Tag: ESPN

On Hinch and Morton and “Codebreaker”

Four weeks.  It’s been almost four weeks now since Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred issued his report finding my Houston Astros guilty of cheating in 2017 and 2018 for using technology to steal signs from their opponents, and only now does former manager A. J. Hinch agree to an interview on the subject.  Coincidentally, it was released the same day we learned more about how the cheating may have gotten started, revealed thanks to that stalwart of baseball journalism, the Wall Street Journal.  No kidding.

The commissioner’s report found that the Astros players were behind the scheme, and that the manager was aware of what was going on but didn’t do anything to stop it.  You’ll get no argument on that point from Hinch, who talked to Tom Verducci of MLB Network.

“I wish I would have,” Hinch said. “I really do. I think that’s a big question that I’m going to process over what’s now a season-long suspension. It’s something I continued to think about certainly through the investigation, when you have to openly talk about it. I wish I would have done more. Right is right and wrong is wrong, and we were wrong.”

(snip)

The Commissioner’s report said that Hinch twice took a bat to monitors that were used to steal signs, an indication that the manager did not approve of the players’ methods. In hindsight, Hinch said, he should have taken further measures to stop what was happening.

“I should have had a meeting and addressed it face forward and really ended it,” he said. “Leadership to me is often about what you preach. Leadership’s also about what you tolerate. I tolerated too much.”

(Note: it is accepted wisdom that there is nothing more powerful in all of baseball than a team meeting.)

Most recent stories want us to focus on the question of whether the Astros’ 2017 World Series title is tainted.  Of course it is.  It’s not invalidated, but short of mass amnesia there’s no way for people not to think that the Astros won, or may have won, because they cheated.  But that’s not the most important question, not to me.  I need to hear Hinch’s explanation for why he tolerated too much, why he didn’t put a stop to behavior of which, we are told, he highly disapproved.

Verducci didn’t press him to answer, at least not in the portion of the interview that was published.

When the question is why didn’t you stop it, the answer is not “I wish I had stopped it,” the answer is to explain to me why you did not, and so far I haven’t seen Hinch’s answer to that question.  I get that it’s not the old days when players didn’t have any power and managers ruled with an iron fist, and that today maybe some managers don’t really have control over their players.  In this case, though, the players reportedly told the investigators that if Hinch had just told them to stop it, they would have stopped; sounds like a group that respects the manager and wants to please.  So why didn’t Hinch take advantage of that dynamic and direct his players to stop this thing that he claims he opposed?  We don’t know.

Hinch has always been comfortable in front of the camera, and he did a good job in this interview of accepting responsibility for his inaction that hurt his team.  Fired Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow seems to have fallen into a deep deep hole somewhere with absolutely nothing to say, beyond a statement last month denying he knew anything at all about this as it was happening.  Hmm.

Keep that in mind when you read the Wall Street Journal story that the “Houston Astros’ front office laid the groundwork for the team’s electronic sign-stealing ploys via a program dubbed ‘Codebreaker’ that was introduced by an intern in the organization in September 2016.”  (If you can’t access the full WSJ story, here’ a link to an ESPN version.)  An intern who worked for Jeff Luhnow says he assumed Luhnow knew the program was being used during regular league games.  Luhnow reportedly told MLB investigators he remembered “the intern’s PowerPoint slide about ‘Codebreaker,’ but said he thought it would be used to legally decipher signs from previous games.”

The team’s director of advance information, Tom Koch-Weser, also alleges Luhnow knew about the system. According to the WSJ, Koch-Weser told MLB that the former GM would occasionally go to the Astros’ video room during road games and make comments like, “You guys Codebreaking?”

Luhnow declined the WSJ’s request for comment but, according to the paper’s reporting, denied Koch-Weser’s accounts to MLB, and investigators could find no definitive proof that Luhnow knew how “Codebreaker” was being used.

Meanwhile, the Astros players are still in hiding, and this is a great example of how a lot of journalism today fails when it comes to covering professional sports, and how the players and other employees of the major league teams aren’t held accountable for their actions in the way that other people who find themselves unfortunately in the news are.  The businessman accused of cheating or of allowing cheating to occur gets grilled.  To use a Houston example, think Enron: Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling and Andrew Fastow were hounded to respond to the charges, and no reporter was satisfied to just let it go if one of them “had not been made available” for an interview.  But that’s what we get from reporters covering the Houston Astros and the findings from Major League Baseball that the team cheated.  Not one current player has had his feet held to the fire to talk about their roles, or the team’s behavior.

I get it that the players don’t want to talk publicly; they do not want to have to admit that they broke the rules.  Of course they don’t; who would?  But it’s the job of reporters to hold the powerful accountable for their actions.  Yet in all the stories about this in the past four weeks since the commissioner’s report was released, I haven’t seen a single reference like “George Springer could not be reached for comment” or “Messages left asking Carlos Correa to discuss the report have not been returned.”  Am I supposed to believe that no one in all of journalism has Yuli Gurriel’s cell phone number?  The Wall Street Journal was able to contact Luhnow for its story, but not one reporter who covers the team has been able to get a player to make a not-for-attribution statement, to give us some insight to what they did and how they feel about it now?

To this point we’ve had to make do with comments from former Astros players, obtained at team-organized off-season events for their new fans.  Two weeks ago it was Dallas Keuchel who apologized without getting into details of which players did what, and yesterday former Astros pitcher Charlie Morton did the same.

…when Morton learned of the scheme his Houston teammates were using to steal signs and tip off their hitters to what pitch was coming, when he heard the actual banging on a trash can to relay the info, he didn’t say or do anything.

And that, he said Saturday in addressing the cheating scandal for the first time, is his primary remorse.

“’I was aware of the banging. … Being in the dugout you could hear it. I don’t know when it dawned on me, but you knew it was going on,” Morton said. “Personally, I regret not doing more to stop it. I don’t know what that would have entailed. I think the actions would have been somewhat extreme to stop it. That’s a hypothetical.”

Extreme because it was widespread, some of his Houston players and coaches actively participating, others complicit by allowing it to continue, all the way to a World Series championship. Extreme because it felt like more than one man could do anything about.

“I certainly have thought about it a lot because it negatively impacted the game, and people’s perception of the game, the fans, opposing players. And that doesn’t sit well with me,” Morton, 36, said during the Rays Fan Fest at Tropicana Field. “Where I was at the time, I don’t know where I was.

“Because what’s wrong is wrong. And I’ll never be absolved of that.”

A couple of weeks ago Astros owner Jim Crane had this to say about the fact that his players had yet to speak on the subject of having cheated, and of being caught at it, and of costing their manager his job:

“A couple of guys that have been interviewed, they’ve been holding back a little bit,” Crane said. “We need to get them a little more time to get together in spring training. Everybody’s split up (geographically).”

(Note: there appears to be no technology available that would let all the Astros players in their various locations have a real-time conversation; that might be worth investigating.)

“It’s a team. We’re going to sit in a room and talk about it and then we’re going to come out and address the press — all of them will address the press — either as a group or individually. Quite frankly, we’ll apologize for what happened, ask forgiveness and move forward.”

OK…Astros pitchers and catchers report on Tuesday, the rest of the players are due one week from today.  We’ll see.

ESPN: The Worldwide Sellout

A blind man can see that the self-proclaimed Worldwide Leader in Sports is no giant of journalism, but the hype-pool of Super Bowl week is no excuse for the eyewash ESPN put out yesterday masquerading as an Earth-moving event of epic proportion.  It was pathetic; it was sad; and it goes to the heart of my belief that many in the news media compromise their integrity every day in covering sports stories, giving control over what they ask and what they publish to the players and the teams.

Loads of reporters have wanted to interview Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning, whose great career came to an unexpected (and perhaps only temporary) stop when he missed this entire season recovering from neck surgeries.  They’ve especially wanted to talk to him since (1) his contract is expiring and everyone wonders if he’ll come back to play with the Colts, or if the team will drop him to save money and use the first pick in the upcoming draft to secure his successor, (2) the Super Bowl is being played in Indianapolis on Sunday, (3) Manning’s brother Eli, the quarterback of the New York Football Giants, is playing in this year’s big game, and (4) anything new to report on would be a blessing.

They’ve all wanted the Big Get, but Peyton Manning has declined the offers, which is his right, until yesterday, when he agreed to an interview with ESPN’s Trey Wingo.  But you and me, the great unwashed American tee wee viewer, we had to be sharp to notice that the interview was arranged through the good offices of Gatorade, which granted ESPN access to its spokesman Manning so he could talk about a Gatorade promotional event.  As such, Gatorade leveraged its position to turn a “news” interview with a hard-to-get person at a time when he’s even more in the news than normal into a commercial for Gatorade (Manning was interviewed with Gatorade bottles lined up behind him, for crying out loud!); as a business with a product to promote, that’s Gatorade’s right.

But it only works when ESPN agrees to the charade.  Check out the interview, parts 1 and 2.  I give Wingo credit for repeatedly trying to get Manning to talk about his injury, his unfortunate public disagreement with his team’s owner, and his contract situation, all things that Manning didn’timage want to discuss—all the reasons why he hadn’t been talking to anyone lately.  As for Manning—and this is particularly true in part 2—I give him credit for not straying from his intended topics.  But for a guy who is so good on camera in so many commercials and interviews, and when he hosted “Saturday Night Live,” I thought he looked uneasy throughout, as if he were seated on something not flat or soft.  When you think about it, that isn’t surprising for a guy who agreed to be interviewed but knew he wasn’t going to be responsive to most of the questions.  I’m not the only one he thought that the very camera-friendly Manning looked uncomfortable in this “interview.”

I’m not saying you can’t do an interview arranged by a press agent or a corporate sponsor, but if you put yourself out to the public as an independent journalistic voice then you don’t roll over (insert inappropriate sexual metaphor here, if desired) and let the flaks have their way with you.  This interview wasn’t live to air—ESPN had the time, and every right, to edit it as they saw fit before airing it, or not to air the damn thing at all if they determined that it wasn’t newsworthy.  What they aired was an embarrassment…or should be.

And then I think about Newt Gingrich, and the traction he’s getting complaining about presumptuous reporters asking uncomfortable questions during campaign debates.  (Jack Shafer takes him to task for pouting and blaming journalists.)  Gingrich is smart enough to know that asking hard questions is what reporters are supposed to do, and also smart enough to know that a lot of people will find him brave for “standing up to” the hated left wing liberal news media.

Remember, most people don’t see any substantive difference between the reporters covering the candidates for president and the reporters covering high school football.  When those people see that “the media” is willing to surrender control of the content of an interview and allow a pro football quarterback to hawk a promotion put on by his sports drink company but conspicuously refuse to answer any question of substance, we shouldn’t be surprised when they think it’s inappropriate “gotcha” journalism for reporters to ask a pointed question of a candidate for president.  And we sure as hell shouldn’t be surprised when the candidate exploits those feelings for his own benefit.

Thank you, Worldwide Leader, for your contribution to journalism education—the bad example.

Joe didn’t do anything wrong? Oh yeah, he did

The fact that he is who he is, and that he did what he did, makes it even worse than it already is.

For most of us who are not in western Pennsylvania, this came out of the blue last week: a grand jury indicted a former Penn State University football coach on accusations he sexually assaulted young boys.  When I first saw the story in the paper last weekend, and read that head coach Joe Paterno had been told by an eyewitness that Jerry Sandusky assaulted a young boy in the shower and Paterno had relayed the information to his immediate superior but done nothing else about it, I felt like he should have done more.  But then I turned the page, because I don’t care about college football or Penn State, and because I didn’t want to really think about what was actually going on here.  Shame on me.

By Wednesday, the winningest coach in major college football history had been fired by his university, but he was not the only person in Happy Valley shamed by the incident.  Far from it.  More’s the pity.

Sandusky, the long-time Penn State assistant coach who gets a lot of the credit for the team’s history of turning out great defensive players—especially linebackers—stands accused of being a serial pedophile, of sexually assaulting at least eight boys over a 15 year period.  He also founded a charitable organization called The Second Mile in 1997, which provided services to children in need.

One of the saddest ironies of the sexual abuse charges against Sandusky that stunned and sickened the nation last weekend is that if the allegations that he assaulted eight boys over a 15-year period are true, he may have been allowed to prey on those children in large part because no one at Penn State would go that second mile for his victims.

Sports Illustrated’s Phil Taylor is one of many who’ve made the point: where the hell were all the adults at Penn State who should have done something about this?  I’ll tell you where—they were all busy protecting a wealthy university and its vaunted football program and its reputation, for surely those things were more important than the lives, and the futures, of pre-teenaged children whose parents had turned to Penn State for help.  What is Sandusky accused of doing?  McClatchy summarizes the timeline here, and it shows just how many people at Penn State didn’t stand up for these kids.

Sandusky was cashed out as the team’s defensive coordinator after admitting to having showered with a 10 year old boy, but the school and the coach only took his job away—Sandusky was allowed to keep using university facilities for his charity’s activities.

In 2000 a janitor saw Sandusky having sex with a young boy in a campus football building and told his supervisor, but neither of them called the police.

In 2002 a graduate assistant (a former player; a grown man) saw Sandusky having sex with a young boy and did not do anything to stop the assault that was going on right in front of his eyes; he did not call the police, not even the university police; he went home and called his own father and asked what he should do; and it wasn’t until the next day that he told Paterno what he’d seen.  Paterno told the athletic director, and left it at that.  About this time, school officials told Sandusky not to bring children to the campus any more, although he himself still used the facilities.

Paterno made a lot of his reputation for insisting that Penn State was different from other big college football programs, that Penn State did things the right way—it followed the rules, it graduated its student athletes, and it was successful on the field.  Bull.  Despite the high graduation rate and the championships and the bowl games, we now know that Penn State was just as sleazy as any other program.  Maybe more so.  Ohio State’s in trouble for its players selling equipment to get discounts on their tattoos; Miami is in trouble (again) over impermissible benefits given to players by a booster.  But no one else is in the news for making the conscious decision to protect their own ass by turning a blind eye to the alleged child rapist in their midst.  For years.

Where was the “Hey, you can’t do that” reaction the first time someone saw this man naked with a child?  Where was the unconscious and visceral “stop that” response?  Where was the call to the cops?  Where is the humanity?

Yesterday, Penn State played its first football game in the post-Paterno era.  It lost the game.  But the university community may have taken the first baby steps to recognizing what’s important in life, certainly more important than a university’s bruised ego or loss of financial support.

"It felt like we all banded together. And it wasn’t just about football," said Melissa Basinger, a 2005 Penn State grad who made the trip from Charlotte, N.C. "It was about coming together as a school, and showing the country, world or whatever that this does not define who we are."

We’ll see.

Pompous is funny—Fox News proves it

Talk about looking for excuse to pile on!  Fox News Channel found one and did, and Jon Stewart was there to skewer them.

On last night’s The Daily Show Stewart used the coverage of a recent contretemps involving NASA (full disclosure: I work for a NASA contractor) to ridicule Fox’s anti-anything-Obama  attitude and its religious intolerance.

Yeah, yeah, I know, “We report, you decide,” and the news shows versus the opinion shows, but still…(and don’t bail out before he cracks America’s News Mommy, too.)

image

I once thought Fox just hoped the rest of us weren’t paying attention, but now I realize they don’t care about that.  They have faith, my friends—faith that eventually, each of us loyal, God-fearing, right-thinking Americans will come around and agree with them, and the lack of fairness and balance won’t matter.  In the meantime, cha-ching!

(All in all, sort of the same attitude that ESPN has, as demonstrated by having finally put their last shard of editorial integrity into a blind trust.)