Football was king in Ohio where where I grew up. The farmland and factories of the Midwest made football America’s game by building beefy players and ardent fans. The rest of the country figured that out decades later.
My schoolmates and I would spend all weekend playing football, mostly against the kids at a local orphanage. They were tough opponents, but so were we. It as a contest among youngsters of very different backgrounds, but we showed one another a healthy measure of respect.
Neither side belittled the other. To do so was unthinkable, so it never crossed our brains.
Tom Brady is the greatest quarterback in history, not because he is a winner, which he is of course, but because he treats football the way I treated my job — with serious lifetime study and boundless enthusiasm, policed by a dedication to professionalism.
Now there is a new hero in town, or should I say heroine. She plays a sport known for its skill, but not heroics. She shows great proficiency, but equal degrees of bravery and humility. And honesty.
Naomi Osaka, the Japanese tennis star, is just 23 and the No. 2 women’s tennis player in the world. She became fed up with negative sports broadcasters and writers, so she skipped a press conference, drawing a $15,000 fine from the French Open’s management. So she dropped out, her agent saying she needed to spend some personal time with friends and family.
She posted on social media: “I’ve often felt that people have no regard for athletes’ mental health,” she wrote, “and this rings true whenever I see a press conference or partake in one. We are often sat there and asked questions that we’ve been asked multiple times before or asked questions that bring doubt into our minds and I’m just not going to subject myself to people that doubt me.”
Osaka had revealed she had “suffered long bouts of depression” since winning her first Grand Slam title in 2018.
She did right to drop out.
Negativity seems to have taken over in news reporting, far more so when I started in the business more than 60 years ago. As an editor I had many an argument with sports writers on the subject.
Sports should be a positive influence on our lives, nothing else and especially nothing less.
Many of us in my day worked hard at being experts in journalism, which meant always … always … serving our readers.
Sports writers would survive by getting to know their sport inside and out, and that meant developing a mutually beneficial relationship with players and coaches.
Some players and coaches were jerks of course, but so were some writers. Those who loved the sport and offered respect to the people they covered produced the most informative pieces. Newspaper stories are nothing if they do not give us new information.
In my day, no writer worth his or her job failed to cultivate sources, players who trusted a writer enough to tell him or her the truth. No player or coach had to be paid to interact with the press, or be fined if they didn’t. Good reporters knew that. So did good athletes.
Sports was an honorable endeavor. Journalists worked hard. Nobody spoon-fed them a story. That would be dishonest.
It is dishonest.
Dan Warner is a veteran newspaper writer and editor.
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June 20, 2021 at 04:48PM
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Warner: Naomi Osaka shines light on reporter-athlete friction - Boston Herald
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