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Wednesday, June 11, 2003
Posted
9:41 AM
by Sean
Charles Piercegets L'Affaire Sosa right in Slate:
Elsewhere, well, it's not the job of sportswriting to create illusions and it is even less the job of sportswriting to maintain them. Sammy Sosa may have profited from an image that it was in the interest of the sports media to create, but his little bit of gamesmanship is no more serious because it may have damaged that image. His obligation to our need for cardboard heroes and plastic drama is minimal at best. (And to argue that he's made a fortune off that image is to miss the point. Caveat emptor still obtains in that transaction.) When Ian O'Connor, one of the finest daily sports columnists in America, writes that Sosa is a "victim of his own power and fame," O'Connor is indicting the sportswriting profession as surely as he is Sosa.
Charles Piercegets L'Affaire Sosa right in Slate:
Elsewhere, well, it's not the job of sportswriting to create illusions and it is even less the job of sportswriting to maintain them. Sammy Sosa may have profited from an image that it was in the interest of the sports media to create, but his little bit of gamesmanship is no more serious because it may have damaged that image. His obligation to our need for cardboard heroes and plastic drama is minimal at best. (And to argue that he's made a fortune off that image is to miss the point. Caveat emptor still obtains in that transaction.) When Ian O'Connor, one of the finest daily sports columnists in America, writes that Sosa is a "victim of his own power and fame," O'Connor is indicting the sportswriting profession as surely as he is Sosa.