by Kevin Pelton
March 1, 2002
Were a late-19th century athlete able to be transported through
time to
current 21st century America, it is highly doubtful that he would
recognize what
we today call sports. Over the past 100-plus years, team sports have
undergone
changes both simple and fundamental -- the rules that govern how the games
are
played -- and complex and superficial -- salary caps and other provisions of
collective bargaining agreements. Beyond these intrinsic properties of modern
team sports, the anachronistic athlete would likely also be confused by the
society that has sprung up around these sports, from fantasy leagues to
sports
video games to merchandise bearing the symbol of a fan's favorite team. It
is,
in a sense, an extension of Thurtle's Law #59876b -- not only do new media
create cultures around them, but so do new forms of entertainment. Of course,
the media is naturally a part of this 'sports culture'. Few fans have the
time,
energy, and money to follow their favorite team -- let alone an entire
league or
sport -- making it necessary for someone else to transmit accounts of games.
This is the function that sports journalism -- specifically in print form
-- has
served throughout the entire timeline of team sports, but it certainly has
not
done so in a consistent or regular manner. Instead, the methods of sports
journalists have changed to follow the changes in sports in general, society,
and in the broader field of print journalism.
To make such a study of the history of sports journalism feasible, the
fields of interest must be defined and narrowed. For these purposes, modern
sports journalism will be meant to encompass the time past 1970, with sports
journalism during the rise of modern sports being considered as consisting of
the period from 1890 to 1929.
First, these changes must be understood in the context of the
mechanics
of sports print journalism, which have undergone significant changes as well
during the development of American team sports.
The significance of the role of sports as a part of the newspaper has
changed significantly over the last 100 years. In the late-19th century,
major
metropolitan New York papers might devote as many as three pages to college
football games between Harvard, Yale, and Princeton out of eight total
pages. In
a more representative situation, the Seattle
P-I in 1912 devoted one of its 20 weekday pages (5%) to sports, with this
coverage expanded to four pages on Sunday but still constituting about the
same
portion. By the 1920's, however, sports coverage had exploded, making up
approximately 40% of the New York
World's
news coverage, and 16% of a paper in an area that lacked professional sports,
Muncie, Indiana.
Modern sports pages have established a medium between these historical
rates of coverage, with the sports section comprising about a fifth of a
typical
daily Seattle Times (10 sports
pages
in total) and, while increasing in size (18 sports pages), still taking up
approximately one-fifth of a typical Sunday Times/P-I.
A significant and largely unconsidered shift in sports journalism from
the historical era to the modern era has been what is considered relevant
to an
account of a game; what is 'reportable'. Modern notions of journalistic
objectivity have meant that mistakes by umpires or referees are virtually
ignored by the print media. This was not the case in the early days of
professional sports. The Seattle
P-I's
account of an August 14, 1912 baseball game between the Seattle Giants and
the
Victoria Bees contains the following passage on the game's umpiring:
Carelessness on the part of Umpire
Toman
robbed Seattle of the game and compelled the scoring of two errors against
George Nill, the first he has had since he joined the Seattle club. Toman's
mistakes on base decisions cost Seattle four runs, to say nothing of the bad
umpiring he did in the fourth, when he walked two on bad calling, both of
whom
subsequently scored . . . . Toman is the best umpire in the league by a long
ways, but that does not excuse him from getting careless. . . . Toman said
the
runner was safe, which the right field bleachers say was wrong, and this cost
another run. Seattle was entitled to win by a score of 8 to 5.
Contrast this to the Seattle
Times'
recap of the Seattle Seahawks' football game against the New York Jets on
December 6, 1998, a game decided when the referees ruled that Jets
quarterback
Vinny Testaverde had scored on a quarterback sneak. Replays showed that
Testaverde did not enter the end zone, and the ruling was a significant
factor
in the NFL's decision to re-institute Instant Replay the following season.
Although the headline does refer to a 'terrible' call and the team's
displeasure
is noted, the account of the game seems to portray it as just part of the
game:
Pritchard walked off the field and
toward ESPN broadcaster Ron Jaworski. "Was Testaverde short?"
Pritchard asked.
Jaworski nodded.
"Tough break," he
said.
That's exactly what it was.
Although in this case the mistake was so great so as to require
coverage
by the print media, it was handled in an entirely different manner and
tone than
seemingly minor (in comparison) subjective calls in the baseball game.
This result follows logically from the general shift in print
journalism
towards a detatched, third-person tone. While a Seattle fan may have
agreed with
the P-I's assessment that the umpire "robbed" their team of the
game,
it's unlikely that a fan of Victoria would agree. In the 1910's, when
regional
team loyalties were still developing, this was not as great of a concern to
newspaper editors; it could be assumed that readers were fans of the home
team.
Nowadays, readers may be fans of teams an entire country away from the
city they
live in, and it is necessary for editors, and thus writers, to avoid
alienating
potential readers with game recaps filtered through a hometown bias.
Modern, objective journalism also is seen in sports journalism through
the use of the inverted-pyramid style that is common to news stories. Lengthy
game recaps about local professional teams tend to 'frame' a game's
outcome as
opposed to using the inverted-pyramid style. However, recaps of non-local
games,
much shorter, do tend to this style. A typical opening sentence of such a
recap
reads, "Wally Szczerbiak scored 24 points and Kevin Garnett added 21as
Minnesota handed Charlotte its third straight loss." The critical
information for a fan about the game is embodied in this single sentence;
everything else following is just embellishment.
In stark contrast, recaps during the early days of modern sports
focused
on narratives; the 'story' of the game. In the late 19th century, the
newspapers
of New York moved towards a purpose of entertaining rather than informing.
Sports was a part of this entertainment, and game recaps were written to
entertain, not to inform. That leads to an entirely different tone for the
beginning of the account of a game. An 1892 Harvard-Yale recap from the New
York World begins, "An Aetna of humanity, bellowing with the
combined
thunder of a dozen tornadoes." This foreboding style continues
throughout
the first paragraph; through that time it's not entirely apparent that a
football game is being referenced.
This bombastically hyperbolic speech gave way by 1912, but we still
see a
sense of story emphasized in another Seattle
P-I account of a Seattle Giants game. This particular author, C.O.
Colburn,
writes his account not as a report for fans to be read in a newspaper, but
instead a casual letter to his niece, Clarice:
Believe me, Clarice, we had some ball
game at Dugdale's park yesterday. From the time that Jimmy Toman called
"play ball" and pulled down the tail of his body protector till
Chick
fanned out in the thirteenth it was some game, believe your uncle. The only
trouble was that Vancouver won, 2 to 1.
This style emphasizes the game not as a series of events to be related
and connected, but a story to be related. Just like any story, sports
narrative
has roles, codes, and certainly binary oppositions. These have been evident
throughout the history of sports journalism, although they have manifested
themselves in different manners. Binary opposition is a quite natural part of
any sporting event: team vs. team, coach vs. coach, pitcher vs. batter, often
team vs. referee/umpire. It has already been noted that the team vs.
referee/umpire conflict has been de-emphasized by the print media, but the
others continue to be used. These oppositions are crucial to creating
interest
and drama in the recap.