Paul Smalera

My latest story in the Big Money is a tale of the Goofus and Gallant of sports network startups, the NFL and MLB Networks. Goofus thinks he should retain sole ownership of his network and dictate carriage terms to the cable companies. Gallant sees the value of sharing ownership of the network with cable companies, so that everyone is happy. Goofus thinks customers will drop cable for DirecTV just to get a few extra late season Thursday night games. Gallant wants to bring the games to the customer, appearing on more services and devices than any other startup network in history. Which do you think has been more successful to date?

Read about the other ways in which baseball has learned from football’s mistakes in creating its MLB Network and Extra Innings package, here:

MLB Network Hits a Home Run: How baseball learned from football’s mistake and pulled off the biggest cable launch ever. | The Big Money.

As someone who is a sometimes freelance fact-checker for a national publication, (Enough qualifiers? Trust me, they're all necessary.) I've done my homework on the history of the field. For example, did you know that in the UK there are no such things as fact checkers at magazines? The fact-checking is handled newspaper style: between the writer and the editor, everything is supposed to be verified as accurate. Facts aren't explicity checked; if the editor reads something that raises an eyebrow, the writer provides backup. If the writer lied about it, and it makes it to print well, they are in deep shit, my friend. There is no system in place to bail them out, like there is in the US.

Here in New York, if a writer fumbles a fact in a story that's made it to press, it's the fact-checker who typically gets interrogated first. And if the erroneous detail cannot be accounted for by said staff member, it's THEIR ass, not the writer's. Sure, the magazine may choose not to work with the freelance writer who submitted the lie anymore, but if they are writing for the glossies, they are probably going to be able to drum up work. The fact-checker, on the other hand, is a magazine staff member, and if they make too many errors in a year (depends on the pub, but some places say 3 is the max), they are fired, out on their ass. And their colleagues and competitors know exactly why, making finding more work in the field a challenging proposition at best.

A major problem is while this system is designed to eliminate publication of erroneous information, it also encourages feature writers to flub and exaggerate their stories. If they slip one past the goalie that makes their story sound much more dramatic, it's to their benefit! If later, the facts are called into question, it's the staffer that gets in trouble, not them! The more cunning or unscrupulous (or just lazy) the writer, the more the fact-checker has to be on guard. And working with my fact checking colleagues, boy have I heard some stories of malfeasance. Entire legs of trips forged (don't forget to check the expense report for a plane ticket where there should've been a car rental). Composite characters created out of scratch. Interviews written to sound intimate, that were a bit more like a keynote address at a conference. The writer inserting himself into events, only to omit key facts or misreport those events (best to find out there was a major power outage in Italy BEFORE talking about how great a time you had there last year. It's comical if sad.

Most writers certainly don't try to exploit the system, but even so, errors slip through. And thus, Adam Gopnik's insightful football piece in The New Yorker (The Unbeautiful Game, not available online) contains two errors, neither serious, certainly neither purposeful, but nontheless a rare  example of mistakes in an article screened by the world's most vaunted fact-checking department (one I'd like to freelance for, if anyone who reads this can drop a dime).

First, Mr. Gopnik paranthetically states that suits are not permitted to be worn by coaches on the sidelines. As the great site Uni Watch mentioned often, and ESPN reported, two NFL coaches, Jack Del Rio and Mike Nolan, were allowed to wear suits this season on the sidelines. For marketing purposes, Reebok wants coaches to wear all branded/logoed usually awful looking gear, but these two won permission to buck the trend and wear suits twice during the season. As late as the start of this season, this was no certainty. Thus, I bet this article was sat on for a while until the timing was right (the playoffs starting, for example), and then run. When, in that timeframe, the article got vetted, who knows, but anyone doing research in the last two months would run into multiple sources stating that these two coaches were permitted to wear suits. So this one appears to have slipped through the cracks.

More questionable would be Gopnik's assertion that Brian Billick, head coach of the Ravens, is defensive-minded. Yes, Billick's Ravens are known for their smashmouth, in your face, defenses. They won the 2000 Super Bowl playing lights-out D and just enough offense. But Billick's history is as an offensive genius. From his bio: "Prior to becoming the Ravens' head coach, Billick spent five years as Minnesota's offensive coordinator, where in 1998, the Vikings' offense scored an NFL single-season record 556 points." So the key here is phrasing. Gopnik's sentence about Billick as the subject of a book described him as: "…a tight-lipped, humorless, defensive-minded coach…" (nothing omitted changes the meaning of that phrase). 

Now maybe I'm being humorless, but as soon as I read that sentence, my jaw dropped. After all, this isn't just an offensive-minded coach, this is a coach who, as coordinator, set the NFL record for points scored in a season. He's in the books as an offensive genius. He came up through the ranks on the offensive side of the ball. Chuck Noll, who Gopnik compares him to in that sentence, was a Pittsburgh coach, a team known for its Steel Curtain Defense. Noll's teams allowest the fewest yards in an NFL season four times in his career! I will soften my own argument by saying that Billick's Ravens allowed the fewest points in league history in 2000. But, one year, even a record setting year, does not undo a career spent as an offensive assistant, especially since Marvin Lewis was running the defense in Baltimore pretty much without interference from Billick, nor does it legitimize the comparison between Noll and Billick.

So, the point of checking facts is to maintain a tone of accuracy in reading. When I came across these two statements within a few paragraphs of each other, I was blown away, and my enjoyment of Gopnik's analysis (and his writing style which I enjoyed in Paris to the Moon was kind of shot. I still think he's a good writer. I still think The New Yorker's fact checking department is beyond compare. But I was, to borrow the football theme and be a bit overdramatic, blindsided by the hit.

The New York Times reported on a peculiar time warp happening in the bowels of Yankee Stadium's ticket office. After sending out emails telling season ticket plan holders (like me) that the Yankees were "prepared to discuss your ticket upgrade request," it turns out, in fact, they were not. In fact, it seems no one had checked the outgoing phone line message since, well, the last home game of the playoffs, 79 days ago. Here's the brief story, something I'd never thought would make it into the Times: Yankees Fans Get a Recording, and an Old One at That - New York Times. The kicker? They weren't prepared to discuss anything–not till next Tuesday, five days after they announced their "preperation" to discuss the upgrades. (NB: Who the hell writes the Yankees' communications with ticket holders? I feel like I'm dealing with a cross between a Roman Emperor and a Communist Chinese functionary…). "Dear Comrade: The Leader, through his minions, is prepared to discuss your recent request for seatings at which to observe the spectacle of base-ball from a marginally better stature. Your prostration has been noted…"

So, it finally happened today. After fits and starts, stadium plans in Manhattan and New Jersey, and more than a decade of bickering, an ailing Steinbrenner scooped a shovel full of ceremonial dirt to show that the new Yankee Stadium, meant to be a replica of the old, original one, will soon start to rise. Yankees Will Break Ground for Their New Stadium - New York Times

I have mixed feelings about this whole thing. As a kid, as a Yankees fan, it was indoctrinated into me that Yankee Stadium was living baseball history. In fact, when I was growing up, the Yankees went through some rather lean years. We had Donnie Baseball, but Reggie left, Thurman died, Billy Martin was fired, Billy Martin was fired, and did I mention that Billy Martin was fired? So yes, the Yankees were a historically great team, and I don’t expect anyone to shed tears for my fandom, but it’s not like they were hoisting pennants while I was a kid. All I had was other people’s memories, and that park in the Bronx.

Being a Jersey brat, with parents that thought baseball was for lazy Americans, I was left to my own devices to attend games. Luckily, a few of the churches in town sponsored bus trips to games once or twice a summer. For $10 (later $20) we got round trip bus service, bleacher tickets, (sometimes Tier Reserved), and a three block walk through the war-torn Bronx (that would be the drug war) to the safe haven of the maddening Stadium crowds milling about River Avenue. The rest of the time, it was up to Phil Rizzuto on Channel 9 to keep me up to date on the game, and uh, whatever else was on his mind.

Then Steinbrenner got banned. For 3 years, he couldn’t touch the team. Three years during which we didn’t trade away prospects named Rivera, Williams, Jeter, Posada for guys named Ken Phelps. We finally had a farm system that hadn’t been pillaged for the Aging Slugger’s Pension Fund. We had manager, Buck Showalter, who was kind of dictatorial and mean, who managed to get the best out of a bunch of pretty spoiled athletes, while also alienating everyone around. Little did we know your team could pre-order World Series rings the day he quit or got fired. In ‘96, with Mattingly retired too early (my heart still breaks for him), we promoted the kids, hired a nice guy manager, and the run started.

Many people have written better accounts of that period, from 96-9/10/01, when we were invincible. I won’t try to add to their brilliance. But the points is, Yankee Stadium was alive again.

Today, it died. The new Yankee Stadium plans look alot like the original, before the renovation in the 70’s, when the Yanks played at Shea for two years. That’s cool. It will be a modern ballpark in an antique shell. That’s cool. It will have 10,000 less seats. That’s not cool. More luxury boxes– again, not cool. Tickets will be more expensive. Not cool. Parkland will be destroyed. The replacement parkland, though greater in acreage, will be on top of parking garages and in nooks, not wide open space like the current Macombs Dam park. Not cool.

As far as personal experience, the current Stadium, and I say this as a fan and half-season ticket plan owner, is awful. The crowds are dense and the flow around the park is badly designed. A full half of the Stadium promenade is closed to the public, thanks to lack of underground parking for players, camera trucks and crew. That means 50,000 people are squeezed into a plaza that could maybe hold 10,000 comfortably, which in turns squeezes everyone out to River Ave. Entrances are badly designed, security tries to be efficient, but invariably you feel like a hog in a chute. It makes no sense that there are 15 ticket checkers for 5 or 6 screeners. Those numbers should be reversed, since the ticket guy is just holding a scanner, but screeners have to inspect each fan before they can pass. The halls around the seats are practically catacombs. Narrow, low ceilings, claustrophobic, even when you can see the field from the doorways. The ramps inside are all hairpin turns causing pile-ups after every game. The place is basically a deathtrap.

But, another renovation could make it a thing of beauty and preserve the parkland, and preserve the fact that Ruth, Gehrig, Dimaggio, Mantle, Munson, Berra, etc., played there, on that field, in that park. After this Stadium is gone, Wrigley and Fenway will be all that links us back to the turn of the century, back to the original shrines of baseball.

The renovations I’d like to see though, are too minor in scale. Take down the outside wall, expand halls and aisles. Get rid of the stupid floating yellow step that makes getting around the Tier a nightmare. Create a ticketed outdoor area and an underground tunnel to the player’s lot so the whole damn side of the park doesn’t have to be closed off. The problem is, none of this does anything for revenue.

The new park will have fewer seats, increasing scarcity and prices, and more luxury boxes, creating whole classes of fans who will never have to wait in line for a hot dog or even watch the game in front of them, if they’d rather sit in the back of the suite and watch on the plasma tv. We fans broke attendance records every year for the past 10 years so that Steinbrenner could build a new park with ten thousand less seats? Please George, pay someone to dig up dirt on Gary Sheffield. The guy is filthy, and it’s obvious we could use another ban, although I guess it’s too late. Anyway, at this point, Steinbrenner is the Queen Elizabeth team figurehead– his son in law, Steve Swindal [great name] is the Vaseline in this act of penetration.

Yankee Stadium needs an update. But slapping an old facade on a brand new Stadium that will cater to the wealthy is nothing short of despicable. For me, going to a basketball game is out. I can’t spend $100 to sit in the rafters and watch the Knicks suck. Hockey? Never heard of it. Baseball is the egalitarian sport of my youth. The sport where any kid, with a little luck, could at least hit one good home run ball, once, even if they weren’t a good athlete, and think, for a second, that they were Donnie Baseball, George Brett, Kirk Gibson, because they could pay $3 or $5 to see them in person. The danger of getting to Yankee Stadium as a kid made it all the more welcoming (in a really strange way) once you finally got there. Though I don’t miss the danger, I do wonder who the new Stadium will be welcoming once it’s open. Kids from Jersey, at least my town, can’t afford $80 bus trips to the Bronx.

This isn’t all that exciting, but I wrote a brief response to something Bill Simmons, ESPN’s sports guy, said in one of his columns. I’ll put it here for your reading pleasure.

Hey Sports Guy,

Long time listener, first time.. whatever… anyway, I’m writing to help broaden your perspective on the Pat Riley thing. He has bad karma, but not for the reasons you described:

“Pat Riley: Took the Knicks to Game 7 of the Finals in ‘94 and the conference semis in ‘95, then stabbed their entire fan base in the back by jumping ship to their archrival (in especially sleazy, underhanded fashion). Bring up Riley’s name to any diehard Knicks fan — they react like Jennifer Aniston finding out that the Pitt-Jolie kid was born two days before “The Break-Up” came out. They can’t handle him.”

The thing is, when Riley left, we were really about to get totally sick of him and he could smell it. When grind-it-out, knock-em-to-the-floor basketball brings you a chip, you accept it. When it brings two near misses, you begrudge it, greatly. “Ugly game, AND we lost? Might as well see what the Yanks are doing. Oh, they’re good again? Some kid named what? Jeter? Sweet!”

Furthermore, after Riles retired to South Florida, in the true New York spirit, the Knicks OWNED all the playoff Series against Miami. I think there was one we lost, but it was near the end of the road for our core guys. Think about the upsets we pulled, and Allan Houston’s beautiful, worth every penny of a $100mill, bounce-bounce roll-in floater in Game 5 (now known as game 7) of the first round in 99. Talk about crushing a team, a city, and a coach.

Riley’s bad karma is that he ever came back to the Knicks at all. He had such an incredible run with the 80s Lakers that he should’ve taken his titles, retired at 40, and gone on to the celebrity golf circuit, maybe throw in a stint as a Hawaiian Tropic bikini contest judge for good measure.

Yet that’s the paradox. As Knicks fans, we have Riley to thank for the Jeff Van Gundy era, our finest of the last two decades, and the fact that JVG was even a coach at all. Remember, after 60 games of Don Nelson loosening up the playbook, and using a full court run n gun offense with a bunch of creaky and slow dudes, he was history (before he was a genius, again). We had no idea what to expect from the short bald dude who was Riles’ #1 assistant, but he dialed back to what the Knicks, of the day, admittedly specialized in. It’s just he did a few little things to tweak the offense and take advantage of the discipline of guys like Ward and Houston, like, oh, run screens and pass the ball to someone other than Ewing. I love that guy and he, nor Lawrence Frank, would’ve ever been coaches in this league without Riles’ catching the JFK to Miami red eye after 95.

If anything, it’s a little sad for Knicks fans, now that Zo is No and Riley is desperately going after that last ring, henna colored hair and all, especially being that he has almost no chance in hell against Dallas, and it’s just gonna get worse for him next year. Talk about jumping ship– do you see him possibly sticking around as coach with Shaq getting another year on his knees? Unless he pulls off the blockbuster Diop Diaw trade we’ve all been waiting to see, he’s stuck with two creaky centers, more roleplayers in the Brian Grant “useless unless someone points me in the direction of the basket” mold and one superstar. I think Miami loses the finals and falls off a cliff this season, taking a page from Superbowl losers of the past 6 or so years.

Thanks for all your good work and that’s coming from a NY sports fan.

Paul

In short, it’s pretty amazing how wrong one guy can be.