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Fans Don't Boo Nobodies: Image Repair Strategies of High-Profile Baseball Players During the Steroid Era

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Fans Don't Boo Nobodies: Image Repair Strategies of High-Profile Baseball Players During the Steroid Era Brigham Young University BYU ScholarsArchive Theses and Dissertations 2011-09-23 Fans Don't Boo Nobodies: Image Repair Strategies of High-Profile Baseball Players During the Steroid Era Kevin R. Nielsen Brigham Young University - Provo Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd Part of the Communication Commons BYU ScholarsArchive Citation Nielsen, Kevin R., "Fans Don't Boo Nobodies: Image Repair Strategies of High-Profile Baseball Players During the Steroid Era" (2011). Theses and Dissertations. 2876. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/2876 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by BYU ScholarsArchive. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of BYU ScholarsArchive. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. Fans don't boo nobodies: Image repair strategies of high-profile baseball players during the Steroid Era Kevin Nielsen A thesis submitted to the faculty of Brigham Young University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Steve Thomsen, Chair Kenneth Plowman Tom Robinson Department of Communications Brigham Young University December 2011 Copyright © 2011 Kevin Nielsen All Rights Reserved Fans don't boo nobodies: Image repair strategies of high-profile baseball players during the Steroid Era Kevin Nielsen Department of Communications, BYU Master of Arts Baseball's Steroid Era put many different high-profile athletes under pressure to explain steroid allegations that were made against them. This thesis used textual analysis of news reports and media portrayals of the athletes, along with analysis of their image repair strategies to combat those allegations, to determine how successful the athletes were in changing public opinion as evidenced through the media. The contexts, media reports, and strategies of Jason Giambi, Mark McGwire, Andy Pettitte, and Roger Clemens were analyzed and revealed important implications involving effective use of image repair strategies. They provided a deeper framework for the success of mortification strategies. An authentic, sincere mortification strategy has more power to change the media's reporting and portrayal of the athlete, while stunted or incentivized mortification strategies provide diminishing results. The four different situations of the players and the different combinations of strategies used provide insight into how much a public persona matters in confronting allegations. They show how ineffective the strategy of minimization is against allegations that involve on-field performance. The situations reveal how the promise of future on-field actions, along with actual on-field success can help repair an athlete's image without a solid rhetorical strategy. They show the amount of information offered, along with the strategies used, influences the amount of persuasion that occurs. The different situations also showed how a complete image repair strategy is successful in ending news coverage of the allegations and not just changing the media portrayal. Keywords: textual analysis, apologia, image repair strategies, baseball, steroids, HGH, Mark McGwire, Jason Giambi, Andy Pettitte, Roger Clemens iii Table of Contents Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1 Literature Review............................................................................................................................ 5 Image Repair Strategies ............................................................................................................ 10 Atonement ................................................................................................................................. 17 Form .......................................................................................................................................... 18 Sport Apologia .......................................................................................................................... 20 Summary ................................................................................................................................... 23 Method .......................................................................................................................................... 24 Context .......................................................................................................................................... 30 August 1998 .............................................................................................................................. 30 December 2003…………………………………………………………………………....…..34 December 2004 ......................................................................................................................... 35 February 2005 ........................................................................................................................... 40 June 2006 .................................................................................................................................. 43 October 2006 ............................................................................................................................. 43 December 2007 ......................................................................................................................... 44 January 2008 ............................................................................................................................. 47 Analysis......................................................................................................................................... 51 Jason Giambi ............................................................................................................................. 51 Mark McGwire.......................................................................................................................... 62 Andy Pettitte ............................................................................................................................. 78 Roger Clemens .......................................................................................................................... 91 Discussion ................................................................................................................................... 103 Limitations .................................................................................................................................. 114 Future Research .......................................................................................................................... 114 References ................................................................................................................................... 116 iv List of Figures 3.1 Preliminary Framework of Analysis ………………………………………………. 29 5.1 Dominant Reading and Apologia for Jason Giambi ………………………………. 59 5.2 Dominant Reading and Apologia for Mark McGwire …………………………….. 77 5.3 Dominant Reading and Apologia for Andy Pettitte ……………………………….. 88 5.4 Dominant Reading and Apologia for Roger Clemens …………………………….101 Running Head: FANS DON'T BOO NOBODIES 1 Introduction The game of baseball needed to change with the times. The traditional pastime had lost ground because of a player's strike in 1994, which not only canceled the final two months of the regular season, the playoffs, and the World Series, but caused fan interest to plummet because of the bickering of millionaire players and billionaire owners. Outside the game, the National Football League (NFL) was pushing its fast- paced and more physical game into the nation's spotlight and the fans were responding. Into this environment, Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig, the owners, and the players tried to rediscover fan interest. Two divisions had been expanded to three and a wild card team was added to the playoffs in 1994. Interleague play was voted on after the strike and implemented in 1997, which led to baseball's second highest season attendance in history (Koppett & Koppett, 2004). In 1998, two additional teams were added to the major leagues in Arizona and Tampa Bay, while players became bigger and stronger as home runs began to attract more and more fans to ballparks. Just four years after the strike, Major League Baseball had found its saviors. The red-headed St. Louis Cardinals slugger Mark McGwire and the lovable outfielder for the Chicago Cubs Sammy Sosa put on a show during the summer of 1998 the likes of which no one had ever seen before. They both chased Roger Maris' single season home run record and battled each other all summer long and into the autumn. McGwire finished with 70 home runs and Sosa settled for second with 66, pushing Maris into third. America had paid attention all summer, not just Cardinals and Cubs fans, but the nation as a whole. While it had taken 37 years to break Maris' record of 61, Barry Bonds broke McGwire's record three years later by hitting 73 homers in 2001. Everything that had FANS DON'T BOO NOBODIES 2 been so great about the 1998 season and baseball's innocence began to be questioned. A Sports Illustrated piece (Verducci, 2002, June 3) focused on steroids and included statements from former National League Most Valuable Player (MVP) Ken Caminiti, who gave credibility to the growing rumors and accusations of the clubhouse culture of using steroids to enhance recovery, performance,
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