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Sportswriters: Masters of Their Universe
One of the joys of being a sportswriter is that you get to do things journalists are never ever supposed to do, like manufacture the big story before you write it. You can even boast about doing it. War isn't contingent on the correspondents who cover the fighting, but without the gang in the press box, the big game is just a bunch of beefy guys working up a sweat. The jocks don't create myths and anoint legends; the TV cameras don't either. But when a sportswriter or announcer throws out a phrase like "they'll talk about this one forever," well, then we do. A lot of sportswriters despise many of the jocks they cover because the jocks aren't properly grateful. They don't get that they owe the journalists everything: not merely fame and fortune but the arrogant certainty that what they do in life is worth doing. Bobby Knight famously once said of sportswriters, "All of us learn to write in the second grade. Most of us go on to greater things." Sportswriters should have replied, "What a coincidence! All of us learn to bounce a ball when we're two. Most of us go on to greater things too." Without sportswriters, no one would give a rat's patootie what Bobby Knight went on to. Sportswriters have arrogated to themselves certain powers. One is the right to decide which myths to give life everlasting. The ten-year veterans of the Baseball Writers' Association of America choose the retired ballplayers who will be admitted to the sport's Hall of Fame, and most are solemn and studious about their duty. Last week Dennis Eckersley and Paul Molitor were elected to the hall, and ESPN.com's Jayson Stark posted an elaborate story explaining his ballot. "Nowadays, we live in an age in which nothing is ever simple," Stark wrote. Having agonized, he walked us through his agonies. He'd voted not only for Molitor and Eckersley but for Goose Gossage, Bruce Sutter, Ryne Sandberg, Andre Dawson, Dale Murphy, and Jack Morris. He hadn't voted for Jim Rice, Lee Smith, or Joe Carter, but he'd been tempted. He told us in detail exactly why in his view some were worthy and others weren't. If at any time during the long nights he wrestled with his soul he'd ever wondered why acting as gatekeeper to Valhalla was any of his business, he didn't let on. Then there's Pete Rose. During his playing career he collected more hits than anyone else in baseball history. Years later he was thrown out of organized baseball for betting on the Reds while he managed them. Despite overwhelming evidence, Rose stubbornly denied the obvious -- until in a new book he changed his tune. Apparently he reached the remarkable conclusion that by admitting he'd lied to the world for the last 14 years he'd collect enough brownie points to be allowed into the Hall of Fame. On January 9 five Sun-Times baseball writers wrote stories explaining how they'll vote this year if Rose's name is allowed on the ballot. Three said they'd support him. "Nobody played the game harder than Rose did," wrote Ron Rapoport. "Nobody enjoyed playing it more than Rose did." Two said they wouldn't. "If he somehow survives this and reaches the Hall, I'm turning in my BBWAA card," wrote Jay Mariotti. But the situation is fluid. Joe Goddard, still a yes vote, has about had it with Rose. "This is a very stupid man," he tells me. "He's even contradicting his own book now. He's just not getting it." If the BBWAA does get to vote on Rose next year, the voters will empty barrels of ink analyzing what they did and why they did it. This self-involvement will be entirely to the hall's benefit. Halls of fame, like games of the century, matter only as much as the people involved with them think they do, and as long as membership is a prize awarded by journalists, journalism will exalt it in language due a pope or president. Baseball writers have been the ones choosing the members since the hall was founded in 1936, and it's hard to imagine anyone else taking over. "I think we do it as well as anybody," says Goddard. "I'm not sure we're more qualified than managers or players, but we see these guys all the time." The op-ed pundits of America who contemplated the sins of Bill Clinton back in the days of Monica Lewinsky wrote themselves into a lather, but they weren't the ones who voted on whether to impeach him. If they had been, they probably would have produced a more enlightened, less cynical vote than the House of Representatives came up with. But their job was merely to influence public opinion and enlighten Congress, not to take matters into their own hands. Sportswriters take matters into their own hands because if they didn't, those matters wouldn't matter. They decide who's in the Hall of Fame. They decide who's the most valuable player, the Cy Young Award winner, the rookie and the manager of the year, and just about every paper goes along with this -- the New York Times is the only one that doesn't. Sportswriters live in another world. Never Having to Say You're Sorry The managing editor of Elgin's Courier News is digging himself out of a hole. Mike Bailey writes a column each Sunday, and on December 28 he began: "Once in awhile, I have to do something for my people. This one is for the frustrated, abused and underappreciated males who would love, just once, to summon up the courage to say one of these things to their wives/girlfriends." "These things" made for a long list. It began, "If you think you are fat, you probably are. Don't ask us. We can't answer." It ended, "If we ask you 'what's wrong' and you say 'nothing,' we will act like nothing's wrong. We know you are lying, but it's just not worth the hassle." Ring a bell? The Courier News runs a feature called "Speakout" that's fed by readers who phone and leave recorded messages that give writers what for. Several called because Bailey had either infuriated or tickled them. But here's a comment published on January 6: "Shame on you, Mike Bailey. Your 'if only men had the courage' column has been floating around the Internet and been seen in e-mail forwards for months. Why didn't you acknowledge those were not your own words?" This caller had Bailey dead to rights. The paper responded, "Mike did not mean to imply that the column was original. The original list, in fact, was sent to him via an e-mail from a reader." Two days later another caller showed up in "Speakout" asserting, "I have read those same comments in a trade publication at one of my places of employment." The Courier News responded, "The column was never intended to be portrayed as original. The list has been in circulation for months and most readers recognized it as such." Regret is carefully calibrated at most newspapers, and it's not surprising that the Courier News did no serious breast beating. But theft of language is the sin of sins. Even some staffers were a little startled at the lack of anything that even vaguely approximated an apology. "I'm explaining this. I'm not on my hands and knees," Bailey tells me. "It was a holiday column. I was in and out that week. I wanted to make sure I had something light and humorous." The list showed up, he went with it, and he forgot to say where it came from. "I disclosed all this to my publisher. She said, 'Fine. It's not like you stole William Faulkner and claimed it was yours.'"
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