What Mark McGwire’s confession means for you
In America, a baseball superstar revealing that he’s used performance-enhancing drugs contrary to the laws of the game is about as novel a sight as a glum weatherman in Ireland, and McGwire’s predictable bout of lip-quivering when talking of his family followed a familiar pattern (which incidentally is bound to be emulated soon by Tiger Woods, though that’s another story).
On first glance there are all sorts of interesting nuggets in the interview, such as his response to the question of whether he’d have hit as many home runs on nothing stronger than a protein shake: “Absolutely … I believe I was given this gift by the man upstairs ... I did this for health purposes. There’s no way I did this for any type of strength purpose.”
Well, if by the man upstairs he meant some kind of penthouse-level chemist ... nah, there’s just too much material there. If you start, where would you stop? (A question Mr McGwire might want to ponder at some stage).
For our purposes, there’s something far more interesting about the venue McGwire chose for his confession.
The baseball player decided to tell all on the MLB Network, the broadcasting arm of Major League Baseball. At first glance that may not mean too much to you, but it has been taken in some quarters in the States as a landmark in sports media, proof of a growing trend among professional sports organisations which seek to control reporting of their teams and players.
Now, there’s a name for that kind of reaction from other media outlets. It’s called jealousy. Having McGwire vibrate with emotion like a well-muscled blancmange is a scoop of huge proportions, and the man who secured it is Bob Costas, a journalist of some repute in the baseball field.
Costas now works for the MLB Network but has decades of experience with other organisations behind him, and having him lob questions at McGwire will help establish MLB Network’s credibility. Think of Costas’ equivalent in Irish broadcasting jumping to work for the sports organisation he’s supposed to be reporting upon; consider exactly how sharp any questioning of a controversial figure would be in those circumstances.
(Legal niceties prevent me from naming the unctuous Mr Costas’ Irish equivalent, but the identity can be revealed in exchange for one bottle of Tiger beer, purchasable at An Cruibín bar in Cork city most Friday evenings).
The baseball clubs themselves have taken a leaf from the book of their governing body, and many now employ reporters who cover the day-to-day business of the clubs – injuries, team line-ups and so on – to the greater satisfaction of club management than those pesky independent commentators.
All of this may have you drumming your fingers and saying how does this apply to me, particularly the bit about the Tiger beer, but it does apply to you.
For shelling out the price of this newspaper you expect independent reporting and analysis of events in sport – games, team announcements, purchases, sales – and that’s what you get.
There’s a spectrum of opinion about any issue in sport which lurches from eye-popping hatred at one end to foaming delirium at the other, but in your heart of hearts the one fault you can’t forgive is kennel blindness, the one-eyed chauvinism that blots out anything which isn’t filtered through the red/blue/green of one’s chosen team.
Unfortunately, this worrying trend means you’ll see less, not more, of this kind of in-house cheerleading. Sports organisations on this side of the Atlantic – and this side of the Irish Sea – won’t be long in adopting the MLB Network’s tricks.
There’s room for everyone to have their say, and if you want a relentlessly positive spin on what are negatives to the rest of the world, there are plenty of examples close to hand (the most obvious recent one being the Manchester United bond prospectus, memorably skewered in The Guardian earlier this week).
Mind you, if you’d prefer someone honestly calling it as he sees it, not calling it from inside the pocket of a vested interest, you know where to find us.
* michael.moynihan@examiner.ieTwitter: MikeMoynihanEx
