I F YOU believe in a free press, there is no Gray area concerning the now infamous Jim Gray-Pete Rose on-air conversation before Game 2 of the World Series.
Gray had every right to ask Rose the questions he did. More than that, he had the obligation to ask them.
And if you don’t agree with that, maybe you don’t deserve to live in a society where the press is still allowed to do that.
America, get over it.
You, too, Yankees.
The public is calling for Gray’s head. The Yankees, widely portrayed as a classy bunch of professionals, are using Gray’s questioning of Pete Rose as an excuse to duck the entire media in the sanctity of the trainer’s room.
Foolish. And lame. This is what we do, and how we do it.
If anything, NBC was at fault for not setting Gray loose on Bud Selig with a similar line of questioning. Selig and Rose have hard questions to answer on a difficult and vexing issue.
Me, I prefer a guy who is willing to ask them as opposed to a guy who makes out the issue doesn’t exist.
Perhaps you were offended by the “timing” of Gray’s questioning. Maybe it was the “tone” of the questions. My, that Jim Gray has “an edge,” doesn’t he?
Or it could be that you are one of the millions out there who prefers to live with your head in the sand, allowing only good news in and shutting out anything with a whiff of reality.
Fine. Perhaps you would prefer to live in a world where all information is force-fed to you. Already, much of it is, by organizations such as Major League Baseball and the NFL and the U.S. government. They tell you what to think. Maybe that’s the way you want it.
But every so often, someone is not going to go along with the program. Once in a while, someone will ask a real question. Occasionally, people are going to be made to feel uncomfortable. Sometimes, they’ll even be exposed.
Sunday night was one of those occasions.
Journalists and their subjects often do not get along. They are not supposed to. The job of a journalist is to dig up the truth, through questioning and investigation. If the truth is bad, you can bet the person being questioned and or investigated is not going to like it.
In an earlier time, journalists were respected and even treasured for keeping America the way the drafters of the Constitution intended it to be.
But little by little, a campaign by the government and Hollywood and various special-interest groups has convinced a large segment of the population that an aggressive media is bad, that journalists are sleazy, that they tell us things we neither need, nor want, to know.
Television is the worst offender of all, because it has created a generation of cheerleaders disguised as reporters who glorify and kiss up to the subjects they cover.
They are not reporters, they are shills, and they are doing you no favors. People like Barbara Walters, Larry King, Ahmad Rashad, Roy Firestone, Al Michaels, the pathetic jock wannabes on “SportsCenter” and “Fox Sports News” should all be carrying pompoms, not microphones.
They have convinced you that sucking up is the same as questioning, that fawning is equal to interviewing.
That is why when a Jim Gray comes along and asks a question that makes his subject a tad uncomfortable, so many of you were mortally offended.
That is because most of you don’t know the reality of the athlete-reporter relationship.
You should see the kinds of exchanges players and reporters, especially newspaper reporters, regularly get into.
That is the way the job is really done. It is how real, hard information is gathered and how truly informative quotes are obtained.
If you don’t like it, don’t read the newspaper anymore. Limit your TV viewing to kiddie shows, sitcoms, and the Home Shopping Network.
The biggest shock of the 1999 World Series is not that the Braves are getting pounded – that happens every couple of years, anyway – but that a TV reporter would be reprimanded by fans, players and, incredibly, other people who call themselves journalists, simply for doing their jobs.
You may not think Jim Gray did his job very well the other night, and you will get no argument here about that.
There might have been a better way to get the answer Gray wanted.
But there was no way anyone could interview Pete Rose after his first appearance on a major-league baseball field in 10 years and not broach the subject of how he got into such a mess in the first place.
Pete Rose does not deserve to be made “comfortable,” not even on that wonderful, “festive” occasion, the one contrived by a credit-card company that tacks a 20 percent vig to all of your purchases.
Believe it or not, the Jim Grays of the world are on your side.
Too many of you don’t understand that. But you should.