Big Macatrosity
January 11, 2007
In 28 years as a print journalist I’ve known many colleagues that took themselves far too seriously. Responsible journalism doesn’t have to be dour and fatalistic; good reporting and writing are not necessarily at odds with humor and optimism. This is especially true in sports reporting, for goodness sake. Not to say there are no serious issues in sports. But at the heart, what reporters on the beat chronicle is entertainment. Not global warming, AIDs, war or genocide. Entertainment.
Baseball writers need to lighten up. It’s not their duty or place to protect the integrity of the game. I wonder how they got to man the gates to the Hall of Fame in the first place. Shouldn’t baseball people decide? The writers’ sense of outrage over Mark McGwire’s apparent sterioid use and sheepish performance in Congressional testimony in 2005 is just stupid. Sterioids were rampant in baseball during Big Mac’s run to home run greatness. If you leave him out of the hall of fame then you need to leave everyone out from that era.
