An Interview with Susan Slusser

“I talk to younger colleagues who aren’t dating – they’re saying it’s a problem meeting people who understand the schedule thing and working nights and weekends.”

“I know an A’s radio guy who has put a limit on himself for checking news – he said he was just getting overwhelmed. There’s some sense to that. You can drive yourself nuts reading and following up. You have to have some life outside of it at some point.”

“There are a lot of baseball lifers – like the Cleveland guys and Tracy Ringolsby (Rocky Mountain News) – and there are people who do it two or three years and say “Forget it”. It takes a certain kind of person to do it a long time…I’m pretty sure I’m a lifer. I’m not sure what else I would do.”

Susan Slusser: Interviewed on December 11, 2006

Position: Oakland A’s beat reporter, San Francisco Chronicle

Born: 1965, Monterrey, Calif. (hometown)

Education: Stanford, 1988, History, English

Career: Sacramento Bee, 1988-94; Orlando Sentinel, 94-95, Dallas Morning News 95-96, SF Chronicle 96 –

Personal: married, (to Dan Brown, San Jose Mercury News)

Favorite Restaurant (home): The Slanted Door, SF (Asian cuisine) “it’s gone down hill but you are guaranteed to get one thing as good as anything you have ever eaten”

Favorite Restaurant (road): Bread Winners Café and Bakery, Dallas “best brunch place in the world”

Favorite Hotel: Marriott Renaissance Center, Detroit “completely different than other hotels we stay at – futuristic”

“Replay of an End-Zone Love Catch”, by Daniel Brown, San Jose Mercury News, April 27, 2005:

On Sept. 8, 1990, quarterback Jeff Bridewell threw for 402 yards, UC-Davis beat Santa Clara 31-19 and I made the greatest catch in the history of Buck Shaw Stadium. It happened near the corner of the end zone in the waning minutes of the fourth quarter, while waiting to conduct postgame interviews. That was when I said the first words to the woman who would become my wife.

Granted, those words were, “Bridewell had a good game,” and granted, her response was to turn and walk away, but the moment remains nonetheless historic. It was the first play of what would turn out to be an all-time upset: a girl like that with a guy like me. The Miracle on Eyes.

Susan Slusser was new to the UC-Davis beat, a luminous, rising young star for the Sacramento Bee. I was a UCD student working for the campus paper and had all the wisdom of an empty notebook. Without proper consideration for our professional gap, I attempted chitchat. The woman who would become my wife looked at me half-startled, as if I had just offered to set myself on fire, and walked away. Love at first slight!

It got better. In the weeks that followed, against St. Mary’s, Chico State and Humboldt State, the Aggies won big, and so did I. By San Francisco State, we were both close to clinching. By Hayward State, it was all wrapped up. Years later, when it was time to propose, I figured that the ideal plan was to return to what was apparently the most romantic place on earth. Getting her back to the end zone at Buck Shaw Stadium was tricky, since A. the football team disappeared after 1992 and B. there was no reason to stand in an empty field at sunset. But thanks to a combination of lies and misdirection, the foundation of any good marriage, I persuaded her to walk to the spot that used to be the end zone at Buck Shaw Stadium.

I got down on one knee, as if downing a kickoff. “Will you marry me?” She looked half-startled again. Only this time, she didn’t walk away. “Well, will you?” “Of course.” It remains the best interview I’ve ever done.

Q. Is your husband’s account of your first meeting accurate?

A. Yes. I totally big-leagued him.

Q. How many two-sportswriter couples are there?

A. There’s got to be quite a few – there’s Jen Floyd and Mac Engel (Ft. Worth Star-Telegram). A few years ago there were four couples at the Chronicle – Nancy Gay (SF Chronicle) and Mike Martinez (San Jose Mercury News) – he’s in travel now. Michelle Smith (SF Chronicle) and Jerry McDonald (Oakland Tribune). Brian Murphy (KNBR radio) and Candace Putnam Murphy (Oakland Tribune). Janie McCauley and Josh Dubow are at AP. I’m sure tons of others are just slipping my mind.

Q. Does it help a marriage?

A. Absolutely. I talk to younger colleagues who aren’t dating – they’re saying it’s a problem meeting people who understand the schedule thing and working nights and weekends. Then there’s all the travel – the travel seems to wear on people who don’t accept it as part of the job. So, yes, it helps.

Q. How long have you been married?

A. Seven years, but we’ve been together for 16 years.

Q. Do you talk shop with your husband?

A. We do, but we work at different papers in the same area, so it can be difficult – I wouldn’t want to work at the same paper. I have to be careful if I’m working on something I wouldn’t want the Mercury News to know about. It can be tricky if something is going on where we’re both involved – although there haven’t been too many instances where we covered the same thing. Once he called me from the office and I said, “Stay there” – I gave him a heads up something was coming down the pipeline – I didn’t want us both putting out calls from the same phone.

It gets strange. An assistant GM called me and said “You husband is leaving calls on my office phone – can’t you give him my cell phone?” I said no. Dan is the national football writer and national baseball writer – they’re a little football heavy at the Merc-News – 70-30 or 60-40 – so he’s not around baseball as much. But he does do a weekly baseball column.

Q. How many women are on the baseball beat?

A. Kathleen O’Brien (Ft. Worth Star-Telegram) covers the Rangers. A couple more if you throw in mlb.com.

Q. Why so few?

A. In terms of travel and schedule baseball is probably the most rigorous job in sports. It’s tough to do it with a family. We don’t have kids but I don’t know how male writers with kids do it – I’d be crazy. Other sports have a saner schedule. Football has more women – maybe they’re smart. But I really like the baseball schedule and travel.

Q. Does the culture of baseball have anything to do with it?

A. I don’t think so. I haven’t found it unwelcoming in terms of gender – I’m sure that’s changed in the last 30 years. A lot of sportswriters consider baseball to be more difficult from a media standpoint – baseball players have a reputation of being tough to deal with. But I’ve been lucky with the teams I’ve covered – I’ve been in some good clubhouses. I hear horror stories about the Raiders and 49ers – they’re difficult in terms of media access and personalities.

It’s probably the schedule more than anything. I don’t know if this sounds sexist, but I think more women are interested in football than baseball. The women writers I’m friendly with are more interested in football.

Q. Why?

A. I don’t know – I really don’t. Obviously I’m not.

Q. Did your interest in baseball precede your job?

A. Yes. I’ve been a massive fan from the age of five or six. We lived in Alameda (Ca.) near the Coliseum after we moved back from Guam – I was the only child in a military family. On Guam the Super Bowl was the only thing they made a big deal about. When the A’s got in their first World Series in ’72 my Dad sat me down and explained it to me and I thought it was the greatest thing ever. I’ve continued liking baseball since then.

Q. Is baseball a good writing sport?

A. It is and it isn’t. Just the sheer numbers of stories – the sheer output – makes it impossible for the quality to be top-notch every day. I knew this year was busy but I didn’t know how busy until I did a byline count – it came to 427 or 428 – which is just ridiculous. As a sport there are so many different things going on and so many personalities – there’s always something great to write about. If your stories aren’t primo every day it’s not a horrible thing. Every baseball game lends itself to a great story if you have the time – which we don’t – so that’s frustrating. The ironic thing is that as technology gets better and better our deadlines get earlier – my first one is 9:15 (p.m.) on the west coast. Obviously they don’t get a completed game story for that edition. I’ll send them running – I always send them 18 inches of something.

Q. Do you enjoy the time cushion when you’re in the east?

A. It’s beautiful. I feel sorry for the eastern writers. It can work in reverse too – I wasn’t at the recent winter meetings in Florida – but our writers have so much extra time they can keep filing until 3 a.m. They’re up until 4 a.m. and then they have to be back in the lobby first thing in the morning.

Q. Does it bother you to miss the winter meetings?

A. No – we sent our national writer and Giants writer because of the Bonds crap. I covered it from here and did all of the Piazza stuff by phone. It’s not a fun event to cover due to the sheer amount of hours standing in a lobby – you’re always wondering who’s that agent over there – and who is Scott Boras talking to – and who is my competitor talking to. There are bad rumors flying around, and the G.M.s tend to be on the surly side because they’re getting hammered from all directions. There’s a lot of coffee and paranoia – it’s not fun. I was happy to let John Shea have the bulk of that although he’s making noises about me going next year.

Q. After Ken Macha was fired as A’s manager in October you had the only quotes from several players – Mark Kotsay, Jason Kendall and Barry Zito – critical of Macha. How did you manage that?

A. Without betraying a confidence, I had been hearing things for some time – I was aware that something was coming down. Obviously nobody will say things on the record during the season especially with the team heading for the post-season. I was certain a move would be made when the season ended – it seemed almost unavoidable given the state of the clubhouse. Certainly they (Kotsay, Kendall and Zito) weren’t the only ones saying those things.

Q. Did any other outlets have those comments?

A. Not that I’m aware of.

Q. Is that a feather in your cap?

A. I guess. Maybe it was a matter of timing – I had been willing to wait for a certain amount of time and I would hope there was some trust built up. This was the ninth year I’ve covered the team.

Q. Sounds like a balancing act.

A. Especially when you’re on a beat. Columnists can come in and maybe take a chance – I won’t say betray a confidence – but he can write something his source wouldn’t be thrilled with at the time because he might not be back for awhile. On a daily beat you have to be careful – if somebody tells you something off the record you don’t want to burn them from a personal standpoint. You have to be persuasive and you have to wait for the time to be right to say something controversial or against the grain.

Q. How do you maintain a civil relationship with the people you cover?

A. You don’t. I’ve been lucky in that I’ve had very good clubhouses to work with great personalities. That said, you’re going to write something, if you’re honest and objective, that ticks somebody off. I have a player still not talking to me for a story I did last year. He insists he was upset at the headline, and he realizes I didn’t write the headline, but he’s still not talking to me. Things happen. Not everybody is going to like you. The team doctor is irate at me for a story I did on Bobby Crosby being unhappy with his medical care. What can you do?

Q. Are there certain people you can’t afford to alienate?

A. You can’t look at it that way and do your job. If somebody looked at my job they’d say you have to stay on (GM) Billy Beane’s good side. That’s true, but at times I haven’t been. Fortunately, he understands our job. When he’s been mad at me or our columnists he says what’s on his mind and gets over it, which is great.

Q. Your take on mlb.com?

A. It seems to depend on the city – it’s uneven. It’s got some really great people like T.R. Sullivan in Dallas – he’s a good friend but I also respect the job he does as a reporter. Then there are some relatively inexperienced people in other places. I’m not sure mlb.com knows what it is at all times. I’m not 100 percent sure how to classify it. It does some things very well and provides fans a service.

Q. Is MLB really reporting on itself?

A. That’s what gives me pause about it. It’s not strictly news – it’s got a p.r. element to it. They are the league and they are covering themselves. I had this discussion with the mlb.com A’s reporter, who is a friend and someone I respect. He claims that the baseball writers don’t respect mlb.com writers, but I think it’s probably a case-by-case basis, as it would be for any newspaper writer. As I told him, “Your paychecks are signed by Bud Selig and that’s a little problematic”.

Q. Does mlb.com have an advantage on breaking news?

A. I hope not. I hope the people getting the breaks are the best reporters on the beat, or the hardest-working reporters. People will always wonder about them but I’ve never had that feeling on my beat.

Q. How do you stay informed?

A. I read a massive array of stuff – there are so many links you can link. Buster Olney (espn.com) is a must read and I try to watch Baseball Tonight and to a lesser extent SportsCenter. I read the other beat writers – not every one every day – but I really try to stay up on my division. I definitely check the headlines around the league. I’m not sure everybody does this but I check the fan sites occasionally to get a perspective on what the fans are talking about. I can get so caught up in the day to day stuff that I may miss something. I’ll look at Athletics Nation and some other good ones. The problem I have is that the good ones get too popular and then there are so many voices the level of discourse dips a little. Rabid fans tend to be very good at picking up on news, but there are a lot of bad rumors, too.

Q. Have the fan sites changed baseball writing?

A. Maybe the reporting a little bit. They can be rumor mills. When I was in Orlando people were really starting to pick up on sports on the Internet – the Magic were the only game in town and I spent a lot of time chasing Internet rumors. Everybody sees everything at once.

It’s a 24-hour job now. Ron Bergman, who covered baseball for the Oakland Tribune and Merc-News in the early 70s, laughs at how much harder our job is today. It’s a 24-365 job. When he worked, off-seasons were completely off – he wasn’t spending all day checking to see what everybody across the country had written. I know an A’s radio guy who has put a limit on himself for checking news – he said he was just getting overwhelmed. There’s some sense to that. You can drive yourself nuts reading and following up. You have to have some life outside of it at some point.

Q. How do you get away from it?

A. (laughing) I don’t know. That’s a very good question. I’m not sure I’m the best person to ask. I probably do obsess about work. I’ve got my husband and my friends outside of work – I enjoy traveling to see my friends – and I read (non-sports fiction) and watch movies. I’m not totally crazy but I probably should cut back on my amount of work.

Q. Is burnout a concern?

A. I don’t know – it seems to go in extremes. There are a lot of baseball lifers – like the Cleveland guys and Tracy Ringolsby (Rocky Mountain News) – and there are people who do it two or three years and say “Forget it”. It takes a certain kind of person to do it a long time. I like all the lifers – I guess I now consider myself one. I’m pretty sure I’m a lifer. I’m not sure what else I would do.

Q. Sounds like you really like your job.

A. I do. But talk to me in August in Kansas City. I might sound differently.

(SMG thanks Susan Slusser for her cooperation)

Why did kotsay, kendall and zito open up to the chronicle about macha?

But Thomas opened up to the Oakland tribune:

Why did ken macha open up to the chronicle about his firing?

SPORTS

DISCONNECTED / GM again cuts ties with Macha

Susan Slusser

Chronicle Staff Writer

2248 words

17 October 2006

The San Francisco Chronicle

FINAL

E.1

English

© 2006 Hearst Communications Inc., Hearst Newspapers Division. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All Rights Reserved.

Two days after the A’s were eliminated from the postseason, Ken Macha was fired as the team’s manager, because of what general manager Billy Beane described as “a disconnect on several levels.”

Though Beane was careful not to spell out that disconnect, emphasizing during a news conference Monday that he alone was responsible for Macha’s ouster, the primary reason the team parted ways with a man with the second-highest winning percentage in Oakland history was that a growing number of players had issues with Macha.

“There were things that transpired over the course of the year that the players were unhappy about,” A’s center fielder Mark Kotsay said. “There’s no question there were things throughout the year, but the fact of the matter is that that by the end of the year, the players didn’t have the same feeling about the manager as they did at the start of the year — and that was at a point you’d think everybody would be happy, with a six-game lead. … I believe there was friction.”

Third baseman Eric Chavez, the longest-tenured member of the team, said several times in a phone interview Monday evening that he likes Macha and got along with him well personally, but Chavez had seen enough happening around him to realize there were problems.

“The whole thing was a weird situation for me because ever since he came here, we had a pretty good relationship, but over the last couple years, I could see things unfold, and I kept hearing things,” Chavez said. “He’s always been very open and communicative with me, and with some other players, that wasn’t true. I heard some things that were kind of disturbing. I think there are going to be a lot of guys who are happy about this.”

Many of the players thought that the tone set by Macha was gloomy, even when the club was playing well.

“The atmosphere wasn’t positive, for some reason,” Chavez said. “That was hard for us to deal with — here we are, winning the division, we’re banged up but we’re still doing what we should be doing, and every time he spoke to us, he’d say how much he appreciated the effort, but then you’d read things where he was always smashing people. … This negative cloud was just eating at everybody.”

Some of the players had the impression that Macha was miserable in his job. Starter Barry Zito, who is a big believer in the power of positive thinking, said that Macha dwelled too much on what might go wrong and that that was detrimental.

“The fact is, when you have someone leading people, you want them to be a visionary, to forge ahead and be on the front lines,” Zito said. “We felt like we were on the front lines, and he might have been with us, but he didn’t have the same conviction or faith. I think it was a fear of failure. He was a little more focused on the pessimistic stuff than on success.”

Zito was among those who felt as if Macha had not done enough to back him sometimes, especially in his final start against Anaheim in 2004, when he left after seven innings and 115 pitches. The A’s lost the lead after Zito departed, and Macha told reporters afterward that Zito had taken himself out of the game.

“I felt like he didn’t protect me,” Zito said. “I know a lot of managers do — (White Sox first baseman) Paul Konerko told me that Ozzie Guillen would take a bullet for his players. I was upset but Macha was fighting his own battle and he probably couldn’t process that kind of pressure, so, OK, I’ll wear it.”

The protection issue arose numerous times Monday.

“I know that the one thing any player wants from his manager is to be protected,” catcher Jason Kendall said. “If there’s a bang- bang play at first, even if you’re out, if you’re arguing, you want someone there behind you. If you argue a pitch, even if you’re wrong, you want someone joining in. And I’m not sure Macha did that.”

Macha’s seeming impatience with injuries also upset players. Kotsay, whose availability was uncertain at times because of a bad back, was furious when Macha said it was “puzzling” that Kotsay couldn’t play in a road game against Tampa Bay when the team had been off the day before. Two days earlier, Kotsay had described himself as having to use duct-tape simply to drag himself onto the field.

“When I got injured, I felt disrespected,” Kotsay said. “The ‘puzzling’ comment really threw me. My manager didn’t have my back, and every manager’s first business is to protect his players. That totally lost my trust in that relationship, between us as player and manager.”

Now, the A’s would like to have Beane’s back, worried that he’ll get criticized for firing a manager who just took the team to the American League Championship Series.

“I don’t want Billy to take heat for this because this is what needed to happen,” Kendall said. “If Billy is comfortable with it, we’re behind Billy. Maybe Billy saw the same thing the players saw. If Billy gets blasted in the media, it’s ridiculous. Billy’s going to get a lashing, and he shouldn’t.”

“I heard Steve Phillips on ESPN saying, ‘I don’t understand this move because those guys were playing (well) for Macha,’ ” Kotsay said. “Well, we didn’t play for him. This collective group wanted to win together, we felt we have a chance to win together, and we provided the leadership. The core guys who went out and played every day were the leaders of the team and carried us through the uncertainty. If there were problems, they were dealt with among the 25 guys.”

There were concerns from a strictly managerial standpoint, too.

“Everyone thought it was weird Kotsay didn’t hit against left- handers the last two months of the season, he’s so great defensively,” starter Dan Haren said. “And it was unfair to sit him two months against lefties and then all of a sudden throw him in there in the playoffs against tough lefties like (Johan) Santana and Kenny Rogers. I don’t think Macha handled that correctly.

“Then there were issues with the bullpen, guys being possibly overused, a lot of different issues.”

Haren noted that it probably was stressful managing under Beane, and he said, like Chavez, that he’d had a decent relationship with Macha. And when Macha was re-hired last fall, many of the players were supportive of the move.

“Deep down inside, I think he cared about the players, he just didn’t have a good way of communicating,” Chavez said. “He was always asking me about guys, he wanted to know if they were OK, but I was always the one he talked to in his office and I was probably the one who least needed to be in there.”

Macha will be paid the remaining $2.025 million remaining on his contract. The A’s will interview two internal candidates, third- base coach Ron Washington (who will interview for the Rangers’ managerial job today) and bench coach Bob Geren, for the managerial spot. Others on Beane’s list last year when Macha briefly left the team during a contract stalemate were former Phillies manager Larry Bowa, former Texas pitching coach Orel Hershiser and Colorado coach Jamie Quirk. A strong possibility for an interview this time: Angels pitching coach Bud Black. —————————————— —————

An Interview with Michael David Smith

“I do believe I could write about any sport in a pinch. During the Olympics I wrote about gymnastics, table tennis, diving and a number of other sports that I don’t follow outside the Olympics, and I think I did good work. Writing about sports isn’t like writing about economics or medicine, fields where I think the writer needs a lot of specialized knowledge. I think a good writer can write well about a sport without being an expert in it.”

“I’m really proud of all of my Vick posts as a body of work, and I’m especially proud to have worked with Mike Florio at Pro Football Talk during the Vick case, because Mike set the gold standard in Vick coverage.”

Michael David Smith: Interviewed on September 18, 2008

Position: Lead blogger, FanHouse.com; Writer, ProFootballTalk.com; Editor in chief, CollegeFootballTalk.com; NFL columnist, New York Sun

Born: 1976, Detroit

Education: University of Illinois, 1999, speech communication

Career: English teacher, Compton High School, 1999-2000; Web site producer, Los Angeles Daily News/Long Beach Press Telegram, 2000-2001; Long Beach Gazette Newspapers, 2001-2003; Communications Assistant, Joyce Foundation, 2004-2006; Sportswriter, 2007-present

Personal: Married to Sarah Smith since 2000

Favorite restaurant (home): Hong Kong Chef, Chicago “Simple and easy, you call them up, order your sesame chicken and your crab Rangoon and your egg rolls, and you know what you’re getting when you go pick it up 10 minutes later”

Favorite restaurant (away): Battista’s Hole in the Wall, Las Vegas “My wife and I got married in Vegas and we’ve gone back about once a year, and we always try to make it to Battista’s, an old-school Italian restaurant from the days when Vegas didn’t advertise itself as a family place”

Favorite hotel: TheHotel – Mandalay Bay, Las Vegas “We stay at different places every time we go to Vegas, and so far I’d have to say TheHotel is the top place we’ve been”

Posted by Michael David Smith on FanHouse.com, Sept. 18, 2008, 1:27 PM:

Boxer Oscar Diaz is awake and breathing on his own
, two months after suffering life-threatening brain injuries in a bout with Delvin Rodriguez.

Diaz was in critical condition
but has now been updated to stable, and his doctors and family are optimistic he will continue to improve.

“It’s very exciting to see Oscar open his eyes. He’s a fighter and I believe he will get better,” his mother, Theresa Diaz, said in a statement. Diaz’s family and doctor will provide more information about his condition today.

The Diaz-Rodriguez fight was shown live on ESPN2. Rodriguez had unleashed a fury of punches on Diaz, and before the start of the 11th round, Diaz began to look unstable and then fell to the ground in his corner. He was rushed to San Antonio University Hospital and has been there since.

Reached by ESPN.com, Rodriguez said, “It’s very good news to me…. I’ve been waiting for his moment for a long time. It’s been difficult. I kept thinking about him and how his family was doing. I’ve been worried.”

Q. Was SI?s Richard Dietsch accurate in describing you as “an evenhanded and smart read”? What was the impact of being named SI?s Mainstream Blogger of the Year for 2007?

A. I’d like to think that was an accurate description of my writing. I’d say the big impact was that the recognition led to a couple of job offers, even though they were offers I turned down. It was nice to know I had options, even though I was happy with what what I was doing – and still am, 10 months later.

Q. The mugshot that runs next to your blog – are you grinning because blogging is fun? Or because you’ve got the job all your friends envy?

A. I took that picture of myself with my digital camera when FanHouse got redesigned and my old picture got lost somewhere in the series of tubes, and I can’t honestly say I gave any thought to the look on my face. But I will say that yes, blogging is fun, and yes, people often tell me that they envy my job.

Q. What are the various outlets you write for and what do you contribute to each? Do you do primary reporting?

A. Yes, I do primary reporting. I cover events live and I interview people, but for the most part my job entails sitting at home, with my laptop and my TV, and just writing whatever I’m thinking about the world of sports. I try to get out of the house every now and then, but I disagree with those who think that writers need access.

Q. Which sports are you most comfortable writing?? Which are the best writing sports? Could you write on any sport in a pinch?

A. Football is, always has been and – I think – always will be my favorite sport, and I know much more about football than I do about other sports. In the last year or so, however, mixed martial arts has become a close second. Those are definitely my two favorite sports to watch and my two favorite to write about.

I do believe I could write about any sport in a pinch. During the Olympics I wrote about gymnastics, table tennis, diving and a number of other sports that I don’t follow outside the Olympics, and I think I did good work. Writing about sports isn’t like writing about economics or medicine, fields where I think the writer needs a lot of specialized knowledge. I think a good writer can write well about a sport without being an expert in it.

Q. Describe your typical workday?

A. I get up early, I turn on ESPN, and I start reading e-mails and various sports web sites. I try to get a lot written by 9 a.m. I find that if I get off to a fast start on the day, the momentum will keep me productive through the afternoon. My coffee habit and my ability to type fast keep me productive.

Q. Do you read all the comments to your posts? Do you measure the success of the post by the number of comments?

A. No and no. There was a time, when I was first getting into the sports writing business and writing for FootballOutsiders.com, when I read all the comments and found the vast majority to be well thought out and intelligent. But now that I’m writing more often and for bigger web sites, I find that the comments aren’t really all that helpful. I’d love to engage in thoughtful dialogue in the comments sections of my posts, but unfortunately it just doesn’t turn out that way very often.

Q. Your most controversial post? Any posts you regret?

A. I don’t know about one specific controversial post, but the most controversial subject, by far, was Michael Vick. When evidence of dog fighting was found on Vick’s property, I at first took him at his word that he was never there. But once I started looking into it, it was clear to me that Vick was lying and that he was involved in dog fighting. So for the next few months I wrote about Vick just about every day, trying to give readers a full sense of Vick’s dog fighting activities.

Over the course of those months, I got a constant barrage of negative feedback, in comments at FanHouse, e-mails, and things other bloggers wrote about me. That feedback got really nasty when Chris Mortensen reported on ESPN that Vick wouldn’t be indicted. But I was confident that what I was writing was accurate, and obviously, we now know it was.

Really, the only thing I regret is that when I posted about Mortensen’s report, I didn’t make clear how skeptical of it I was. I thought Mortensen was wrong, that he was being fed bad information by people close to Vick, and I should have made that more clear. But in subsequent posts I did make clear that I still believed the evidence was overwhelming that Vick was involved in dog fighting, and 11 days after Mortensen’s report, Vick was indicted. A little over a month after that, he pleaded guilty. I’m really proud of all of my Vick posts as a body of work, and I’m especially proud to have worked with Mike Florio at Pro Football Talk during the Vick case, because Mike set the gold standard in Vick coverage.

Q. Do you attend games as credentialed press??

A. Occasionally. I’ve attended four events in the last year as a credentialed member of the media: One NFL regular season game, the Super Bowl, the NFL scouting combine and one UFC event.

Q. Who and what do you read and watch – mainstream and non-mainstream – to keep up with sports?? Who in sports media has influenced you?

A. I watch lots and lots of ESPN, and I read all the major sports sites. As for non-mainstream, the blogs I tend to like best are the ones like Awful Announcing and The Big Lead that just decided to start doing things their own way and found an audience doing it. I really respect anyone who starts their own site and turns it into a successful enterprise. That’s an impressive achievement. It’s something that two of the people I’ve worked for, Aaron Schatz of Football Outsiders and Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk, have done, and I’ve been proud to work for their sites.

Even among mainstream writers, the people who have influenced me the most are the ones who do things their own way. I think Paul Zimmerman of Sports Illustrated is probably the best writer in the history of professional football, if you look at his entire body of work, and it’s because he just watches games and writes what he sees. It really is that simple for him, and I try to keep what I do that simple as well.

Posted by Michael David Smith on collegefootballtalk.com, September 18, 2008, 8:18 a.m. EDT:

We’ve invited Russell Levine of Football Outsiders to post his Seventh Day Adventure podcast here at CFT. Russell is joined by Deadspin.com associated editor Clay Travis to discuss the weekends three big SEC clashes: Florida-Tennessee, LSU-Auburn and Georgia-Arizona State. Clay, author of Dixieland Delight, also shares some of the insights he’s gained while working on his latest book project, which has him spending the entire season behind the scenes with the Volunteer program.

(SMG thanks Michael David Smith for his cooperation)

An Interview with Jon Solomon

“The Clemson and South Carolina beats are more competitive than people realize.”

“I have all the respect in the world for beat reporters. They’re the lifeblood of the sports section…they’re working crazy hours.”

“Columnists now – and I don’t want to generalize – are caricatures. They’re so opinionated. They have to have a take on everything.”

Jon Solomon. Interviewed August 29, 2006

Position: enterprise reporter, Birmingham News

Born: 1976, Gaithersburg, Md.

Education: University of Maryland, BA, 1998

Career: Washington Post (part-time) 1998-99, Anderson (SC) Independent-Mail 1999-2003, The State (Columbia SC) 2003-2005, Birmingham News 2005 –

Personal: married, (expecting)

Hobbies: reading, movies, softball

Favorite Sports Movie: Hoosiers

Jon Solomon excerpted from the Anderson Independent-Mail, 2003:

We like Radio because of who he is, yes. There he is every Friday night, funny and caring, leading cheers in the stands and tending to injured players on the sideline – the constant showman proving he can live a good life in spite of his diminished mind.

We love Radio because we recognize those traits.

Anderson, South Carolina might be perceived as behind the times. The Confederate flag still flies on our Statehouse’s grounds, traffic jams consist of sitting through two left-turn lights on Clemson Boulevard, and nonexistent street lamps make our city anything but electric.

But we get Radio. You can’t deny us that. We’ve been able to get him for decades now, and we love that no one tunes in to hear Radio like us.

If that sounds a tad self-centered about a community, so be it. Anderson is growing bigger by the day; shopping centers, steakhouses and movie theaters have commercialized the community into Everywhere America. Radio still distinguishes us, we tell ourselves.

Our relationship with a mentally retarded black man, beginning when a white football coach discovered Radio loitering around T.L. Hanna High School practices, speaks to our values. It reminds us of words we learned from our mother: tolerance, humility, dedication, compassion.

Communities can be built on those words alone. Had teachers, administrators, coaches and students at Hanna not accepted those principles to heart unconditionally, Anderson would be a poorer place.

Life is short, so, so short. Radio was dealt a bad hand. He is a high school junior for life with limited thinking abilities, a stubborn attitude and a gift for living. Harold Jones, a teacher first and a football coach second, was wise enough to see the latter and gave Radio a home when others would not.

Q. What are you working on?

A. We’re doing a project on the quality of education college athletes get. It’s still in its early stages. It could go in many different directions.

Q. How would you describe your job as an enterprise reporter?

A. Much different. My working hours are more normal – which is nice. When I covered the Clemson beat for seven seasons I had a lot of project ideas but no time to do them. I was doing two stories a day, traveling, and working 70-80 hours a week. Then I come to a job like this, moving out of state, and have to develop new sources, and it’s ironic, because I have more time but the ideas don’t flow as much because you’re not on the beat. If there were some way to combine both it would be amazing.

Q. Why did you move from The State to Birmingham?

A. It was a chance to work on in-depth stories and tackle issues I just didn’t have time to do.

Q. What was it like covering Clemson in a medium-size market?

A. The Clemson beat and South Carolina beats are more competitive than people realize. You’ve got the Greenville News, the Charleston Post and Courier, The State, and Anderson. Plus fan websites, rivals.com and scout.com.

Q. What’s it like competing against rivals.com and scout.com?

A. They operate with a much different mentality. They’re constantly putting up minutiae they advertise as breaking news – tiny little details. It’s great for die-hard fans, but newspapers only have so many inches. Newspapers can’t offer as much detail – they have to offer perspective. We offer a filter – here is what you really need to know.

Mostly they’re competing against each other, and it’s more cutthroat. A lot of their key sources are coaches on staff. Their biggest thing is recruiting and committing. When someone commits they get a heads up. If they cross the coaches with a story they get cut out. You won’t find them writing critical or analytical stories.

Q. Won’t that limit their appeal?

A. Maybe to the mainstream. Their lifeblood is recruiting. And they have a message board – fans read it for rumors and trash talk.

Q. Couldn’t newspapers do that?

A. Newspapers are slowly starting to do that. At The State we had a Q&A forum for the beat reporters. We got questions and could answer them when we wanted to. It was a good dialogue with readers and let them see how we went about doing our work. I think it opened their eyes about how and why we do things.

Q. Do you worry about what rivals.com and scout.com are posting?

A. You have to. I don’t now – which is a relief. I’m not constantly checking Internet sites and boards. It’s a must today. You feel slimy for doing it and you feel stupid for making a call based on something you saw but if you don’t you risk seeing it in somebody else’s story.

Q. That sounds harrowing?

A. It is. When I was a beat reporter I would wake up and go to other newspapers and kick myself when I got beat. Then I went to message boards and websites. Often I would go late at night. Sometimes you make a call at 10 or 11 o’clock. Newspapers are starting to post news on a 24-hour news cycle. They’re still trying to find a balance of what is breaking news and what isn’t. If someone is demoted to second string is that breaking news?

Q. What kind of hours are beat reporters expected to work?

A. I have all the respect in the world for beat reporters. They’re the lifeblood of the sports section. Even now they’re the ones I call to set up stuff and get background. They’re working crazy hours.

Q. Are they paid for it?

A. I wouldn’t say so. That’s probably why you see so much turnover. That’s why I left. But the hours are more of a problem than the pay. Although I will say that employers are good about giving comp time and being flexible. But I remember covering Clemson, I had a week off in the summer, and I just couldn’t remove myself from the beat. I was still checking stuff and making calls. The only way I could forget it was to be out of town.

It takes a special mentality to be a beat reporter. You have to be a grinder and be competitive, too. You have to take it to heart if you get beat. You want to go out and get them back.

Q. Does the public have a positive view of sports media?

A. The public always feels sports media is not covering their team enough – and not positively enough.

Q. Does the public feel a connection to sports media?

A. Maybe the columnists. They see their faces and hear their voices. And now more columnists are on TV and radio. And in some ways columnists play up to that. Columnists now – and I don’t want to generalize – are caricatures. They’re so opinionated. They have to have a take on everything. Aren’t some issues gray instead of black and white – that require a debate instead of shouting? Internet and radio changes the way things are approached. Editors say that a story is “a good talker”. And a “talker” is what’s on the Internet message boards.

Somewhere along the line I hope we don’t lose the ability to create a reasonable and intelligent dialogue. And to do articles that make sense where we aren’t just shouting opinions.

Q. Why is it that one thing you never hear a columnist say is “I have no opinion on that”?

A. I went on a weekly sports opinion TV show in Birmingham. Before the show I told them I know nothing about Nascar and if it came up to go to the other guy. Nascar came up and the others discussed it. Then the host came to me and said “What about Nascar?” I said, “Is that the sport where they keep going round and round?” The host said, “That’s one way to put it”, and then he went on to something else.”

Q. Writers you admire?

A. Lots of beat writers. Ken Tysiac (Charlotte Observer). Joe Person (The State). Nationally, the Washington Post writers: Michael Wilbon, Sally Jenkins, Thomas Boswell. Rick Telander (Chicago Sun-Times). Joe Posnanski (KC Star). Ivan Maisel (espn.com). Dennis Dodd (CBS sportsline.com)

Q. Favorite sports book?

A. I read ‘Best American Sportswriting’ every year. It has so much material I’m not reading, from the magazines for instance. I like the stuff from Esquire and GQ, stuff that Charlie Pierce writes.

At Maryland I took a Baseball Literature class. I thought it would be a piece of cake but it was tough – I barely got a ‘B’. We read “Shoeless Joe”, “The Great American Novel” by Philip Roth, “Pafko at the Wall” by Don DeLillo, and “That Natural”.

Q. Do you read blogs?

A. I read the wizardofodds.blogspot.com. It’s about college football. I like the links they do for stories around the country. I read deadspin.com. I like their links, and I like to see the fans’ perspective. Some of it you have to take with a grain of salt. There’s lots of candor and honesty in blogs, in some ways more so than newspapers, because you have to stay objective and down the middle.

I’m trying to start a blog. I’m trying to convince my editor to let me go to a college football game each Saturday and blog on the game. And also about my AP college football ranking votes, as well as my Heisman vote. It would be about college football.

Q. Do the blogs make newspapers seem tame and boring?

A. Maybe. But I still think at the end of the day the newspapers have an advantage because of their established credibility. They have a brand name. They just have to bring it to the Internet. When I covered Clemson for Anderson I could break a story that would go unnoticed. But when I got to The State all the stories I broke were noticed. There is a credibility that comes with being the largest newspaper in the state. That’s worth something. We have to hang our hats on that, and provide perspective and context.

Q. Do you play fantasy sports?

A. Fantasy football. It’s addictive.

Q. Do fantasy sites provide different information than regular sports media?

A. No, but it’s condensed. They’re getting their information from regular sports media. They’re just putting it all in one place so you can get at it. Maybe newspapers should do that. The newspapers are still generating the information.

Q. Where would the fantasy sites be without newspapers?

A. That’s the funny thing. People say they don’t read newspapers anymore. But we’re still providing the bulk of the news. Radios pick up our stuff. Newspapers are still the lifeblood. They just have to be smarter about how to package themselves. That’s why we’re seeing more and more on newspaper websites. Washingtonpost.com is tremendous.

Q. Career goals?

A. I’d like to keep writing enterprise, and to find good interesting stories. Maybe one day be a columnist, or a takeout writer. This is really enough for now.

(SMG thanks Jon Solomon for his cooperation)

An Interview with Aaron Schatz

“People ask me how to get into what I do. The biggest thing is that nobody will pay attention to you unless you do something they can’t get in 100 different places. Another sports commentary blog is boring. I did something nobody else did. We differentiated ourselves.”

“If you listen to conventional TV analysts, they constantly talk about how it doesn’t matter that you’re getting only 2 or 3 yards per carry because you’re establishing the run. That’s nonsense. Winning causes runs – not the other way around.”

“Conventional reporters give you a sense of who the coaches will use. One of the variables is player usage – you can’t really guess…hopefully the reporter can give you a sense of that. But I don’t trust most reporters to talk about how you win games. Honestly, when they say “To win you have to do x” usually it’s just wrong.”

Aaron Schatz: Interviewed on September 22, 2006

Position: Editor-in-Chief, FootballOutsiders.com

Born: 1974, Princeton, NJ

Education: Brown, 1996, Economics

Career: WBRU Radio, Providence 1992-96; WKRO Radio, Daytona Beach, 1996-97; International Data Corp. (storage systems analyst) 1998-99; Venture Development Corp. (market research analyst studying car stereo systems) 1999-2000; Lycos (writer of Lycos 50) 2000-2004; FootballOutsiders.com 2003 –

Personal: Married, one daughter

Favorite Restaurant (home): Apsara’s, Providence. “Vietnamese restaurant in crack neighborhood, where Brown and Providence College students eat cheaply.”

Favorite restaurant (road): any sushi place

Favorite hotel: Hotel Monaco, Seattle.

Author of: “Pro Football Prospectus 2006”

Q. What is Football Outsiders?

A. An intelligent football analysis site – mostly about the NFL. In general the basis is advanced statistics we created that go far beyond anything else available. Also we have columns that are not advanced stats – one is film watching, another is NFL history.

Our writers combine stats with personal observations and jokes. I’m big on humor – it makes it more fun to read rather than dry numbers.

Q. What does Football Outsiders do that newspapers don’t?

A. Research and use of stats based on intensive research. I can’t tell you how many hours I’ve spent on the DVOA (defense-adjusted value over average) formula that is the main stat on our site. We question conventional wisdom and do research projects that go past what is happening this week. And we have discussions for our readers.

Q. Whose conventional wisdom?

A. Mainstream newspaper journalists. Mainstream web analysts. TV commentators. I started my analysis in 2002 because I disagreed with something someone in Boston wrote.

Q. Who did you disagree with?

A. Ron Borges (Boston Globe). He wrote that the Patriots did not return to the playoffs in 2002 because they could not establish the run. He was promoting the Raiders as a team that succeeded because it established the run. But the Raiders ran less in the first half than any other team that year – so how could he talk about them establishing the run? I knew Bill James used to go to box scores when he had questions about baseball – I decided to do the same thing. That’s how we got started.

Q. Name a conventional nostrum you challenge?

A. Establishing the run is nonsense – that’s the first one. Running does not win games. It’s running well that wins games. If you listen to conventional TV analysts, they constantly talk about how it doesn’t matter that you’re getting only 2 or 3 yards per carry because you’re establishing the run. That’s nonsense. Winning causes runs – not the other way around. Ron Jaworski, who is the most intelligent NFL analyst, says you score with the pass and you win with the run. The pass gives you the lead and the run solidifies it.

Q. Football Outsiders’ audience?

A. We get 12,000 visitors per day. We also sell copies of Pro Football Prospectus. This year the book peaked at 74 on the Amazon sales list. In 2005 it peaked at 182.

Q. Staff?

A. Counting the people who write regularly plus our cartoonist – about a dozen. I’m the only full time employee. Everyone else has another job or is in law school.

Q. What’s the profile of your typical reader?

A. People who love football and don’t accept the conventional wisdom that’s constantly recycled by standard football journalists, and who are looking for a place to the discuss the NFL that isn’t about gambling and without saying “My team rules” with five z’s at the end of the word.

Mostly professionals. Mostly men. Probably mostly white but who knows. For a while the joke was we had more black writers than readers because of Ryan Wilson. But I’ve seen blogs of our readers and they aren’t all white. A lot are fans of sports in general. A lot came to us because of their relationship with Baseball Prospectus and were looking for something similar in football. I would say we have a higher percentage of non-US football fans than newspaper websites, or ESPN. They find us looking for football info they can’t get in their countries. We have people from Mexico, Israel, England and Germany who are actively in our discussions.

Q. What about gamblers?

A. I’m sure they are. People ask me about it a lot. We have ads from sports books. I know people gamble. I don’t think it’s great but I don’t think it should be illegal. When I started this I said to myself “Hundreds of sites are devoted to gambling and fantasy football, but none to intelligently discussing how teams win games and build contenders.” So while I’m sure our stats are useful in gambling – and we have a column that picks against the spread – in general I don’t try to talk about it because I’m more interested in why teams are winning.

Q. What do newspapers do that you don’t?

A. I don’t go into the locker room to talk to coaches and players. Does that diminish our ability to analyze? When something occurs that I can’t solve with stats I say so. I said last year I couldn’t tell you the effect of the Terrell Owens thing on the Eagles because I’m not in the locker room and I don’t know the personalities.

The nice thing about the blossoming of the Internet is that someone with an interest in football can read the conventional reporters – the good ones like Mike Reiss (Boston Globe) and Mike Sando (Tacoma News Tribune) – and get that angle and then read us for the stats angle. No point in limiting yourself – you can read it all. I wouldn’t want people to only read us and not read conventional reporters.

Q. What do you get from conventional reporters?

A. Conventional reporters give you a sense of who the coaches will use. One of the variables is player usage – you can’t really guess – only Gary Kubiak will tell you which of those terrible running backs he will use this week. Hopefully the reporter can give you a sense of that. But I don’t trust most reporters to talk about how you win games. Honestly, when they say “To win you have to do x” usually it’s just wrong.

We do the power rankings for Foxsports.com based on our DVOA rankings. I have problems with subjective rankings – they’re so subject to the whims of the writers they’re useless. Dr. Z ranked St. Louis third in power rankings when they had won a single game at home by 8 points, completely throwing out everything we knew about the Rams, which was proven the next week when they lost to San Francisco. They had a lucky upset. I’m very big on not over-analyzing upsets. Many of our stats drain the effect of luck out of the performance of the team. In the future you have to figure luck will even out.

Q. How much football do you watch?

A. A lot more than I used to before I started doing this – all day Sunday and Monday night. Sometimes I re-watch one I taped it as part of a game-charting project. I’ll watch the AFC South because I’m writing about it next year for our book. During the week I watch things the NFL replays on the NFL network. I try to combine our stats with a visual.

Saturday is family day for me – I don’t watch much college football.

Q. How do you generate revenue?

A. We have advertisers. Sports books, ticket sales people, fantasy football sites. And also through blog ads, the new Johnny Unitas book, and ‘Catholic Match’ – a singles site.

Q. Are you credentialed by the NFL?

A. No. Some of my guys have talked about it. The NFL doesn’t credential websites – it’s really hard-core. But we’re not totally a website anymore. We write for the New York Sun and Foxsports.com, which is a major website. We went to the Combine in Indy this year – it was the first thing I ever reported in person. I didn’t meet as many coaches as I wanted to but I did meet a lot of national reporters.

Q. Who did you meet at the Combine?

A. I introduced myself to Peter King (Sports Illustrated) – he knew about us and liked us – he’s a reader of Baseball Prospectus. John Clayton (ESPN) was open to what we do. I disagree with a lot of analytical things Peter writes but I get so much from his column I find it very valuable. I like Clayton’s blog but now that I write for Fox I keep forgetting to check it.

Q. Who did you avoid?

A. I didn’t introduce myself to the writers we constantly criticize on the site. I didn’t introduce myself to Don Banks. He does a lot of articles for SI.com I don’t consider too good.

Q. Do you see Football Outsiders covering more events live?

A. I don’t think we would ever become a reporting site – it’s just not our thing. I do what I’m good at.

Q. Who do you read?

A. Gregg Easterbrook (NFL.com) – he was a major part of our becoming popular. He mentioned us in his last ESPN column in 2003 – before he got dumped. I came up with the idea of our readers writing his column for him – as a contest. Gregg found out about it and contacted me – so he wrote for us for two weeks before he went to NFL.com. He links to us and sends people to us.

Like others in my generation I like Bill Simmons – I throw a lot of pop culture into our site but I’m not trying to be Bill Simmons – I was a radio DJ before I was a writer. I read the weblogs of Mike Sando and Mike Reiss. I also have so much respect for Len Pasquarelli (espn.com) – his ability to put out non-fluff useful NFL reporting in the middle of March is astonishing. I’m talking about his reporting – not analysis – we often disagree with his analysis – but as a reporter he is amazing. He finds things when the league is at its slowest point.

Q. How did you build an audience?

A. The first person I e-mailed was Bruce Allen (Boston Sports Media Watch). I had written some things for him – I had to start somewhere. The

second was King Kaufman of salon.com. Next was Easterbrook, who mentioned us in his last column on espn.com before the mishigas.

People ask me how to get into what I do. The biggest thing is that nobody will pay attention to you unless you do something they can’t get in 100 different places. Another sports commentary blog is boring. I did something nobody else did. We differentiated ourselves. Give people a reason to read you when they could be reading a hundred thousand other things. That’s the thing about the Internet: There’s a lot to write about, but unless you’re as funny as Bill Simmons you better have a hook.

Q. What does it feel like to be quoted in a Frank Rich column?

(Frank Rich, NY Times, February 15, 2004: “That a single breast received as much attention as the first attack on United States soil in 60 years is beyond belief,” wrote Aaron Schatz, the columnist on the Lycos Top 50 site.)

A. That was my old life. You’ve got to understand the irony of that. The Lycos 50 had a dual purpose – internal market research and publicity. I was a publicity spokesman-type person – I did a lot of interviews on the most-searched topics of the week, which put Lycos’ name in the papers.

Janet Jackson was the biggest thing to promote the Lycos 50 in my time there. I had started Football Outsiders by that point and here I was reporting on a football-related thing for Lycos. A week later Lycos laid me off. I tried to get a job in market research or in the Internet industry but nothing came up. That’s when Football Outsiders became my whole thing.

(SMG thanks Aaron Schatz for his cooperation)

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Compared to Bill James by the New York Times Magazine, AARON SCHATZ is the creator of Football Outsiders and most of the original statistical methods presented on this website, as well as lead writer on the book Pro Football Prospectus 2006. He also writes the Monday Quick Reads column and Tuesday Power Ratings found on FOXSports.com
, and regular NFL analysis for the New York Sun
. Before Football Outsiders, Aaron spent five years on the radio at WBRU Providence and WKRO Daytona Beach, and three years as the writer and producer of the Lycos 50, the Internet’s foremost authority on the people, places, and things that are searched online. He has appeared on a number of TV and radio stations including ESPN, CNN, and NPR, and written for a number of publications including The New Republic
, The New York Times
, The Boston Globe
, Slate
, The American Prospect
, and the Boston Phoenix
. He lives in Framingham, Massachusetts with his wife and daughter and proudly sports a #93 Richard Seymour jersey on Sundays when he is often told “they can’t hear you in Foxboro through the television.”

February 15, 2004

My Hero, Janet Jackson

By FRANK RICH

IT may be a dirty job, but somebody’s got to do it. Two weeks after the bustier bust, almost no one has come to the defense of Janet Jackson. I do so with a full heart. By baring a single breast in a slam-dunk publicity stunt of two seconds’ duration, this singer also exposed just how many boobs we have in this country. We owe her thanks for a genuine public service.

You can argue that Ms. Jackson is the only honest figure in this Super Bowl of hypocrisy. She was out to accomplish a naked agenda — the resuscitation of her fading career on the eve of her new album’s release — and so she did. She’s not faking much remorse, either. Last Sunday she refused to appear on the Grammys rather than accede to CBS’s demand that she perform a disingenuous, misty-eyed ritual ”apology” to the nation for her crime of a week earlier. By contrast, Justin Timberlake, the wimp who gave the English language the lasting gift of ”wardrobe malfunction,” did as he was told, a would-be pop rebel in a jacket and a tie, looking like a schoolboy reporting to the principal’s office. Ms. Jackson, one suspects, is laughing all the way to the bank.

There are plenty of Americans to laugh at, starting with the public itself. If we are to believe the general outcry, the nation’s families were utterly blindsided by the Janet-Justin pas de deux while watching an entertainment akin to ”Little Women.” As Laura Bush put it, ”Parents wouldn’t know to turn their television off before that happened.” They wouldn’t? In the two-plus hours ”before that happened,” parents saw not only the commercials featuring a crotch-biting dog, a flatulent horse and a potty-mouthed child but also the number in which the crotch-grabbing Nelly successfully commanded a gaggle of cheerleaders to rip off their skirts. What signal were these poor, helpless adults waiting for before pulling their children away from the set? Apparently nothing short of a simulated rape would do.

Once the deed was done, the audience couldn’t stop watching it. TV viewers with TiVo set an instant-replay record as they slowed down the offending imagery with a clinical alacrity heretofore reserved for the Zapruder film. Lycos, the Internet search engine, reported that the number of searches for Janet Jackson tied the record set by 9/11-related searches on and just after 9/11.

”That a single breast received as much attention as the first attack on United States soil in 60 years is beyond belief,” wrote Aaron Schatz, the columnist on the Lycos Top 50 site. (Though not, perhaps, to the fundamentalist zealots who attacked us.)

For those who still couldn’t get enough, the cable news channels giddily played the video over and over to remind us of just how deplorable it was. Even though by this point the networks were blurring the breast with electronic pasties, there was still an erotic kick to be milked: the act of a man tearing off a woman’s clothes was as thrilling to the audience as whatever flesh was revealed therein, perhaps more so. But to say that aloud is to travel down a road that our moral watchdogs do not want to take. It’s the unwritten rule of our culture that the public is always right. The ”folks,” as Bill O’Reilly is fond of condescending to them, are always the innocent victims of the big, bad cultural villains. They’re never complicit in the crime. The idea that the folks might have the free will to tune out tasteless TV programming or do without TV altogether — or that they might eat up the sleaze, with or without young ‘uns in the room — is almost never stated on television, for obvious reasons of fiscal self-interest. You don’t insult your customers.

Since the public is blameless for its role in creating a market for displays like the Super Bowl’s, who should be the scapegoat instead? If you peruse Mr. O’Reilly’s admonitions in his first three programs dealing with the topic, or the tirades of The Wall Street Journal editorial page and right-wing direct-mail mills like the Parents Television Council and Concerned Women for America, you’ll find a revealing pattern: MTV, CBS and their parent corporation, Viacom, are the exclusive targets of the invective. The National Football League is barely mentioned, if at all. To blame the country’s highest-rated sports operation, after all, might risk insulting the football-watching folks to whom these moral watchdogs pander for fun and profit.

But the N.F.L. is in the sex business as assiduously as CBS and MTV, and for the same reason: it wants those prurient eyeballs. It’s now been more than a quarter-century since Super Bowl X, when the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders first caught the attention of the nation. ”The audience deserves a little sex with its violence,” Chuck Milton, a CBS sports producer, said back then.

The N.F.L. has since worked tirelessly to fill that need. This year was not the first MTV halftime show that the league has ordered to try to expand its aging audience beyond the Levitra demographic. The first such collaboration, Super Bowl XXXV three years ago, featured Britney Spears all but falling out of a halter top and numbers in which both Mr. Timberlake (then appearing with ‘NSync) and Nelly grabbed their crotches. There was, to my eye, twice as much crotch-grabbing then as there was this year, but that show generated no outrage whatsoever.

It did, however, attract two million more viewers than the game itself. The N.F.L. wanted more of the same for 2004, which is why the league’s commissioner, Paul Tagliabue, released a statement saying, ”We’re pleased to work again with MTV” when announcing the encore. Or pleased up to a point. When MTV proposed that part of the show be devoted to a performance of the song ”An American Prayer” by Bono to increase awareness of the horrific AIDS epidemic in Africa, the N.F.L. said no — even though Bono had done the league the favor of giving the 2002 Super Bowl halftime show a dignified musical tribute to the victims of the 9/11 attacks.

The mention of a sexually transmitted disease might dampen the libido of the salacious MTV show that the N.F.L. wanted this year and wanted so badly that the league remained silent even when MTV’s pregame publicity promised that the performance would contain ”some shocking moments.” As one participant in the production told me, the N.F.L. saw ”every camera angle” at the show’s rehearsals and thus was no less aware of its general tone than CBS and MTV were. You don’t hire Ms. Jackson, who’s been steadily exposing more of her breasts for over a decade on magazine covers, to sing ”Rock Your Body” if you have a G-rated game plan. Nonetheless, Joe Browne, the league’s flak, pleaded total innocence after the event, releasing a hilarious statement that the N.F.L., like the public, was the unwitting victim of a show that it had both commissioned and helped supervise: ”We applaud the F.C.C.’s investigation into the MTV-produced halftime. We and our fans were embarrassed by the entire show.”

That investigation, piggybacked by last week’s Congressional hearings, is an election-year stunt as full of hot air as the Bud Light horse flatulence ad. ”Like millions of Americans, my family and I gathered around the television for a celebration,” declared Michael Powell, the F.C.C. chairman, upon announcing that the entire halftime would be examined. A celebration of what, exactly? Didn’t Mr. Powell, the nation’s chief television regulator, watch the previous MTV halftime show?

He promises to conduct the investigation himself — a meaningless gesture, though it may gain him an audience and perhaps a photo op with Ms. Jackson. Mr. Powell’s real agenda here is to conduct a show trial that might counter his well-earned reputation as a wholly owned subsidiary of our media giants. Viacom has been a particularly happy beneficiary of the deregulatory push of his reign, buying up every slice of the media pie that’s not nailed down. Should CBS be found guilty of ”indecency” by the feds, the total penalty would amount to some $5 million, roughly the price of two 30-second Super Bowl commercials. Congress’s new push to increase those fines tenfold is just as laughable. Viacom took in $26.6 billion last year.

Not for nothing did the company’s stock actually go up the day after the Super Bowl. The halftime show was great merchandising for both MTV and CBS, the go-to network for ”Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show.” Not to be left without a piece of the action, even NBC got into the act. Citing the Jackson flap, it decreed that two split-second shots of an 80-year-old woman’s breast in an emergency room sequence in ”E.R.” be excised. But the ”E.R.” star Noah Wyle then went on NBC’s ”Today” show the morning of the broadcast to joke about the decision, and the network-owned NBC affiliate in New York used the banned breast as a promo for its post-”E.R.” news broadcast: ”What you won’t see on tonight’s episode of ‘E.R.’ — at 11!” Thus did NBC successfully transform its decision not to bare geriatric flesh into a sexual tease to hype ratings. This is true marketing genius, American-style.

What’s next? Some are predicting that all the tape delays being injected into TV events to pre-empt future wardrobe malfunctions will be the death of spontaneous, live TV. But the moment an awards show takes a ratings hit, this new electronic prophylactic will be quietly abandoned by the networks even faster than the N.F.L.’s vague threat not to collaborate with MTV next year.

Ms. Jackson, the biggest winner in this whole escapade, is already back on the air. Her official rehabilitation began right after the Super Bowl, when BET started broadcasting a 10-part series of ”special Black History Month” spots in which she profiles historical luminaries like Harriet Tubman, Paul Robeson and Sidney Poitier.

”Her tone is serious and focused, with the air and diction of a seasoned lecturer,” says the network’s news release, which also notes that ”the spots feature Ms. Jackson clad in classic black.” Wasn’t her Super Bowl dominatrix costume classic black as well? Well, never underestimate the power of synergy. BET is another wholly owned subsidiary of Viacom.

The Search Engine as Crystal Ball

To take the pulse of popular culture, no search site analyzes the queries tapped into its search box as single-mindedly as Lycos, the portal owned by Terra Lycos. One employee, Aaron Schatz, writes a daily report that spots trends, called the Lycos 50, and also compiles regular lists of the most-searched-for terms. Those queries can offer a fascinating glimpse into the often mysterious rise and fall of consumer interests. [C10.]

KEEPING SCORE; When Flags Fly, the Referees’ Habits May Be the Reason

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By AARON SCHATZ

Published: August 13, 2006

When the Giants hired Tom Coughlin as coach in January 2004, one of his stated goals was to instill discipline in his players. The Giants had ranked third among all N.F.L. teams in total penalties the year before, and that was unacceptable to Coughlin and to Giants fans.

In Coughlin’s first year, it seemed as if his tough-minded approach to rules and practices might bear fruit. The Giants ranked 11th in total penalties, including those declined or offsetting.

But if Coughlin’s disciplinarian approach helped, it did not help for long. Last year, the Giants were penalized 167 times, tied with the Oakland Raiders for second most in the league behind the Arizona Cardinals. Left tackle Luke Petitgout earned 15 flags on his own, making him the second-most penalized player in the league.

The problem came to a head in November, when the Giants lost to the Seattle Seahawks, 24-21, in overtime. Jay Feely missed a field-goal attempt to win in regulation, and two more in overtime, but it never should have been that close.

The Giants gained 413 yards in regulation, compared with 297 for the Seahawks. But they kept giving back that yardage with penalties: 19 in all, 16 of which were accepted for a total of 114 yards. Petitgout was called for five false starts, and his linemate David Diehl had three false starts and a flag for holding.

But were Petitgout, Diehl and the other Giants entirely to blame for their performance? There are a number of factors that determine how many penalties will be called in an N.F.L. game, and the discipline of the penalized team is just one. Analysis of all regular-season games from the past four years shows that the habits of the officials calling the game have as much impact as a team’s ability to avoid penalties.

The Giants’ loss to Seattle provides a good example. Larry Nemmers was the referee that day, and Nemmers and his crew doled out more penalties per game than any other crew in the National Football League last year: 20.6, significantly ahead of second-place Ed Hochuli’s 19.1 penalties a game. Nemmers called the Giants for 19 penalties, but he also flagged the Seahawks 13 times. That was a season high for Seattle, which ranked 29th in total penalties over 16 regular-season games.

On the other extreme was Bill Vinovich, whose crew called only 12.3 penalties a game. In one San Diego-Oakland contest, Vinovich called three total penalties between the two clubs. The Raiders committed at least seven penalties in every other game last year.

The Giants’ high number of penalties may be largely attributable to the officiating crews that were randomly assigned to their games. The Giants may have finished second in penalties, but they also ranked first in opponent penalties, and by a hefty margin. In fact, the Giants’ opponents had more penalties (170) than the Giants (167). This indicates that referees in Giants games were calling penalties on everyone.

Oakland and Arizona, on the other hand, were among the top three most penalized teams last season, but they ranked near the bottom in opponent penalties. That indicates that the Raiders and the Cardinals, not the referees, were the reason for all the flags.

The average N.F.L. team was penalized 8.5 times a game last year; the Giants drew at least 10 penalties in 10 games, and their opponents drew at least 10 penalties in 11 games. Seattle was one of four teams that marked its season high in penalties in a game against the Giants.

This tendency for highly penalized teams to also draw a lot of penalties was even stronger two years ago. Arizona led the league in both penalties and opponent penalties in 2004; the Jets and the Seahawks, ranked first and second in fewest penalties, were ranked the same way in fewest opponent penalties.

The habits of N.F.L. referees and their officiating crews, for the most part, stay consistent from year to year. Nemmers was third in penalties per game in 2004, and ranked first in penalty yards per game the past two seasons. Gerry Austin and Walt Anderson ranked first and second in fewest penalties in 2004, and tied for second behind Vinovich for fewest penalties in 2005.

Officiating crews also differ in their predilection to call certain penalties and not others. Over the past three years, Hochuli’s crew has called 193 false-start penalties, while Jeff Triplette’s crew has called only 95, despite the same number of games. On the other hand, Triplette led the league in calling defensive pass interference two of the past three seasons, and is annually among the leaders in calling offensive holding.

No matter which teams draw Nemmers as the referee for their opening-week game, they can count on a lot of penalties. The commentators will say the penalties show that the teams are showing early-season jitters. In reality, they may show that Nemmers and his crew are in midseason form.

Aaron Schatz is the lead author of ”Pro Football Prospectus 2006.”

An Interview with Peter Schmuck

“I’m pretty sure the distinctiveness of the name has helped me throughout my career. It also has given me a thicker skin – in a ‘Boy Named Sue’ kind of way – in a business where that isn’t a bad thing to have.”

“I was always into humor, so I’d say my biggest influence from a sports and column perspective was Jim Murray, though I certainly don’t write like he did. It was just great to work in the same press box with him for a few years and get to know him. “

Peter Schmuck: Interviewed on December 2, 2008

Position: columnist, Baltimore Sun; talk show host, WBAL radio

Born: 1955, Southern California

Education: Cal State Fullerton, English

Career: Orange County Register 1978-1990; Baltimore Sun 1990 – ; WBAL radio 2003-

Personal: Married, two children.

Favorite restaurant (home): P.F. Chang’s, Baltimore

Favorite restaurant (away): Captain Jack’s, Sunset Beach, Calif.

Favorite hotel: Marriott Eastside, New York, “Great location – classic Manhattan charm.”

Peter Schmuck, excerpted from the Baltimore Sun, November 2, 2008:

News item: The Orioles will hold a rally this month to introduce the team’s new uniforms for the 2009 season. The road uniform is expected to have “Baltimore” on the front of the jersey.

My take: That’s great, but when it’s all said and done, I think fans are going to care more whether “Roberts” and “Teixeira” are on the back of a couple of them.

News item: The Philadelphia Phillies won the World Series on Wednesday night after waiting 46hours between the top of the sixth inning and the bottom.

My take: Honestly, it was a very entertaining 3 1/2 -inning game, and it ended early enough for school kids to actually watch the Phillies’ celebration. That’s important because most of those kids will probably be collecting Social Security the next time a team in Philadelphia wins a world title.

News item: The Orioles still have not firmed up their plans for a permanent spring training site. They’re expected to be in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., next spring but have made no commitment to train anywhere in 2010. The most likely location still appears to be the Dodgertown complex in Vero Beach, Fla.

My take: In the most likely scenario, however, the Orioles will try to play Vero Beach off the soon-to-be-vacant complex in Sarasota, Fla., and end up without a permanent resolution to a situation that has been unsettled since – believe it or not – 1990.

Bonus my take: Based on conversations with several people who have attempted it, negotiating with Peter and John Angelos is like trying to eat soup with a fork.

News item: Hundreds of thousands of Phillies fans lined the streets Friday for the city’s first world championship parade in 25 years.

My take: Now, let me get this straight. It was Halloween and everyone in Philadelphia was dressed up like a winner? I’m confused.

News item: New San Francisco 49ers coach Mike Singletary took some heat last week after dropping his pants as part of a halftime rant during his head coaching debut last Sunday.

My take: I’ve got no problem with that, and I bet the great halftime motivator Knute Rockne wouldn’t have a problem with it, either. If the players don’t want to see it happen again, they need to get out there and win one for the zipper.

News item: The Green Bay Packers have signed quarterback Aaron Rodgers to a contract extension that calls for him to make more than $11 million per year through the 2014 season.

My take: The Pack would have locked Rodgers up for longer, but they’re pretty sure they can persuade Brett Favre to come back in 2015 if there’s a problem.

News item: Agent Leigh Steinberg, who was the inspiration for the movie Jerry Maguire, was arrested in Southern California last week on charges of being drunk in public.

My take: I heard he had the occifer at “Hello.”

Q. On your Facebook page you write: “I‘m the only person in the world who thinks it was a big advantage to grow up with the last name Schmuck.” Can you explain this, as well as the bit of history with the California Department of Motor Vehicles?

A. Well, I’m pretty sure the distinctiveness of the name has helped me throughout my career. It also has given me a thicker skin – in a ‘Boy Named Sue’ kind of way – in a business where that isn’t a bad thing to have.

In 1980, my girlfriend at the time applied for a vanity license plate with my last name on it. The California Department of Motor Vehicles rejected the request and sent me a letter saying that the plate I had chosen was in bad taste and offensive to public decency. The story made the wires and I spent the day doing a few dozen talk radio interviews. The DMV, faced with the embarrassing publicity, relented and sent me the license plate, which I displayed proudly for years in California.

Q. Your career started in print but now you’re a multi-platform performer? How did you make the leap? How would you characterize your radio voice and your screen presence?

A. I got asked to do some radio and TV after I came to Baltimore. I had never done more than an occasional guest shot in California. I was pretty raw at first, but you eventually get more comfortable. I don’t think I have a very good radio voice, but the station manager keeps asking me to do more shows, so I guess it doesn’t grate as bad on everybody else as it does when I hear a recording of it.

Don’t really know what kind of TV presence I have, but I usually know my stuff when I’m on and am fairly articulate. My favorite TV appearance was on “Hardball” with Chris Matthews when I debated Jose Canseco and his lawyer during the steroid fiasco. The lawyer tried to cast Jose as a whistleblower, and I said ‘The guy supplied steroids to other players and bragged about it in his book. The neighborhood I grew up in, we didn’t call that a whistleblower. We called that guy a drug pusher.’ The lawyer sputtered that I couldn’t call his client a drug pusher on TV. I said, ‘I’m sorry counselor, I just did.’

Q. You were pretty tough on a congressional panel last January for failing to call MLB players to testify about steroids. Looking back, how do you grade your own reporting and writing on steroids?

A. I think I did a pretty good job on the explanatory part of it, though I wasn’t involved in a lot of investigative work. I had more to do with the ephedra controversy after the death of Baltimore Orioles pitcher Steve Bechler. But the week of the infamous Mark McGwire congressional hearings, I ripped the committee for making a backroom deal not to make McGwire answer any direct questions about his steroid usage. I thought it was going to be a grandstanding dog and pony show. I had to admit afterward – well afterward – that the congressional meddling did lead to a much tougher steroid testing program in baseball.

Q. How did you learn to write? Who were your influences? What do you try to accomplish with a column and how do you know if it works?

A. I guess it came sort of natural to me. My mother gave me a portable typewriter when I was a kid and I liked to simulate news stories and write phony TV scripts. I had a high school English teacher take an interest in me and help me refine my writing style, then ended up on my college newspaper.

I was always into humor, so I’d say my biggest influence from a sports and column perspective was Jim Murray, though I certainly don’t write like he did. It was just great to work in the same press box with him for a few years and get to know him.

Q. Who and what do you read to keep up with sports?

A. I’m really not a guy who faithfully reads certain writers and columnists and not others. I read through several of the sports internet sites pretty much every day and, obviously, pay attention to what writers like Buster Olney (espn.com) and Ken Rosenthal (foxsports.com) are doing, since they dig stuff up. I’ll pop into some of the fan message boards once in awhile to see what the pulse of the internet is on a certain subject. My guilty pleasure is T.J. Simers (LA Times), who is the columnist I would be if I had the guts.

These days, when I read something on paper, it’s usually a novel – either contemporary or classic.”

Q. The Orioles have been lousy for years, while the Ravens have been generally good. Which inspires better columns?

A. My philosophy has always been, I don’t care if a team is very good or very bad, as long as it is either very good or very bad. The worst thing for a columnist is to get stuck in the middle.”

Q. Your blog is called “The Schmuck Stops Here”. What exactly does that mean?

A. It’s a play on my name and the old Harry Truman line, “The buck stops here.” Taken literally, it’s the site on the internet where I stop several times a day to interact with readers. So far, it has been fairly successful, but I’m still pretty new to the whole blogging thing. The future is on the internet and I want to have a future, so it seemed like a good idea.

Q. Fantasy byline: JJ Putz as told to Peter Schmuck. What kind of story would it be?

A. I don’t have to speculate on this. I interviewed J.J. for a column that I hoped would be a funny account of two guys talking about the pitfalls of having funny surnames. He was no help, however, claiming that he never got ribbed about his name because it was pronounced Pootz. If I recall, in the column I wrote that I didn’t know which bothered me more – the fact that he wouldn’t own up to the correct pronunciation of his name or that I never thought to tell everyone my last name was Schmook.

Peter Schmuck, Baltimore Sun, August 5, 2008:

Mariners reliever J.J. Putz pronounces his surname with a long “U” sound; why didn’t the author think of that earlier?

Seldom does a Seattle series go by that I don’t get several e-mails or personal entreaties to interview reliever J.J. Putz. And, of course, this is understandable because of the similar ridiculousness of our respective surnames.

Some of you probably remember that I did just that a couple of years ago for a column in The Sun. I approached J.J. in the Mariners clubhouse and introduced myself and expected some kind of reaction when he heard my last name, but he just stared at me as if I had just surfed back from Gilligan’s Island.

No problem. I explained to him that because I was a semi-respected journalist with a very silly name and he was an up-and-coming baseball star with a silly name, we should be having a bonding moment of mutual understanding after mutual lifetimes of middle school taunts and rebuffed marriage proposals.

When he finally figured out what I was talking about, he politely informed me that no natural kinship existed between us because his last name is not pronounced the way it would seem by the spelling. It is pronounced with a longer “U” sound (Pootz) and he was never the object of junior high or any other kind of name-related ridicule.

I suppose I should be happy for him, but if I recall the column I wrote at the time, I just felt stupid that it never occurred to me to tell everyone my last name is Schmook.

Peter Schmuck, Baltimore Sun, April 6, 2008:

News item: Seattle Mariners closer J.J. Putz has been placed on the 15-day disabled list with a rib cage injury.

My take: As you know, J.J. would be one of my favorite players if he would embrace his funny name and stop insisting that it isn’t pronounced the way we all know it should be. If I can be a sanctimonious Schmuck, he can be an unapologetic Putz.

Peter Schmuck, Baltimore Sun, May 28, 2005:

I also got several e-mails asking if I was going to interview J.J. Putz while the Mariners were in town, but that ship has sailed. I tried to bond with Putz when the M’s passed through Baltimore last year, but he wouldn’t play along.

The guy continues to insist that his name is pronounced with a longer “U” sound, rendering moot the semantic connection between Putz and Schmuck. This is a big disappointment for those of us who are defiantly proud of our ridiculous names.

Peter Schmuck, Baltimore Sun, September 27, 2004

It’s always fun to watch politicians stumble over sports, and both John Kerry and George Bush delivered Page 2 moments earlier this month.

Kerry may have lost some of the Green Bay Packers vote when he referred to their home stadium as Lambert Field, while President Bush was in nearby St. Cloud, Minn., making a speech at Dick Putz Stadium.

That’s right, the stadium that houses the St. Cloud Riverbats is named after someone named Dick Putz (definitely no relation).

Peter Schmuck, Baltimore Sun, August 4, 2004:

IT HASN’T BEEN easy going through life with a built-in nickname, but when the Seattle Mariners arrived in town, I thought I finally had found someone else who could feel my pain.

The Mariners have a relief pitcher named J.J. Putz, a young right-hander who I was sure would be able to identify with my lifelong struggle to order a pizza over the phone.

No such luck. J.J. claims his surname is pronounced with a slightly longer “u” – so that it sounds more like “puts” than “putts.” That’s his story, and he’s sticking to it.

“He’s in denial,” said Orioles play-by-play man Joe Angel.

I don’t know what bothers me more – the fact that he won’t admit to the real pronunciation or that I never thought of telling people that my last name is Schmook.

(SMG thanks Peter Schmuck for his cooperation)

An Interview with Alan Schwarz

“…my job would be to gather information on — in this case — the causes and effects of brain injuries among football players, not to assess any marketing hit the league might sustain as a result. That being said, to steal from P.T. Barnum, it seems to me that few if any industries have ever gone broke by overestimating Americans’ zest for violence.”

“I have decided that given the fractured state of American media, and the impending demands that journalists create stories for delivery across a spectrum of platforms, I am better served not thinking of myself as a writer — though of course I am committed to that first — but as a content developer/provider, primarily print but audio and video as well. Journalists who fight that probably won’t be journalists for long.”

Alan Schwarz: Interviewed on April 27, 2007

Position: reporter, New York Times

Born: 1968, White Plains, N.Y.

Education: University of Pennsylvania, B.A., mathematics, 1990

Career: The National (Editorial Assistant, 1990); Baseball America (Senior Writer, 1991-2007), Inside Sports (Media Columnist, 1997-98), New York Times (contributor, 1998-2007, staff reporter, March 2007 –

Personal: married, one son.

Favorite restaurant (home): Ruth’s Chris Steak House, NY “I know it’s a chain, but it’s sinfully good every single doggone time”; Ivy’s Bistro, TriBeCa “I ate there right after 9/11 with a restaurant-reviewer friend, the review helped save the place, and I’ve been friends with the owner ever since”

Favorite restaurant (away): Wild Ginger, Seattle “incredible Asian/fusion food, great atmosphere, referred there by ESPN’s Jim Caple”

Favorite hotel: Renaissance Madison, Seattle “mostly because I love Seattle in the summer”

Author of: “Once Upon a Game”, 2007; “The Numbers Game”, 2004

Alan Schwarz excerpted from the New York Times, January 18, 2007:

Since the former National Football League player Andre Waters killed himself in November, an explanation for his suicide
has remained a mystery. But after examining remains of Mr. Waters’s brain, a neuropathologist in Pittsburgh is claiming that Mr. Waters had sustained brain damage from playing football and he says that led to his depression
and ultimate death.

The neuropathologist, Dr. Bennet Omalu of the University of Pittsburgh
, a leading expert in forensic pathology, determined that Mr. Waters’s brain tissue had degenerated into that of an 85-year-old man with similar characteristics as those of early-stage Alzheimer’s
victims. Dr. Omalu said he believed that the damage was either caused or drastically expedited by successive concussions Mr. Waters, 44, had sustained playing football.

In a telephone interview, Dr. Omalu said that brain trauma “is the significant contributory factor” to Mr. Waters’s brain damage, “no matter how you look at it, distort it, bend it. It’s the significant forensic factor given the global scenario.”

He added that although he planned further investigation, the depression that family members recalled Mr. Waters exhibiting in his final years was almost certainly exacerbated, if not caused, by the state of his brain — and that if he had lived, within 10 or 15 years “Andre Waters would have been fully incapacitated.”

Dr. Omalu’s claims of Mr. Waters’s brain deterioration — which have not been corroborated or reviewed — add to the mounting scientific debate over whether victims of multiple concussions, and specifically longtime N.F.L. players who may or may not know their full history of brain trauma, are at heightened risk of depression, dementia and suicide as early as midlife.

The N.F.L. declined to comment on Mr. Waters’s case specifically. A member of the league’s mild traumatic brain injury committee, Dr. Andrew Tucker, said that the N.F.L. was beginning a study of retired players later this year to examine the more general issue of football concussions and subsequent depression.

Q. Where is the NFL concussion/brain damage story headed?

A. By putting three stories on the front page this year, the Times clearly has evinced itself as committed to examining the risks, both understood and not, of playing football with respect to brain injuries. I’m afraid I can’t go into further details because your site is undoubtedly read by my competition.

Q. How has your coverage of NFL concussions/brain damage affected your perception of the game?

A. I really didn’t have any perception of football per se before I began my work. While I know my share about football through watching games over the years, my professional background has been almost exclusively covering baseball. I think it is a positive — for readers, the Times and the NFL — that my work on this topic began and continues with as clean a slate as could reasonably be expected.

Q. Could football lose audience if fans draw a causal relationship to brain damage – similar to boxing?

A. You are assuming that fan interest in boxing has declined because of the pugilistica dementia suffered by some of its participants. I don’t know that to be true. Beyond that, my job would be to gather information on — in this case — the causes and effects of brain injuries among football players, not to assess any marketing hit the league might sustain as a result. That being said, to steal from P.T. Barnum, it seems to me that few if any industries have ever gone broke by overestimating Americans’ zest for violence.

Q. Explain your use of video to complement your stories – what restrictions and gray areas exist? What multi-platform strategy would you recommend to a young journalist starting out today?

A. This is a fascinating new area that I have tried to learn quickly — basically to stave off my own professional obsolescence. As we all know, newspapers have had to adapt to demands of the market (particularly among youth) for multimedia content. Also, they don’t want to just listen to some Jewish guy from New York who couldn’t play sports to save his life prattle on about the games and personalities — they want to see and hear the players themselves.

So I decided about a year ago to learn how to cut and produce my own audio and video stories on my laptop, using software like Audacity and Adobe Premier. When I did an interview with Si Simmons, a 110-year-old former Negro Leaguer, for a print story in the New York Times, I brought along a video camera — and produced a 10-minute highlight reel for my website, alanschwarz.com. When I conducted interviews for my book of player memories (“Once Upon a Game”), I also produced audio clips so people could go to my site and hear the players talking rather than just reading their words on a page.

I have decided that given the fractured state of American media, and the impending demands that journalists create stories for delivery across a spectrum of platforms, I am better served not thinking of myself as a writer — though of course I am committed to that first — but as a content developer/provider, primarily print but audio and video as well. Journalists who fight that probably won’t be journalists for long.

Q. Who and what do you read in sports? Who were your writing influences?

A. The best baseball writer working today, bar none, has for years been Tom Verducci of Sports Illustrated. No one else mixes such precise reporting, grace, structure, humor and understanding of the game than him, and it’s not even close. Less known to most folks is the wonderful work done for 20 years by Jerry Crasnick (ESPN.com) and Jim Caple (ESPN.com). I have no formal journalism training at all – I was a mathematics major, for heaven’s sake – but in many respects those three guys taught me how to do this.

Other primary influences include the lyrics of Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs and Paul Simon, and the long and wonderful sentences of Scott Fitzgerald.

(SMG thanks Alan Schwarz for his cooperation)

An Interview with Tom Shatel

“I hate to say it, but the voices of sports columnists get a little bit lost these days, with cable, talk radio, and Internet.”

“It’s almost like fans want to be sportswriters, through the blogs.”

Tom Shatel. Interviewed August 23, 2006.

Position: Columnist, Omaha World-Herald.

Born: 1958, Tulsa, Okla.

Education: University of Missouri, BJ, 1980.

Career: KC Star 1980-90, Dallas Morning News 90-91, Omaha World-Herald 1991-

Personal: Married, two children.

Favorite Sports Movies: Caddyshack, Tin Cup, Hoosiers, Paper Lion.

Hobby: Golf.

Tom Shatel excerpted from the Omaha World-Herald, October, 25, 1995:

In his illustrious 23-year career as Nebraska’s head coach, Tom Osborne has made more than his share of good calls. This is not one of them.

I have always respected Osborne as a man and, secondly, as a football coach. But some of that respect was lost Tuesday when Osborne announced that Lawrence Phillips, who assaulted his ex-girlfriend on Sept. 10, was reinstated to the team and would be allowed to play Nov. 4 against Iowa State.

But I’ve lost even more respect for University of Nebraska-Lincoln officials, including Athletic Director Bill Byrne, who allowed Phillips to return this season. The University of Nebraska is less a quality institution today than it was yesterday. And Byrne less an athletic administrator today than yesterday.

One of the school’s students, a female, was beaten up by a fellow male student. One of Byrne’s female student-athletes was beaten up by one of his male student-athletes. And now we’re supposed to all return to the field and pretend this never happened.

….One thing is for sure: The rest of the country will see Osborne in a different light. Just months ago, the entire nation seemingly embraced him for a stately career of service to young people and the game of football. When the cleanest coach finally won the “Big One,” it gave America hope.

But today there is a spot on Osborne’s image. America is in no mood to tolerate domestic violence, especially this month, National Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Now Osborne has taken a young man who committed physical violence on a woman and returned him to the field in two months. Osborne says, “I can take the heat.” The heat will come, like never before.

Q. Which of your columns created the strongest response?

A. October, 1995, when (Nebraska football coach) Tom Osborne brought (running back) Lawrence Phillips back to the team (after a domestic violence incident). I said as gently as possible that it was a big mistake, that playing college football is a privilege, not a right, that you could accomplish the same thing by letting him practice if he needs structure, and by being around the team and going to study hall, that playing him sent the wrong message. I basically questioned the authority above him. That got some nice play. The majority of readers basically told me to shut up and sit down and leave town or whatever. One letter I got from a grandmother in Grand Island blamed it on the girl for getting Phillips in trouble.

I’ve talked with Tom about it since and totally believe he had the right motives – he did it for the right reasons. But I totally disagreed with him. The bottom line was Tom was trying to play him so he could get drafted and get the hell out of there.

Q. Did it change your approach to the job?

A. Not really. I was never told what to write here. I felt like I could say what I wanted. I think surviving that gave me a little more strength. I don’t flaunt that. I try to go the other way. I try to be less loud and offer more perspective. I don’t think we get enough perspective in journalism. Everything is way too loud – too much style and not enough substance. Does that make sense?

Q. Do columnists have to be moral and ethical judges?

A. That’s your job if you are a columnist. You’re not a reporter. You do it with less credibility than a priest or a judge. There’s so much out there now, I hate to say it, but the voices of sports columnists get a little bit lost these days, with cable, talk radio, and internet. It has changed the landscape of what we’re trying to do. It’s a lot different than 20 years ago.

Q. But isn’t the World-Herald still dominant?

A. This is one of the last bastions where a newspaper still is big. Everybody still reads it. Obviously small towns have Internet, but I think my voice is still bigger here than in other places. There isn’t much competition; we’re the only paper that circulates in the whole state. I think I’m the only full-time columnist in the state. There is talk radio in Omaha and blogs.

Q. How much impact do the blogs have?

A. A lot of fans put more stock in blogs than newspapers. It’s interesting to me. I read a lot of blogs and message boards. Some of these blogs are obsessed with getting things first. They want to break stories and they do. It happens. Their members know somebody and they get something. It’s almost like fans want to be sportswriters, through the blogs.

Q. Do you keep up with the blogs and message boards?

A. I like to see what the average fan is saying. Not that it affects what I write. I like to see what they’re saying. It’s like a giant sports bar. Or a bunch of small sports bars where people hang out and talk about football or sports. It’s fascinating. I hate to say it but in some cases our credibility is not what it used to be. It’s eroded.

A couple of years ago we had a story breaking here. Our sports editor said we’d hold off until the last edition, until after the TV news is over, and we’ll have a scoop. I said it will be on a website in an hour – don’t wait. We waited, and consequently we were last when we went up an hour later.

A lot of readers are going to rivals.com sites. Huskersillustrated.com is part of rivals. They do features and break news. Some of these guys help the coaches recruit, so they get scoops. They’re full-time staffers, but some of these guys are in bed with the schools and coaches.

Q. But their credibility will suffer in the long run, won’t it?

A. The public doesn’t care. People out there think huskersillustrated.com is the place to go if you want Nebraska news. It had a story today – an Arizona State quarterback is transferring to Nebraska. That’s reality. But it’s unfair if they’re in bed with the coaching staff and get special access. So it’s a different world. I think that’s where we’re going. Newspapers will exist for columns and perspective.

The other thing is if you go to J-school, be aware of this, franchises, pro sports franchises, are hiring writers who cover the teams for the websites. Jonathan Rand, who wrote a column for the KC Star, is covering the Chiefs for kcchiefs.com. What kind of access does he get? I’m wondering how long before the colleges start doing this. Before they say “we’re going to control all the information and you’re going to get what we want you to have.” Some coaches have websites – you have to monitor them to see when they break some news.

My question is “Who is the journalist?” The newspaper or the pro sports franchise? And these are guys who used to be on newspapers. The line is going to get very blurry. If you’re a fan are you going to the Boston Globe or to the Red Sox website? Hopefully you go to the Globe. It’s got one of the best sports sections around. I love to read Dan Shaughnessy and Bob Ryan.

There always will be a need for a columnist – that’s why I have a great job. But if you’re a beat writer you’re going up against rivals.com, mlb.com, kcchiefs.com, and a lot of different forces. How is the information being released in the future?

Q. But isn’t being first over-rated? What’s the difference if you post news 20 minutes earlier if your credibility is compromised?

A. I hope so. Would you rather be first or would you rather be the outlet that tells you why it happened and have the good in-depth interviews and great writing, plus the integrity and credibility? If I were the sports editor my tack would be to be best rather than first.

It’s a wacky world now if you want to be a sportswriter. And it’s changing by the year. I’m not trying to paint a scary picture.

Q. What do you read?

A. I dropped my subscription to SI because I wasn’t reading it anymore. Lots of stuff was old. I think they lost their fastball. I read espn.com. They have good writing and it’s right now. I love Rick Reilly and Gary Smith. But some stuff in SI, by the time it comes out, I’m on to the next deal.

Q. What about SI.com?

A. I read SI.com, sure. But the magazine is obsolete.

Q. Do you read ESPN the Magazine?

A. It has very good writing, too. But I always thought it was hard to read. I don’t know if it’s an ad or a story half the time. I do like the writing. But I’m not going to read Stuart Scott’s column, for god’s sake. They just hired Wright Thompson. They’re hiring very good writers.

Q. How do you stay abreast of the news?

A. Sportspages.com. If I want a column or a takeout on something that happened it’s right there. And espn.com. SI.com, CBS sportsline.com and foxsports.com all have the same stuff – basically they’re all doing the same quality. I go to espn.com out of a personal choice. I know a lot of their guys who cover colleges.

Q. Why doesn’t sportspages.com pick up World-Herald stories?

A. I don’t know. I e-mailed the guy who does that – Rich Johnson – and said I’d love to be on there occasionally. He said we needed to archive my columns but our website won’t do that.

Q. Does it have a regional bias?

A. Maybe the things we write about aren’t interesting to national people. They don’t do a lot of college stuff anyway. You don’t see a lot of Austin American-Statesman stuff.

Q. How powerful is sportspages.com in the industry?

A. It’s just a bookmark. I glance at the Top 10. I’m not interested in half the stuff. I read every sports section in the Big 12 every day. Topeka, Wichita, Boulder, Denver, Lawrence, Des Moines, St. Louis, KC. Some in the morning – some at night.

Q. Keeping up is a major task?

A. With two kids, yes. But look, in the old days I went to a bookstore in downtown Kansas City and bought week-old papers.

Q. It’s easier to be smarter today?

A. No excuse not to be.

(SMG thanks Tom Shatel for his cooperation)

TOM SHATEL

‘Osborne’s Decision Bad’

25 October 1995

The Omaha World-Herald

(Copyright 1995 Omaha World-Herald Company)

In his illustrious 23-year career as Nebraska’s head coach, Tom Osborne has made more than his share of good calls. This is not one of them.

I have always respected Osborne as a man and, secondly, as a football coach. But some of that respect was lost Tuesday when Osborne announced that Lawrence Phillips, who assaulted his ex-girlfriend on Sept. 10, was reinstated to the team and would be allowed to play Nov. 4 against Iowa State.

But I’ve lost even more respect for University of Nebraska-Lincoln officials, including Athletic Director Bill Byrne, who allowed Phillips to return this season. The University of Nebraska is less a quality institution today than it was yesterday. And Byrne less an athletic administrator today than yesterday.

Pretending One of the school’s students, a female, was beaten up by a fellow male student. One of Byrne’s female student-athletes was beaten up by one of his male student-athletes. And now we’re supposed to all return to the field and pretend this never happened.

There was plenty of time to deliberate this decision, plenty of time to mull the consequences. This was no knee-jerk reaction. But as soon as Phillips was reinstated as a student by the university on Monday, Interim Chancellor Joan Leitzel and Byrne stepped aside and let Osborne handle the tough decision, which was made in his mind long ago.

It’s not surprising Ms. Leitzel wouldn’t intervene; as an interim chancellor, this was one hot potato. But I thought Byrne would step in and hold up a stop sign. I thought wrong. As a UNL spokesperson said Monday, “Coach Osborne has the ability to suspend somebody from the team or bring somebody back.”

True. After all, Osborne is the football coach.

And maybe he’s a lot more, too.

‘Good Judgment’ “What I saw was 35 years of good judgment,” said Byrne, referring to Osborne, “and I had more access to information than the general public did. After I had access to that information, I was in complete agreement with Tom.

“This action doesn’t say what happened was right. This action says that if this had happened to Joe Q. Student, he would not be banned from extracurricular activities as long as he was a student.

“Lawrence has had sanctions and is continuing to have sanctions. Now the question will be, are those sanctions severe enough? That is a debatable point. Everyone who looks at the case will look at it a different way.”

What it looks like is carte blanche for future male students at Nebraska to harass or abuse females and get similar treatment. Byrne disagreed.

“This action does not condone what happened,” Byrne said. “This action says if you commit acts of violence, there will be sanctions. I believe the previous and ongoing sanctions justify his return.”

Restitution What we know is that Phillips must pay restitution for damage done at the apartment complex he broke into and medical or counseling fees for Kate McEwen. Those won’t be inexpensive. He also must participate in regular meetings with his counselor and psychiatrist and perform two hours of community service a week. And any further sanctions of the Student Code of Conduct “will result in significantly more severe sanctions.”

In other words, next time he may have to play on the scout team for two weeks.

If these are the university rules and sanctions, then they need to be updated. An action like this, whether premeditated or under “out-of-control” circumstances, should include a ban of all extracurricular activities – particularly for someone like Phillips, who was supposedly out of second chances. Expulsion may be a bit harsh. But maybe we should ask the victims of physical abuse and date rape about that.

So why would Osborne allow Phillips back? The image around the country will be that this is all about victories and championships, but that’s not even close.

This is all about Osborne, as college football’s Father Flanagan, looking at all the evidence and circumstances and trying to save a young life. This part of the job isn’t in his contract – Osborne offers it strictly out of his heart.

As Spencer Tracy said in the movie “Boys Town,”: “There is no bad boy.”

“Tom firmly believes in the inherent worth of young people and everyone has to have the opportunity to correct mistakes,” Byrne said. “This isn’t the Ayatollah regime around here. We don’t cut off hands, legs and feet.”

But Osborne said Phillips had been warned about staying away from McEwen and was out of chances when the incident occurred. Osborne‘s biggest mistake was initially dismissing Phillips, then reversing field and opening the door in order to give Phillips a carrot to shoot for.

Phillips‘ is a poignant story. He spent much of his childhood without parents, getting beaten down by life, without much female love to speak of. McEwen was apparently his first love, and he snapped. It’s a sad story. But, again, none of that excuses what he did.

And when Osborne says football is a “major organizing strength” in Phillips‘ life, it should be remembered that Phillips had football in his life the night he scaled a wall and dragged McEwen down the stairs.

Osborne is gambling that that won’t happen again, that weeks of counseling have changed a young man. He says, “I think we’ll see a little different person.”

We better see a lot different person.

One thing is for sure: The rest of the country will see Osborne in a different light. Just months ago, the entire nation seemingly embraced him for a stately career of service to young people and the game of football. When the cleanest coach finally won the “Big One,” it gave America hope.

But today there is a spot on Osborne‘s image. America is in no mood to tolerate domestic violence, especially this month, National Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Now Osborne has taken a young man who committed physical violence on a woman and returned him to the field in two months. Osborne says, “I can take the heat.” The heat will come, like never before.

Why bother? Because Osborne doesn’t care about the public outcry and won’t be swayed by the “popular thing.” Osborne has always marched to his own drummer, always been stubborn about his ways and morals. He listens to his conscience and it must be filled with emotion. On Tuesday, his voice quivered and nearly cracked when he talked about Phillips.

“I really, really tried to do the right thing,” Osborne said. “I’m prepared to live with it.”

He will have plenty of support in his home state, mostly from people who say “I trust Tom. Whatever he says is good enough for me.”

But from what I have heard and read in letters the past week, I also know that many other Nebraskans have lost some respect for Osborne today. That’s too bad. It just adds to the saddest story.

Perhaps the saddest part is that a young woman was violated here, then got lost in the debate.

Through it all, several people have wondered why Minnesota Vikings quarterback Warren Moon could beat his wife, apologize and play again without question, while Phillips is being held to another, higher standard. The best answer to that is that Phillips is still a college student and, hopefully, colleges are in the business of preparing America’s youth to become better people.

Today, the University of Nebraska has to ask itself if that is what happened here.

An Interview with Bud Shaw

“I noticed as the confrontation was developing that lots of players and media were moving away from where Albert (Belle) and I were standing. I could see one guy sidling toward me out of the corner of my eye. Finally Sandy Alomar Jr. rushed in and saved me from possibly being pile driven or hit with the roll of quarters Albert no doubt kept in his waistband for just such occasions.”

“It was then I turned to find Plain Dealer baseball writer Paul Hoynes at my side. Hoynsie is one of the greats. He also happened to play rugby at Marquette. I told him I appreciated him not moving away like everybody else and asked him what he was going to do if Belle started getting physical. He said, “Go for his legs.” He’s been my hero ever since.”

Position: Columnist, The Plain Dealer

Born: Aug. 23, 1954, Philadelphia

Education: Indiana University of Pennsylvania, 1976, B.S. Journalism

Career: Kittanning (Pa.) Leader Times, 1976-77; Johnstown (Pa.) Tribune Democrat, 77-78; Trenton (N.J.) Times, 78-80; Philadelphia Daily News 80-82; San Diego Tribune 1982-84; Atlanta Journal-Constitution 1984-89; The National Sports Daily 1989-91; The Plain Dealer 1991 –

Personal: Married, two children

Favorite Restaurant (home): Momocho, Ohio City – “mod Mex with any kind of guacomole you can imagine.”

Favorite Restaurant (away): P.F. Chang’s – “Hear me out. Yes I know it’s a chain but I’m vegetarian and they know their way around tofu”

Favorite Hotel: The Hotel del Coronado, San Diego

Bud Shaw’s ‘Sports Spin’, excerpted from The Plain Dealer, August 14, 2008:

Braylon Edwards will likely miss two exhibition games.

Edwards, needing stitches after teammate Donte Stallworth spiked him, might be a blessing for the Browns.

The NFL preseason is already too long. Whatever small setback Edwards might experience in either conditioning or in chemistry with quarterback Derek Anderson is offset by the fact that this injury reduces the chances of him suffering a more serious one – like having Shaun Rogers fall on him.

Part of growing up

Edwards Part II: Romeo Crennel gives new meaning to the phrase, “What, me worry?”

Crennel’s explanation for why Edwards was running in his socks along with teammates wearing spikes showed a lack of concern among other things.

“Kids are kids,” Crennel said. “You look at kids. They take their shoes off and run around all the time. . . We’ll educate him a little bit more and tell him about keeping his shoes on until he gets inside.”

Just for clarification, Edwards is 25.

Educational class topics over the next three weeks could include: “Running With Scissors – Why It’s a Bad Idea” and “You Can Put Somebody’s Eye Out With That”

Got an ID?

Legendary gymnastics coach Bela Karolyi believes some gymnasts on the gold-medal Chinese team are underage.

As long as the International Gymnastics Federation insists on a minimum age and only requires a government issued passport as proof, there will be questions about the “youth movement” in some countries.

China’s Deng Linlin (4-6, 68 pounds) and Jiang Yuyuan (4-7, 70 pounds) have raised suspicions, basically because they could fit on your dashboard.

“They are using half-people,” Karolyi told the Associated Press. “One of the biggest frustrations is, ‘what arrogance.’ These people think we are stupid.”

The two high chairs set up at China’s team meals did seem a dead giveaway.

What, no motoball?

The Beijing Games are draw-ing good ratings for NBC.

You know the reasons. Michael Phelps. The beauty of gymnastics and diving. Ratings should improve even more when track and field starts.

But there’s also a lot of unwatchable events, too.

Here’s my list of the worst Olympic sports, Summer and Winter, after covering three of each (Calgary, Seoul, Atlanta, Nagano, Sydney and Salt Lake City).

1. Shooting: Spectators sit in auditorium-like seating. The target is projected overhead for viewing. Think of the worst audio-visual class you’ve ever sat through.

2. Doubles luge: Really, get a room.

3. Greco-Roman wrestling: Apologies to Matt Ghaffari, but 30 seconds into heavyweight matches both big men are too slippery to grab. Sumo without the diapers.

4. Modern Pentathlon: The roots trace to 708 B.C. Now that’s modern.

5. Biathlon: Paint-ball guns aimed at each other would be an improvement.

Note: It’s not an Olympic sport, but the strangest international sport I’ve ever witnessed came during the inaugural Goodwill Games in Moscow in 1986 – motoball. Teams of motorcycle riders would advance an oversized soccer ball down the field and attempt to kick it in a goal. For some reason, no one ever shows up at goalie tryouts.

Say cheesy

The Spanish men’s basketball team is defending a team picture that is running as a full-page ad in Spain.

The photo shows all 15 players using their fingers to make their eyes look slanted while posing on a basketball court adorned with a Chinese dragon.

“We felt. . . it would be interpreted as an affectionate gesture,” Spain point guard Jose Manuel Calderon wrote on his ElMundo.es blog.

How warm and fuzzy. Calderon said the team took a cue from the photographer.

Who was the photog? Don Imus?

Q. Your ‘Sports Spin’ column reads like stand-up comedy. Does that come naturally? Do you have to be a smart aleck to be a sports columnist?

A. When I was asked to contribute a Page 2 column, I remember wishing I could print out the work of some guys I really admire in the business — Dave Kindred, Bob Verdi, Scott Ostler, Steve Hummer, Norman Chad, Ray Ratto, Mark Whicker – put it all under my pillow and wake up wittier by osmosis. Writing funny is difficult, a fact I prove twice a week. And in a newspaper that runs Chad, who makes it look easy, that may not be the smartest approach. I once followed Gary Smith on the Eagles beat at the Philadelphia Daily News. I have those same feelings of inadequacy now when I read the humor that other columnists, not to mention writers like David Sedaris, bring to the job

I don’t know if it’s a requirement to be a smart aleck but deep down I guess I’ve never been able to take sports all that seriously. So much about the oversized stage sports enjoys in our culture – thank goodness for that — and the egos involved invites you to look at it a little sideways. When I was at The National as the Chicago Bureau Chief I got to read Verdi and Bernie Lincicome regularly. Two approaches but the same bright, funny result.

Q. Did you write off the Indians prematurely? Will the real Indians please stand up?

A. I broke a 17-year streak and picked a local team to win a world championship in the pre-season. Of course, it hasn’t been difficult to avoid looking like a front runner in a town where the last title was 1964. But I thought the Indians could return to the World Series this season. So I wrote them in before I wrote them off. Injuries were a part of the reason for their collapse but as they proved in August when they not only were missing Travis Hafner, Victor Martinez and Jake Westbrook but had already traded away C.C. Sabathia, Casey Blake and Paul Byrd, they could’ve played competitive baseball much sooner. We should know by now that the real Indians do stand up, but only every other year or so.

Q. Is it touchy to ask why you didn’t go to Beijing? Did you wish you were there?

A. The Plain Dealer had three Olympic credentials but turned them back in to the U.S. Olympic Committee because of budget considerations. I was not scheduled to go. My Olympic flame isn’t quite extinguished but I covered my sixth Olympics in Salt Lake City in 2002 and haven’t felt a great desire to do another since. I think it’s a great event.

But I’ve long felt it was a tremendous TV show first and foremost, a TV show that hasn’t always translated to print. Of course, the Internet offers much more immediacy than we had as writers covering the Olympics in the 1980s and early 1990s. I was lucky enough to be in Calgary, Seoul, Atlanta, Nagano, Sydney and Salt Lake. I covered the Atlanta bid for the 1996 Games before leaving Atlanta for The National. It was a great experience. If I don’t go to another, well, three Winters and three Summers feels like a pretty good career sampler.

Q. You’re known for being a good interviewer. How do you get people to open up? Who was your toughest interview?

A. There’s a basic curiosity we all have or we wouldn’t have elected to go into sports writing. I think being a good interviewer – not that I’m sure I belong in that category – is a product of the jobs you’ve held. I was a beat writer first, then a takeout writer, then a columnist. I think beat work makes you comfortable with approaching players, coaches and other interview subjects because you have to do it daily. The takeout work I did in San Diego and Atlanta helped me look a little deeper into subjects,. Just the nature of that job allows you much more time to get to know people.

I found it a little unnerving in Atlanta where I worked for the late Van McKenzie who was willing to give you a lot of time to interview and write if he felt he’d see the benefits in the finished product. I’d go a few weeks or more without being in the paper and when I came into the office I knew people were thinking, “What a slacker, this better be good when he finally writes it.” It made you go back and make sure you got what you needed from the people you were talking to for the story.

Probably the toughest interview I ever did was with Bob Knight. A mutual friend – Dave Kindred – had smoothed the way for me with Knight. I knew that going in. But I wasn’t quite prepared for what that meant to Knight. Every time I asked a question he didn’t like, he’d lean in and say, “You know, don’t you, that there’s only one reason I’m even talking to you.” He was alternately charismatic and nasty. I felt I was talking to the smartest guy I’d ever met. But the bullying was always there and when the interview ended, he asked me if wanted to go do dinner with him and one of his coaches. I didn’t go. I’d already had enough of the Good Cop-Bad Cop treatment, all from the same guy.

Q. What do you look for in choosing your columns? Do website hits influence your choices?

A. Website hits haven’t really changed my approach. It has always been true in Cleveland that if you write about the Browns the response is often overwhelming. If you dropped the names “Kosar” Or “Modell” into a column on synchronized diving I’d bet you’d lead that day’s count in letters and phone calls.. And now if you update the references and can work in Brady Quinn’s name and the term “quarterback controversy” somewhere along the way, there’s no limit to the website hits you’d get.

Really, other than being aware of people’s passions – Browns, LeBron, anything anti-Steelers – I don’t purposely write things just to get a reaction. Maybe I should but it’s always felt contrived to me to be that columnist who screams for the sake of screaming – not to mention that you end up contradicting yourself before too long.

Q. Your most controversial column? Any columns you wish you hadn’t written?

A. I have a different answer to this than some of the PD readers might have. I still get mail from a guy who reminds me that I wrote that Manny Ramirez was such a disaster fundamentally as a rookie that he should be sent back to the minors even if it meant playing Wayne Kirby in his place. I don’t remember suggesting that Manny be banished to Triple A for a period no shorter than the rest of his life until he could learn to lay down a good squeeze bunt but I’ll take the hit on that one. That was shortsighted. Of course, when Wayne Kirby goes into Cooperstown, who will have the last laugh then? Huh? Right. Me.

A column I always consider “controversial” was one I wrote on Albert Belle during his 50-homer, 50-double season. I thought it was controversial because it led directly to a debate in Albert’s mind as to whether I should be body slammed or simply thrown off the mezzanine level. I spent part of the column writing about how this guy had made himself into such a student of hitting by keeping index cards in his locker and adding to his card catalog after every game. What pitches he saw. The count. The ump. The situation. He’d make notes on all of it. I found out he did that from interviewing manager Mike Hargrove and one of his coaches, Davey Nelson. When I approached Albert to talk to him about it, he cursed me and told me to go away. That was par for the course with him.

I mentioned in the column that if he even tried just a little not to be the world’s biggest jerk, he’d own the city. It led to an ugly scene in the clubhouse the next day. Albert accused me of going into his locker and reading his index cards. Uh, right. Nobody, including other players, went anywhere near Albert’s locker. I’d be more likely to willingly visit a hell mouth.

I noticed as the confrontation was developing that lots of players and media were moving away from where Albert and I were standing. I could see one guy sidling toward me out of the corner of my eye. Finally Sandy Alomar Jr. rushed in and saved me from possibly being pile driven or hit with the roll of quarters Albert no doubt kept in his waistband for just such occasions.

It was then I turned to find Plain Dealer baseball writer Paul Hoynes at my side. Hoynsie is one of the greats. He also happened to play rugby at Marquette. I told him I appreciated him not moving away like everybody else and asked him what he was going to do if Belle started getting physical. He said, “Go for his legs.” He’s been my hero ever since.

Q. Who and what do you read and watch to keep up with sports – both mainstream and non-mainstream media? How much time do you put into it?

A. I like the Sportspages.com site. Not just the Top Ten but I go through individual papers to read how different columnists handled a big event, or a developing story. I mentioned some of the people I seek out on a consistent basis but there are a bunch more that are so good they make me feel like going into another business.

I do that at least three or four times a week along with checking ESPN several times a day. Since it’s a topics show, I try to watch Pardon the Interruption as much as possible. There might be something Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon throw out for discussion that leads me to an item for the notes column. Those guys are great together so I watch simply to be entertained, too.

Q. Is LeBron destined to leave the Cavs? Say it ain’t so.

A. That’s a question that strikes at the heart of the Cleveland sports fan because it ratchets an already deep-set inferiority complex. LeBron is a local guy AND HE STILL MIGHT LEAVE? Not just leave but go to New York?

I believe James will leave and when he goes it should be with no feelings of guilt associated with abandonment. He’ll have given the Cavaliers seven years. That’s enough of a commitment even if they don’t win a title before he goes. And if they do win a title, he’ll have delivered something the city hasn’t seen in almost a half century. When you’re 23 and grilling Warren Buffett for his keys to success, and when the talk is of becoming a “global icon,” it tells me he’s thinking a little beyond the 330 he’s got tattooed on his body. That’s the Akron area code. Me? When I was 23 I was only drinking shots with Warren Buffett. And now I forget everything he told me.

Q. Can the Browns make the playoffs with those awful brown pants? Do they need a logo on their helmets? Have you ever incurred the wrath of the Dawg Pound?

A. A reader recently lamented that the Browns, barring “divine intervention,” looked on track to become even a bigger disappointment than the Indians were in 2008. I happen to think they’ll make the playoffs because their offense is that good. I think it’s a far better place to put your trust than in The Man Upstairs. Not that I’m an atheist. But it should be obvious to everyone that if God cared even a little about Romeo Crennel’s team he wouldn’t have let them take the field in those all-brown pants during the exhibition season. Those things needed a stripe or a Tinker Bell buckle or something,

I like the helmets without any logo. I hope they stay that way. I do a “PD Roundtable” TV show once a week and occasionally someone will call in and wonder if it’s time to bring back the elf. Seems back in the day an elf logo showed up on the parkas the team would sometimes wear on the sideline. I ask you. Does it sound like a good idea for a city trying to get beyond inferiority issues to rally around an elf?

Bud Shaw, The Plain Dealer, August 3, 2008:

The odds of Manny Ramirez wearing a Cleveland hat when he goes into the Hall of Fame just got better by default.

Of course, they are still outweighed by the odds he will forget to wear any hat, shirt, pants or shoes and will be inducted in his fright wig and nothing else.

“When people ask about Boston, I put my brain on pause,” Ramirez said in his first press conference with the Los Angeles Dodgers. He meant he didn’t want to revisit the acrimony that followed him to L.A. at the trade deadline.

In truth, though, Ramirez’s brain needs no prompting to go on pause. It spends chunks of every day idling there.

“Pause” is a natural default function when his head gets too filled with the nettlesome details of baseball – number of outs, hitting the cutoff man, even stuff like remembering that as the left fielder he’s really not the cutoff man for the center fielder.

Manny played and talked his way out of Boston, saying the Red Sox didn’t deserve him.

Some teammates who tolerated his quirky behavior over the years didn’t find the humor in Ramirez taking himself out of the lineup against the Yankees and not running hard with a chance to break up a no-hitter in another game.

Ramirez doesn’t believe that his teammates turned on him, preferring to think the front office is spreading stories like that to discredit him in the eyes of Boston’s fans.

Let’s just say that makes La-La Land the perfect place for him.

Boston newspapers reported Ramirez tried to lobby to stay with the Red Sox at the deadline, which wouldn’t be surprising since his career is dotted with instances where he didn’t know whether he was coming or going.

Agent Scott Boras told reporters that Ramirez “preferred another city along the lines of the lifestyle he had in Cleveland.”

Yessir. Cleveland and L.A. Peas in a pod.

I was just making that point to Martin Scorsese over skewers of braised tofu at lunch in the shadow of Progressive Field the other day. “Marty,” I said . . .

So Boston is more intense than L.A. Tell me something I didn’t know.

Lifestyle wasn’t Ramirez’s problem. He didn’t really have a problem until he crossed the line from quirky free spirit to the half-dog, half-diva he became in his final season there.

“The Red Sox don’t deserve a player like me,” Ramirez told ESPNdeportes.com Wednesday. “During my years here, I’ve seen how they [the Red Sox] have mistreated other great players when they didn’t want them to try to turn the fans against them.

“The Red Sox did the same with guys like Nomar Garciaparra and Pedro Martinez, and now they do the same with me. Their goal is to paint me as the bad guy. I love Boston fans, but the Red Sox don’t deserve me. I’m not talking about money. Mental peace has no price, and I don’t have peace here.”

He’s right about one thing. The Red Sox didn’t deserve him. They deserved a grown-up.

(SMG thanks Bud Shaw for his cooperation)

An Interview with Eric Raskin

Eric Raskin: Interviewed on October 26, 2011

Position: Freelance writer/editor (most notably: Grantland.com, ESPN.com, ESPN The Magazine)

Born: 1975, Philadelphia

Education: Brown University, 1997, AB in Mathematical Economics

Career: Full-time jobs: Managing Editor of The Ring magazine, 1997-2005; Editor-in-Chief of ALL IN magazine, 2005-2008 & 2009-2011; Senior Content Producer for Full Tilt Poker Academy, 2008-2009. Freelance jobs at various times 2005-present: The Ring contributing editor, ESPN.com boxing columnist, Grantland.com boxing writer, HBO.com boxing writer, ESPN The Magazine boxing writer, Boxing Monthly writer, TheSweetScience.com columnist, Maxboxing.com columnist.

Personal: “Married since 2005 to my beautiful wife Robin, with two amazing kids, Olivia (4) and Eli (2)—and I must give a shout-out as well to our mystery mutt Rodney (6).”

Favorite restaurant (home): “I think my wife would be embarrassed if I stated publicly that Arby’s is my favorite restaurant, so instead I’ll go with Isaac Newton’s, a neighborhood joint in Newtown, Pennsylvania that’s both kid-friendly and good for a low-key ‘date night’ meal.”

Favorite restaurant (away): “I don’t travel terribly often, and when I do, I don’t necessarily eat fancy. Give me a decent coffee shop, and I’ll manage. Still, to answer the question: My older brother took me to a sushi place in L.A. about eight years ago that absolutely blew me away. It’s called Sushi Nozawa, and the chef is affectionately known as “The Sushi Nazi.” Fortunately, I followed the rules and never had to be lectured, “You are pushing your luck, little man.”

Favorite hotel: “The great majority of my traveling over the years has been to Vegas, and I stayed at the Wynn in 2005, just a few months after it opened. With all due respect to Mandalay Bay, Bellagio, etc., the Wynn was the only one where I checked into my room and thought, This is really swanky … I’m not sure I’m worthy of staying here.”

Q. Nice piece in Grantland
. How did you get that assignment?

A. Thank you. There’s still a small element of mystery to the story of how I got the assignment for the Leonard-Hagler oral history, one detail that I haven’t been able to fill in. But here’s the story from my perspective:

On March 31 of this year, I got an email informing me that “SportsGuy33” was following me on Twitter. I’ve been a huge Bill Simmons fan since about 2002, probably read every word he wrote in that time span, I listen to all of his podcasts, etc. So my first thought was, Someone who’s tech savvy is playing an early April Fool’s Day joke on me. Then I got a direct message from him, simply giving me his email address and asking me to email him. Moments later, I noticed he’d un-followed me on Twitter; he just followed me long enough to send me a direct message.

Anyway, we traded a couple of quick emails, in which he said he wanted to assign a boxing feature and he thought I might be the right guy, then he CC’d the deputy editor of the site, Dan Fierman, and Dan finally told me what the assignment was—not really a writing assignment, but more a test of interviewing, reporting, and editing, the oral history of the Leonard-Hagler fight.

Once the assignment had begun to move forward, I asked Dan out of curiosity, “How did you guys land on my name as the guy for this?” Dan said there had been a big editorial meeting involving numerous people, and Bill was a fan of the oral history format and wanted to roll out a few of them around the time of the site’s launch. The Leonard-Hagler fight was on his list. He asked the room if anybody knew of a good boxing writer, someone gave him my name, and he jotted it down and said he’d contact me. Dan doesn’t remember who that someone was, so I’m still not sure whom to thank for getting me on Grantland’s radar.

Q. Why boxing, and how did you come to be a free-lance journalist?

A. This is going to sound corny, but I feel like boxing found me more than I found it. I watched very little boxing as a kid—we didn’t have cable TV until I was almost out of high school, and by the late ’80s, it was nearly impossible to be a boxing fan without cable. When I graduated college in ’97, I knew I wanted to go into sports journalism, I moved back home to the Philly suburbs for the summer, and I responded to an ad in the newspaper looking for a sports editor in another suburban town not far away. It turned out the job was with The Ring magazine, which had a staff of three editors, and two of them were suddenly departing at the same time. That meant they were fairly desperate to hire someone, and a knowledge of boxing was secondary to being able to write and edit. They offered me the job, and the money was god-awful, but I figured I had to start somewhere.

After about a month on the job, I went to my first live fight card, and in the co-featured bout, Arturo Gatti knocked out Gabe Ruelas in what turned out to be the Fight of the Year. I was hooked. What I thought might be a one-year job on the road to covering a more mainstream sport for a more mainstream publication stretched into seven years full-time and seven more since as a freelance boxing writer.

I left The Ring’s editorial staff in ’05 because I was about to get married and needed to earn a better living, and I took a job in New York as the sole editor of a startup poker magazine called ALL IN. I’ll skip various gory details and just say that ALL IN went out of business in February of 2011, and the pursuit of a full-time editorial job that will pay me what I need to feed my family has been a real struggle. So while looking for jobs, I’ve soldiered along as the busiest quote-unquote unemployed man you’ve ever seen, chasing down as much freelance work as I can get and taking on various project gigs—most notably, a two-month stretch in New York editing ESPN’s annual fantasy football guide, which unfortunately never saw the light of day because the NFL lockout wasn’t resolved in time.

Q. What are your main gigs – tell us about your typical schedule?

A. My schedule really varies from day to day and week to week, but I have a few gigs that are on a regular schedule, such as my weekly column on TheSweetScience.com, the subscription-based boxing podcast that I co-host twice a month called Ring Theory, and a poker column that runs twice every month. I also have quite a few gigs that just involve me pitching topics and angles as frequently as I can, such as Grantland.com, ESPN.com, ESPN The Magazine, and HBO.com.

Back when I was full-time with ALL IN and freelancing on the side, I was working a lot of 60-hour weeks. As a full-time freelancer, I’ve probably been working more in the range of 30-40 hours a week. But the brutal part is all the time you spend hustling but not getting paid. On top of those 30-40 hours I spend writing, interviewing, etc., I probably spend 20 or 25 hours a week just thinking about boxing, watching boxing, formulating ideas, reading articles, and ultimately crafting and emailing pitches. Sometimes that work leads to paying assignments, and sometimes it doesn’t.

Q. What is the financial reality of life as a free-lance journalist in your field – tell us about your struggle?

A. I’m not going to reveal exactly what I make, of course … but since I took a lot of econ classes in college, let’s use “widgets” and do some rounding. When I was working for The Ring in my 20s, I was earning about one widget per year. From 2005-2007, between my job at ALL IN and my freelance work, I was earning about three widgets. From 2008-2010, as I got a few higher-paying freelance gigs, I was making about four widgets.

Now, as a full-time freelancer, I’m back down to about two widgets, and I just can’t figure out how to get it much higher than that. If I was still just a single guy, no wife, no kids, no mortgage, just individual health insurance to pay for, I’d be doing just fine financially.

But in the situation I’m in, two widgets simply isn’t cutting it. I haven’t been able to find a full-time job in writing or editing that pays adequately—I’m obviously not going to go back to an entry-level position—and I’ve learned the hard way this year that I can’t make ends meet without a full-time job. At times I feel like a success, when I look at where my byline is running, the work I’m doing, and how much more money I’m making now than I was throughout my 20s. But for the most part, this year has not been successful—at least not financially. So I’m planning to go into another field very soon. I have a job lined up that I won’t go into details about here. Once that job starts, I’ll continue writing on the side, but far less prolifically than I am now. You know, unless someone reads this and offers me a great full-time editing/writing/broadcasting job …

Q. What is your family situation and how do you maintain work/life balance?

A. I’ll say this: It would all be a lot easier if my son would learn how to sleep. Of course, my kids are the greatest thing in the world, nothing makes me happier than they do, but the reality is that my son recently turned two and still gets up before the sun almost every morning, and my ability to function optimally in my work life suffers as a result.

Anyway, my wife works from home also, and both sets of grandparents live nearby, so there’s constantly free babysitting available. I just have to be flexible. If I have deadlines to hit, my wife is on kid duty and I’m more or less able to focus on my work. But I know that from about 5-9 in the morning and 5-8 at night, I’m feeding the kids, getting them dressed, giving them baths, walking the dog, playing with the kids, etc., so unless I have work that needs to get done urgently, my windows for doing work are between 9-5 and after 8:00 at night.

It’s chaotic, but I’m thankful to be able to spend so much time with my family. I know a lot of guys who leave for work before their kids are up and come home after their kids have gone to bed, so I’ll take this over that.

Q. Who and what are your influences as a journalist?

A. I’m not just kissing butt when I say that Simmons has been a strong influence. Also, Nigel Collins and Stu Saks, my mentors at The Ring, were huge influences in shaping my editing skills. I think by doing so much editing throughout my career, I’ve managed to borrow writing techniques from many of the better writers I’ve worked with, and I’ve come away with a versatile style that allows me to take on all different types of assignments. I pride myself on not being just a “game story” guy or a “personality profile” guy or an “OpEd” guy.

Unfortunately, as a guy who reads, writes, and edits all day, I don’t end up doing a whole lot of leisure reading. I make it through about one or two books a year. And I wasn’t big into reading in high school or college. So I think in terms of outside influences, besides Simmons, I don’t have many.

Q. What sports media do you consume and why?

A. For the most part, my sports media comes in two forms: online articles and podcasts. I don’t really read printed newspapers anymore, only subscribe to a couple of magazines, and as I just noted, don’t read many books. I watch SportsCenter and my local Comcast SportsNet sports news show when I can, and same goes for PTI and Real Sports and E:60, but I wouldn’t say I watch any of those shows consistently. For me, it’s mostly web articles and podcasts.

Twitter has made my online reading much easier. I follow the boxing writers I enjoy, click links to their articles, and don’t have to check out every single site every single day. Not to sound like a corporate shill, but I click on almost everything that goes up on Grantland – and probably read about half of the articles in their entirety. I’ll read news articles to stay informed, naturally, but I’m much more drawn to writing that entertains me. Straight reporting bores me for the most part, and this constant competition among reporters to “break” a story that everyone will have posted 15 minutes later seems a bit silly, though I understand why reporting and breaking news is important. Ultimately, though, my preference is toward creative angles and compelling writing.

The biggest way in which my sports media consumption has changed in the past couple of years is with my obsession with podcasts. It was Simmons’ BS Report that drew me in, and now I probably listen to about 10 hours’ worth of podcasts a week. If I’m walking my dog, going for a jog, or driving in my car by myself, the iPod is plugged in and I’m listening to podcasts. I’ve lost all touch with music as a result, but that’s okay; I’m reaching that crusty old age where I think the music of my youth, and long before my youth, is all far superior to anything that’s out there now anyway.

Q. Ideal work situation?

A. That’s a tough question to answer. I’ve grown used to working from home, and I’d love to be able to edit from home or be a staff writer somewhere, while also pursuing side projects. But I’m also open to commuting to New York – as I did for about two years while working for ALL IN, and I’ve found that I can be extremely productive on the train. Hey, in a perfect world, I’d find a single job that pays me so well I can give up the freelance work and dedicate myself fully to that job without chasing down extra income. But I think most people would agree that, nowadays, it’s near impossible to make a comfortable living working 40 hours a week, in any industry.

Q. Goals as a writer/journalist?

A. I guess, in light of my current situation, goal number one is to find a way to feed my family again as a writer/journalist. But approaching the question from a creativity perspective, I feel I’ve achieved a fair amount as a boxing writer. I’d say there are three major ambitions that I have yet to make any headway on.

The first is writing about other sports—I was hoping Grantland might give me an opportunity to branch out and write about the Phillies or the Eagles or pop culture, but so far, those pitches haven’t gained any traction. The second is broadcasting. I’ve made some talking-head appearances on TV here and there, but haven’t really been able to get my foot in the door beyond that. And the third is writing a book. I actually spoke with a couple of literary agents earlier this year about a boxing book idea I had, but boxing is a tough sell and my idea—which everyone I spoke to agreed was highly compelling but a bit too negative to instill confidence that a publisher would latch on—didn’t quite get off the ground.

Someday, though, I’d love to face the challenge of writing a book. My oral history of the Leonard-Hagler fight, which started with some 75,000 words of raw quotes and ultimately ran 13,000 words, was like a four-week test run on writing a book, and I have to say, it enhanced my desire to work on massive projects like that.

Q. What piece of work are you especially proud of?

A. This is obvious and a bit redundant to discuss again, but the Leonard-Hagler oral history stands out. The feedback I got on that was overwhelming. And it took a lot of determination to get it off the ground, because for two months, Hagler’s people turned me away. I finally had to drive from Philly to upstate New York on less than 12 hours’ notice to interview him in person in order for the article to become a reality. Then I conducted about 30 more interviews over the phone in a span of three weeks. It was a major time commitment, and when I had all the quotes, the process of patching them together to tell the story was oddly thrilling.

But if I had to name something else I’m particularly proud of, I would say it’s ALL IN magazine. For most of the mag’s run, I was an editorial staff of one – along with an art director, we had a limited budget, and we put out a magazine that I feel blew away the competition. In 2010, I interviewed Norman Chad—the longtime sports columnist and ESPN poker commentator—and he told me the same thing, that he’d been meaning to get a hold of me for a while to tell me how much he enjoyed the magazine and that he felt it was the best in the genre by far. I’m not trying to knock our competition. A couple of the other poker magazines, which had larger staffs and were better run from a business perspective, are still operating, which means they got the last laugh. But from an editorial perspective, I feel enormous pride over ALL IN. Throughout my time there, when people found out how bare-bones the operation was, they were usually astounded by it.

(SMG thanks Eric Raskin for his cooperation)

An Interview with Ray Ratto

“They work the beat guys like rented mules and can’t figure out why they want something else after two or three years.”

“The Bonds story is a lot like the Republicans and Democrats – you know what side you’re on and you don’t’ care what you hear from the other side. If you like him you don’t care if they have film of him shooting up and if you don’t like him you don’t care if he’s supporting a charity for homeless children. I’ve tried to look at what today’s development means in my usual snooty hateful way – you try to move the ball a little bit – that’s the best you can do with this story because it’s going on and on and on.”

Ray Ratto. Interviewed August 21, 2006

Position: Columnist, San Francisco Chronicle, sportsline.com

Born: 1954, Oakland, Ca.

Personal: Married, two children

Education: St. Josephs High School, Alameda, Ca.; San Francisco State

Career: SF Examiner 1973-81, Peninsula Times-Tribune 1981-86, SF Chronicle 1986-90, The National 1990-91, SF Examiner 1991-2000, SF Chronicle 2000 –

Favorite Sports Movies: Eight Men Out, Slapshot

Awards: Named by Wall Street Journal’s Daily Fix column as one of the ten “most valuable” columnists in the U.S., August 2006. The Daily Fix wrote of Ratto: “A reliable cynic (who) has been a welcome fixture on any sports page during the last five years of failed drug tests and boorish player behavior. The Bay Area has had more than its fair share of both types of badness, and Mr. Ratto has delighted in all the material. And man, can he write!”

Q. You are at ground zero of the Balco steroid scandal. How has the story affected your career and writing?

A. I don’t know if it has. Such a mountain of stuff has been written about it from all over the country. We’ve done a good job, but so has the New York Daily News. Maybe from the standpoint that people would come to our website to read Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams (the two lead reporters on Balco) and then read us for commentary. We drafted behind them.

The four of us (Chronicle sports columnists) come from different angles on it. Gwen (Knapp) is the outraged crusader. Scotty (Ostler) looks at it from a wry angle. I am a cynic who thinks everybody should be shooting the stuff into their eyes. Bruce (Jenkins) is the romantic who says if this is the price of doing business then it’s the price of doing business.” We might have benefited from proximity to the story in terms of readership but I don’t fool myself into thinking we shaped the debate. The debate was shaped by reportage.

Q. Does being in the Bay Area, close to Balco, give you more credibility than other columnists?

A. Maybe. If we have a question we can ask Mark or Lance and get an anwer. Our editor, Glenn Schwarz, has been in it upt o his eyelids. San Mateo actually broke the story (in 2003) but we’ve taken the lead since then. Because we have better access to people who know all the stuff maybe we’re more authoritative. There’s some silly stuff written around the country – knee jerk stuff. We’re so inundated with this stuff that if we write something stupid somebody will call us on it and say we’re missing the point. We’re given the freedom to write it as we see it, and we have plenty of resources to use.

Q. Are you tired of the steroid story?

A. I’m tired of the Bonds angle. That’s the part that’s been overwritten. The story is not moving fast enough for a lot of people. They want resolution, but now it’s in the courts and that’s where time stops. People are disappointed that it takes a year-and-a-half to get voir dire.

Q. Voir dire?

A. Jury selection. I got that from the tube. Law and Order, baby. The point is that whether you are anti-Bonds and you want his head on a pike or you are pro-Bonds and you want him vindicated neither of those things will happen for years. I don’t know if the American public has the appetite for waiting.

Q. How have you approached the Bonds story?

A. I’ve tried to do it with a half-cynical what-comes-next attitude. The Bonds story is a lot like the Republicans and Democrats – you know what side you’re on and you don’t’ care what you hear from the other side. If you like him you don’t care if they have film of him shooting up and if you don’t like him you don’t care if he’s supporting a charity for homeless children. I’ve tried to look at what today’s development means in my usual snooty hateful way – you try to move the ball a little bit – that’s the best you can do with this story because it’s going on and on and on.

Q. Is it an emotional flashpoint in the Bay Area?

A. Only when something happens – the rest is dull white noise in the background. Now the debate is whether Bonds should come back because his salary eats up so much. It’s a baseball issue. With the lack of an indictment he’s become a baseball player again.

Q. Which columnists do you admire?

A. The best columnist in the country is Mark Whicker at the Orange County Register. You won’t see him on TV often, but nobody writes better and more skillfully about more subjects than he does. He’s beyond ridiculous brilliant. When I’m in LA reading him for four days I just want to quit. Selena Roberts (NY Times) is interesting when she’s on a crusade, other times she falls flat. Lots of guys you won’t see on the screaming sportswriter shows really are top drawer. Also, who aren’t on the APSE we-love-you list. One of the most overlooked is Gary Peterson of the Contra Costa Times. He’s very good. Pat Reusse (Star-Tribune) in Minneapolis. If you want access Mike Wilbon (Washington Post) is as good as it gets. He’s good at using the hammer he has to get to people – I give him points for that. Rick Morrissey (Chicago Tribune) is underrated. He’s got big-time chops.

Q. Beat reporters you admire?

A. This sounds provincial, but our guy on the Giants, Henry Schulman, is as good as anybody. Paul Sullivan (Chicago Tribune) does a helluva job but the Tribune has a habit of changing beats every two or three years.

It’s harder to find great beat reporters because they find out how gruesome a task it is every day and be on call 11 months of the years – they move on to other realms, or get replaced by people in their 20s. I usually read more for subject matter than for beat reporters because they turn over so much. Guys don’t stay on the beat long enough to get really good at it. Newspapers don’t understand what it takes anymore. They work the beat guys like rented mules and can’t figure out why they want something else after two or three years. Columnists get paid more. The beat guys get a bag of tootsie rolls and the short end of the stick. The hours are longer. They’re literally required to shape the debate year in and year out. I call on my beat writers so much they’re sick to death of me. They are THE resource for the team they cover. It’s hard to imagine why they aren’t compensated better or given more time off. But it’s a shrinking business. People aren’t thinking Big Picture anymore.

Q. How do you maintain enthusiasm?

A. You can’t do this if you’re bored. Readers are smart. They know if you’ve mailed it in. One of our great failings is that we should be writing up to our audience instead of down. Sports is more Byzantine and fascinating than ever. There’s always something else. The beast is always there to be fed. When I start to get stale I try to figure out a different way to write the same old crap. With the Bonds story you can only write that he’s a good guy or a bad guy so many times before people get tired of it. They want something fresh that makes them think. When we don’t they know. Skate your wing and keep your head up. There’s always something amusing. As long as they’re doing something stupid I’m in business.

Q. How do you stay abreast of the news?

A. This sounds anal, but I read seven papers a day. All the locals, plus New York, LA and USA Today. Then I’ll look around espn.com and CBS Sportsline to see what the news is. Deadspin is the one-stop shopping of the blogosphere – I look there for the weirder stuff. By noon I pretty much know what happened the night before. Then I’ll make quickie checks at ESPN News to find out what wide receiver shot up a liquor store.

If I see a story out of Miami then I’ll go to sportspages.com and get the detail that only the locals can deliver. The assumption is that the local paper will have a handle on it better than anybody else. One, they’re usually breaking the story. The thing they can’t get the pointless idiot reaction from the high muckety-muck in New York. But the heavy lifting is typically better done by locals cause they’re the ones on the ground.

I don’t tool around at random. Nobody has that much time in the day – that’s the point at which your cat starves to death because you haven’t fed him in nine days. Usually the big wires will give me the overview.

Probably my only ridiculous thing is all the newspapers. I like the idea of having something in hand. I keep notebooks on different sports. I find I remember it better when I write it down – the Catholic school training never leaves you.

(SMG thanks Ray Ratto for his cooperation)

Ray Ratto excerpted from the San Francisco Chronicle, February 23, 2005:

Scottsdale, Ariz. – Barry Bonds had weeks to practice for Tuesday’s State of the Great address, in part because he does one every year. He had extra time because his two surgically tweaked knees have given him a lot more couch time to consider his performance.

So, with all that extra time to consider his options, he chose to attack his news conference rather than try to dance with it. He fielded an even 50 questions, nearly all of them dancing about the performance-enhancement drug scandal, and he was even more of himself than he usually is. He was more combative, more dismissive, more rambling, more defiant and yet stingingly accurate on some points.

What he was not, was compliant. He admitted to nothing related to his grand-jury testimony. He did not allow the 50 or so questioners in the room any pathway inside the Bondsian shield, and he did not try to ease the blows. He decided the problem with baseball’s drug scandal was the media, and he was in full scold.

“Let the (new drug-testing program) work,” he kept saying. “Allow it to work. Let’s go forward. I truly believe we need to go forward.”

It was half plea and half command, based on the fact that “backward” would lead everyone back to the scandal. Even then, however, the answer seemed most like resignation based on the knowledge that he was not going to be given any slack by his critics — for being overly guarded about his life, for his race, for his personality, for his connections (real and imagined) to the drug scandal, for any of it.

So he decided not to try. No attempts at conciliation. No half measures. No apologies. He called the media liars en masse, a description designed to let that media know he was done making what little nice he had to make. He knew he would be judged harshly by contemporary historians and decided to judge back.

…It wasn’t a declaration of war with Doubting America, because Bonds’ moods run hot, cold and lukewarm, just as everyone else’s do. But it was a fairly clear indication that he would never admit, apologize or announce anything he didn’t feel like admitting to, apologizing for or announcing. Anyone in the room who thought otherwise was, is and will be thoroughly delusional.

What we learned, in short, was that there will be no Barry Bonds charm offensive as he attacks the remaining home-run records of Ruth and Hank Aaron. He messed with the messengers, is all, and it made for a fairly electric half-hour of mutual spite and contempt. Entertainment, after all, is what and where you find it.