Let me ask this Mariotti question....Updated by Moddy.

Jay's downgraded our business with his self-serving public shenanigans. I'll hold back my tears of pity.

If/when he and the Sun-Times blow up, I have no doubt he'll find another print job . . . though I doubt it'll be in NYC,
Chi or LA.

 

Not to threadjack here, but as to Whitlock's point that this could be Mariotti's "Jim Rome" moment....

...does anyone else think the Rome-Everett thing was staged? A few months back, I saw the clip of that for the first time in years. Damn, it sure looked staged. You can find it pretty easy on Google.

Everett looks like he's reading lines the whole time, and they're both almost laughing when Everett gets up and pushes over the table.

 

I don't know about everybody else, but every columnist I have worked with or around in a game-day situation goes to the locker room/clubhouse/post-game interview room. Frankly, I still find it hard to believe that a columnist at a major metro can avoid it. Obviously, that's the case here. But it blows my mind. So I wouldn't say that I'm holding Mariotti to a different standard. The fact that he isn't living up to what should be a standard is what seems to be the problem.

 

Here is what I don't get: How ridiculous is it for someone to be completely afraid to go into a professional locker room?

Let me first get this out of the way and say that, yes, I believe sports writers should not, but any reasonable standard, have to go to work every day in an environment they deem to be hostile. No one deserves to be humiliated by a bucknaked Ozzie Guillen standing behind him and simulating sex acts. Basic standards of human decency would tell you that that's not ok, and assuming it did happen, Jay had every right to complain, and the White Sox should have put a stop to it.

However, saying that you fear for your safety is just foolish. Of all the places you can travel as a reporter, a locker room might be one of the safest. There is security. There are 100 witnesses. Half the time, there are cameras. Did Jay really think he was in danger of being gang-raped in the middle of Cellular One Ballpark and that no one would be able to hear his screams?

I'm friends with one of my paper's foreign correspondants. He lives in Johanasburg. He's been robbed several times, and has to bribe people on a daily basis just to get basic security for he and his wife. He travels to villages in Africa all the time where disease, civil war and famine are a way of life. For me to complain about going into a major league baseball clubhouse because I'm scared would be an insult to what he does, every day, without complaint.

But hell, you don't even have to go that far to point out how silly this is. Before I worked in sports, I was a metro cops reporter. It wasn't fun, but when somebody got killed, I went into some of the shittiest neighborhoods in the United States to talk to people. Occasionally, I got screamed at by gangsters and thugs, and told not to come back. It wasn't fun, but it was my job.

What would happen if Frank Thomas took a swing at Jay Mariotti? He'd end up paying Jay $3 million and probably get suspended 50 games. In fact, chances are, Frank would be tackled and pulled back by 10 of his teammates if he so much as tried to grab Jay. And if he so much as grazed Jay's lapel, he'd only be supplying him with column material for the next three months.

Outside your desk or the White House press breifing room, a major leauge clubhouse is one of the safest places a reporter can travel. Spare me the drama.

 

David

I think journalists would defend Mariotti had he been barred from the locker room and/or denied professional courtesies. Nothing like that happened. Guillen simply chose to read him out. The most that could be done on Mariotti's behalf are complaints from the BBWAA and his newspaper about Guillen's behavior. If that's been done, I haven't heard it. At the same time, it's true that Mariotti's personal attacks on Guillen are the roots of the affair. A pox on both their houses.

 

Sadly, I can think of one columnist with whom I work who treats the locker room/post-game area like a dentist's office. I can't stand that lazy shit.

 

I have to agree with Poole on this one. This business is crawling with lazy, asshole columnists. We still have to defend their right to be columnists, no matter how they do their jobs. This site sometimes reads like statefans.com (you supply the state). This soap-opera shit comes across as a waste of time. I'm going fishing. Carry on.

 

I will add my voice to David's and Ed's. Regardless of what you think of him, if you just brush aside that he is subjected to sexual taunts by a naked Ozzie Guillen, then you do a disservice to everyone who does this job.

 

Of course Mariotti shouldn't be subject to stuff like that -- no one should. But what's missing here is whether Mariotti went to anybody with a complaint about that, and what the paper did about it. Or better yet, what did Mariotti do when it happened? Mariotti well have a legitimate complaint, but he comes off as pulling this stuff out in a desperate attempt to save his crumbling reputation.

One of the weirdest things in all of this is that the Sun-Times itself has come out with NOTHING in support of Mariotti and his complaints about his safety being at risk in the Sox locker room. Either someone at the S-T is asleep, or the silence is speaking volumes about its feelings on Mariotti, someone who just in the last few weeks berated his employer for not supporting him enough.

By the way, if Mariotti is run out of the S-T because of the fallout, would it shock anyone if he sues the paper and the White Sox over it? There's no way he slinks off quietly, not unless the S-T is, ahem, making it worth his while.

 

My experience has been that people in this business work hard and that people who don't work hard, plagiarize or take shortcuts that make their co-workers look bad are often torn to pieces by their brothers and sisters.

This Jay bashing doesn't surprise me at all, and if he truly felt threatened or harassed in a locker room he should have dealt with it at the time instead of whining about it years later.

I don't have any sympathy for the guy and I'm surprised anyone does. The torment he described is pretty typical stuff for anyone who has been in a locker room and pretty tame for someone who has fired the salvos he has over the years.

 

Ace -- OK, but next time I want to be on the committee that gets to decide who we like enough to stand up for and who we hate enough to savage and hang out to dry.
A couple of years ago I was president of the National Motorsports Press Association and NASCAR was trying to play some pretty silly games with its credential policies. They took dead aim at photographers. Now I will be the absolute first to tell you that there are people who get photo credentials for NASCAR races who have NO business having them. But years and years ago, when NASCAR was dying for exposure, they let all of these people in and a lot of them have come every year since then. A couple of people who probably should have credentials also act like, well, idiots at the track. They bring great dishonor to the profession on an almost weekly basis. But as NMPA president, when I was telling NASCAR "You can't do this," I couldn't very well say, "Look, we really don't care if you keep this person and that person and that person out, just take care of everybody else." You have to say, "This isn't right" and try to address the issue.
I just wish I saw more evidence of that here, from his paper and from his colleagues.

 

Where do I sign up?