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Tuesday, April 22, 2008
MLB: Astros: Tejada says he, family were misled by ESPN
Not since Stuttering John interviewed Ted Williams...have I seen such outrage!
Tejada says that during that interview, ESPN reporter Tom Farrey surprised him with a copy of his birth certificate while on camera. Tejada reacted by walking out of the interview.
“They called me about two days before the interview and told me it was going to be more about baseball,” Tejada said. “When I got there, I thought it was about baseball and they throw me a 98 mph fastball inside.”
“E:60,” an hour-long investigative show on ESPN, plans to air its report on Tejada on Tuesday at 6 p.m. CT.
Tejada said he was particularly disappointed with how his family was treated.
“They went to my father’s house,” he said. “They got the camera everywhere in my father’s house. I don’t know what they tried to find. They interviewed my father, and they interviewed people from my neighborhood and everything. They [ate] in my father’s house. They make my sister cook for them. That’s why I feel mad. ... I had an enemy inside of my father’s house, and my family treats you nice. And look at what they did to me. My family is really mad right now.”
Repoz
Posted: April 22, 2008 at 12:31 AM | 70 comment(s)
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Shouldn't that be the Bristol Soxyanks, at least this week?
Give ESPN credit - at least they didn't ask Tejada if he'd ever farted in the catcher's face.
I think it is great but you better make it for something worthwhile... like government corruption, pedophiles, ect... not some poor guy fudging a couple years onto his birth cert to get out of poverty.
That was scummy move by ESPN
The media gets closer and closer every day to convincing me to switch my major from journalism.
Be an agent for good.
That was downright low. Fox, CBS, and NBC are willing to fill the void you created.
But surely the punishment should be commensurate to the misdeed. Getting this kind of treatment for it is kind of harsh, I think.
There. Stick with it.
Unless you're a television guy. Then, have mercy on your soul.
what would be the punishment? seems like this little public embarrasment is easier to take than other plausible punishments (suspension, voidance of contract, etc)
Well, how much has he gained by lying? Millions of dollars, maybe?
And ESPN is in the entertainment business. That's reality TV which is all the rage with the public.
I empathize with Tejada's reasoning for the choice he made, and I loathe the need of television to exploit information for entertainment purposes.
Tejada made a choice. Choices have consequences.
Since the only thing he gained by lying was money, maybe the "punishment" should be related to his career, and not just a embarrassment that benefits nobody except a cable TV station. I think that's what commensurate means.
After he got his foot in the door by lying, he proved himself worthy.
The questions you have to ask yourself are:
A) Is Miguel Tejada a public figure? (yes)
B) Is his age relative to that status? (yes)
C) Can you prove he lied about his age? (yes)
D) Is the fact he lied about his age news? (yes)
Now, can you assert that the way they went about it was iffy? Sure. Would it have made it any less newsworthy if they went to Tejada or his people and said "We have the goods on you, we're running a story, care to comment." It may have, but it would have been less compelling TV. So I can understand the decisions the WWL made.
And what about the capable execs from a few years back who were fired or left their jobs when it was discovered that they had lied on their resumes? Were they any less capable because they had NOT graduated from Stanford?
No. But they suffered the consequences for acts that in some cases dated back 25 years.
So making millions of dollars by being a good baseball player is the moral equivalent of making millions of dollars by giving children cancer?
Good to know.
But he didn't just lie once. He's been lying about his age since that first contract, and probably could have just come clean, without incident or embarassment, when the first wave of age revelations happened. He chose to keep quiet about his lie. A little embarassment now seems eminently deserved.
That's the whole point. Nobody questions your points A, B, C, and D. Tejada's entire problem with ESPN is based on them lying to him in order to get to that one gotcha moment.
That's not the point. You're either for a free press and a strong investigative arm of that press - or you're not. If you start chilling the press on "lesser" things like sports or ages of athletes, the slope to chilling the press on other things gets slippery.
See Sean's point above. You cannot base this on which offense is worse. It is either right or it is wrong.
What Tejada did is wrong. And because of his station in life it is news.
Are we arguing that ESPN was wrong to make Tejada's age a story, or that ESPN was wrong to spring it on him the way they did?
It's the Internet.... we're just arguing. Why would the subject matter.
Did he? As Ed Wade said, all his legal documents have his correct age.
Well, the only document I go by is BBRef, and lying to Sean is pretty unforgivable.
I'm for a free press... but I'm also for a press that uses good judgment in determining the best manner in which to present stories, as well as the proper distribution of attention among various stories.
Reporting on Tejada's age difference was fine. Reporting on it in the way that they did was a cheap shot.
"You cannot base this on which offense is worse. It is either right or it is wrong."
########. You're seriously trying to claim that all lies are equally evil, and that the circumstances and consequences of the situation are irrelevant? That telling your wife the dress doesn't make her look fat is on the same moral plane as telling the public that your products won't make their kids die in horrible agony?
I repeat: ########.
Agreed. I couldn't believe it either, BBRef has him as 31, and BBRef's word is law.
I agree ESPN shouldn't hold the story, but the way they went about exposing it was utter human garbage. Any news agency that tries the 'surprise' tactic without attempting to go for the fair tactic has lost all credibility as a news gathering service and has focused on entertainment to the masses that make american idol a high rating show.
This is (I think) a new show on the WWL, and they've turned around this gotcha moment as a way to get people to watch the show. It's in every single ad for the show I've seen, and liberally used to promote the show across other shows.
Regardless of the journalist's intent to be newsworthy here, they're taking this moment of discomfort and agitation and sensationalized it with the goal of making money off of it. My essential problem with it is that it certainly appears to be using tactics which I don't approve of to grab ratings. I don't watch To Catch A Predator either.
Like I suggested earlier, the MLBPA should take some sort of action, even if it is cutting off ESPN interview access for a month.
I've already complained to the luminaries in suits about it. But they're used to hearing from me every time they do anything.
Going for the "gotcha" on Tejada helps nobody but ESPN.
It's not really close. He's arguably been the best SS in baseball since he hit free agency:
Here are the SS with 2000+ PA from 2004-present, sorted by OPS+:
Cnt Player OPS+ PA From To+----+-----------------+----+-----+----+----+
1 Carlos Guillen 132 2273 2004 2008
2 Miguel Tejada 125 2788 2004 2008
3 Derek Jeter 123 2961 2004 2008
4 Michael Young 113 3002 2004 2008
5 Jimmy Rollins 105 3034 2004 2008
6 Edgar Renteria 101 2635 2004 2008
7 Khalil Greene 100 2233 2004 2008
8 Rafael Furcal 99 2787 2004 2008
9 Jose Reyes 97 2507 2004 2008
10 Felipe Lopez 93 2380 2004 2008
11 Julio Lugo 90 2535 2004 2008
12 Jack Wilson 90 2475 2004 2008
13 David Eckstein 88 2472 2004 2008
14 Orlando Cabrera 85 2715 2004 2008
15 Juan Uribe 85 2216 2004 2008
16 Omar Vizquel 84 2536 2004 2007
Given Guillen's defense, lack of playing time, and time spent at other positions, I'd put Tejada ahead of him. Jeter gets bumped up for baserunning (SB/CS and otherwise) and his better OBP, but he loses a bunch on defense.
Here's how UZR (2004 to mid-2007) sees their defense in total runs saved at SS:
Guillen: -24
Tejada: 0
Jeter: -30
I think the Orioles got a great deal on his contract. And if the A's wouldn't have signed if they knew his real age, it would have been their loss (and baseball's).
If you were to press me for two perfect examples of shopworn, overused, not-funny-a-decade-ago sports witticisms, then I'd have trouble beating these two.
As for the matter at hand, I don't see a credible way to argue that, a, this wasn't newsworthy, and, b, ESPN didn't go about it in a thoroughly unethical manner.
(Edited for basic coherence)
Boo-yah!
Exactly, why can't they drop a little "Never Surrender" on us?
And yet you watch. And yet we all consume.
Part of this is because there really isn't a national competitor for the service ESPN provides. But part of it is just inertia - post-popularity and all of that.
Personally, I don't watch ESPN anymore, and I don't really miss it. If the Indians are on ESPN, or if there's a particularly good soccer match, I'll watch. A few college football games a year too. At this point, it's safe to say I watch ESPN less than two hours a month. And there are two primary causes: The clusterf**k that is SportsCenter, and the fact that I can't flip past the ESPN family of channels without seeing poker.
I'm 32, so I realize I'm speeding towards irrelevance for ESPN and its advertisers. But I felt the need to point out that there are those of us who've completely given up on the WWL.
edit: Forgot to mention that it's not as if I've stopped watching sports television...ESPN is far behind SportsTime Ohio and Fox Soccer Channel in the amount of time I watch, and it's right there with NFL Network and Speed. Which is to say it's way the heck back there behind STO and FSC.
But that's about it.
That doesn't make a lot of sense. No one is arguing that ESPN shouldn't have pursued the story or that Tejada's age isn't newsworthy, just that the on camera gotcha stunt was sleazy and unnecessary. And because the stunt served no purpose for the investigation itself, criticism of the stunt in no way chills free speech or the investigative arm of the press.
As for the matter at hand, I don't see a credible way to argue that, a, this wasn't newsworthy, and, b, ESPN didn't go about it in a thoroughly unethical manner.
That sums it up nicely.
He gained millions of dollars by playing baseball at a very high level, not by lying.
And what about the capable execs from a few years back who were fired or left their jobs when it was discovered that they had lied on their resumes? Were they any less capable because they had NOT graduated from Stanford?
I take your point, but were they ambushed by Geraldo Rivera when told they were there to talk about the best-feeling leather for their executive chairs, or was it revealed impersonally via a news outlet? What happened afterward was a matter for their employers to act on, just like for Tejada.
Actions do have consequences, but just because something is a consequence doesn't make it the proper wages of sin.
But to what extent did his lying contribute to his having the opportunity to play baseball at a very high level?
The only guilty party here is the jerkoff at ESPN who cooked this up.
I think very little. Obviously, at the time, lying about your age was an almost universal act in the DR for kids looking to get signed into one of the baseball academies. As far as I'm concerned, as long as MLB treats the DR like some kind of plantation, the kids there have carte blanche to make the system work as well as they can for themselves.
...living in the basement of his mom's, writing in his underwear...
Part of this is because there really isn't a national competitor for the service ESPN provides. But part of it is just inertia - post-popularity and all of that.
TVE, true, we all watch. I only watch live games anymore on WWL.
To say that the management and business practices are sound because your competitors are amazingly incompetent isn't a good argument, though.
Part of this is because there really isn't a national competitor for the service ESPN provides. But part of it is just inertia - post-popularity and all of that.
I watch ESPN News for my anti-Sportscenter fix. So the great thing is they even provide their own competition. Unfortunately its on our digital tier so I can only watch it on our main TV, while my opportunities for watching highlights (in the morning while getting ready for work, etc.) I am forced to tune into the snarkfestic Ultimate HotSeat.
You make a fair point.
for what? unfortunately what they did is probably 100% legal.
That doesn't mean he can't sue. People get sued for doing perfectly legal things all the time.
It's hard to see the basis for a lawsuit here, though.
true, big reason why lawyers are hated so much.
Can I just go ahead and say that I think Tejada's standing to complain about deceptive practices is a bit in question at this point?
Yes we should hate the litigants, we should hat the plaintiffs, we should hate the system and we should hate the truly good lawyers who are able to win these baseless claims making others hope to hit the lotto in similar fashion.
I understand some of the good that has come out of some of these baseless claims, but for the most part it's made our society a society full of wimps who feel that rational thought is someone elses responsibility to provide me. If I hurt myself because I'm an idiot and you didn't put up a sign for every possible idiotic thing a person could do to injure themselves it makes it your fault.
I still would love to see some penalty(in form of horrible ratings) happen to ESPN for this but we all know that in this society being respectful, honest, ethical and a generally nice person is not how to make money.
How does that work anyway? How do you transfer bytes and bandwidth into boxers and/or briefs? Do you need a BVD burner or something?
Best Regards
John
I try this, but I find even ESPN News shows only one or two plays from most games. It's good for the ticker, but not so much for seeing anything from a random MLB game.
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