Shaughnessy: "We now have a bad connection"

Shaughnessy was an arrogant ass who skated by on the fame of his "Curse" book for about 20 years. After being a prick to nearly everyone around him for years he's finding the world is changing and he actually has to break a sweat on his job from time to time. Boo-fucking-hoo.

 

The how and why is that your local TV station and my local newspaper are no longer media outlets that teams believe they must cultivate. They'd like you to air a nice story and they'd like me to write one, sure, but better yet they'd like the fans to get in the habit of going to the official team website for the news (and to buy stuff while there). In my market, MLB PR guy runs his own blog, posting team news before disseminating to media.

And the players used to ask the PR folks to help with publicity from your station and my newspaper. Now the players (and their agents) have decided we are not necessary. ESPN will do, or the local FSN affiliate, or some glossy magazine. So the players now ask the PR folks to keep us away. In the old days and now, the PR folks want to keep the players happy.

And, Luggy, you should feel free to tell the radio guys not to engulf you. Unless you're talking to a guy who just got dropped in the lineup or back from an MRI tube, the radio guys should not be jumping into your one-on-one. Your sweet smile and "Excuse me, I'll just be a couple minutes" should do the trick.

 

Luggy,
If that happens pre-game, you have every right to tell those reporters to scatter. I bet most athletes would support you. It's common knowledge (or should be) that you don't interrupt one-on-one pre-game interviews in the clubhouse/locker room. Post game is different, obviously.
The exception: covering the Knicks. There are no one-on-ones, ever, unless you don't mind a pr flack eavesdropping and recording it on their blackberry, to be sent directly to Jimmy Dolan.

 

Hah - The Yankee Clubhouse is just like that. It looks like the scene from Take the Money and Run when the convicts are all chained together. All the writers huddled in middle of Clubhouse. Whenever Clubhouse door opens all eyes are on it.

Loopy breaks ranks and stands closer to Managers office. Its funny to hear him conduct an interview - he has kind of sing song squeky voice.

 

Without evaluating Dan's work AT ALL (I've known him for eons and we get along just fine), there is no question he is loathed by many Boston fans, as this thread indicates. I'm never quite sure whose fault that is, and three years out of the racket, I'm less sure than ever.
I DO know this. When I started sportswriting in the late 1970s, writers who'd been in the game for awhile were bitching that the big money had changed everything, especially access and attitudes. I think Dan's piece, while accurate, is pretty much a description of something that was going on when he was a rookie, just as I was.

 

I don't get it, Chris. You start out with the great Gowdy-Stengel anecdote and then you say it doesn't matter that most reporters today would never have enough access to get a similar one. If all you want is to watch the games and read the boxscores, that's fine, but as a fan, I want more than that, and I think most fans do. I want to know the stuff that goes on behind the scenes, the stuff that I can't get from watching the games and studying the stats. I don't need to know anybody's favorite BBQ sauce, but I'd like to know a little more about who the hell Tim Duncan really is, besides somebody with a good post-up game, for instance. I want that Jackie MacMullan story on what a detail freak Ray Allen is. That's the kind of story that's getting increasingly difficult -- not impossible, but difficult -- to put together, and that's a shame.

 

Yankee Beats in the middle of Yankee clubhouse converse with stadium security guard.

 

Add this to the 'too much media' explanation:

The explosion of the sports marketing industry--since the days of the Fridge and Ditka and Jordan and the 86 Mets/Giants--created an entire culture of humanoids required to justify their existence by protecting and sheltering and screening and 'handling' whatever bits of lint float their clients' way. Not just media, but everything from speaking to a group of Little Leaguers to cutting the ribbon at a new car wash.

I'm amazed by how many times, especially in recent years, I finally reach a guy whose management has been managing him, and he has no idea anyone has been trying to get in touch.

 

Amen.

A few years ago, I was trying to get in touch with Red Auerbach for a story about an old player of his who was an aging local guy. Maybe the guy had died. Can't quite remember.

Someone in Celtics media relations take the call and act super guarded and patronizingly skeptical. I can tell he was humoring me, but tried to keep the faith. I worked for a relatively unknown paper at the time - at least in the NBA world. A couple days go by. No return call.

I finally reach Celtics PR guy a day later or so.

"Oh, you know, we passed that along to Red. He's just not really feeling well right now, so he's going to have to pass."

I'm steamed. And now I'm skeptical. So I look Red up on whitepages.com. He's listed. I call him up. He answers. First try. We talk about this guy who played two seasons in Boston five decades ago for at least 15, maybe 20 minutes.

He didn't know a thing about my request. Hadn't talked to anyone in Celtics media relations for weeks.

 

Red Auerbach was a pirate. The greatest pirate who ever lived. He taught me a good lesson one day.
I asked him a question in an interview circa 1990. I used the question formation "Some people say." He stopped me.
"No, the hell with that. That means it's what you think. Have the guts to say so." (That's my best paraphrase after many years).
He was right. Often was, the old pirate. Never used that format again.
In terms of this thread, the point is that strong, independent people don't need, want, or use handlers. It's the gifted but otherwise passive folks (HI! A-Rod, and a billion more guys) who use them, for fear someday they'll miss a dollar.

 

Fifty, sixty years ago, when teams were making the transition from traveling by train to traveling by plane, and access to athletes was dropping dramatically, there was basically the same complaint. And the older writers just couldn't understand the young guys, even when they had access.

The real difference now is economic and class. Today's players make so much money that they do not consider themselves part of the same class as the writers - and they are not. As a result, very few see any logic in being revealing - what's in it for them, at least right now? Later, when they miss the attention, there may be regrets, but not now. When Rick Robey was driving everyone to the airport, he was making more than the writers, but not dramatically, life-changing so. Today, Shaughnessy, one of the better paid columnists in the country, doesn't even make rookie money. Very few of the players would either live in his house or his neighborhood.

That being said, I recently interviewed several of the youngest and best, in terms of talent, in MLB. They were terrific. But then again, I had read and taken notes on about 100 pps. of stories written about them ahead of time, dating back to when they were in junior high, highs school and college, before I ever thought of asking a question. I looked up the demographics of where they grew up, googled their parent, high school coaches, etc. Not that it always makes a difference, but that kind of prep, when your first question references a gam tyhey played in Little League, can make a difference in the next twenty or thirty minutes, and might be the difference between "Not today," and something approaching a real conversation.

 

Do you think that they consciously think that way?

I bet they would far, far, far overestimate how much we make. Even the teams think that anybody who writes a book is rolling in vats of $100s.