The difference between sportswriters and porn stars

... is that sportswriters only suck some of the time.

Seriously though, in a comment to the last post, Big C raises an interesting point. Here’s the relevant part:

I really enjoy reading this blog, and have no interest in ripping the scab off of the whole sportswriting dust-up, but kvetching about overwrought, hyperbolic sportswriting is like complaining that porn is repetitive, superficial, and flashy.

Both porn and sportswriting are diversions; entertainment, if you will, and to be successful in the field of entertainment is to be as outrageous and attention-getting as possible. Calm, metered and pensive sportswriting would not, on the whole, sell papers. When the least-common-denominator sports fan sits on his toilet to peruse the daily rag, he is not looking to read a exquisitely written 10,000 word piece by William Safire or George F. Will. He wants the over-the-top rant from Joe C. Schmo (the C is for Cuuunt), so that he and the world of sports radio have something to yell about the next day. I believe that this is the reason that some of the most loud and obnoxious figures in sports media (Rome, Cowherd, and, to an extent, Screamin' A) are also the most popular. Popular commentary and column makes for increased sales, period. If it were in the sports media's best interest to devote an entire 10-hour program to John Clayton, they would have. (Aside: Does Clayton have his own show? I love that guy.) Homers buy papers and watch TV, and that is just a gruesome fact of life.

I love the sports and sportswriting related stuff, really, as it is probably the most entertaining and fun part of my typical workday. But wailing about the horrible, sloppy and preachy sportwriting that you voluntarily endure is an odd thing to put next to telling people to shut the fuck up about high ticket prices.

As usual, I agree with you, to a point. And the point is well taken that our complaints about overwrought sportswriting are, themselves, often overwrought. Also as usual, I’m going to use this discussion as an excuse to get way too philosophical.

To put myself in the unusual position of defending the field, the difference between sports journalism and the other forms of entertainment you mentioned – porn and entertainment television, and really any form of entertainment -- is that sports journalism is still journalism. And journalism has much higher aims than simply entertaining. It's fundamentally an informative medium: that's why I generally like guys like Hansen (the AZ Star's columnist), as well as great non-fluff feature writers or investigative guys or beat reporters. They tell you something you didn't know before, whether that something is that Ryan Howard has hit more home runs off of lefties than anybody else this year, or how blind people play sports (Beep Baseball!).

That's precisely why I hate post-Disney ESPN so much, as well as sports talk radio, most of the Page 2 writers, etc. They view their field as purely entertainment. And while it would probably cripple the field to neglect the fact that you have to entertain your reader/viewer, it completely invalidates it, in my eyes, to treat it as purely entertainment. I don't think a sports page should read like Star magazine.

If you’ll allow me a (hypocritically) hyperbolic analogy, imagine the results if the entire field of journalism took the approach you describe, and figured all that mattered was getting readers. Would we know what our city councils decided in their last meeting? Would we hear about yet another bombing in Iraq? Probably not, and definitely not as much: we’d get Paris Hilton, 24/7. Look at the difference between the New York Times front page and the New York Post’s. In a purely ratings-driven profession, we’d have much more of the latter: look at TV news with its fearmongering, “it bleeds it leads” approach.

Another example would be art. Say every movie producer just wanted to maximize viewers and, thereby, revenues. You’d have no more indie films, no more film for art’s sake at all. You would have never had a Hitchcock or Fellini. You’d get Transformers or Spiderman 7 twenty times a year.

What I’m saying is that an art, especially one as important as journalism, cannot succumb completely to the marketplace and retain its function. You’ve mentioned in passing, I think in jest, your socialist leanings. If you're an anti-capitalist or familiar with capitalism in any respect, you probably realize that journalism is placed in a precarious position within a capitalist system. (Not as precarious as under fascism, and precarious in a different way from socialism, but precarious nonetheless.) News outlets need to sell ads to survive, and they need readers to do that. But if they abandon any pretext of a guiding purpose and morality to their profession – if they say they’re going to be purely entertainment – then they’ve betrayed the purpose of the press.

And it has a purpose. For all my bitching about journalists, I do believe that journalism – including sports journalism – is a noble profession. Ideally, it’s an art – maybe the only art -- that serves a critical purpose beyond aesthetics or entertainment: it is the Fourth Estate ideal, an entity that ensures Democracy. I actually think journalism is the most perfect form of writing, because of who it can reach, and because of what it can do. (Elitist rant alert!) The American proletariat has proven itself, in recent years, as dangerously, overwhelmingly uninformed. Promoting that ignorance by pandering to it is not going to help our society. And journalism is supposed to help a free society.

Of course, it’s a hell of a big step down from the Fourth Estate to Bill Conlin’s latest dumbass diatribe. Sports journalism has a vaguer sense of purpose, which complicates this whole nobility discussion: because it comments on a form of entertainment rather than the workings of the government or the world, it probably should rely a bit more on entertaining its viewer. But I don’t think that means it should abandon information and analysis altogether. I still think that pursuing such an important profession demands a commitment and responsibility beyond pandering to whatever people want to read or watch. I still think sports journalists should be journalists.

Is that pandering the fault of the journalists themselves, or of the institutions? Both, I would think. But it's disingenuous to suggest that a sports journalist has to do that pandering; it’s still possible to succeed without it. Look at Gammons or Neyer or Wilbon (or thousands of others, including the vast majority of non-ESPN journalists and a few of our readers). In fact, I don’t think many sports journalists actually do forsake the informative purpose. But the people you and I have mentioned – sports talk radio hosts, Sportscenter anchors, the worst of the print columnists – do exactly that. And so I think it’s necessary to call them out for doing it. Even if their bosses tell them to do it – even if it is their job – they still choose to do it. And it’s still shitty.

That's one of the reasons I feel the need to rip sensationalist sportswriting.

Boras?!? Maybe more like, "Big Asshole!"

Summarizing baseball's feelings about Scott Boras, the sport's most successful player agent, the Chicago Tribune's Rick Morrissey once wrote, "He is a very, very bad man. Exquisitely bad, in a foreclose-on-the-farm sort of way." When Boras brokered his latest jaw-dropping contract—a 10-year, $252 million "merger" between the Texas Rangers and shortstop Alex Rodriguez—the animus only intensified. Writing in the April issue of Esquire, Scott Raab called Boras "the Most Hated Man in Baseball, the heartless bastard hell-bent on destroying our National Pastime, the keen-eyed pimp of ball-hogging, bat-whipping, splitter-hurling youth."

- "Scott Boras, Motherhood and Apple Pie," Slate, May 9, 2001

That quote wasn't really cherry-picked; I can't think of another figure — save perhaps Barry Bonds — who can inspire more instances of bobbing for epithets than Boras. A three-second Google search will bring up an overwhelming number of journalistic hatchet jobs on Boras' reputation, and very few measured pieces that actually delves into something resembling reality.

(LATE EDIT: The author of the Esquire article, Scott Raab, has clarified that his comments about Boras were taken out of context in the Slate piece. Raab was being facetious, which is kinda obvious now, and ended up arguing against the blind hatred of Boras. I wish I could read the full article myself [and link to it], but Esquire hates poor bloggers. If anyone can find a copy, I'd love to read it)

The hyperbolic reaction that he receives from columnists is absolutely insane, and serves as proof that very few men of the major metro sidebar actually think for five seconds before forming an opinion on something. Boras has done nothing in his career except represent his clients, and their interests, to the best of his ability. That's his fucking job. It's like criticizing a defense attorney for getting his or her client acquitted. Of course, many baseball writers aren't willing to accept that this is a business involving two parties attempting to get rich off the other, and without talented representation, it would be the players who get ripped off by the millionaire/billionaire owners who don't suffer for negotiating acumen or astute legal advice.

Two major issues with Scott Boras coverage, specifically:

1) This man cannot possibly dictate the terms of players' careers as much as many columnists would have you believe. How many times, during the Carlos Beltran free agency bidding war, did we hear about Boras "steering" Beltran to Queens when the player really wanted to stay in Houston? Anyone with half a brain has to call bullshit; there is no fucking way that a player of Beltran's caliber was going to do anything he didn't want to do. Frankly, the attitude many of these columnists took with Beltran, and continue to take with all of Boras' clients, couldn't be more condescending if they referred to the player as "boy." Yeah, I realize that intelligence isn't a prerequisite for a baseball player, but to suggest that Boras gets to dictate the terms of his clients' careers is insulting and unacceptable.

2) Big salaries, for the last time, are not ruining the game, unless you believe the game needs to be played for free in order for it to have any value. Yes, I know, you would play the game for free, but that's because you suck at it and no one would want to watch you play. Yes, I know, $10 million is an insane sum of money, and it just seems greedy to want $20 million when $10 million should be more than enough. And yes, I know, ticket prices have gone through the roof, and you believe it's because of outrageous player salaries. But none of those arguments are actually rooted in logic; they're the kind of emotional responses one expects from six-year-olds. Grow the fuck up. Baseball revenues are counted in the billions, and that's almost totally because of the players themselves. If George Steinbrenner is going to get rich off of baseball, the persons responsible for his team's profits should be getting rich, too. And, the fact that a lot of people are getting really fucking rich is as much proof as you need that baseball is far from ruined. In fact, I couldn't think of a better time to be a baseball fan.

More: Boras is almost solely responsible for destroying the "slot" system in the MLB draft, a system that served to move almost all the risk associated with a baseball career onto the players, leaving the owners in a situation where they were guaranteed low-risk, high-reward investments in prospects. That the odds of any particular draftee finally making it to the league — not to mention be good enough or lucky enough to play long enough to earn a commensurate wage through free agency — are so staggeringly against any individual player is the main reason why Boras' advocacy was so needed. A player should take every opportunity he has to get paid as much as possible, since a long athletic career is so improbable. If a pitching prospect blows out his shoulder in High-A thanks to mismanagement, his career is effectively over, and teams wouldn't think twice about casting him off to the land of used auto sales. He has every right to ask a team to make a sizable investment in what they perceive as potential, big-league talent. There is strong evidence to support that the cautious, safety-oriented approach taken with most top prospects is owed almost entirely to the fact that teams are making multi-million dollar investments in top-level prospects. That's a positive for everyone involved. Furthermore, owners still stand to make huge profits for relatively low investments, even with the "outrageous" bonuses that are being given to top draft picks. Sure, paying a guy who plateaus in Double-A a million bucks stings, but paying Albert Pujols roughly $500k/season to produce DiMaggio-like makes all of those failures well worth it.

(Aside: Not all criticism of Boras is off-base; Peter Gammons recently argued that Boras' handling of prospects in his private training facility might actually be hurting the players in question. Interesting stuff.)

In short, it's flabbergasting to me that the kind of weak populism that colors the criticism of huge contract figures for baseball players serves only to benefit the fattest cats of them all, the owners. Anyone who wants to tell me that David Glass, Carl Pohlad or — gasp — the motherfucking Yawkeys are more sympathetic characters than A-Rod, Barry Zito or Carlos Beltran should be slapped in the face in that frenchy, limp-wristed, glove-in-hand way.