Why Nobody Likes Sportswriters

Garble Garble

This little rant has been held inside all day. Might as well let it rip.

A rant like this has been coming for awhile. However, I have to admit that this specific post was set off by a comment made on a radio show that I didn’t even listen to. Yes, I heard about it secondhand. Yes, writing this sounded like a better idea this morning than it does right now. No, I’m not letting that fact deter me.

Boston Globe columnist Bob Ryan rolled out of his orthopedic bed and pulled himself away from the buffet at Golden Corral for long enough to go on some Monday morning show on WEEI in Boston.

When the topic turned to baseball, Ryan touched on the Red Sox before turning his attention to my the Tampa Bay Rays. It was then that words were spoken that were quickly turned to evil legend in the WTSP newsroom.

Ryan said that, due to a lack of fan support, the Rays organization should not exist.

Now this post is not an excuse to rile up some homer defense of Rays fans. As a self-diagnosed Rays fan, I am willing to inform you that the Rays fanbase sucks. Well, that’s not fair to say. They don’t really have a fanbase.

There are plenty of excuses that I could pimp out. The Rays are 23rd in MLB in attendance, The Reds are in a similar situation competition-wise and are only 21st. The Rays are 7th in baseball in television ratings, so there are plenty of people that care about the team, they just don’t feel like making that pesky drive to St. Pete.

Nobody cares.

I could write a novel on Rays attendance problems that no one would read. I’ll avoid that here. If Sternberg and friends decided tomorrow that it would be best to pack up and head to Charlotte, my reaction would be something along the lines of “understandable, the area did a crappy job.” If baseball contracted them altogether, I’d say it’s dumb.

The point here is more about Ryan. I’m going to take a wild guess and say that Ryan doesn’t really believe that the Rays “shouldn’t exist.” But in an ever-changing cycle of sports news, the goal isn’t always to be truthful or accurate or insightful. Sometimes, you just want to write/say things that make people go crazy.

What you get out of this is sportswriters trying to make a shocking statement rather than do their jobs.

How else do you explain Skip Bayless having a job? How else do you explain the sudden mega wave of sportswriter-based shows that have reached popularity on ESPN in the last decade?

Poster boys for my argument.

There are still plenty of ways to make your name known as a sportswriter. The problem is that it’s not solely based on how you write, report or carry yourself.

The stereotypical sportswriter was once a cigar-smoking, scotch-drinking man that enjoyed the game that he covered. They built professional relationships with the players that they followed. They didn’t ambush them or dig into their personal lives.

The modern stereotypical sportswriter is a cynical egomaniac. It’s a monster that craves attention and is yearning for that next big catastrophic story. Steroids? Great. Collapsing career? Even better. Personal strife? The best.

They’re grumpy old men that take their positions for granted and have become as sterile and uninvolved as the pale walls of a press box’s interior.

Sure, there are still great ones. Storytellers that paint vivid pictures and never put more into a story than they take away from it. However, most of them have been shuffled to magazines, leaving the most-read section in the newspaper void of personality or intrigue.

Legendary baseball writer Jimmy Cannon once told Jerome Holtzman that “a sportswriter is entombed in a prolonged boyhood.” It’s one of my favorite lines of all time. Yeah, it might be on my Facebook page.

Jimmy Cannon

By this he meant that sportswriters see so many generations of athletes come and go, that time is never truly judged because each generation must be met with the same passion and excitement. It is this excitement that breeds from the simple fact that a sportswriter’s job is something as trivial and enjoyable as watching a game and writing something about it.

But this was also at a time when an 18-year-old caddy at a golf course could delve into an enthusiastic baseball or boxing conversation with a publisher while carrying his bag and be shipped off to cover spring training or a title fight the next week.

If any bit of this topic interests you in away, I highly suggest reading the book “No Cheering in the Press Box.” It will make you want to be a sportswriter… 70 years ago.

Times have changed.

Sportswriters are now gingerly tutored and educated to a point that might be too far. It comes out in their finished product as something that often lacks passion, but exudes arrogance.

But what’s the point in looking around or trying to change? It’s not like they have an industry to save or anything.

-Bryan