A baseball note

The sports weekend on TV has been filled with college basketball and NFL football. (My assignment covering the Queens-Limestone game last night saved me from having to watch the Panthers' playoff debacle against Arizona.)

But earlier today I was going through some old VHS tapes -- yes we still have a VCR -- and I found the HBO movie "61*" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0250934) that I had taped off TV when it came out in 2001.

Directed by comedian and lifelong New York Yankees fan Billy Crystal, the movie is a dramatization of Roger Maris' pursuit of Babe Ruth's single-season home run record in 1961. It's pretty well-researched, written and artfully-acted, especially by Barry Pepper (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001608) as Maris. (The Canadian-born actor has also portrayed Dale Earnhardt Jr. in a TV movie.)

As a sports writer, I've always found the movie's portrayal of the media coverage of the record chase to be quite interesting, if borderline stereotypical. But much has been written about the media's treatment of Maris, a stoic Minnesotan who was generally self-effacing, quiet and not very quotable, as he neared the magic 61 home run total. Reporters preferred the more approachable (usually) Mickey Mantle, who was always ready with a quote.

In case you've ever wondered, this view of the media is pretty much spot on. Reporters tend to gravitate toward the players who will give them the best story, while being much less charitable toward an equally talented player who may not be as good an interview subject.

I read a story today about former Boston Red Sox slugger Jim Rice, who is a case in point. This year is his last shot at being elected to Baseball's Hall of Fame before he goes into that pool of veterans who have been retired 15 years or more without being elected. Rice, whom I first saw play in an American Legion game in my hometown in the late Sixties -- he hit a couple of homers that may well still be in the air somewhere -- has career statistics that are probably Hall-worthy. But he gained a reputation in his career for being uncooperative and surly with the media, who are the voters for the hall. This also explains the absence of Dave Kingman (442 career home runs) from the Hall, I believe. Well, that and a .236 career batting average.

But I digress. On re-viewing the movie I was struck by a couple of things. The story starts in 1998, with the Maris family (he died of cancer in 1985) watching St. Louis Cardinals slugger Mark McGwire on TV as he hits his 61st homer of the season -- they then get ready to fly from their home in Gainesville, Fla., to St. Louis to watch McGwire break the record.

The movie came out before the full extent of steroids use in baseball had received a lot of media attention, so there's a little irony in going back and watching it now in that context.

And I had to laugh at a little scene at the beginning of the movie. Maris, who had been traded from the Kansas City Athletics to New York in 1958, had won the American League's Most Valuable Player award in 1960 for a 39 home run, 112 RBI season. As the 1961 season started he had what apparently had become an annual conversation with his wife on buying a home in New York while keeping their residence in Kansas City, where the kids were in school.

"But, honey, you know we can't afford two houses," Pat Maris tells her husband.

I suspect it's been a while since the reigning MVP of any major pro sport has had to hear something like that.

A Gator then, now and always

I’ll be watching college football’s BCS National Championship game between Florida and Oklahoma this evening with a great deal of interest for several reasons. First, Dr. Jerry McGee, president of Wingate University (my employer), is going to be on the officiating crew. A college football official for many years, he’s going to be hanging up the whistle after this game, so it’s quite a way to go out.

Dr. McGee's son Ryan, a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine, has written a tribute to his father's career and I include that link here. It's a wonderful piece of writing.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espnmag/story?section=magazine&id=3745784

But the main reason I'll be watching the game is that it involves one of my alma maters. I earned a Master’s degree from the University of Florida, and seeing the Gators play for their second national championship in three years is quite a reward for us older alumni from more frustrating football times.

When I was in Gainesville (1974-1976), the Gators had never won a Southeastern Conference championship, much less a national title. And they had gained a reputation in football much like the one my first alma mater, Clemson University, has had in recent years. Good, but never great – underachievers who are likely to let victory get away in the big games.

In both the 1974 and 1975 seasons, the Gators had Top 20 teams that had but to beat Georgia to claim that first SEC title. But they lost both showdowns in a couple of the most painful ways possible, to end the season in ultimate disappointment. They won that first SEC title on the field in 1984, only to have it tainted by NCAA investigations and probation and nullified by the conference as a result.

Then came Steve Spurrier.(http://gamecocksonline.cstv.com/sports/m-footbl/mtt/spurrier_steve00.html) He’s worth a blog entry on his own, if only for me to work out my ambivalent feelings about the man.

The Ol’ Ball Coach, as he styles himself, is worthy of respect for his stellar playing career at Florida as a Heisman Trophy winning quarterback in the 1960s. He’s also a brilliant tactical coach and motivator. Anyone who can make a winner out of Duke football – as he did in the late 1980s -- must be an evil genius.

And any Gator coach who can beat Georgia as regularly – and with as much undisguised glee – as Spurrier did has my undying gratitude. Former Bulldogs coach Ray Goff once famously said that he’d like get Spurrier alone in a dark alley for five minutes.

He made the Gators the team that the rest of the conference loved to hate, too, starting a run in 1991 of five SEC titles in six years. That 1996 team also won Florida’s first national championship. And with his egotism and prickly personality, Spurrier was the perfect leader for the team.

I’ve read that athletic directors from opposing schools loved it when the Gators were scheduled to come to town. In the run-up to the game, Spurrier would invariably say something that would enrage the other school’s fans. And presumably that led to more ticket sales to fans hoping to see him get his comeuppance. And usually it didn’t happen.

But back to tonight’s game. The Gators coach now is Urban Meyer, an equally skilled tactician and recruiter without the polarizing persona. After the three unfortunate years of Ron Zook, who followed Spurrier as the Gators’ head coach, he’s restored Florida to national powerhouse status. One wonders how long he’ll stay.

But at least for tonight, he’s still a Florida Gator and as we say, it’s great to be one. Enjoy the game.

The coach vs. the columnist

There’s plenty to fault on both sides of the war of words between Oklahoma State football coach Mike Gundy and a newspaper columnist.

For background, here’s the column in question written by Jenni Carlson of The Daily Oklahoman, about an OSU football player http://newsok.com/article/3131543/1190442218 and Gundy's response to it in a post-game press conference last weekend:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VytIZZzee0

First, the column was certainly no Pulitzer Prize winner. I’m the faculty adviser for a small college newspaper and I would certainly sit down and have a talk with any student reporter who turned in a piece like this. It’s poorly sourced -- I’m always uncomfortable with phrases like “rumors and rumblings” and unattributed “backstories.” That’s questionable journalism that just gives aid and comfort to knee-jerk media haters, who have been out in force on this one.

But poor reporting is no excuse for the coach’s screaming fit, which detracted from his team's victory and the fine performance of the quarterback who DID play, and made the coach the focus of attention. I don’t care what the circumstances are, wild-eyed gesticulating and yelling in a public forum is not a good look for someone who wants to be taken seriously as a professional person.

I am uncomfortable with some of the personal criticism, bordering on amateur psychoanalysis, of the player. (What did she mean by his mother “feeding him chicken,” anyway?) But I’ve seen and heard much worse abuse of a college player from fans on message boards and on talk radio. Maybe it’s just a problem when the so-called MSM do it.

But the reasons why a coach in a major college football program chose to play or not play a particular player -- especially one as high-profile as the quarterback -- are legitimate subjects for media coverage. And as poorly executed as it might have been, the piece appears to be based on facts the reporter has gathered and on her own observation, which is appropriate and even desirable in a column.

If those facts aren’t really facts, most newspapers want to know that and are willing to correct inaccuracies. You can’t do that if the source, who has told you that 75 percent of your story is wrong, won’t be specific about what’s wrong. (In my experience in both journalism and public relations, that translates into, “I really can’t dispute your facts but I hate what you wrote and I REALLY hate that you wrote about it at all.”) The coach is wrong – if he’s going to be credible, and if he's going to question the reporter's credibility, he does have to address the inaccuracies.

Criticism of a player is always a touchy issue. I've always believed that criticism should avoid the personal -- unless the circumstances make it impossible to ignore -- and focus on the player's performance. I also think the standards to which players should be held depend on the level of play. I’ve never criticized the play of an individual high school player – although I have reported when that player’s mistake may have determined the outcome of the game. Professional athletes, who earn thousands of the fans’ hard-earned dollars each time they step on the field or the court, should be held to the highest standards.

College athletes are somewhere in between, depending on the sport and on the level of “amateurism” in the program. At Oklahoma State’s level of play, a fair number of these players are using their "student-athlete" status and their scholarship primarily to train for a professional career. (If the young quarterback thinks THIS media attention was aggressive and over-the-top, I hope he never ends up playing for the New York Giants/Jets or Chicago Bears.)

I’ve been amused at the comments of the coach and his defenders that want to portray these men, some of whom are actual adults of legal age, as fresh-faced young “kids” unschooled in the ways of the world and just playing for the glory of their university and an afternoon of vigorous exercise. They don't deserve any criticism, they say.

Please. Big-time college football is a multi-million dollar enterprise which depends in part for its success on the exposure and publicity provided by the news media. Sometimes the news is good and sometimes it’s bad – sort of like the real world. And it’s the news media’s job to find out what happened and tell that story – whatever it is – to the public. Yes, it doesn’t always get told well.

But in this case, the attitude of the coach reminds me of playwright Noel Coward's famous comment about critics: “I like criticism just so long as it's unqualified praise.”