Dealing With Press Is Easy, Y’Know, With Right Coach

The New York Mets have hired an interview coach. What does an interview coach do? Let’s listen in to a spring training session.

Coach: Good morning, class. We’re going to review the week’s lessons to see if we’ve been doing our homework. First, the speech drill. Where does the rain fall, gentlemen?

Class: The rain, y’know, falls mainly on the, y’know, on the plain.

Coach: Very good. Someone asked me why we encourage the use of the nonphrase y’know, y’know? Quite simply, we don’t want to become branded as a team of intellectuals.

We lost one of our top pinch-hitters last season when he spoke an entire sentence with no y’knows, and was hired as a professor at Yale. Don’t let it happen to you.

As you know, there are three things in baseball that you do only in secret--lift weights, smear foreign substances on the ball and read books.

OK, let’s review our useful phrases. What are the five cliches I asked you all to commit to memory?

Class: Our backs are to the wall. . . . We’ll go out and give it 110%. . . . Hey, no excuses, we just got our butts kicked. . . . I’ve just got to play within myself. . . . I’m not guilty.

Coach: Excellent. You’ll find those cliches will serve you well. Almost any question can be answered by one of those five.

Timing is important, of course. “Our backs are to the wall,” for instance, isn’t real good to use in spring training or before the first game of the World Series.

Let’s go over some more handy phrases. Who should you always give credit to, besides the fans and your teammates?

Class: The Big Guy upstairs.

Coach: Right. The general manager. Believe me, he’ll appreciate the mention, and show his gratitude at contract time.

Now, what do you say to the reporters when you’ve lost a tough game because the other team cheated and got all the breaks?

Class: I don’t want to take anything away from them, they deserved to win, but. . . .

Coach: Perfect. We don’t want to sound like whiners, do we? Let’s go over some interview etiquette. If you’re being interviewed by a national magazine reporter, what three things should you not do during the interview?

Class: Spit tobacco, read my mail, take a nap.

Coach: Yes! You’ve all been studying, I see. It’s perfectly acceptable to do any two of those things during an interview, of course, but never all three. You could get a reputation for being uncooperative.

Treat the interviewer as your friend. Establish a rapport. To that end, you should always do what?

Class: Make eye contact.

Coach: Yes, but I’d like to clarify that. We’re not talking about your fist and their eye. Rapport is an elusive thing. Once you’ve punched a writer’s lights out, or poured ice water on his head, or dropped his notebook in the team washing machine, the interview could go downhill, even if your gesture was in the spirit of fun.

What about clubhouse behavior? We have more and more women sportswriters coming into the clubhouse to do interviews. What is the proper procedure for greeting a female reporter?

Class: Get naked and swing from a ceiling light fixture.

Coach: No, no. That was last season. There’s been a change in club policy. This year you are to treat female reporters the same way you would treat women you meet in any business situation.

Class: Get naked. . . .

Coach: Now let’s get serious! The front office wants you to treat all writers with respect and decorum. Human decency is the issue here, along with the soaring cost of replacing those broken light fixtures.

Next, let’s go over our signs. Anytime you’re doing an interview, I will be standing nearby, unobtrusively, flashing you signs, just like a third-base coach.

Right hand to left ear is . . .

Class: Swing away.

Which means to go ahead and give your opinion on whatever the interviewer has asked. Left hand to right ear is . . .

Class: Squeeze.

Coach: Right. Squeeze your tongue between your upper and lower teeth, to avoid saying something you’ll later have to claim was taken out of context. OK, both palms clapped to my forehead means . . .

Class: Throw the reporter’s notebook in the team washing machine.

Coach: Right. I’ll give that sign when you’ve been too candid and the only hope of salvaging your career is to destroy those notes. But I don’t anticipate using that sign. Especially if we stick to the cliches.

Now, before we go, what about class tomorrow?

Class: There’s no tomorrow.

Coach: By George, I think you’ve, y’know, got it.