How Media Coverage Ruined Sports

Growing up my hero was New York Yankees baseball icon Mickey Mantle.  The legendary power hitter wore the number 7 on his pinstriped uniform, roamed Yankee Stadium's cavernous center field, swatted towering home runs from both sides of the plate and was as fleet as a cheetah.

Many boys of my generation worshiped The Mick as he was dubbed by an adoring sports media.  I followed every game of his black-and-white career broadcast on television and the radio.  My prized baseball card collection once included every Mantle card issued during his 18-year career.

Mantle chased Babe Ruth's single season home run record of 60, slugging 54 in 1961.  I cut out every single newspaper headline in the local paper about each blast that year and pasted the clippings in a binder.  I wept the day Mantle died of cancer in 1995 at age 63.  America lost an epic sports figure.

Soon after his passing, the ugly stories began oozing into the media.  Mantle was a chronic alcoholic.  He chased women and cheated on his wife. He was a lousy father. His teammates recollections of his carousing spurred titillating news from reporters who once praised his play on the field.

This forlorn tale stands as a metaphor for how media coverage of sports has changed.  When newspapers ruled journalism, the sports writers reported on what happened on the baseball diamond. What took place off the field wasn't news.  Invading a players privacy was considered bad manners.

In the years since Mantle died, sports reporters spy into every private area of a player's life.  The media pry into players' feuds with management, their sexual preference, their free spending habits, their use of performance enhancing drugs and their hyper-inflated salaries.

The scrutiny from television sports outlets, radio talk shows, newspapers, social media and bloggers is pervasive.  Sports figures no longer have private lives.  Every whisper and deed is dissected, analyzed, critiqued and judged.  No athlete can emerge unscathed under the media microscope.

In my opinion, sports is not better off for the invasive investigation.  Sports figures are now treated as celebrities, meaning their lives are fair game for public evisceration.  One misstep and their lives and careers can be ruined by a cell phone video or a confrontation with an unruly fan in a bar.

Do sports fans really care how much money every single player earns?  Does that add to their enjoyment of the game?  Do fans relish the juicy details of who's dating a movie starlet?  Does that create more interest in the game?  Do we care about players' DUI arrests?  Does that entertain?

Constant media surveillance has made cynics of everyone.  Fans complain about a highly paid players performance.  They boo a player because the athlete partied last night.  They yell obscenities at the player who was exposed as an adulterer.  Fans have morphed into contemptuous critics.

The game has lost its innocence.  The action now takes place on a plethora of sports talk shows, each competing  to become the loudest, most provocative, angriest muckraker. Post-game talk shows are the worst, where blame is parceled out in the cruelest terms and praise is often nonexistent.

Think about the biggest sports stories in the last 15 years.  Many involve off the field antics, cheating or bad behavior.  A few come to mind: Deflate Gate; Lance Armstrong's Drug Tests; Tiger Wood's Womanizing; Barry Bonds' Use of Performance Enhancing Drugs; Kobe Bryant's Assault Case.

As a youngster idolizing Mantle, I prefer my heroes to be judged on their performance on the field.  I enjoy combing over box scores of games, rehashing great plays, perusing statistics that illuminate the performance of athletes.  I desire sports coverage that celebrates the greatness of players and teams.

The Sports Section of newspapers once served as escapism from the humdrum of local, national and world news that depressed us.  Now the sports pages are a cesspool of defamatory, malicious and hearsay coverage of athletic figures.  There is no escaping the reality of human imperfection.

I yearn for those days of bigger-than-life heroes and games played for the fun of competition.  I hunger for the thrill of watching super human feats of skill and daring.  I long to be surrounded by fans who root for players and teams not against them.  I relish big games and even bigger plays.

That's what I wish sports could be again. But those days are forever in the past.  The media has made sure we can never go back to a time of virtue and purity of sport.  It is a sad commentary on what society consumes and clamors for in sports coverage.  And it has ruined the joy of sports for me.