Posnanski and the Paterno book

If the Neyer stuff is true, it sounds like he has news to break about Paterno's relationship with the university in the last year's of his tenure and life. I'm not saying it's the right call to go forward, but I can see why he'd want to get that stuff out there before someone else inevitably does.

 

Most powerful man in that state? No. The Pew board? Yes. Or someone/something of that ilk.

 

Biff,

Spot on.

You know, Pearlman's short form opinion writing is really good. That flowed... He tallied point after point.. Good use of logic....

Everything he wrote makes sense.

The only problem is, one gets the sense Posnanski just wants this damn thing over with.

 

I think my point though is that it's a losing battle to try and "defend" yourself on the Internet. We live in this hyper-analysis culture now where, if someone pokes a stick at you and you answer, you have to repeatedly argue your position (on Twitter, on blogs, whatever) or you're labeled a pussy. What possible good would it have done for Pos to "respond" to that whole classroom thing? And then respond to the response? And yet we have people here mocking him for going radio silent. It's just an endless cycle of can't win. The book ultimately should represent Posnanski's feeling on the subject, not some blatherings he made in a classroom that were then filtered through some kid's Twitter account and taken as gospel because he didn't "disown" them. I think you see this with Simmons sometimes and you see it with Jones. The more you respond, the more you stir up hornets. In the end, even if you get creamed, it's best to just leave it alone and let your work speak for you.

Maybe the book will be great. Maybe it will be sycophantic failure. I really don't have a clue. I just think it's easy to pile on, and shit on someone from afar, just to feel smug about the whole thing. That's what a lot of this is, a chance to take shots at Pos for the perception that he's "soft." A fellow writer no less. Not some attention whore, but one of the most thoughtful and fair journalists we have left.

No, I don't think the book should be praised before anyone sees it either. I don't see anyone doing that, in fact. And ultimately if the work is not good, then it probably should be shredded. That's the way it works. But forgive me if I don't have a little empathy for Pos. Maybe he did go up there wanting to write a Happy Grandpa book, and maybe that annoys you. But you know what? There are hundreds of authors -- many of them on this board -- that have written happy sports books. You know why? Because happy sports book sell. Depressing sports book rarely do. So even if he went up there to write that kind of book, should he be ashamed of that? Maybe if the book came out, painted Joe as a saint, and then the scandal broke. What happened, as an author, is both the luckiest and unluckiest break in the history of sports biographies, to be honest. He's obviously not writing a happy grandpa book now. You'd have to be a moron to to believe that. But you know what? Whatever is published probably is going to sell a lot of books. A book a year from now, no matter how good, would probably sell less. Should that matter? I can't say. I bet it matters to the publisher though, which ultimately gets to make the decision on when it comes out. Maybe they don't want an exhaustive Paterno biography. Maybe they want the best book Posnanski can write in the time he has. Many years ago, I could see myself slamming that thought process too and toasting to my own integrity here in the rigid moral universe of SportsJournalists.com. The way I'm viewing it today, the universe feels a bit more gray. Would you walk away from a project and give back money that would pay for your kids to go to college? I see people all the time here posting that they're struggling to hold jobs in retail because journalism didn't work out. I see people who now work for some of the teams they used to cover. Would they have made a similarly principled decision? Or would they have done the best job they possibly could with the resources and time fate handed them? I don't even know that believe that about Jeff Pearlman, since he had to write about book about the 1986 Mets when he couldn't interview either Daryl Strawberry or Dwight Gooden. Should he have continued to wait until he got their side of stuff? Or did he do the best he could, working around those limitations and still write a good book?

It's really easy to boast about what you would do on a message board. I think the decision in real life is much harder. I don't envy what Pos went through at all. I do know he's a great person, someone I care about. And I don't believe a lot the people who feel like they have all the answers for this situation would know quite what to do either.

 

I'd be more impressed if you wrote that on your phone.

 

I think I wrote the angry one on my phone. I'm fairly certain one of these times when I'm furiously posting righteous incoherence on SJ at 2 a.m. while lying in bed, my wife is going to wake up convinced I'm having an affair.

 

I believe Righteous Incoherence was the original name of Guns 'N' Roses.

 

Has there been any official word on the book? I'm guessing Posnanski worked out some type of agreement with Paterno and the publishers - my guess is they'll just eat it, have Posnanski turn over his research to the family for their possible future use and he keeps the advance.

 

It's coming out in August.

 

I feel incredibly bad disagreeing with you, because you clearly put a ton of thought into your post, but, well, I disagree with you.

I don't think anybody has an issue with someone writing a happy sports book. I don't recall a 17-page thread debating the merits of Posnanski's Buck O'Neill book, for example. Or Feinstein's "The Amateurs." Or Halberstam's "The Teammates."

The problem here is not that Posnanski set out to write a happy sports book. It's that he set out to write a happy sports book about a figure that many people here and in the sports journalism world at large already had pegged for a disingenuous fraud well before this scandal broke. Nobody begrudges Posnanski for wanting to write a happy sports book. But they do - hell, I'll say it: I do - begrudge him for wanting to write what a reasonable observer should have understood to be an untrue sports book. Or at least a half-true sports book.

And, I know, I know. Books change from the proposal. But I think a lot of us who have been embedded deep into the belly of the beast that is big-time college sports just don't understand how that could have been the working hypothesis to begin with. That's the issue. Not that he wanted to write a happy sports book.

 

When was the last time an author was given almost total access to a major sports figure and the following book was not exactly what the hosting figure had intended? In other words, was not a "happy grandpa" book?

 

"Season on the Brink" obviously.

I bet I could think of more given a few minutes.

But it's kind of tough because major sports figures rarely grant that kind of access without being a partner in the project, like LaRussa and Bissinger.