1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 [First Page] 12 13 [-1], (1) 14 15 Lines: 0 to 20 16 17 ——— 18 * 395.58398pt PgVar ——— 19 Normal Page 20 21 * PgEnds: PageBreak 22 23 [-1], (1) 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 BOOKCOMP, Inc. — University of Nebraska Press / Page i / Printer proof / Baseball and the Media / George Castle 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 [-2], (2) 14 15 Lines: 20 to 21 16 17 ——— 18 0.0pt PgVar ——— 19 Normal Page 20 21 PgEnds: TEX 22 23 [-2], (2) 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 BOOKCOMP, Inc. — University of Nebraska Press / Page ii / Printer proof / Baseball and the Media / George Castle 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Baseball and the Media 9 10 11 How Fans Lose in 12 13 Today’s Coverage of [-3], (3) 14 15 the Game Lines: 21 to 53 16 17 ——— 18 * 195.0pt PgVar ——— 19 Normal Page 20 21 George Castle * PgEnds: Eject 22 23 [-3], (3) 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 University of Nebraska Press 38 Lincoln and London BOOKCOMP, Inc. — University of Nebraska Press / Page iii / Printer proof / Baseball and the Media / George Castle 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 © 2006 by George Castle 13 All rights reserved [-4], (4) 14 Manufactured in the 15 United States of America Lines: 53 to 99 16 ⅜ϱ ——— 17 Library of Congress * 18 Cataloging-in-Publication Data 130.824pt PgVar ——— 19 Castle, George. Normal Page 20 Baseball and the media : how fans lose in today’s coverage of the 21 game / George Castle. * PgEnds: PageBreak p. cm. 22 isbn-13: 978-0-8032-6469-4 (pbk. : alk. paper) 23 isbn-10: 0-8032-6469-0 (pbk. : alk. paper) [-4], (4) 24 1. Baseball—Social aspects—United States. 2. Mass media and 25 sports—United States. I. Title. 26 gv867.64.c37 2006 796.3570973—dc22 2006015462 27 28 Set in Janson Text by BookComp, Inc. 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 BOOKCOMP, Inc. — University of Nebraska Press / Page iv / Printer proof / Baseball and the Media / George Castle 1 2 3 4 5 6 Contents 7 8 9 10 11 12 Preface .................................vii [-5], (5) 13 Introduction ...............................1 14 1. A Long, Strange Journey to the Press Box and Clubhouse ......5 15 Lines: 99 to 150 16 2. Old-Time Players and Scribes ....................19 17 3. The Baseball Beat Writer .......................35 ——— 18 * 63.669pt PgVar 4. Celebrity Players or Upstanding Role Models? ...........51 ——— 19 5. Not Baseball’s Golden Children ...................66 Normal Page 20 21 6. LaTroy and Carl as Jekyll and Hyde .................82 * PgEnds: PageBreak 22 7. A Lot Less Chewin’ the Fat with Managers .............91 23 8. All the News That’s Not Fit to Print ................ 101 [-5], (5) 24 9. The Red and Blue States of Baseball Journalism ......... 116 25 26 10. The Politics of Baseball Media ................... 143 27 11. Chicago a Toddlin’, But Soft, Baseball Media Town ....... 163 28 12. No-Shows in the Press Box and Clubhouse ............ 191 29 13. Sports-Talk Radio .......................... 210 30 14. No More Harry Carays ....................... 228 31 32 15. Old versus New Media ....................... 241 33 Afterword .............................. 253 34 35 36 37 38 BOOKCOMP, Inc. — University of Nebraska Press / Page v / Printer proof / Baseball and the Media / George Castle 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 [-6], (6) 14 15 Lines: 150 to 151 16 17 ——— 18 0.0pt PgVar ——— 19 Normal Page 20 21 PgEnds: TEX 22 23 [-6], (6) 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 BOOKCOMP, Inc. — University of Nebraska Press / Page vi / Printer proof / Baseball and the Media / George Castle 1 2 3 4 5 6 Preface 7 8 9 10 11 [First Page] 12 Baseball is the eternal game, melding past, present, and future in a 13 sport that never dies. In fact our oldest professional sport prospers [-7], (1) 14 after all the knocks it takes—labor disputes, greed, venality, man- 15 agement incompetence, and petty politics—through the decades. Lines: 0 to 26 16 No wonder we talk about baseball 24/7/52/365. The free-agent ——— 17 era brought the end of the off-season as traditionally perceived. But 18 0.5pt PgVar if truth be known, baseball fans never took a month or two off. ——— 19 We’ve always talked, debated, and argued baseball year-round, even Normal Page 20 if the news slowed to a trickle. We could always time-travel to some 21 * PgEnds: Eject previous era to compare present achievers with those in the good 22 old days, which often seem more glamorous in hindsight. Now the 23 never-ending parade of player movement and related developments [-7], (1) 24 provide fresh fodder even during the traditional downtime between 25 26 Christmas and New Year’s. As a result, for sheer athletic entertain- 27 ment value, the sport provides conversational grist and analogies 28 for other parts of life like no other. Baseball terminology pervades 29 so many facets of life, from politics to sex. 30 Measure its competitors—many say its superiors. The nfl is a 31 white-hot focus of office-cooler talk when betting pools are set up 32 on Fridays and settled on Mondays, sandwiched around the social 33 event of sixteen Sunday games. In between, however, these ama- 34 teur gamblers are not exactly talking up the merits of the slant play. 35 Most who call themselves nfl fans probably could not name their 36 favorite team’s starting offensive linemen or top defensive reserves. 37 “If gambling could somehow be outlawed, football would dry up,” 38 sportswriter-pundit-turned-travel-writer Alan Solomon said around BOOKCOMP, Inc. — University of Nebraska Press / Page vii / Printer proof / Baseball and the Media / George Castle 1 1988, a feeling seconded by those who can see beyond the nfl’s 2 intensely choreographed marketing and media machine. 3 The betting aspect isn’t as prevalent in the nba, whose fine points 4 of the give-and-go and the triangle offense are not chewed over 5 by the average league follower. Aerial artistry, slamma-jamma, and 6 other deft body English are the main lures here. Professional bas- 7 ketball is intensely visual, a perfect made-for-tv winter game where 8 the players wear less than any other sport and whose identities are 9 not obscured by helmets. But the nba has been a big deal for only a 10 generation. “I’d love to have the history baseball possesses,” nba 11 commissioner David Stern once said. Indeed, when Joe DiMag- 12 gio was captivating the country and building up mythic legend by 13 hitting in fifty-six in a row, what passed for pro basketball were [-8], (2) 14 vagabond teams playing for coffee money in small industrial cities 15 of the Northeast and Midwest. Lines: 26 to 42 16 Hockey? Remember that winter sport? After a brief upsurge in 17 the 1970s and into the 1980s, the Canadian import was steadily re- ——— 18 duced to cult status long before labor squabbles cashed in its 2004–5 -0.5pt PgVar ——— 19 season. Hockey faded behind other individual sports in popularity, Normal Page 20 falling totally off the table. PgEnds: T X 21 Golf, tennis, and nascar are all good visual theater. But they don’t E 22 cut to the base loyalties of the average sports consumer like baseball 23 does. In the end—and despite the criticism battering it from non- [-8], (2) 24 fans and football lovers—baseball remains the one sport so closely 25 intertwined with other classic Americana. 26 To be sure, the game was overromanticized by too many authors 27 and essayists. They read into it far more than it is. Field of Dreams was 28 well-made Hollywood fantasy, but that’s all it was. Don’t try to whip 29 up assorted allegories for deeper human meanings. The game does 30 have some social significance. Jackie Robinson’s color-line busting 31 of 1947 was a true landmark in American history, with a baseball 32 player representing progress that presidents and Congresses before 33 and after 1947 shamefully refused to foster. And in some cases, 34 a winning team is a psychological salve, uniting a disparate com- 35 munity and temporarily healing wounds, a function served by the 36 world-champion 1968 Detroit Tigers a year after their city burned 37 in horrific riots. Yet to apply all kinds of links to the human soul 38 that might puzzle Freud himself is unsuitable. viii Preface BOOKCOMP, Inc. — University of Nebraska Press / Page viii / Printer proof / Baseball and the Media / George Castle 1 Simply put, baseball is the first sport we usually love. And if a 2 gaggle of propagandists don’t convince us we should have a passion 3 for other sports or forsake baseball entirely, it’s a game that sticks 4 with us a lifetime, passing down to our heirs in the process. 5 Baseball is a game we pursue at many levels. Almost all of us have 6 played it or its variant, softball, at the very least at a basic level. 7 Beyond park-league, flag-and-touch contests, football winnows out 8 most competitors with its jarring contact, equipment requirements, 9 and sheer brute strength.