“Come gather ’round people…”
Dateline: Jerry’s Mountain
“Journalism will kill you, but it will keep you alive while you’re at it.”
~Horace Greeley
As I see it.
The central issue in this here journalism business is this:
Do I tell you what you want to hear.
Do I tell you what you need to hear.
Do I tell you the truth.
Judge your news by those picks.
“Objective journalism and an opinion column are about as similar as the Bible and Playboy magazine.”
~Walter Cronkite
To be honest I never set out to be Woodward or Bernstein, nor Hemingway or Hunter S., in my soul I’m just a writer who cares about stuff and folks, not many jobs with that in the title, so I became a reporter, a news guy, a journalist.
I’m in the sports journalism game because of one man, one quote, this the quote:
“…when the one Great Scorer comes to write against your name, he marks not that you won or lost but how you played the Game”
~Grantland Rice
The man, my Uncle, Sibby Sisti, a Major League ballplayer during the 1950’s while I was growing up.
Sib, told me stories of the game, of the players and one such story I never forgot, listen here to my favorite uncle, now gone, Uncle Sib:
(I won’t put quotes around this because I was about 8 when he told me it) Donnie it was fall ball, 1952 in St. Louis, I’m in Right Field, got me a base hit that game, RBI, I’m standing out in right and my friend, Warren (Warren Spahn) is on the mound and up comes Stan Musial…
I’m sitting at a homemade bar in Uncle Sib’s basement, the bar stool legs are made of baseball bats, Sib is behind the bar with a bat over his shoulder, above him are two signed balls I always look at but can’t touch, one is signed by Babe Ruth, one is signed by Abbott & Costello…
…and Donnie the park erupts with cheers and Warren being Warren pitches to him and I can’t actually see the pitch but I hear the crack of the bat and I see the ball launch, not my way, but as I start to move Donnie I feel can really feel down on the field the air sucked out of the park as the fans hush as the ball climbs and climbs…
…even at age 8 I knew this was something important he was telling me because he was smiling the smile of the player transported back to that game.
…and once it clears the whole stadium erupts but…
…and the bat comes off his shoulder and he leans closer to the bar and my dad sitting next to me pokes me on the shoulder, the dreaded childhood listen up poke…
….Donnie the game isn’t about the cheers, it’s about the hush.
Thirty two years later in a non-descript cafeteria I told Bob Feller that story, and he smiled, told me he knew my Uncle and told me, quote, “The hush is the game and it is why they come to watch.”
Know that backstory as I tell you this, up on a mountain top yesterday sitting with one of the owners of this game that I now cover I told him exactly this: “Jerry, it’s not about those who play the sport it’s about the sport they play and we all are but one click of the time clock of the game.”
“…wherever you roam…”
“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.”
~Lewis Carroll
As I see it.
Whenever this tour comes this way I drive up the mountain Jerry lives nearby and we sit and talk, Jerry McKinnis is now 79 and dealing with skin cancer issues, I’m 64 and dealing with a host of bad health stuff, that fact allows us to cut through the BS.
Up on the mountain top it is a conversation not a negotiation.
Below us eagles flew while we talked about the game and not about those who play it, and if you ask Jerryhe’ll tell you I talked, he mainly listened, it went on for two hours and ten minutes.
When you sit up there and look out over the land below you it’s impossible not to realize how little we are in all of this, and how little we as human beings can be as we put self interest above interest in everyone.
We talked when I said, “In what will be the history of Bass Tournament fishing we are but one click of the clock of the game and our role is to be stewards and pass it on better than how we got it.”
Told that I thought, “…the most famous to play this game are 20 years down the road, they’re in cribs now, but it is they who will be the superstars.”
Trust me when I say this but this game as we play it now is brutally tough both financially and physically on those who play it but they, we, are but an early click on the game clock.
Know that fans of this sport, this young 45 year old game as far as the history of sports, we are but out of diapers.
We have yet to take the training wheels off.
We are the ones who will scrape our knees, bruise our shins, and that my friends is how IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN IN SPORTS.
Put us in perspective.
“…and admit that the waters…”
“Perhaps I should not have been a fisherman, he thought. But that was the thing that I was born for.”
~Ernest Hemingway
The Old Man and the Sea
As I see it.
It is always hard to see past what you be standing in.
The history of sports shows us that this sport you see today will look nothing like what your grandson will watch a couple of decades from now, and that is how it always is and always will be.
At ESPN once or twice a year we would have what they called a “Town Hall,” meeting where owners and workers got together not to bitch but to assess, that will be one of the next clicks of the game clock and it’s in our hands.
Also talked with Jerry about another click of the clock, this game we play and cover has to be like all other games played and that means we need a no dog in the fight Commissioner to be the Solomon of these games and it can’t be anyone who handles the fish or the money.
But the click that will take the training wheels off may not happen on our watch even though many are trying to make it happen, if I win the lottery it will, if not my fingers are crossed, but that click is those who play the game shouldn’t have to pay to play.
Maybe that’s not our click to turn and for those in it, that sucks and we then must take it on our own, you the fans, me the media to make it as easy for those who provide us with “the hush” to make a good comfortable living as they provide enjoyment.
I take some of that failure on myself because I haven’t done enough for the sport to make it happen because I believe that once the financial burden is off those who play this game THE GAME WILL GET BETTER.
I know what it is like to bet the mortgage on a story and fail, but that is the click I choose, the click that needed to happen, the failure that lead to the success.
“…around you…”
“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.”
~Henry David Thoreau
As I see it.
I enjoy the mountain top talks, we just sit and chat, I don’t take notes, that’s why there aren’t any Jerry quotes, he knows what I would write and for the record he has never once ever told me not to write what I think.
Some will look at this as me sipping the Kool-Aid, but the truth is that in this rock-n-roll journalist life I’ve lead I’ve had much stronger stuff fed to me than Cherry or Triple Awesome Grape, and I’m well aware of the difference.
I believe up top there we are happy in our time and place but that we are envious of those who will make those many, many clicks to come.
Hope, we do, that they look back on all of us with kindness, with respect for those who set the time clock running and those who kept it wound.
It doesn’t begin with us, doesn’t end with us, we are just like the current in the river far below us, we are part of the history of the sport and it should not all be about “us,” but just as much about “they” who come next.
The central issue in this here journalism business is this:
Do I tell you what you want to hear.
Do I tell you what you need to hear.
Do I tell you the truth.
Truth is, when those who come after us look back I hope they smile at what they see, and not laugh.
Up top here, we both agreed, we hope that our click of the game clock, counted some, helped some, and that big or small in some way while this was in our hands we handed it off better than how we found it, and we hope those we hand it to next, do the same.
“…have grown.”
The Times They Are A Changin’
Bob Dylan
“If the world was perfect, it wouldn’t be.”
Yogi Berra
db
“And that’s the way it is.”
~ Walter Cronkite