clamps are going to tighten on what athletes are allowed to do with it.” Funnily enough, Corazza chose not to mention his own company’s short-lived ban on social networking. In the space of less than 24 hours, contradictory memos were issued, first stating “personal websites and blogs that contain sports content are not permitted”, and after the resulting firestorm of ridicule, a second missive stating, “ESPN understands that employees may maintain or contribute to personal blogs, message boards, conversation pages and other forms of social media (such as Facebook and Twitter) outside of their job function and may periodically post information about their job or ESPN’s activities on these outlets. If an employee posts ESPN or job-related information, they are required to exercise good judgment, abide by ESPN policy, and take the following into consideration.”
Translation? The WWL would prefer their employees leave the story swiping breaking to the network’s existing or future platforms. Personal Tweeting (ie. if Adam Duritz and Tom Brady are both drowning and @sportsguy33 can only save one, who will he pick?) is permissible, just so long as no one does anything to embarrass the company (or gives the impression they’ve saved the good shit for their own blog). Sort of like most large companies, then.
If the above clip is “seen by enough people”, pleads co-creator Bill Sabert, “hopefully it’ll kill the Favre story once and for all.” While I admire the sentiment, I must admit I’m a little confused. Which of the above actors is supposed to be Peter King?
(photograph by Chris Strong, taken from Stop Smiling)
Cheap laughs aside, ESPN’s made-for-TV films haven’t been especially memorable but there’s one on tap that might prove the exception. “Hoop Dreams” co-creator Steve James (above) was commissioned by the network to direct “The Trial Of Allen Iverson”, a project Bill Simmons wrote, “has a chance to become one of the most important sports documentaries ever.” Word to the SportsPutz, “Ice Castles” was not a documentary. From the Daily Press’ David Teel :
During the last nine months, James has traveled from his Chicago home to the Peninsula four times to interview those on both sides, and in the middle, of a chasm created in 1993 when a black-versus-white fight at a Hampton bowling alley prompted mob-violence charges against Iverson and three other African-American youths.
Each was convicted of felonies, but Iverson, then an impoverished basketball and football prodigy at Bethel High School, was the lightning rod. A juvenile when the chair-throwing brawl occurred, he was tried as an adult, convicted by Hampton Circuit Court Judge Nelson Overton and sentenced to five years in jail.
The subsequent firestorm included what many described as the Peninsula’s worst racial tensions since the King assassination, weeks of blanket coverage from the Daily Press and drive-by reporting from national outlets such as NBC and Sports Illustrated — the magazine later published a full-page apology for its error-ridden account.
Race relations, law enforcement, celebrity, class and sports: All collided on a Southern stage.
Three-plus months after sentencing, another twist: The nation’s first elected black governor, Douglas Wilder, furloughed Iverson.
“This is not a dispassionate journalistic inquiry,” Fox Hill, VA native James said. “It is an inquiry, but it is from a very personal place.”
Teel is careful to mention that Iverson and his mother, Ann, declined to be interviewed for James’ film. Also refusing comment, former prosecutors and current judges Christopher Hutton and Colleen Killilea.
Times sports editor Tom Jolly wrote in to CSTB’s comments section, pointing out a fact that needed correcting in my story. In both my responses to the Ramirez/Ortiz and Sosa stories, I said that Schmidt based his reporting on evidence thrown out of Federal Court by Judge Susan Ilston in the Barry Bonds case. That was my basis for saying the Times based their stories on “discredited evidence.” I still say it’s discredited, or at least too weak to prove anything on its own. Jolly’s correction gives me different reasons to believe this.
As Jolly points out, Judge Ilston allowed the Bonds test results to remain as evidence. As I gleaned from this report, it’s the 104 names list she has problems with, as well as much of the evidence needed to corroborate the Bonds test results. I misread the report and took that she wants the 104 names list tossed out, which includes the Bonds original test, later retested by the Federal Govt, allegedly showing that he took designer steroids. It’s the retest she’s allowing as evidence. Confusing? Yes, but I should have gotten it right.
What was thrown out was a pile of evidence corroborating the Bonds test results needed to prove him guilty. That is, without corroboration, the admissible Bonds tests aren’t enough. The government case against Bonds collapsed in February. The prosecution currently scrambles to find a new way to nail the Sultan of Surly. The Bonds test, and anonymous lawyers quoting the players’ 2003 test result lists, are all The New York Times has on which to base the credibility of their Sosa, Ortiz, and Ramirez claims. That’s the evidence that gets you nowhere in court on its own. If not “discredited,” it’s at least too flimsy to mean anything by itself – unless you’re The New York Times. Selena Roberts’ A-Rod story for Sports Illustrated has something the NYT still doesn’t have – a confession from the named player, vindicating the reporter’s anonymous sourcing and accusations. I imagine it’s what the Federal Gov’t wishes they had from Bonds, too.
I definitely stand corrected on the fact of what got thrown out of court and what didn’t. My own ineptitude aside for the moment, you can decide for yourself on whether the government’s evidence looks even more discredited because Bonds’ tests are admissible and the case still collapsed – or not. You can also read the same flimsy, in-need-of-corroboration evidence Schmidt uses, and decide on the Times case.
Fact Correction Acknowledged. I’m sorry Jolly didn’t address the bigger ethical problems of what the Times is doing to player reps on such evidence. It’s the reason I wrote the stories I did. Michael S. Schmidt, in this blogger’s opinion, is still getting played by someone with a creepy agenda. Here’s Jolly’s comments section note to me, and my response to him.
Tom Jollysays:
8/1/2009 at 9:03 am
Ben,
Two points about Barry Bonds’s drug tests from 2003:
1. The 2003 test list has not been discredited. Judge Ilston threw out positive tests seized from the Balco lab because she said the government cannot authenticate them without Greg Anderson’s testimony. The judge is is permitting the government to present the results of Bonds’s 2003 tests.
2. Unlike Ortiz, Ramirez, Rodriguez, Sosa and Segui, Bonds’s name is not on the anonymous list of those who tested positive in 2003 because he did not come up positive when MLB conducted the test. However, the sample was later seized by federal authorities, who retested it for the designer steroids that Balco used and that’s when it came up positive.
First, thanks for the gentlemanly level of restraint in your response, something I probably don’t deserve, but then, around here, am never expecting. Re your two points:
1) I’m assuming you mean the judge is allowing the gov’t to present both Bonds’ players union result (negative) and then the govt’s retest (positive) – all from the same sample. The judge’s admission of the govt retest adds up to the same thing – it isn’t enough to nail the Sultan of Surly for something we all “know,” or assume, he did – take steroids. That requires more evidence, something the NYT stories don’t add to the 104 names list. That seems pretty discrediting to me re the Ilston decision, in that the positive results don’t prove anything in and of themselves. So why does it matter what it says about Sosa, Ortiz, etc?
What Schmidt’s stories argue is that Sosa, Ortiz, and Ramirez are on the 104 list. That’s it. Ok, but that list isn’t helped much by its standing in the Bonds case. Also, apparently, it tests for some steroids but not others. Do you know which steroids? I had an asthma medicine with steroid in it – would that show up on the 2003 test? Has the NYT investigated the specific medical procedures of the test and which steroids it detects? If you want me to believe this list matters, I’d like to know some of that (more on this below).
2) well, that’s why I included Schmidt’s background stuff on the 2003 tests in my post, to point out that Bonds was positive on the retest, not the initial test.
Here’s some other stuff that’s come up since I posted this piece: Nomar Garciaparra’s interview, wherein he further questions the credibility of the 104 names list as false and rigged by players:
If Michael S. Schmidt is in the mood to make some calls, I hope NG is on his list. Garciaparra specifically states players from the White Sox lied and said they were positive. That’s a lead, right? A day later (the same day?) White Sox mgr. Ozzie Guillien said he wants the whole 104 list released instead of the drip-drip-drip list of names. As a Cubs fan, I definitely want to know which Sox are on the list and how many played for the 2005 WS championship team. I would forgive Schmidt everything on a purely partisan level if he publishes that list. Again, though, Nomar raises questions about the testing process – what was it? How does a player just put himself down as “positive?” You could opt out of physical testing if you just put “positive?” Is that the list you want to damn these players with?
Secondly, here’s a timeline that bothers me: 1) the A-Rod/steroids story broke in SI as the gov’t’s case v. Bonds crumbled and A-Rod was on a long, off-season PR binge of Madonna, money, and sex workers. 2) When Sammy Sosa announced his retirement he smarmily said he planned to wait by the phone for his call from the Hall of Fame. A week later (?) Michael S. Schmidt ran his Sosa story, handing Sosa a timely comeuppance. 3) Manny Ramirez gets busted for steroids, does a 50-game suspension, and comes back to standing ovations from LA fans and seemingly no dent in his career. Within a month, Schmidt ran the Ramirez/Ortiz story. Why the coincidence of Ramirez/Ortiz’ names doled out at once, btw? That’s as nice a built-in an angle as the Sosa take down, as both were on the Curse Breaking Red Sox team. Nice of those anonymous lawyers to provide your angles, I guess.
Given the timing of all three stories, whose agenda is the NYT on? I realize you can’t reveal sources, but whoever leaks these stories sure has it in for smug, unapologetic players who your sources know to be on that 104 list. This is why I think Michael S. Schmidt looks like he’s being played (unless he’s calling the lawyers first in order to knock the players down a peg). After Garciaparra’s public statement, I fully expect Schmidt to get a call about him. Or, that the next player the NYT outs will have some similar recent public hubris some anonyous lawyer feels he needs to pay for. Are you at least confident that the lawyers familiar with the case aren’t all the lawyers on the same team with the same agenda? Schmidt looks like he’s taking dictation on these stories, and not asking around for information to balance anything beyond what’s given him. I mean, thanks for the press release, but does the NYT have anything to add to anonymous lawyers attacking players, or is a sensational leak really news enough? I think Schmidt’s stories serve people with a nasty, petty vendetta of some sort.
Why are all the 2009 stories about Latinos? I ask not because I believe the NYT has a problem with Latinos – Selena Roberts wrote her A-Rod story for “Sports Illustrated,” not the NYT – but who ever doles out the names for you has offered up only Latinos.
Finally, is Schmidt looking into which steroids these players tested positive for? So the players tested positive on this creaky list – for what? how much? Is the test just +/- like Garciaparra says, or is there more detailed information that would give us a clear picture of abuse, severity, or possibly legitimate use of medicines prescribed by doctors (again, like my asthma medication). Players’ careers and reputations are getting permanently damaged by the NYT, so it’d at least be considerate to ask such questions or make clear some limitations on what you know – adding context and the possibility that not all these players are dead to rights cheats because of a questionable list and shady leakers.
All in all, if Obama had me and Michael S. Schmidt over for a beer, I might not call him names, but I’d still have some real issues with how the NYT handles these stories. Thanks for writing in – as a freelancer myself, I doff my hat to any editor who sticks up for his writers.
Quoting Bill James (if not Jose Canseco), the Arizona Republic’s Dan Bickley writes, “baseball players who dabbled in steroids in the late 20th century will be viewed as pioneers”, and while I’m not quite ready to put Ken Caminiti up there with Jackie Robinson, Bickley may be right when he promises, “all the objections and horrified reactions will be rendered meaningless noise.” Even so, careful with outing the hometown team, Dan. After all, that’s Ken Kendrick’s job!
Twice in this space, Luis Gonzalez professed his cleanliness regarding those 57 home runs in 2001. Mark Grace said he was very proud of the choices he made in his career – and besides, steroids scared him.
“They make your (testicles) shrivel up,” Grace said a few years ago. “And I don’t want anything to do with that.”
Yet Matt Williams was pulled out of a net in the BALCO scandal, and while he said he was experimenting with human growth hormone only to heal from an ankle injury in 2002, he never explained why he allegedly paid $11,000 for three more shipments of HGH in 2004 and 2005, after he retired.
In retrospect, there is no shortage of suspicion for some of the feats and players during the Diamondbacks’ championship run. And one guy you’d never expect – Randy Johnson – opened an unexpected window during an interview with Sports Illustrated:
“I’m not denying I went to GNC and all that stuff,” said Johnson, who once endorsed Champion Nutrition, a company also linked to Mark McGwire and androstenedione. “I took a lot of different things that, you know, maybe at that time, maybe early enough if I would’ve been tested, who knows? I could have been taking stuff had they tested me back then. Maybe I would have tested (positive for a banned supplement). I don’t know.”
Welcome to baseball, where nobody knows anything anymore.
At length, anyway. In today’s Washington Post, journalist Ian Shapira describes in detail his emotional roller coaster ride upon learning one of his recent stories had been excerpted at length by Gawker. At first, Shapria admits “I confess to feeling a bit triumphant…I was flattered.” After a dressing down from his editor, however, Shapira came to understand that Nick Denton’s House Of Snark had ripped him and his employer off (”after all the reporting, it took me about a day to write the 1,500-word piece. How long did it take Gawker to rewrite and republish it, cherry-pick the funniest quotes, sell ads against it and ultimately reap 9,500 page views?”).
While I sympathize with one of Shapira’s main complaints — that Gawker failed to attribute the original piece’s publisher in a prominent-enough fashion — there’s a number of questions unanswwered in his otherwise thoughtful piece. How is it, for instance, that a venerable institution like the WaPo, not only finds itself openly coveting Gawker’s ad revenue, but struggles to maintain a readership when faced with competition from the likes of Denton, the Huffington Post, etc. Why would someone rather puruse the aggregators than the original sources?
Perhaps it’s a matter of convenience. Or maybe a matter of tone. But there’s a fair bit of cut & pasting happening on the part of the tradtional print media as well. How many daily newspapers and/or dailies-owned sites are thoroughly reliant on TMZ, Perez, etc. for gossip content? How many print journalists no longer reader the work of their colleagues and competitors, preferring to cherry pick from stories they’ve seen highlighted on Deadspin, TBL, heck even this blatant bastion of C&P’ing?
I’d probably have missed Shapira’s piece were it not for a link provided by a traditional journalist in a non-traditional setting. The New York Post’s Bart Hubbuch, a Mets beat reporter whose work has been linked to on many occasions at CSTB, Tweeted last night about Shapira’s WaPo item, and commented, “replace ‘Gawker” with ‘metsblog.com’ in this story and you’ll know exactly how Met beat writers feel about aggregators.”
It’s a hell of a bomb to drop in the middle of a Mets game. Metsblog’s Matthew Cerrone has been the subject of criticism in this space previously, but as a frequent reader of his site, he seems pretty responsible when it comes to attributing his sources, along with generating a fair amount of original content. Do all beat writers really share Hubbuch’s opinion?
In CSTB’s nearly 6 years, I’ve read more than a handful of suggestions that I’ve quoted from others’ works too extensively. Obviously I don’t share that opinion, but I do believe I’ve done a number of writers (new media and old, staffers and freelancers) far more good than harm in highlighting their work and encouraging a dialogue. I’m sure that sounds a little self-serving to Hubbuch, but I wonder if outrage over such excerpting is so widespread, why have I heard so few complaints from writers and editors over the years? Print journalists and their bosses have not been shy in the slightest when it comes to defending themselves (on or off the record), requesting corrections or retractions, or in many instances just saying “thanks”. I’m not saying Hubbuch isn’t entitled to his opinion, but I’m not so certain he’s speaking on behalf of a majority of beat writers, either.
For the record, I’ve been asked exactly TWICE during CSTB’s run to remove someone else’s copywritten material from the blog. In both instances, these were photographs, and in both instances, I complied quickly and without complaint. If a writer, editor or publisher — print or online — has a problem with the way their work has excerpted or credited on this site, I’m more than willing to remove said content. If NewsCorp would like a piece of CSTB’s advertising revenues —- which didn’t crack $3K in 2008 and are on pace for far less in 2009 — I would just as soon eliminate all advertising from the site.
And yeah, I’m throwing the name of Hubbuch’s parent company around for a reason. It’s staggering to me that with all of the Murdoch companies’ vast resources and opportunities for synergy, Matthew Cerrone gets named and shamed as a reason why hard-working reporters might lose their jobs. How many years has the New York Post been a money loser, and how many of those years were long before the advent of blogs? NewsCorp, WaPo, the New York Times (Times and Globe), TribCo, etc. had a massive headstart on the likes of Cerrone (who despite the current hookup with SNY, was very much a DIY publisher at one time) — if he’s attracting more eyeballs, is the answer really to impugn his integrity? Maybe Hubbuch’s highly original blog entries about the Mets would receive more traffic if the Post’s website didn’t look like shit?
The part I find most ironic about this is that while sports bloggers are being castigated for hurting Hubbuch’s peers, I continue to pay the hosting bill for old CSTB entries that quote from newspaper stories those publications long ago eliminated from their archives. Curious readers googling the names of various Post writers, current and former, might well come upon a CSTB entry from 2005 much faster than something from the newspaper’s own site. That’s ok, by the way. I’m totally comfortable having more respect for these journalists’ work than their own employers do.
Somewhat echoing the earlier comments of Murray Chass, add the New York Post’s resident conscience of all things sports media, Phil Mushnick, to the small chorus of those who find something slightly unseemly about the Daily News’ Adam Rubin receiving career guidance from Jeff Wilpon. While acknowledging Omar Minaya’s remarks Monday were “slathered with cheap desperation”, Mushnick protests “the sports media have a long and dishonorable tradition of trying to ingratiate themselves to the teams and people they cover in exchange for future considerations, be it access, a few bucks or a full-time job.”
The sports media know that “playing ball” can provide all manner of benefits, from regular paid writing gigs in team yearbooks and game programs, to team-site Internet gigs, to book deals, to front-office club and league positions, to full-time team TV and radio deals. Certain credentialed reporters, men and women, become looked upon by teams’ management and ownership as “our people,” often inexpensively compromised.
Just think of the beating a certain national all-sports network would daily be taking if so many big-time writers and columnists, throughout the country, weren’t on its payroll as contributors.
Does truth-telling suffer? Suffer? It’s often destroyed. And there’s no one who has spent more than a year on a sports beat who doesn’t strongly sense the co-opted among them.
That’s why some of the indignant and horrified fallout to Minaya’s ugly claim against Rubin was a bit much. Everyone knows half a dozen “house men” who trade on their media credentials. Make it a dozen.
This is what a baseball reporter looks like, i.e., a working man. This is not Michael S. Schmidt.
If it can still be called news, word comes from The New York Times’ Michael S. Schmidt today of two more names added to the list of those who allegedly tested positive for steroids in 2003. Today, Yankee fans will be happy to see Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz’ from the World Series Curse Breaking Red Sox. Curt Schilling haters can now sneer that his World Series ring was won with a needle. Unfortunately for Bosox haters and those hoping to read a credible story, Schmidt continues to base his allegations on discredited evidence. Like his Sammy Sosa story a few months back, Schmidt relies on the evidence thrown out of Federal court as inconclusive in the Barry Bonds case. If a Federal Judge threw the Bonds results out, why are results from the same batch of results now conclusive for The New York Times re Sosa, Manny, or Ortiz? They’re not, and one guesses the attorneys who fed Schmidt these stories, and Schmidt himself, hopes for an A-Rod style confession as vindication. If it’s not forthcoming from Sosa, Ortiz, or Manny, then Schmidt actually has some reporting to do, besides waiting for his phone to ring. As steroid fans will recall, at no time could the results said to belong to Bonds from this same batch of tests actually be proven to be Bonds’ results – it needed corroboration from his trainer, Greg Anderson, who refused to talk. It’s why the Federal case against Bonds fell apart in February ‘09, and exactly when the names of the 104 started to leak to the public – ie, February ‘09. Chasing after Selena Roberts’ A-Rod admission of PED use, Schmidt continues to play mouthpiece to lawyers familiar with the case who taint player reputations with No Credible Evidence. If I read Schmidt’s story correctly, he has not personally seen any evidence, shows no sign of making the link Federal prosecutors failed to make, and he has no other sources.
What’s getting so pathetic about The New York Times’ sporting coverage comes down to three current/former NYT staffers: Michael S. Schmidt, Murray Chass, and Selena Roberts. Chass’ “backne” fiasco re allegations of Mike Piazza and PEDs, and Schmidt’s threadbare accusations against Sammy Sosa, are equally ludicrous at this point. Roberts took heat for her anonymous sourcing, a standard if imperfect journalism practice, but guess what – she’s the only one proven correct. She certainly beat the Times out on this story, and Schmidt obviously hopes to catch up and score the same kind of admissions but with much weaker sourcing. There’s a difference between using anonymous sources and letting them use you. We’ll see if Ortiz or Sosa ever confess, as A-Rod did with Roberts, and save Schmidt’s rep from that of “backne” level journalism. Again, as I’ve said before, it wouldn’t surprise me these days if my three-year-old tested positive for steroids, much less a Sosa or Ortiz. Still, Michael S. Schmidt is getting played here. He needs to actually report something or forever look like what he is today, a shill.
As Schmidt relates here, his story is based on nothing but the following:
Baseball first tested for steroids in 2003, and the results from that season were supposed to remain anonymous. But for reasons that have never been made clear, the results were never destroyed and the first batch of positives has come to be known among fans and people in baseball as “the list.” The information was later seized by federal agents investigating the distribution of performance-enhancing drugs to professional athletes, and the test results remain the subject of litigation between the baseball players union and the government.
Five others have been tied to positive tests from that year: Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, Sammy Sosa, Jason Grimsley and David Segui. Bonds, baseball’s career home runs leader, was not on the original list, although federal agents seized his 2003 sample and had it retested. Those results showed the presence of steroids, according to court documents.
The information about Ramirez and Ortiz emerged through interviews with multiple lawyers and others connected to the pending litigation. The lawyers spoke anonymously because the testing information is under seal by a court order. The lawyers did not identify which drugs were detected.
You might think being 4-time New Hampshire Sportswriter Of The Year award winner and working the highly coveted Manchester Monarchs beat would constitute a full enough plate for the average guy, but the Union-Leader’s Kevin Provencher isn’t your run of the mill sports journalist. Granite State cops allege Provencher was the mastermind behind a Massachusetts/New Hampshire border prostitution ring, utilizing Craigslist and other internet fuck-sites. The following was penned, appropriately enough, by Provencher’s Union-Leader colleagues, Dale Vincent and Dan O’Brien.
Provencher, at his arraignment in Manchester District Court yesterday morning, waived extradition from New Hampshire. He was ordered held on $10,000 cash bail following afternoon arraignment in Lawrence (Mass.) District Court on two charges of deriving income from prostitution.
Massachusetts police said about five women worked for Provencher and two of them will be witnesses. Provencher allegedly recruited the women on Craigslist and arranged for them to meet him at a Manchester hotel, wearing specified clothing, where he would “audition” them.
During one of the auditions at the Fairfield Inn, Provencher allegedly provided a woman with black lingerie and photographed her in various poses, according to court documents. The woman allegedly agreed to have sexual intercourse with Provencher who later told her she was hired.
Police said he used the Marriott, Spring Hill Suites and Fairfield Inn for the operation until one prostitute complained about the long drive from Quincy to Manchester. Provencher then allegedly moved his operation to Andover, Mass.
Police said they set up a sting operation June 11 at the Andover, MA Spring Hill Suites and observed men coming and going from a room. Defeo said law enforcement authorities “could clearly hear activities consistent with sexual intercourse.”
“Adam Rubin said he had asked people from all 30 teams how one gets into the baseball business, but someone who has covered baseball for more than five years, as Rubin has, should not have to ask how. It has all been there in front of him.” So mused former NY Times baseball columnist Murray Chass (above), who observed yesterday’s circus at Citi Field and in taking a tact similar to that of Amazin Avenue, insists, “of course there’s a conflict of interest.”
I’m not suggesting that Rubin wrote the stories to undermine Bernazard, but whatever his intention was in speaking to Mets’ officials about working in baseball Rubin created a situation that raised questions about his motives. That’s certainly how Minaya saw it, and he was justified in thinking that way. Rubin was wrong for not understanding it.
I sent an e-mail to Leon Carter, the Daily News sports editor, asking if he thought Rubin was guilty of a conflict of interest. He did not reply. Instead I received the newspaper’s statement from the editor-in-chief, Martin Dunn.
“This was a well-reported, well-researched, exclusive story, and it’s a shame that the Mets deemed fit to cast aspersions on our reporter instead of dealing with the issues at hand. We stand by Adam 1,000%.”
The Mets, of course, did deal with the issues at hand. They fired Bernazard. But the Daily News editor-in-chief did not deal with the conflict of interest so I sent another e-mail on the conflict question but got no further reply.
In the meantime, Minaya and Jeff Wilpon came to the press box for news conference Part II. Minaya apologized not for what he said but for when he said it. ”That was not a proper forum for me to raise those issues,” he said.
I disagree. That was the absolutely right forum. When else? When no one was paying attention any longer?
Though mocking Chass is a more popular sport around here than, well, Slamball, he’s not incorrect. There’s little to indicate that Rubin had a score to settle or has ever been particularly interested in making himself the center of attention. But in seeking career advice from Jeff Wilpon (who presumably suggested that Rubin come back to earth after he’s won a genetic lottery), the reporter left himself wide open to implications of impropriety. And while I realize this has nothing to do with Chass’ point, there must be a worse way of currying favor with the Wilpons than repeatedly exposing them to ridicule? It would seem Rubin is just as poor at sucking up to potential employers as Omar Minaya is at crisis management.
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Ben,
Two points about Barry Bonds’s drug tests from 2003:
1. The 2003 test list has not been discredited. Judge Ilston threw out positive tests seized from the Balco lab because she said the government cannot authenticate them without Greg Anderson’s testimony. The judge is is permitting the government to present the results of Bonds’s 2003 tests.
2. Unlike Ortiz, Ramirez, Rodriguez, Sosa and Segui, Bonds’s name is not on the anonymous list of those who tested positive in 2003 because he did not come up positive when MLB conducted the test. However, the sample was later seized by federal authorities, who retested it for the designer steroids that Balco used and that’s when it came up positive.
Here are a couple links to reports on this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/20/sports/baseball/20bonds.html
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2009/02/20/MN8M161I4R.DTL
Best,
Tom Jolly
Sports editor
The New York Times
Tom,
First, thanks for the gentlemanly level of restraint in your response, something I probably don’t deserve, but then, around here, am never expecting. Re your two points:
1) I’m assuming you mean the judge is allowing the gov’t to present both Bonds’ players union result (negative) and then the govt’s retest (positive) – all from the same sample. The judge’s admission of the govt retest adds up to the same thing – it isn’t enough to nail the Sultan of Surly for something we all “know,” or assume, he did – take steroids. That requires more evidence, something the NYT stories don’t add to the 104 names list. That seems pretty discrediting to me re the Ilston decision, in that the positive results don’t prove anything in and of themselves. So why does it matter what it says about Sosa, Ortiz, etc?
What Schmidt’s stories argue is that Sosa, Ortiz, and Ramirez are on the 104 list. That’s it. Ok, but that list isn’t helped much by its standing in the Bonds case. Also, apparently, it tests for some steroids but not others. Do you know which steroids? I had an asthma medicine with steroid in it – would that show up on the 2003 test? Has the NYT investigated the specific medical procedures of the test and which steroids it detects? If you want me to believe this list matters, I’d like to know some of that (more on this below).
2) well, that’s why I included Schmidt’s background stuff on the 2003 tests in my post, to point out that Bonds was positive on the retest, not the initial test.
Here’s some other stuff that’s come up since I posted this piece: Nomar Garciaparra’s interview, wherein he further questions the credibility of the 104 names list as false and rigged by players:
http://www.cantstopthebleeding.com/?p=18466
If Michael S. Schmidt is in the mood to make some calls, I hope NG is on his list. Garciaparra specifically states players from the White Sox lied and said they were positive. That’s a lead, right? A day later (the same day?) White Sox mgr. Ozzie Guillien said he wants the whole 104 list released instead of the drip-drip-drip list of names. As a Cubs fan, I definitely want to know which Sox are on the list and how many played for the 2005 WS championship team. I would forgive Schmidt everything on a purely partisan level if he publishes that list. Again, though, Nomar raises questions about the testing process – what was it? How does a player just put himself down as “positive?” You could opt out of physical testing if you just put “positive?” Is that the list you want to damn these players with?
Secondly, here’s a timeline that bothers me: 1) the A-Rod/steroids story broke in SI as the gov’t’s case v. Bonds crumbled and A-Rod was on a long, off-season PR binge of Madonna, money, and sex workers. 2) When Sammy Sosa announced his retirement he smarmily said he planned to wait by the phone for his call from the Hall of Fame. A week later (?) Michael S. Schmidt ran his Sosa story, handing Sosa a timely comeuppance. 3) Manny Ramirez gets busted for steroids, does a 50-game suspension, and comes back to standing ovations from LA fans and seemingly no dent in his career. Within a month, Schmidt ran the Ramirez/Ortiz story. Why the coincidence of Ramirez/Ortiz’ names doled out at once, btw? That’s as nice a built-in an angle as the Sosa take down, as both were on the Curse Breaking Red Sox team. Nice of those anonymous lawyers to provide your angles, I guess.
Given the timing of all three stories, whose agenda is the NYT on? I realize you can’t reveal sources, but whoever leaks these stories sure has it in for smug, unapologetic players who your sources know to be on that 104 list. This is why I think Michael S. Schmidt looks like he’s being played (unless he’s calling the lawyers first in order to knock the players down a peg). After Garciaparra’s public statement, I fully expect Schmidt to get a call about him. Or, that the next player the NYT outs will have some similar recent public hubris some anonyous lawyer feels he needs to pay for. Are you at least confident that the lawyers familiar with the case aren’t all the lawyers on the same team with the same agenda? Schmidt looks like he’s taking dictation on these stories, and not asking around for information to balance anything beyond what’s given him. I mean, thanks for the press release, but does the NYT have anything to add to anonymous lawyers attacking players, or is a sensational leak really news enough? I think Schmidt’s stories serve people with a nasty, petty vendetta of some sort.
Why are all the 2009 stories about Latinos? I ask not because I believe the NYT has a problem with Latinos – Selena Roberts wrote her A-Rod story for “Sports Illustrated,” not the NYT – but who ever doles out the names for you has offered up only Latinos.
Finally, is Schmidt looking into which steroids these players tested positive for? So the players tested positive on this creaky list – for what? how much? Is the test just +/- like Garciaparra says, or is there more detailed information that would give us a clear picture of abuse, severity, or possibly legitimate use of medicines prescribed by doctors (again, like my asthma medication). Players’ careers and reputations are getting permanently damaged by the NYT, so it’d at least be considerate to ask such questions or make clear some limitations on what you know – adding context and the possibility that not all these players are dead to rights cheats because of a questionable list and shady leakers.
All in all, if Obama had me and Michael S. Schmidt over for a beer, I might not call him names, but I’d still have some real issues with how the NYT handles these stories. Thanks for writing in – as a freelancer myself, I doff my hat to any editor who sticks up for his writers.
Ben