The late humorist Jean Shepard — his present heard right here for years over WOR-Radio — typically quoted from an indication that appeared over a bar in his hometown of Hammond, Ind.:
“In God we belief. All others pay money.”
Belief, particularly the general public’s belief, is simply too fleeting and treasured to be toyed with. As soon as one’s integrity is compromised, how is it restored?
Within the case of the media’s Baseball Corridor of Fame voters, we’ve seen appreciable help for the drug-enhanced superstars who introduced disrepute to The Sport through the Bud Selig years. That help persists as a matter of wishful rationalizations and “Recover from it, already” revisionism.
A two-time drug cheat and shameless liar akin to Alex Rodriguez, for instance, receives votes for enshrinement for causes aside from that he was harmless.
Regardless of the cause for the unnaturally middle-age muscled gamers who started to smash dwelling runs when earlier sluggers had been at their pure ends, how do these forgiving or forgetting media now strategy their duties as journalists?
What if those that voted their Corridor of Fame approval for a Barry Bonds, Manny Ramirez, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa at present discover credible proof of a present star who's illegally juiced?
Having already decided that the drug-enabled meet with their commonplace for Corridor of Fame inclusion, would they pursue the story or ignore it as a matter of no-big-deal in service to their compromised voting place?
Would they serve the general public’s belief as journalists? Or would they whistle whereas kicking their very own cans down the highway?
Just lately, MLB Community’s Harold Reynolds threw some jabs on the MLBPA in view of the house owners’ lockout. Nice.
However is his an opinion of an impartial, unfettered observer, or ought to we think about his opinion nugatory as an worker of a community primarily owned by MLB?
Contemplate the current ouster of valued MLB Community contributor Ken Rosenthal, additionally a Fox MLB common, ostensibly for having taken one too many swings at commissioner Rob Manfred.
Has that created a chill — a deterrent — all through MLBN? How might it not?
Whose aspect are the media on? The gamers’? The house owners’? Their very own?
To paraphrase Ernest Hemingway: “One of the best ways to search out out if you happen to can belief any person is to belief them.”
NY Occasions tennis man retains mentioning rear
Throughout this yr’s Australian Open, New York Occasions tennis correspondent Ben Rothenberg made a jackass of himself.
After Nick Kyrgios and Thanasi Kokkinakis gained the boys’s doubles championship, Rothenberg, through the media convention, requested Kokkinakis, “Does Nick contact your butt as a lot as he does if you end up not on the courtroom collectively?”
Rothenberg, intelligent idiot, was referring to position-signaling to 1’s accomplice through behind-the-back hand alerts. The infantile query impressed groans and mock.
You might recall that Rothenberg’s skilled judgments have been written about earlier than, right here.
Masking the 2017 Australian Open for The Occasions, he recklessly tweeted that 10-year ESPN tennis analyst Doug Adler had simply racially slurred Venus Williams by calling her “a gorilla.”
Clearly, Adler didn't such factor. As you could have learn right here earlier than, Adler had complimented Williams for her “guerrilla impact” of out of the blue charging the online, an offshoot of the widespread time period “guerilla techniques.”
But ESPN, frightened gutless, swallowed Rothenberg’s declare entire, summarily firing Adler, destroying his profession and popularity.
To at the present time, Rothenberg insists that Adler, on ESPN, known as Williams “a gorilla,” a malicious life-ruining falsehood that nobody — not in tennis, not at The Occasions, not at ESPN — has proven the braveness or conscience to right. As Rothenberg carries on.
What, precisely, did TNT discover so interesting about energetic NBA participant Draymond Inexperienced that it signed him to a multi-year deal to hitch the community’s “Contained in the NBA”?
An informed guess based mostly on fashionable standards: Inexperienced is among the many worst acts in NBA historical past. He has been ejected from 12 video games, suspended thrice and fined, ultimately rely, roughly $750,000. And he’s an inveterate talker of trash — and worse.
So TNT needed to signal him earlier than ESPN did.
That’s what it now takes to zip to the pinnacle of TV’s hiring wish-lists.
You’re recognized for superior achievement as a dignified, even gentlemanly performer? Get misplaced, idiot! We don’t rent your type!
Invoice Fitch, amongst my favorites, died Wednesday at age 89.
He coached the Celtics within the spring of 1980, once I coated the Jersey Nets in Piscataway. It was NCAA Match time, and I used to be requested by sports activities editor Greg Gallo to solicit Closing 2 picks for itemizing in a just-for-fun function.
The Celts had overwhelmed the Nets once I entered the guests’ locker room. I requested first Dave Cowens, then Pete Maravich for his or her picks, not their social safety numbers. However each informed me to take a bleepin’ hippity-flippin’ hike.
Fitch watched the scene then stopped me as I left the locker room, ticked off. With a skinny smile he mentioned, “Now you see what I've to place up with on daily basis.”
Possibly Williamses not in style?
Why has “King Richard,” the critically heralded film about tennis’ Williams household, starring Will Smith, been a colossal field workplace bust?
Right here’s my guess: Regardless of what the media and TV commercials promote and inform us, we don’t all love Serena Williams. Many have watched her real-life, self-entitled, boorish, threatening, bad-loser and even vulgar on-court act. They usually don’t prefer it.
The human situation could have doomed that film from even earlier than its begin.
Or perhaps it’s the pandemic? Guess it might be the pandemic.
Will we ever witness the day ESPN returns as a sports activities community? It appears each telecast is connected to moralizing, politicizing, virtues-are-us social-engineering, undesirable gimmickry.
Will ESPN ever permit us to only watch, no dogmatic strings connected? Permit us to attempt to benefit from the video games it owns?
As if burdened by a responsible conscience, ESPN has introduced that a whole NBA telecast can be known as, produced, shot and supported by an all-women crew!
Effectively, that ought to placate the a whole bunch of 1000's of subscribers who demanded such — versus simply wanting to observe the sport.
However there is not going to be even one Estonian lady among the many crew! What does ESPN have towards Estonians?
Good plan: Remove the most effective out there folks to take advantage of a sport for affordable, shallow — and discriminatory — look-at-us social grandstanding. How do you awaken the woke? Sufficient, already!
Watching the Olympics as televised from Crimson China has been form of creepy. Don’t know if I’m watching them or they’re watching me.
The boys’s U.S. Nationwide Soccer Workforce final week hosted Honduras in a World Cup qualifier performed at evening in minus-14-degree windchill in Minneapolis. Roger Goodell couldn’t make it. Too chilly.
If Kyrie Irving, like mask-less Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti ultimately Sunday’s Rams sport, simply held his breath throughout Nets dwelling video games …
Tony Romo has violated the phrases of his $180 million (or so) CBS contract. Final Sunday, throughout 49ers-Rams, he mentioned a receiver “jumped” for the ball slightly than tried to “high-point it.”
Is the Phil Mickelson who final week mentioned the PGA is infested with “obnoxious greed” the identical Phil Mickelson who was ordered to repay $1 million in an insider buying and selling scheme?
President Biden has informed the Buccaneers they need to substitute Tom Brady with a minority feminine.
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