It is said that sports is just a reflection of our society. That was never more true than on Sunday night during Game 2 of the World Series. Rather than report the news, the game announcers -- Joe Buck and Tim McCarver -- decided to MAKE the news, as so often happens in the media when reporting world events.
Buck and McCarver honed in on a spot on the pitching hand of Detroit Tigers pitcher Kenny Rogers and surmised that Rogers was using pine tar to alter the flight of his pitches to gain an advantage against the St. Louis Cardinals batters. They said members in the St. Louis clubhouse who were watching the telecast would tell manager Tony La Russa, who would undoubtedly complain to the umpires. Well, as they were instucted by their eyes in the booth, members in the Cardinals clubhouse did inform La Russa, who informed the umps, who checked Rogers, who had previously cleaned his hand of dirt, pine tar or whatever was on his hand. And with hands clean, Rogers went on to pitch seven more innings of great baseball.
Not to be dissuaded from trying to make a big deal out of nothing, Buck and McCarver continued to harp on the dirty hand the rest of the game, Chris Myers had a "sideline" report, both managers were quizzed as to what was going on during and after the game, Rogers was deluged by postgame questions from the print media which was quick to pick up on the controversy that their media brothers had so cleverly dreamed up to pump up interest in this Series, and ESPN kept it alive until Game 3 on Tuesday night. It even was mentioned again just before Game 3 and will undoubtedly surface again the next time Rogers pitches, if not sooner.
Enough already. When will the media in this country stop making the news and go back to their responsible role of reporting it?
Sadly enough, the answer is: Probably never.
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
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