Athletes and the media: what do you think?

So, apparently, Erik Bedard is being less than friendly with the media.

This brings up an issue I've always been very curious about, so I hope we can get a discussion going here. What do you, the fans, think about this? Do you consider it part of an athlete's job to at least be cooperative and cordial with the media?

How important is it for you to hear what an athlete thinks about the game, his performance, anything else? How important is it for you to be able to see the kind of outside-the-stadium details that can only come with a player's cooperation?

Our baseball section will include several stories about some of the Royals' most popular and talented players with perspective and thoughts that I hope you enjoy. These are the kinds of stories that come when a player agrees to let a reporter in a little bit, to share personal and deep thoughts that you just can't get in a five-minute postgame scrum.

How important is that for you? How much do you want to hear those tales? How much do you want to get to know the athletes you cheer for?

Reporters, in the best of circumstances, are at games and in the locker rooms to bring you stories and thoughts you wouldn't otherwise have. When we get shut out, fans get shut out.

I know the rules are changing a little bit with more athletes speaking directly to fans through blogs or whatever, but with only very rare exceptions (that I have yet to see), those settings never produce the kinds of insights that thoughtful interviews do.

Then again, the most important thing on both sides --- for fans and athletes --- will always be performance.

Anyway, I'm just curious what you all think: how important is it for you that athletes be available and cooperative with reporters?

Programming note: I'm thinking from here on out, the days we do the links, we'll do 'em in the afternoon. It'll make the posts and my life better, and I'm all for each of those things.

Submitted by Sam Mellinger on March 13, 2008 - 12:20pm.
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Totally agree that it's up

Submitted by Sam Mellinger on March 16, 2008 - 8:04am.

Totally agree that it's up to the athlete. It makes it much easier and more pleasant for everyone involved if they do cooperate at least minimally, but it's a free country.

Albert Belle might be another example of what you're talking about, though from what I understand, he wasn't just a prick to the media, he was a prick to most everyone.

I know I bring some biases to the table on this one, but here goes anyway: I don't think the media (at least the vast majority) do anything --- consciously or otherwise --- to screw over an athlete based on a petty personal thing like, "that guy won't talk to me." But I do think it's only natural that the guys willing to talk, the guys who give thoughtful and insightful and funny answers, are going to be the guys on TV/in the paper a little more often and if there are benefits to that, then they'll get them.

But I absolutely agree. If they don't want to talk, that's their perogative. As the great Bobby Brown once said, "I made this money, you didn't. Right Ted?"

I understand that without

Submitted by deaconjones on March 15, 2008 - 8:10pm.

I understand that without media coverage of sports teams and athletes, the popularity of those sports and individuals would plummet, along with their revnues and salaries. However, I get a kick out of listening to members of the media bitch when someone won't talk to the media. In reality, it is completely up to the individual player to cooperate with the media. And if they don't want to, there's not much anybody can do about it.

A great example of a player refusing to deal with the media, and it affecting his popularity was Eddie Murray (former Oriole). He was EVERY BIT the player his teammate Ripken, Jr. was. Look it up. But he didn't give interviews, so therefore, he was not exactly a household name.

If a sports personality wants to be a dick to the media, I think that is their right, whether anybody likes it or not. As a reader and fan, I don't really have to have quotes from the player/coach.

Deacon Jones
LA Rams

Sam, I enjoy the blog and

Submitted by jlsantis on March 14, 2008 - 10:07am.

Sam, I enjoy the blog and would like to see some more in depth interviews with players, etc. The links can be fun, but I'm primarily interested in KC info. You're on the right track. Keep it up.

Cool. Got some things coming

Submitted by Sam Mellinger on March 14, 2008 - 10:18am.

Cool. Got some things coming in the next week or two I think you'll enjoy.

Whoa

Submitted by wdb12 on March 13, 2008 - 7:25pm.

The dude abides...and really unloads. Relatively spot on in most regards so I'll go another direction.
I look at a player's relationship with the media from two perspectives. First, professional athletes are foolish not to cultivate (self-serving) relationships with the media. If it means granting a little access, so be it. Rep sells. So if I were advising one I'd push for a pro-media attitude.
From a fan's standpoint I put little stock in reports that a guy is "surly" with the media. Whatever. Sure it limits the information I get and that kind of sucks, but I don't think they have an obligation to provide me with personal (or otherwise) info about themselves.
In the end it's a poor professional choice but if being a media sweetheart doesn't jive with a player's personality then surliness is his right.

How often do players who take anti-media stances have legitimate reasons for doing so? Impossible to tell, right?

Lots of good questions. One

Submitted by Sam Mellinger on March 13, 2008 - 7:52pm.

Lots of good questions. One thing that always irritates me is the idea that if a guy's a prick to the media, he doesn't get voted for this or that. I really hope that's not true, and my strong gut feeling is that it's not. Steve Carlton was an all-time prick to the media, right? And he got 95.6% of the vote. But whatever.

I agree that a good athlete-reporter relationship can be beneficial for both sides. Actually, beneficial for all three sides, because the fans get better information.

Someone asked about how much our access depends on the "spin" we put on performances...zero. First, games are on TV, millions watch in person, it's not like we can (or would) say a guy's great when he's looking up at Mendoza. Also, these are grown men, and (most) of them are big enough to recognize when it's warranted. I've had strong disagreements when plenty of people I've covered, from the Royals to colleges to high schools. Almost without exception, the people who've come to me with the strongest beefs about something I've written are the people I have the best relationships with.

I don't know if this is what you meant, but there is no implied bartering system here. I've never had the feeling a guy will only talk to me if I write flowery stuff about him. Most times it's the opposite, guys aren't going to respect you if all you write is B.S. News makers, and I think especially in MLB, respect knowledge and hard work.

It's also worth mentioning that it's more than just the teams "granting" us access. They're required by MLB to open the clubhouse for a period of time before and after games.

It absolutely makes the job of a reporter easier when there's cooperation, but that cooperation goes both ways. The team/athlete/executive can't dictate what we write anymore than we can dictate who hits cleanup.

As for the purpose of this blog, I'm still feeling my way out with this, but generally I'm looking for a place to get thoughts or observations or whatever that don't have a place in the paper. Hopefully that includes stuff you wouldn't get anywhere else.

I think I've done some good things here, some dumb things here, some funny things, some more dumb things, and hopefully some interesting things. The goal is to make it better, and I hope you guys help me do that.

follow up question on "spin"; paging Justin Huber

Submitted by TheDudeAbides on March 14, 2008 - 12:12pm.

Hey Sam, I'm glad to hear you feel that the overwhelming majority of your subjects respect your work and act professionally. You seem to have a great personality for working with people.

When I'm wondering about access, it's access to quality - by which I mean interesting and truthful - information, not just the usual banal responses. And by spin, I guess I mean from the perspective of choosing what to leave out, not from the perspective of feeding us false info.

Objectivity in journalism is great (and I suspect a much higher percentage of journalists try to be professionally objective than most people think) but simply providing facts can give a pretty skewed picture.

You have a limited number of words to work with - especially in the paper - and so selecting what set of facts to include has such a huge impact. That's why there is such a battle between statheads and traditionalists. In a normal sports column, there's not enough space to approach the game from both angles, so even though both approaches reflect facts, the choice of which set of facts to use could be considered "spin" (and I mean that without the normal negative connotation).

And that's where my question about the role of reporting comes in and where my question about the purpose of this blog comes in. While the ubiquity of blogs is forcing traditional newspapers to blur the lines between reporting and commentary, my understanding is that most of the pieces you do for the paper are straight reporting (with that likely to change as your role at the Star continues to expand). Is the role of the blog to do commentary when you feel like it? And if you do commentary on the blog, does that compromise your objectivity for the paper?

For example, going back to Dayton Moore. Your interview of him for the blog is flat out spectacular. Your questions are hilarious. His answers are hilarious.

Now let's say it starts to really bug you that the Royals appear to be planning to give both Grudz and Gload a lot of at bats. Let's say you write a blog entry about how the Royals are treating Justin Huber. This could be a very professional non-Whitlock type post (sorry, he's probably a great guy, but he's at the forefront of turning writing into name-calling yellow journalism).

The fact is that in 14 plate appearances, Justin Huber has 6 hits, 4 doubles, 1 triple, 2 walks, 1 stolen base. He's hitting .500/.533/1.000 for an OPS of 1.533. Now everybody knows that this is essentially meaningless because of the sample size. However, because Justin Huber has easily been the best minor league hitter in the Royals organization over the past five years after the two potential superstars (Gordon, Butler), and because Justin Huber is the hero of pretty much all of the Royals blogs you link to on the left of your page, it creates the following dynamic: THE ROYALS HAD TO BENCH JUSTIN HUBER TO DERAIL HIS ATTEMPT TO MAKE THE TEAM.

And it's obvious Huber has been effectively benched. Jason Smith, Damon Hollins, and Mitch Maier all have significantly more PAs and none have more than a snowball's chance of making the team (even Angel Berroa has the same number of PAs). Of course, there are other possibilities. They may feel he's already won a spot (highly unlikely), or they may have benched him in an attempt to throw other organizations of the scent when they try to pass him through waivers (possible, but who are they kidding).

Now benching Huber is the kind of thing that Buddy Bell would do. It makes sense that during the time of Spring Training Optimism the travails of Justin Huber is not a happy story, and it makes some sense to bury this story. But considering the intense blogosphere interest in Huber and the fact that Trey Hillman is already talking about how the Royals may struggle to score runs, it's a story that's more important - and more interesting in terms of generating eyeballs, hits, readers, what-have-you - than the Star's piece on Pena improving his range by split-stepping a milisecond earlier or whatever (which was a fine piece).

So my question - I know you're not still reading this - is what happens if you write a story/post pointing out this shabby treatment of Huber (along with pointing out that Ross Gload, he of the .313 batting average, also has a .313 OBP, because he can't take a walk; again, small sample size, but Hillman goes on about OBP and Gload last year walked 16 times in over 330 PAs)?

And this goes back to your question about the relationship of athletes and media. Sometimes the interests of the local team and the local media are at cross purposes. The Royals may come out after they lose Huber on waivers and say: "Look, we decided there was no way we could keep both Butler and Huber since neither one is remotely capable of playing in the field." That's when it makes the most sense strategically for them to address it. But from the media/fan perspective, the story is already over by then. For the media/fans, the time to address the fact that we may see 350 plate appearances from Ross Gload is right now.

From your response, it sounds like you'd have no problem bringing that up in the blog and wouldn't have to worry about Trey Hillman taking you off to the side and ripping into you like Herm when he felt someone accused him of lying (you know, when he was, in fact, lying). That we might have posts like that in the future - incorporating info that those of us who just read about the Royals from cold, drafty, mean places like NYC don't have - is really exciting.

What if when Moore mentions he reads the Bible everyday you ask about Jose Guillen's cheating? I realize that some people would consider that a cheapshot, but if Moore wants that to be part of his public persona (which is definitely valid), and many of the people who pay to show up at the ballpark everyday share his beliefs, isn't it a fair question to wonder how those beliefs fit in with paying someone $36 million dollars based at least in part on their juiced track record? How can we tell high school kids not to use drugs when our actively Christian GM is sending the message that drug use pays off, and not only that, it pays off big? (Imagine the flyers alerting everyone to the next CCF meeting featuring Jose Canseco as guest speaker.)

Please don't consider this an assault on Moore. I - like everybody else - love the guy. I simply think that sports cannot be separated from the rest of life, because they in fact aren't separate. (As Clay Bucholtz can evidently attest.) And maybe those questions have been asked and answered; Guillen, as far as I know, denies cheating, and maybe he and Roger Clemens are telling the truth.

Royals 91-71 AL Central Champions
Billy Butler 2008 Batting Champion
Zach Greinke 2008 Cy Young

Totally un-blog related...

Submitted by Llama on March 13, 2008 - 7:59pm.

I can never remember whether AZ is on Moutain or Pacific time after Daylight Savings begins. So which is it right now, same as Denver or LA?

LA. We're two hours behind

Submitted by Sam Mellinger on March 13, 2008 - 10:27pm.

LA. We're two hours behind KC.

athletes and media

Submitted by TheDudeAbides on March 13, 2008 - 5:05pm.

It depends on the quality of the reporter and the level of insight the athlete is capable of.

Puff pieces like we always get from the Star about the Chiefs are mind-bendingly uninteresting. Blatant rip jobs that are about as well thought out and researched as a 4th grade English paper like we get from Jason Whitlock not only are unenlightening, but I would expect they compromise the ability of other writers to get access (or at least to get interesting answers to questions).

Unless Erik Bedard is as interesting as Brian Bannister, why would we care if he's being less friendly with the media?

What's your feeling about it? As a reporter who is going to follow a certain subject (Royals) for a significant length of time, how important is your relationship with the players? How much does your access depend on the spin you put on their performances? Knowing that you can't perform your job properly without at least a minimum level of access, how does that impair your ability to deliver a more analytical and truthful story? (Like pushing Dayton Moore for an explanation for what role ethics plays in the $36 million signing of a player who cheats and was so despised by his former employer he was paid half a mil just to go away faster. What's your follow-up, for example, when he gives the generic, "we looked into it and decided his cheating doesn't concern us as to his character, nor does it concern us as to potential degradation of the performance we paid so dearly for"? Mos seemed all over the potential for that one.)

Players and management have access to media as a means of promoting their product and educating their fans, and it strikes me that they come off like the dumb ones when they assume a lack of sophistication on the part of the fans (why would Hillman want to downplay his statistical awareness right before he launches into a fairly impressive answer?). While many coaches and general managers see information as something to be hoarded at all costs, providing some useful information to fans can have a huge benefit to the individual and to the team. While it obviously created some backlash in limited circles, Billy Beane and the A's allowing Moneyball to be written was a huge boon for the GM and the organization.

This is one of the real failings of the Chiefs. They provide very little interesting information to the media and what they try to push on their website is often not true and usually disingenuous.

Which brings me to a question about this blog. What is your purpose? You write excellent articles for the Star and the interviews you've posted on here are tremendous. It's also great to have something of a homepage for starting one's daily Royals experience.

Otherwise though you seem to be leaving a little on the table. This would appear to be a forum where you can write all of the kinds of things you can't write for the Star because of length, depth, and/or word choice/sentence structure/creativity that doesn't fly for a newspaper. Since I'm coming here for Royals info, I'd rather hear about your attempts to find out why the Royals are intent on discarding Justin Huber than get a link to something about a playmate (who I don't care about) dating a player from another team (who I don't care about).

Not that there's anything wrong with anything on here, but it just seems like for the blog and the comments section to really take off, we need to see you show off your writing chops. The best way to promote yourself, the Star, and the Royals is to make this a Michael Shur/Bill Simmons-esque blog on the Royals. And I don't mean to try to emulate their style - I certainly wouldn't want to contradict Mose's edict to be yourself - but simply that you can make your blog to the Royals what their writing is to their respective areas.

Anyway, Florida does suck. Good luck building this thing.

Blogging

Submitted by jtuck123 on March 17, 2008 - 9:38am.

I agree with the dude that abides...I think that this blog is a great thing. I like the fact that I can learn a lot more of other teams from some of the posts that you write. I would also like to know a bit more about what happens in the dugout and why. I believe Justin Huber deserves a chance in Kauffman. I know it's a lot to try and figure out but it would be nice to know. I also know that we can't rag on you too much about what you do and don't do being that this is a new thing for you. I'd love to enjoy the links that you post, however my internet access at work is highly limited and I can't see anything about those links. Like he said above, I don't really care too much that some fake plastic woman is dating a most-likely overpaid player. I want to see about my team and the people I care about on the diamond. And just to clarify, I have nothing against your blog, I love it! I like being able to see a little more about the Royals than I would in the paper or on the website. Keep up the good work man...

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