Pelican hunting: Cavs-Pelicans, Behind the Box Score
February 6, 2016Von Miller and Cleveland Browns non-QB draft misses
February 8, 2016The Verge is not a tech blog; it is, according to its mission and whatnot, a website that covers the intersection of technology, science, art, and culture. There are undoubtedly blog-like posts and the occasional gadget review, but right alongside a piece on the future of Twitter and algorithm-driven timelines are pieces about Beyonce, Larry David, and the aftermath of Michael Brown’s tragic death in St. Louis. One could argue that these latter items have nothing to do with technology in the sense that they have very little overlap with 4K televisions and the next video game console, but that person doing the arguing would not be more wrong—as “technology” as a broad understanding of increased efficiencies and accomplished objectives has not only spent decades seeping over into categories like art, science, and culture, but is now doing so at an increased rate.
Verge’s use of the term “intersection” is not just perfect, but ubiquitous. We can talk about blurred lines or Venn Diagrams and look at how items rooted in one section of the newspaper—i.e. Business, Sports, Leisure—tend to all have ingredients from other sections tossed in. In a piece penned by Hardball Talk’s Craig Calcaterra, he discussed the use of intersectionalism and effectively took a tack hammer to the grunters and farters who still think sports as a form of entertainment should be housed neatly in its own, white male-dominated silo—otherwise known as the “STICK TO SPORTS!” crowd.
The entire point of it is to understand and appreciate that sports are part of the real world, impact the real world and that the real world impacts sports as well. Why not talk about how they do so and what it means, both for sports and the real world? If you really want to be that dude who keeps their sports fandom hermetically sealed and, within their world of sports fandom, sports are everything, go ahead and be that dude. Just know that you’re boring. You’re David Puddy from “Seinfeld,” unironically painting your face at the game and making your friends uncomfortable. You’re the guy who calls in to talk radio and angrily rants about how some player is “stealing money” because he didn’t hit as well as you had hoped. You’re that guy Fox catches on the camera crying at the ballpark when your boys lose. Don’t be that guy. Even if you follow sports for escapism, understand that sports don’t take place in a vacuum. Understand that it is just a ballgame, that you can LOVE the ballgame with every ounce of your being and that we do too, but that the ballgame is not your entire life nor should it really be and that the players are themselves human beings with human failings. Understand that, once you make that realization, it’s interesting to talk about what sports means for life and what life means for sports.
With sports comes business. With sports comes politics. With sports comes religion and race and reports of drug use and domestic violence. This isn’t to say that every play, game, or roster move should be looked at through a prism of some false larger meaning, but the fact that MLB beat writers waste time rushing into clubhouses so that they can simultaneously tweet the lineup of that night’s game, oftentimes minutes after the team tweets it out themselves, is the exact opposite of the important work that these folks with the access and platform could and should be doing. Take a look at any Monday While We’re Waiting… and look at the #ActualSportswriting section. The last year-plus of these pieces being shared, and every single one of them has a narrative arc that is more about culture—age, race, religion, nature, nurture—than it is some bullshit Twitter debate about whether Player X is suited for pick and roll defense.
Calcaterra used Twitter to fine-tune a few of his discussion points in addition to promptly shooing the flies who blindly believe sports to merely be some wholesome feel-good diversion rooted in triumph and altruism.
Top negative response: "I don't want politics in my sports." My response: sorry, it's already in there. Now how about talking about it?
— Craig Calcaterra (@craigcalcaterra) February 7, 2016
You know who would LOVE for you not to talk about political and cultural issues in sports? Team owners. Advertisers. Networks. Commissioners
— Craig Calcaterra (@craigcalcaterra) February 7, 2016
To @hbryant42's point that the best sportswriting has ALWAYS been about more than sports: 100% agree. Without question. [cont'd]
— Craig Calcaterra (@craigcalcaterra) February 7, 2016
I'm simply saying that those issues/questions/approach should not just be reserved for the Big Important Pieces from prestige reporters.
— Craig Calcaterra (@craigcalcaterra) February 7, 2016
Rather, the impulses which led to that great work should be present in even the day-to-day work. We should always be asking those questions.
— Craig Calcaterra (@craigcalcaterra) February 7, 2016
To that point: The Sin Tax was rooted in culture. Johnny Manziel’s off-field struggles are rooted in culture. Cavs ticket prices going up? Culture. Kevin Kiley spewing misogynistic views on women? Culture. When we talk about TV deals and sneaker releases and NBA players having more success in advertisement than their NFL or MLB brethren, it’s culture. Cam Newton dabbing? Petyon Manning’s career? These items can be as heady as LeBron James and Tamir Rice or as ephemeral as Beyonce dressing like the cover of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas while she sits courtside at Warriors-Thunder—oh, and it just so happened to be on the same night that she dropped a new single out of absolutely nowhere, one rooted entirely in culture.
— Scott @ WFNY (@WFNYScott) February 7, 2016
Like Calcaterra adds, this isn’t about using sports to drive home beliefs; it’s not about firing up the Hot Take Cannon and lobbing grenades without an ounce of reporting or in-depth understanding of topics at hand. “Good [sports] writing places [sports] in context, describes players as human beings and makes the readers care about the game as it fits in their lives.” Grantland was a website rooted in sports coverage, but had several tentacles in various cultural pots, be they music, television, and movies; gender and race; and even politics. One quick look at the header of ESPNW and one sees “Life/Style” and “Culture” as a category of coverage. Glossy mags like GQ and Esquire and Vanity Fair have covered culture for decades—they just occasionally involve people who just so happen to trade in sports.
The Verge is the first site I’ve seen to use the term “intersection”, doing so years before the piece referenced by Calcaterra, but if anything has become more apparent over time, as the Internet gets wiser, and media outlets continue to increase their focus on cultural items while utilizing their platforms, the facade of sports as merely being entertainment or some harmless diversion continues to evaporate. And as that sheen gets thinner and thinner, so too will the voices of those who prioritize rumors and speculation and Xs and Os and draft position over the items that are truly more important. As fans, our place in sports is tertiary, tangential at best. As human beings, our place in culture is as important as its ever been.
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Oh, you thought after that whole discussion you’d get a break? Good one. Here’s this week’s edition of #ActualSportswriting:
“Larry Bird will die young. Just ask him” by Jackie MacMullan (ESPN): “It’s a macabre outlook for Larry Legend — but he’s hardly alone in harboring it. Ask a bunch of NBA big men and the consensus is that their atypical size and the strains placed on their bodies during their careers cause them to deteriorate more quickly and die younger. The bigger they are, the younger they fall — or so they think. Is it possible they’re right?”
“We are what we wear” by Tim Layden (Sports Illustrated): “Over the last four decades, American sports fans have transformed themselves from a populace that dresses almost exclusively in civilian clothing and pays to watch athletes perform in uniform, to one that dresses—in significant numbers—exactly like those athletes. … Jersey-wearing by fans is such normative behavior in the modern sports culture that its absurdity—dressing like players? Really?—has long been snowed under by its ubiquity.”
“The House That Built Cam” by Eric Nusbaum (Vice): “His coaches and teammates at Westlake say the Cam Newton America sees now is the same person they saw back then—right down to the smile and the hospital wristbands he wears. He was always special, but he didn’t show signs of becoming the physical specimen he is today until a growth spurt before his junior year. He was hyper-competitive, a hard worker, and the kind of kid who built his teammates up, who brought them with him. He was also something of a quarterbacking savant, even back then.”
“Peyton Manning, you’re our only hope” by Tommy Craggs (Slate): “Consider the licit means by which Manning, now 39, has been kept in shoulder pads. The treatments he’s discussed openly involve some combination of alternative chemistry and injected fat cells. There are also various exotic procedures, the names of which he can’t even recall, not to mention all the reiki crystals and sitar music being inflicted upon the patients of the Guyer Institute. And, yes, there are steroids, too, but only the kind the league has no desire to demagogue onto a banned list. Moral arguments aside, can anyone really say that adding human growth hormone to an already-baroque regimen of cortisone shots and stem-cell therapy would represent some unnatural degree of physical self-improvement?”
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And finally, with “Bern Your Enthusiasm,” Larry David officially made the world yearn for more “Curb.”
Have a great Monday, you crazy cats.
22 Comments
was that all a long winded way of saying we should expect more WFNY takes on the Kardashians in 2016?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxMxt9m5L0c
You hit on one of my biggest MLB beat writer pet peeves Scott.
MLB beat writers now usually tweet it out moments before the team. Think it’s the team’s nod towards them.
But, your point remains. All they would have to do is re-tweet the lineup from the team to their followers (assuming some not in overlap) and spend the time before the game reporting.
Having Jordan Bastian and Paul Hoynes sitting on a chair in the locker room doing nothing is more productive than chasing the lineup sheets. They might hear a nice anecdote, have a conversation with a player, or use that quiet moment to come up with a story angle or idea.
So many more things they could be doing with the incredible access given (and those guys do a good job overall, it’s their bosses requiring them to chase those things).
No. WFNY won’t change—culture has always been a part of what we’ve done here, be it through discussions on Wahoo, attendance, Sin Tax or any other off-field item. The point is that it’s these off-field items that are starting to have more and more of an impact on the sports themselves and they should (and will) be covered as such. What I am saying (indirectly, anyway) is that you’ll never see us rushing to the corkboard in the clubhouse and making today’s lineup a point of emphasis. I would much prefer this site continue to trade in larger items worthy of the time and ambition put into them; not something that as ephemeral as the weather. This Is all a “long-winded” way of saying that while WFNY is, at its core, a site that discusses local sports and the individuals who comprise it, we will continue to do not just work in covering them, but that the most important work will involve more than just a box score.
Larry Bird was thee man … i would’ve loved to have seen him & LeBron go at it on the court.
But….hey boss, big butts.
My comment is the equivalent of tweeting a starting line-up, but as long as we’re petting our peeves, it’s “compose.” The team comprises the individuals, the individuals compose the team. You’re welcome.
Ok, and if you’re branching, I call dibs on the Funbag piece. I envision fantastic things from our reader mail and responses thereto.
The ultimate red ass. I wonder how his game would translate to today’s (i.e. stretch four, etc) but the guy was a baller. Tough to call a top-10 all-time player underrated, but it could be argued that he often gets lost in the MJ/Magic discussions.
It’s hard to look at any beat writer and see them as anything other than an extension of the team’s PR wing. Maybe that’s not true everywhere, but it sure seems to be the case for the teams I pay attention to. That’s the price for access, it seems.
i’m thinking his game could translate into any era … he may not have been the greatest athlete , but he was smart & tougher than most think … and yes , he was cocky as well … but he backed it up.
I guess I forgot my sarcasm tag. Or, someone really has a case of the Mondays 🙁
Bird in today’s defense-free, glorified HORSE game version of the NBA?
He’d score 50 a game.
Him and all the players of that era took beatings on the court. You can’t even breathe on today’s players without a flop, or a foul call.
It’s just a pre-cursor to our announcement that we’re going to start covering The Bachelor in depth with slideshows of moments you have to see to believe.
The suggestion that sports and culture are somehow separate is beyond ridiculous. How can anyone follow sports and think that? Have you not seen any of the 30 for 30s? Pretty much every other one is about some the intersection of sports and some broader social issue.
It’s a really chronocentric point of view to have too, like Grantland was the first to note that sports and culture often connect. Fifty years ago, there was Muhammad Ali and the Football War. A hundred there was Babe Ruth and Jack Johnson. You can look back to the early days of formalized prize-fighting in England and find guys like James Figg who socialized with the Prince of Wales and other noblemen. Sports have never existed in a bubble.
So….I can vote for Larry David now, as well? I mean, it is the election of television personalities.
20 years ago, right in the middle of Bird’s prime, NBA teams were averaging 10 points a night more than they did last year, despite them not figuring out the benefit of the 3 point line – in 85-86 teams averaged shooting 28% from 3 on 274 attempts a season, last year it was 35% on 1838 attempts per season. There were some enforcers in the league back then who got away with stuff that shouldn’t be on a basketball court anyway, but back in Bird’s day, defenses simply didn’t get back on defense and prevent easy baskets the way even the worst current NBA defenses do.
How Calcaterra’s top response should read is “I don’t want different politics than my own in my sports”. That’s all there is to it.
Good to see Larry trying to breathe life into SNL after he kept Seinfeld on life support all those years.
you, one thing that irrationally bothers me is when I make dinner Sunday nights, I like to listen to the Dari & Mel podcast. Lately, they’ve all been Bachelor recaps. Ugh
Neither. I think it’s a legit question. But I’m also sensitive to any readers who think something they’ve enjoyed for so long would be potentially changing. While you may have asked in jest, I’m sure there are a few who don’t comment who may have read and thought the same.
Bread and circuses.
The dumbing down of America is at its zenith. Small example:
I watch the NFLUK broadcasts, there is a commercial break at the end of each quarter, 2 minute warning and halftime. Whilst America is watching Papa John and KFC/Pepsi sling transfat, the UK is watching a CFL coach breaking down plays that just occurred in the previous series, and doing a rather nice job of it. I have been watching football for 40+ years and learn quite a bit of nuance from those breakdowns. Now one can argue the NFL is doing the groundwork to educate the UK audience on the game, and you would be right. But the biggest complaint I always hear from soccer and rugby fans, Kiwi, Aussie and Brit, is the game is too long with too many stoppages.
The only thing close is the NFL Matchup show on ESPN. However, they cover as much ground in 30 minutes as the UK guys do in 10. Other than that, the NFL network and all the pre-game shows are just fluff, very little substance.