Verducci/Torre and journalism ethics

Funny, but now that I see it again, that 2001 piece Verducci did on Clemens is what led me to say for the first time that Clemens is juicing. Everything said about Clemens' intense workouts, the way those quoted said he was a freak of nature, his intensity, etc., I can remember getting two-thirds of the way through the story that week, putting the magazine down, and saying out loud, "Holy cow, Clemens is on steroids!!!!" I had never really thought about that before, but everyhting written about him in that story is consistent with what I knew about steroid users dating back to an investigative series I did with a news reporter back 15 years before that.

I remember thinking, Clemens has blown his cover!!! He's juicing, and yet no one else picked up on it at the time. Then two years ago, about the time the Mitchell report was headed toward its conclusion, several of us in the sports dept. got to talking about which players' names would come out. Bonds, Sosa and McGwire were at the top of the list, but when I chimed in and said Clemens would be top of my list, most just shook their heads and said, No way, he's a pitcher.

I don't say this to pat myself on the back. But to this day, I don't understand how Clemens' sneaked by for so long.

 

What bothers me more than Verducci doing a book with a guy he also should be covering is the growing frequency with which SI writers incorporate themselevs into the stories they writer, as though they think they are fooling readers into a heightened sense of credibility for the writer.

John Garrity does it a lot, when he's not writing another one of his pieces channeling some dead guy and making up dialogue and a story.

Rick Telander did it with his recent piece on Mandarich.

When Ricky Reilly was there, about one in every 8-10 columns was some sort of first-persono piece that went beyond the typical columnist's voice. Not only was it in first person, it was about him, period, such as when he was a ballboy at some tennis event.

Even Michael Bamberger and the Michelle Wie DQ deal a few years back.

It's become SI shtick to write along the lines, 'Hey, look at me, Reader, I"m not only on top of the story, I'm actually IN the story crafting out all this wonderfully nuanced prose to give you a perspective you can't get anywhere else becasue I"m so good at what I do and an integral part of why this story is even newsworthy in the first place."

I think . . . I think, I'm gonna puke! (10 bonus points if you can name the movie that line comes from. Hint: it stars a Hollywood legend who loves to play golf.)

 

I think it's a Dirty Harry movie but can't remember which one. Half credit?

 

Dear Clutch: The same dynamic you observed in the Clemens' story was present in a LOT of stories about Pete Rose in the '70s. People would observe how closely he followed all the games and all sports and write it demonstrated his passion for baseball and sports in general.
Now, this behavior was and is also typical of all compulsive gamblers, but nobody made the connection.

 

There's a better one. There's an SI in the 1990s that has a big story about Brady Anderson's breakout season, and how golly gee nobody can figure out where this amazing, super duper power surge is coming from!

And on the front of that issue is a bulging biceps and, inside, a gigantic takeout on steroids in sports.

 

The original. It's the guy up on the ledge, threatening to jump. When Harry goes up in the cherry picker to try to talk him down, he tells the guy about a past jumper who got squashed on the pavement below, how mixed up this body part was with that body part, smirking all the while. The guy responds with the "I think I'm gonna puke" line, and Harry takes it a step further, saying, "Oh no, don't do that. All those people looking up here, the firemen looking up here..." Then the guy gets pissed, lunges at Harry and our hero pops him and drags him down on the cherry picker.

Gets to ground, tells partner, "Now you know why they call me `Dirty' Harry. Any dirty job..."

 

Pete Rose, in dugout in West Palm Beach, 1984 spring training with Montreal. He's avidly talking about and setting up an NCAA bracket for the men's tournament. Think I even wrote about it, setting the scene for this hypercompetitive 40-something player. Only realized later it probably was just the "action" that was driving him.

 

I don't think they do it with as much self-worship as you alluded to here -- or maybe not some of them -- but you are right, with some of the stories it can get annoying. The Reilly piece you mentioned was actually pretty cool. I like stories where a reporter lives something so we can get a look at what it's like. I remember reading Verducci's piece about being a Blue Jay as a kid and thinking it was awesome that a sports writer -- and writers in general -- could do stuff like that and get paid to write about it.

Writers in Esquire do it all the time. I've never read Tom Chiarella before the April 2009 issue, but his piece on Ben Affleck was incredible.

The greats of old did it all the time. W.C. Heinz was renowned for his dialogue, and a ton of the dialogue in some of his stories is his own, making conversation with the subject.

So, all that said not to be contentious, just to offer a different side of things. It works sometimes; not so much others. When it does work, though, I love it.

ADD/EDIT: If there's any dumb typos in there I'm sorry, Jeff Dunham's on Comedy Central right now going nuts with the alien-looking dude and the pepper on a stick.

 

You remember reading that Verducci story as a kid? Didn't he write it just a couple years ago?

 

I've said it once, I'll say it again:

STOP READING TAKEOUT MAGAZINE PIECES LIKE THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO FOLLOW THE GUIDELINES OF TWELVE-INCH NEWSPAPER GAMERS!

 

huh?

 

All the bellyaching about first-person writing in magazines.