Ugly Talk Reflects on Society

We were walking the throng and the course at Winged Foot and Bill Perilla, my friend from Providence, and I were considering all the applause Tiger Woods and Grant Hill, the basketball player, receive because they’re polite. And isn’t that a damning observation about our culture of sports.

Here are two young men being lionized for being just what we raised our children to be. No, we would have punished our children for being otherwise. These athletes have exquisite talent, but they stand out from so many others with talent because they’re different.

And then the next day we hear that Mike Francesa, the broadcaster, has come back from vacation after weeks of introspection intending to be a voice of civility and responsibility in the wilderness of sports-talk radio. It’s not only sports radio, it’s all sports media. It’s sports. And, of course, it’s our society that has made sports important beyond reason.

How else could they be paying those salaries and we be paying those prices? And why are we so mean-spirited? I wish somebody could convince me I was taking this all too seriously, but the vulgarity of the crowd waiting to buy movie tickets on Saturday night and the nightly news on TV convinces me that it’s more serious than I thought.

It’s interesting that Francesa should be making the re-evaluations because the impact of WFAN radio in New York is enormous, and so it is with 100 or so similar sports-radio stations around the country. And with the television highlight programs featuring hairdo journalists giving us ‘Stros and ‘Spos and Charlie “Brushman” Fuller’s nickname until it’s deciphering code to determine what happened. I’d say Francesa is the most influential voice in sports media right now, with so many 20-somethings finding it too challenging to read.

Francesa has always been more likely to recognize an obscenity in the fact that the likes of Stephon Marbury is welcomed into a college although the only thing he wants is a path to the NBA--and will emerge as soon as possible, unscathed by education. University presidents and alumni close their eyes to that and fire coaches who have 14-14 records and graduate their players. Listen to the braying broadcasters on the college games rave about the player who cares only about winning. The best piece of sports radio I ever heard was Francesa skewering a Utah assistant over his justification for recruiting Richie Parker.

Too many players have learned to value “look-at-me” over substance--like a series of touchdown and sack dances, chest-bumping and home-run trots, which is what so much of sports is. It’s not whether you win or lose that counts, it’s whether you can strut yourself onto the highlights at 11.

I once asked a professor who taught a course in ethics whether sports sets an example or merely reflects what’s going on out there. He declined an opinion. I suspect the absence of respect for the opponent in sports stems from the absence of respect for another person from society, which is accelerated by the example of sports. See the taunting on the field and hear it on the sidewalk. It’s not enough to beat a worthy opponent, you have to destroy him. It’s not enough to tackle the ballcarrier efficiently, you want to drive him into the next zip code and have the world see it replayed on Sunday’s Greatest Hits.

It all makes money. Why should a man hit a grounder to advance the runner when statistics fuel free agency? Why should a basketball player pass when his agent tells him if he takes five more shots a game he can multiply his salary? Francesa asks, “How much do we pander to Dennis Rodman at the expense of good players who sacrifice themselves for the team? We say it sells. Especially when we’re looking for that under-30 audience. I don’t think we have to play to the lowest denominator.”

He does admit to considerable ego. He is also willing to put his foot into areas--such as morality in sports--that get him labeled a know-it-all. He also is an acknowledged self-promoter. Ah, and as Francesa points out, the man with the microphone who attracts the biggest crowd also draws the biggest salary. Once a lot of us thought the price of sports would reach a resistance point, but we keep getting shown otherwise. “To get to make what I make in sports-radio is absurd,” Francesa said.

The plague talk-radio has inflicted is the call-in. People who have no credentials suddenly have a forum. Newspaper editors listen to the calls and conclude that’s what the public thinks and wants to hear. Most often the caller says the coach is a bum and should be fired, and the receiver who dropped the pass should have a public flogging. “That caller hopes the coach or the player is listening,” Francesa said. Indeed, his business encourages those calls. The total is a mean-spiritedness to which newspapers also are party.

My wife, Anita, is in the food business. When people complain unreasonably about a restaurant, she asks if there’s any chef who wakes up in the morning and says he’s going to make bad meals that day. Do you remember how the callers danced on Bud Harrelson’s grave when he was fired? Fans bother Francesa. They bother me too. “They expect too much,” Francesa said. “They forget the player is a person under the uniform. All of us have to remember that.”

What he says upsets him is “there’s no price on human life, and that’s scary.” It is indeed. Does that grow from sports and talk radio? That’s too cosmic a leap. But is it too illogical to look at the climate that produces our games and the climate our games produce? Jim Mulvaney, my lawyer, was a public defender for a kid who was cut from his school basketball team and went out and killed somebody on the street.

Sports is supposed to be recreation, not mortal combat. Do we remember when Jerry West or Stan Musial came to town and we wanted to beat them, but we admired them; we didn’t take batteries in our pockets to throw at them. Thursday there was a caller who wanted vengeance on David Stern for suspending the Knicks in the playoffs--and mentioned the knife that was thrown at Wally Joyner at Yankee Stadium.

Peter Cattano--I’m quoting friends today--asks, “What ever happened to manners?”

I love the competition and the contest of player against player. I hate the ugly face we’ve put on it. “Wouldn’t it be a great thing in sports, and everywhere else,” Francesa said, “if people had more respect for each other?” It’s a thought worth dwelling on for weeks, but foolish.