That Scoop Might Be Worth New Suit

Like a lot of Southern Californians, I read with great interest and fascination the in-depth, evenhanded exploration of the burgeoning crime rate in the athletic community of the USA of late (“From Box Scores to the Police Blotter,” “Crime & Sports ‘95”).

I found what the research dug up enlightening--but not surprising. I found the reaction of the sports world predictable--and amusing.

In some quarters, the excuse was anticipated. It’s our fault. The press.

Whenever things go wrong in the world of games, it’s fashionable to point fingers at the media. Never mind the fact we constructed the whole gaudy panoply of big-time sports in the first place. They want that. The free promotion and advertising.

But then they think we have some nerve pointing out the warts. It’s the intrusion into the privacy of the athlete by the reporter who needs an “angle” (because television has already robbed him of the game itself to write about) that has unmade heroes.

It’s all our fault. The old-time writers wouldn’t do this.

Poppycock.

Let me explain something about journalism. Particularly in the older days.

The game has changed somewhat because of a decision handed down by the courts in a suit brought by the New York Times some years ago in the South. Known colloquially as the “New Sullivan Law” in honor of one of the litigants, it held, in fine, that public officials forfeit certain rights to privacy. A subsequent ruling extended to public figures. You can, for instance, say almost anything you want about the President of the United States with impunity. If you don’t think so, watch Jay Leno or David Letterman any night.

But does this mean such a person, even a professional athlete, cannot be libeled?

It seems to be a perception of the public that you can print anything you see. You can’t. Let me tell you why: You have to have “privilege” attached to the story. Something on the police blotter, a charge made by a person in authority. I remember years ago as a young rewrite man, I took a story over the phone from a woman who charged her neighbor with repeated violations of the penal code. It was a juicy story. I wrote it and handed it to my city editor. “Has the D.A. acted on it? Have the police filed charges? Is there a social workers’ report?” he wanted to know. No, I told him. “Then,” he said, “we cannot print it until privilege is attached. The guy attacked will sue us and own the paper when it’s over.”

It’s a lesson every newsman had to learn. If you didn’t--and libeled someone--your career was over.

The point is advanced--erroneously, it seems to me--that the old-time reporter “protected” the athlete, confined himself to between-the-lines reportage.

There were examples in our story. “Babe Ruth, known as a carouser, once was chased through a train by a woman wielding a knife, but the reporter who saw it didn’t tell the story until he was on his deathbed.” A sports editor is quoted, “Twenty-five years ago, [Mickey] Mantle was going to bat admittedly half-drunk. Writers knew it then. They could see it. Did they write about it? No. That’s the kind of history sportswriters have had.”

Wait a minute! Let’s say Mickey Mantle awakes the next morning to read in the paper where he went to bat half-drunk. The team’s PR director is on the phone, desperate. Mantle screams into the phone “Half-drunk?! I haven’t had a drink in a month. I had the flu and I took this medication. I shouldn’t have played but the team needed me! Half-drunk? I hit a home run, didn’t I?!”

The team demands a retraction. The player threatens suit. The writer wails “But he was drunk! I saw it!” Oh, no, says the team. You made it up. You’ve got it in for Mantle.

Ditto the Babe Ruth example. The Babe denies the incident. The team pays the woman off. Where’s the corroboration? Where’s the privilege?

It is the public’s notion that, if I see Darryl Strawberry snorting what appears to be cocaine or spot Pete Rose apparently making a bet, I can sit right down and write it and print it.

Oh, no, I can’t. Now, if the narcotics squad or the vice squad happens to come along and makes an arrest, then, and only then, I am home free.

I remember many years ago, I was covering spring training in Phoenix and I heard a commotion outside my hotel. I looked through the window to see three San Francisco baseball players involved in an altercation. They were apparently intoxicated.

I got dressed and went down to the police station where they had been taken for questioning and held overnight.

I printed the story. Then, two San Francisco sportswriters berated me, in print and in person, for publishing such an anti-industry story. The city of Phoenix was also interested in keeping the Giants’ business. But I was armed with all I needed--privilege.

One of the things that’s happening today is that more and more of these cases do find their way onto a police blotter. Spousal abuse and drunken behavior are no longer as tolerated by society at large, as they were, and about time.

There is one facet of our Times exposure that I find we ink-stained wretches have been guilty of not understanding. We extol and sometimes build up into mythic status individuals whose eccentric, even antisocial, behavior we chuckle over and describe them in print as “colorful.”

A Lincoln, Neb., psychiatrist holds they’re not so much colorful as sick. He says a percentage of top athletes suffer from manic depression, which is hereditary and can lead to mood swings and aggressiveness.

I never studied psychiatry, but I bet I can pick a lot of them out.

But I sure can’t print it until the psychiatrist files a medical report--or one of their victims files a police report. We’re not protecting athletes, we’re protecting our jobs.