National interest
Why were national commentators hellbent on the Angels getting rid of their most exciting player?
HEART OF THE ORDER
Deal with it
What the talking heads and the bloggers want may not be in the best interest of local fans
Charlie O. Finley, the owner of the Oakland Athletics, knew he was going to lose some stars to free agency after the 1976 season. The A’s had won the last five AL West titles— with three World Series titles in that run — but were under .500 in mid-June, and Finley sensed the team had seen its best days.
Finley was generally considered uncouth, lacking in much sense about baseball, and a tightwad. He was definitely cheap. And he continually ruffled the feathers of the baseball establishment. Actually, he ruffled the feathers of about just about everyone who dealt with him.
But Finley knew something about baseball. He was his own general manager. He was the architect of the Athletics dynasty, something he didn’t get credit for at the time and still doesn’t.
So Finley decided it was time to tear down and retool. On June 15, he agreed to sell the contracts of outfielder Joe Rudi and relief pitcher Rollie Fingers to the Boston Red Sox, and the contract of pitcher Vida Blue to the New York Yankees. The total haul from the deals was $3.5 million, which Finley could use to lure other players to Oakland.
Does that sound reasonable?
Not at the time.
So Finley did what the blogosphere and Twitter-sphere have been imploring — nay, demanding — Angels owner Arte Moreno to do with Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani: ship them to a contender and rebuild the roster.
“Here’s a learned analysis of Charlie Finley’s flesh peddling spree: It stinks, ’’ Herb Michelson wrote in Sacramento Bee. “It doesn’t stink for him or Rudi or Fingers or Blue. Or for the Red Sox or Yankees.
“But it’s a dirty trick to pull on the fans — those folks always claimed he was trying to woo into the Oakland Coliseum.”
One Oakland fan named Al Davis told the Oakland Tribune that he was so shocked when he heard the news that the called the Coliseum press box.
“It’s not good for the community,’’ said Davis, who was representing his Raiders in New York at the NFL meetings.
The San Francisco Examiner sarcastically called it the Great Auction.
Great Auction canceled
Commissioner Bowie Kuhn voided the deals, even though the moves broke no stated rules. Kuhn felt it wasn’t in the best interest of baseball. Finley sued and spent a couple of years fighting Kuhn in court and lost.
So Finley did what the blogosphere and Twitter-sphere have been imploring — nay, demanding — Angels owner Arte Moreno to do for years with Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani: ship them to a contender and rebuild the roster.
Baseball has changed. More importantly, the way we see baseball has changed.
First of all, the offseason following the 1976 season was the first time numerous star players were eligible for free agency. There had always been free agency — either before a player signed their first contract or after a team released a player. But now established players were eligible.
Oakland A’s pitcher Catfish Hunter had become a free agent the previous offseason because Finley didn’t make payments for an insurance annuity on time. So this free agency thing was all novel.
Many of the fans — and sports columnists — saw free agency, not as a right of players to determine their worth or choose their employers, but as a betrayal.
And the money involved seems downright paltry.
Factoring for inflation, the $3.5 million involved in the contract sale would be $18.8 million. That’s a figure that wouldn't make national news today.
And we know how well the teardown-and-rebuild method works.
Well, the strategy worked well for the Astros, who took their lumps with three 100-loss seasons but have since been to the playoffs seven times, won four American League pennants, and two World Series. It worked well, but not quite as well, for the Cubs, who won their first World Series title since 1908 and made to playoffs five times before fading but of contention. It seems to be working well for the Reds this season
But the Royals have been rebuilding since 2018 and they are neck-and-neck with the A’s for the worst record in baseball. And the Pirates started their rebuild after the 2019 season and while it looked like they turned the corner early this season, they don’t seem to be there yet.
National vs. local perspective
Here is another change. For much of my life, sports commentary was largely a local affair.
There were a couple of columnists at each big-city newspaper who opined on the sports news of the day or week or what was upcoming. Their prime interest was what was happening with or affecting the local college or pro teams, or sports figures with ties to the area.
The columnists and talk show hosts wanted the team to be good. If the team wasn’t relevant, they were less relevant.
Along came sports talk radio, on local stations, and again mostly concerning themselves with the local scene. The columnists and talk show hosts wanted the team to be good. If the team wasn’t relevant, they were less relevant.
The columnists and talk show hosts would sometimes venture onto national sports — who was going to win the NFL playoffs or the World Series or how maybe, after a showdown with Wilt Chamberlain-Kareem Abdul Jabbar, the NBA should raise the height of the basket. Those sorts of things.
The New York Times looked at sports, particularly baseball, from more of a national perspective.
The Sporting News carried many of these big-city columnists. But though they were writing for a national audience, they often still were giving you a viewpoint from say Detroit or Washington D.C.
Sports Illustrated, Inside Sports, and Sport Magazine worked some opinions into their articles.
Other people had opinions on sports, of course. But their platforms tended to have limited reach — like to the guy on the next bar stool.
And there was Howard Cosell, a figure who, to my great surprise, seems to be largely unknown to anyone under 50. A lawyer who had wanted to be a sportswriter and somehow bulled his way into broadcasting. Cosell did not have a face for TV or a nasal voice, but he had a sharp mind, a sharp tongue, a distinct manner of speaking, and he was unafraid — in the phrase he made his own after lifting it from a 1966 Aaron Neville hit — “to tell it like it is.” But the more you knew about a sport, the more you realized he didn’t know what he was talking about.
However, Cosell had a broader worldview than the average traditional sports writer. He knew and cared about subjects such as the intersection of sports and law, business, and society.
ABC News radio carried his 5-minute program, “Howard Cosell Speaking on Sports.” And Cosell worked his commentary into his appearances on Monday Night Football and ABC baseball broadcasts, and his blow-by-blow descriptions of boxing matches.
Other people had opinions on sports, of course. But their platforms tended to have limited reach — like to the guy on the next bar stool.
In the 1980s and 1990s, some of the big city newspapers began to assign writers to national beats for major sports such as pro football and MLB. Their main task was to assemble a notes column or insider column about doing in the league. These usually ran on Sundays and gain often related to how events in the league affected the local team.
Sports commentary is no longer a local affair.
This is good in most ways. More voices in a plus.
Even when ESPN became a force, starting in the early 1980s up until the turn of the century, there wasn’t much in the way of commentary. The only programs that were not live events or replays of live events, or Denise Austin exercising, consisted of announcers making snarky remarks about highlights.
That has changed. Bloggers, Twitter, sports news sites such as Major League Trade Rumors, The Athletic, Deadspin, The Ringer, ESPN’s and Fox Sports’ shows with talking heads, podcasts, and national sports talk radio — not to mention Substack— have changed the game.
Sports commentary is no longer a local affair. This is good in most ways. More voices in a plus.
But the gaze is all most entirely national these days.
Which I believe has affected the remaining local columnists and talk show hosts.
It has also won over some fans.
Why it matters
The difference is that from a national standpoint, having a star player finish the final season of his contract with a team that is not going to the postseason is just a waste. Almost sinful.
This season, there has been a hue and cry for the Angels to trade Shohei Ohtani to a team that will make the postseason. There actually have been calls for several seasons for the Angels to ditch their stars. But the urgency reached a how new level.
However, the fans in Anaheim didn’t seem to be the ones leading the charge.
Do you think Tom Verducci cares about the Angels becoming irrelevant to their fans in August or September?
While I am sure some fans agree that a fire sale would be the right move, the most vociferous proponents of trading Ohtani are the commentators.
Whereas back in the day the local writer or talk show host often viewed the world somewhat similarly to the fans, the new breed is indifferent to the desires of any local market.
Not to pick on him, but do you think Tom Verducci cares about the Angels becoming irrelevant to their fans in August or September? If that were to happen, he wouldn’t be showing up at Angels Stadium unless the Angels were playing a contender.
But Verducci would sure like to see Ohtani in the playoffs, on baseball’s biggest stage.
Once-in-a-lifetime season
Moreno has now ruled out trading his brightest star — and postponing what is likely a much-needed overhaul.
The day after the Angels doused any trade talk for Ohtani — and in fact decided to trade two prospects to the White Sox for Lucas Giolito and Reynaldo López — Ohtani threw a one-hitter, shutout (his first complete game) in the first game of a doubleheader in Detroit, then hit two homers in the nightcap.
Through July 27, Ohtani had a 9-5 record 3.43 ERA and was batting .298 with 38 homers.
He is clearly the Angels’ top starting pitcher. No other starter has an ERA under 4.00 — except for the newly acquired Giolito.
Ohtani could break the American League homer record, set last season by Aaron Judge, and no matter what is having one the greatest seasons in baseball history.
Without him, the Angels’ slim chances of making the postseason would be gone.
So what would the price be for giving up all that?
BONUS FRAMES
The kid who wanted to write baseball
I came to work at the Riverside Press-Enterprise one day in 1997, and my sports editor, John Garrett, called me into his office.
“I have an interesting candidate,’’ he said. “He just graduated from college.”
We were looking for a new Angels beat writer. I had wanted to promote from within, but the managing editor didn’t think we needed to get some outside talent to replace what we were losing. I hadn’t won an argument in seven years with that guy, and my streak was extended on this issue.
“You gotta be kidding me,’’ I said.
He put up his hand to stop me.
“This kid has more experience covering major league baseball than any other recent grad I’ve ever seen,’’ he said. “He’s been doing it since he was 13.”
The kid had started a homemade baseball magazine — “a zine,” to use the parlance of the time — when he was 13.
Now, when I was 13 I used to watch a game on TV or listen to a game on the radio and write stories. And I would write columns and preview events. Other people who went to the business did similar things. And I am sure plenty of kids who never went into the business tried their hand at it, too.
In fact, when we moved back to Arizona 20 years ago, I found some of my early sportswriting efforts. They weren’t all that bad. . . . but they weren’t all that good either.
No way I would have the guts to share any with my friends. Let alone strangers.
KP Baseball Monthly
But this kid, Tyler Kepner, produced a monthly publication (except February) with a circulation that reached about 600. The early editions were handwritten. The covers were drawn by his brother. The publication was photocopied in black and white. In order, to get a color cover, the kid and his friends would hand-color each copy.
By the time he was 15, he was getting press passes from the Philadephia Phillies to go talk to players himself. Sports Illustrated for Kids, The New York Times, and ABC News did stories on him.
I was impressed.
The kid went off the Vanderbilt for college. He did an internship with The Boston Globe and was doing another with the Washington Post.
The sports editor for the Globe, which then had one of the top three or four sports sections in the country, wanted young Tyler to get some seasoning at other papers and then eventually become the Red Sox writer. That is how his resume came to us.
My boss could tell I was skeptical.
“Take a look at his stuff,’’ he said. “Let me know what you think.”
I liked his clips. I talked to the sports editor at the Globe. I was impressed.
We flew him out to California. He was good in the interview. We decided to hire him.
I think I was more approachable than John. So the staff gave me plenty of grief about this. When you have a coveted position and you have passed over internal candidates for it, you have to expect some pushback.
On the same page
When young Tyler showed up for work, we put him up at a so-so hotel. It was dinner time, and he had flown across the country. So I figured I would take him out to eat.
But the Angels were playing the Royals in Anaheim. I offered that as an alternative. We could eat at the game.
He made the right choice. We went to the game.
This was August, and he wasn’t going to start covering the Angels until the 1998 season.
Other stuff
So I put young Tyler to work doing other things. One of his first assignments was to look at a high school football star who had been accused of sexual assault. He was suspended from school and from football.
The player was suing the county school board to be reinstated in both. The player was good enough to interest colleges. The accusation would taint that.
Not playing at all would completely eliminate him from consideration.
I wanted to use this case as a point of departure for how athletes were often punished before they are convicted of anything. It was not an easy story.
It required diligent effort to give the family or — in this case, their lawyer a chance to respond.
The family wasn’t returning calls. Nor was the lawyer.
That meant he would have to to the family’s house and knock on the door.
Now a lot of times, the public sees this as harassment. But it’s not. It is an effort to give someone who is likely to be portrayed in negative light an opportunity to tell their side. You don’t know if they want to talk unless you show up.
I don’t know anyone who relishes going to a stranger’s house who is likely to be angry as hell and knocking on their door and trying to have a conversation with them.
Tyler was facing that prospect. He was uneasy but willing. He was quite relieved when the family’s lawyer called back.
He passed the test.
Upward
Tyler didn’t stay long at Riverside Press-Enterprise. But he never made it back to the Globe. He left for the Seattle P-I to cover the Mariners, then to the New York Times to cover the Mets.
He has been the Times’ national baseball writer since 2010.
I’ve received a vicarious thrill from his successful career. We still text, occasionally.
Naturally, I was disappointed that the Times was shuttering its posts department and relying on The Athletic, which the company owns, for sports coverage. The sports writer will be moved to cover sports, outside the lines, I guess, for other sections.
I text him and he replied he’d be OK.
Later he tweeted this: “And on a programming note, the NYT says we will still have Sports coverage until some point in September. So I'll keep writing baseball, which is all I've ever wanted to do. And, of course, I'll let you all know what comes next.”
Later, he tweeted from the All-Star Game: “Today I wrote baseball.”