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I'll start off with the latest thing about sportsball fans that has made me roll my eyes
Sports are one of the best facets of human society at one thing: revealing our collective stupidity. I witnessed this again in the drama regarding the Houston Astros’ usage of cameras and trash cans. Once again, fans have ascribed way more gravity to professional sports entertainment than they should.
For an example of just how dumb the extent that some people went to on the Twitters over this situation is, Robert Silverman detailed how a burner account laid some bait and fans got caught in the trap for The Daily Beast. The trap was set by a fake niece of former MLB player Carlos Beltrán, whose stint as the manager of the New York Mets was only beaten to the distinction of the “Least Relevant Amount of Time Occupying a High-Profile Position” by Anthony Scaramucci’s time as White House Director of Communications. The account alleged that Houston players secretly draped buzzers over their bodies. That sent the interwebs into a predictable feeding frenzy. Yet that’s just one way in which people have behaved as imbeciles regarding this situation.
True to form, ESPN latched on to the drama to boost ratings and social media reach. The amount of credit that sports fans continue to give that Disney subsidiary despite the fact that it is not an actual journalistic enterprise but rather an entertainment company could be the subject of a whole separate newsletter. Perhaps someday it will be. I digress...
The morning after MLB announced its sanctions against the Astros and owner Jim Crane decided that using cameras in this way was a firable offense for the heads of his enterprise (while presiding over a culture that produced Brandon Taubman and the failed series of faux-apologies warranted zero discipline of any kind), Mets front office person and ESPN Sunday Night Baseball talking head (for now anyway) Jessica Mendoza was on some show I admittedly didn’t watch because I would rather attempt to pass a ballpoint pen through my skull. Mendoza criticized Oakland Athletics pitcher Mike Fiers for going public with his allegations against Houston, which started MLB’s investigation. Mendoza then went on to clarify her remarks, emphasizing that her criticism of Fiers was on him going to the press instead of to MLB first. Mendoza also said that her role with the Mets, who at the time still employed Beltrán, did not shape her opinion.
The reaction to Mendoza’s words is again demonstrative of fans’ incapacity to think. Whether or not Mendoza’s role with the Mets influenced her position is completely irrelevant, so even if that was the case, that’s not what should have made fans dismiss Mendoza’s comments as obviously biased. The real bias that Mendoza has is the one she conveniently didn’t mention in her clarification Tweet: her job with ESPN.
ESPN pays MLB for exclusive rights to broadcast several games each season. Because of that, ESPN sells ad spots during those games and raises the prices that it charges distributors of live television content to carry its programming. It’s just as much in bed with MLB as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is chummy with Russian agent Lev Parnas. Mendoza’s job with ESPN, completely independent of her getting a paycheck from the Mets, precludes her from stating an objective opinion on any issue related to MLB. What’s bad for MLB is bad for ESPN. That fans complained about the context of Mendoza’s criticism instead of seeing the obvious conflict of interest she has and dismissing her criticism altogether points to the media literacy problem fans in general have.
That’s just part of the problem that fans have in their reading of the sports landscape displayed in this situation, however. The barrage of judgments from fans has gone from, “hey, you cheated the game and we prefer you don’t do that,” to, “my entire world is upended and what you did is the equivalent of pushing my grandmother down the stairs while she’s holding my infant child.” That’s evident in a statement by Representative Bobby Rush.
Rush called for a Congressional hearing on MLB’s handling of this situation, calling the cheating a cancer and stating it is Congress’ duty to look into the situation to see if MLB adequately fulfilled its duty as the sport’s governing body. Fortunately, the US House of Representatives has taken no further action on Rush’s letter. In this regard, we can equate Rush with the talking heads at ESPN. They capitalized on the moment to get their names in the conversation.
What Rush and the throng of Twitter pitchfork-bearers fail to comprehend is that MLB and all of its franchises are for-profit entertainment corporations just like Disney. The games on the field are just the show, no different than any other form of entertainment that Disney puts out on ESPN or any of its other delivery channels. Morality does not hang on whether MLB teams are stealing signs and even if it did, MLB and its franchises aren’t concerned with being the vanguards of morality. The Taubman situation should have clued fans into that. While not all 30 of MLB’s franchises or the league itself may not have such a culture of misogyny as the Astros, what is true of all of those businesses is that their primary interests are how much they can sell those aforementioned broadcast rights for and how they can make people who live in the areas local to their franchises pay for the show twice through public subsidies and ticket sales. MLB is a show and sign-stealing, cheating or not, is part of the drama. There are enough actual ills in our society that we need to focus on. We don’t need to manufacture more.
For those of you who may not understand the name of this newsletter, I suggest reading The Inferno by Dante Alighieri. Not only will it give you some comprehension of where most of Western Christianity got its concept of an unpleasant side of an afterlife instead of from its actual sacred text, but you will understand what I’m referencing when I say that operating as a journalist within the sports faction of society in the United States is like inhabiting the Ninth Circle of Hell in Alighieri’s work. Everyone is frozen in their sentiments, having relegated themselves to the lowest realm of misery by betraying their fellow man and themselves in abandoning their ability to reason, prioritize their resources and display compassion for other members of our species in exchange for the entertainment. Thanks for reading, subscribing and sharing. You’ve been great. Enjoy Darth Vader as voiced by Seinfeld's Frank Costanza.