Murray Chass smells a conspiracy…or is that just an uncalled-for abstenchtion in his pants? Depends.
Maybe Simon & Schuster has innocently planned the Piazza publication for soon after the announcement for marketing purposes, but it might just as easily have agreed to a post-election publication to insure that the book would not keep Piazza out of the Hall.
If, on the other hand, the book includes a steroids admission, all I can say is shame on Piazza and his publisher. With that possibility in mind, though, the voters would be wise to withhold their votes from Piazza until a future election. He will have 14 more chances.
For nearly three years, Piazza has been said to be writing a book about his career. It appears to be taking him longer than Tolstoy needed to write “War and Peace.”
Aides to the Simon and Schuster editor handling the book, Bob Bender, and the agent who put the project together, David Black, said they would find out the status of the book and let me know, but neither called with information. Another publishing source said he believed the book would be published next year.
“It’s taking a long time,” I remarked to Vincent.
“You can imagine why,” he responded.
If the timetable calls for publication next year, Piazza and Simon and Schuster would both get their cake and eat it, too.
The Hall of Fame election results would be known, which means Piazza could be elected, and then the book could come out with Piazza’s admission that he used steroids during much of his career, thus justifying his $800,000 advance.
Piazza would be in the Hall of Fame with the writers having no recourse to unelect him. Just as he did in his playing career, Piazza would have fooled the voters and the fans. This time, though, he would have a major publishing house as his co-conspirator.
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#1: There is no process for "unelecting" someone.
the spurned lover. always a dangerous creature
As an editor, I know I can: ex-jock decides to write book himself; editing nightmare ensues. No mystery at all why fixing that into something useable would take a long time.
Unless, of course, Chass believes Piazza is as talented a writer as Tolstoy, and is therefore dogging it... but I doubt that was the point he was trying to make.
Like they have time to waste talking to a lousy blogger...
#2: The word he's looking for is "ensure".
I think the CW is it doesn't matter because it doesn't mean a ####### thing.
In the sense that bacne isn't a symptom of steroid use? I thought it was. Do a simple Google search and it pretty clearly says so -- both the science and user anecdotes.
Or in the sense that it doesn't matter whether Piazza used steroids?
There's a third possibility. Piazza may reveal that he diverted a shipment of steroids intended for the Mets' clubhouse, replacing them with distilled water. On his way to get the water, he visited a children's cancer ward and cured all the patients with a smile, then invented pita chips and gave every kid on Long Island a pony who didn't already have one. But he is too modest to want the HOF voters to be influenced by those revelations.
In the sense that bacne isn't a symptom of steroid use?
In the sense that there are also causes of bacne that have nothing to do with steroids.
EDIT: cokes to BBF and Shooty.
But it's evidence of steroid use. If a guy has a clean back and then all of a sudden has a back racked with pimples that's evidence of steroid use. His body is showing a newfound symptom of steroid use.
I'm having a tough time squaring the CW on this. If we're saying the media was lax in outing steroid use -- which we hear all the time in the HOF and roid threads and I agree with -- then how can we at the same time rip a media guy when he proffers an eyewitness account of bodily changes that evidence possible steroid use? If you're requiring airtight "proof" before a media guy can say something, you can't then blame the media for enabling.
If you want to rip on Chass for being late in his accounting, fine (though my recollection is that he wanted to report it contemporaneously but the Times wouldn't let him).
Or evidence of a guy who started eating a lot more cheese, or who got lazy and stopped changing his sheets as frequently as he had a few years before. Who the hell knows?
We can do both because Chass isn't providing actual evidence of steroid use. If he talked to players or steroid dealers and got one of them to speak on the record about Piazza using, or found evidence of steroid shipments going to Piazza's home, that'd be just fine. But instead, we have Chass jumping to conclusions based on Piazza's personal hygiene. It's shoddy work, and deserves to be called out as such.
A glimpse of a player's backne should be, at most, the suspicion that starts a real investigation, not the capstone to a journalist's work.
I think a major part of the issue with Chass/Piazza is not that he reported it (and it's been part of Piazza lore ever since), but that Chass seems to have made the issue a personal vendetta. If his conspiracy theory were to play out, Simon & Schuster would take a publicity and trustworthyness hit far in excess of whatever they might get from sales of the book. Maybe they are really that incredibly stupid, but I doubt it.
So Murray Chass has been following Mike Piazza around his entire adulthood, recording whether he had back acne or not? So, when Piazza was hitting like Lou Gehrig with the Dodgers he had a nice, clean back, but when he got to the Mets and was hitting more like Greg Luzinski, that's when he started his regimen? SBB, I know you like to challenge the CW, but this is so beyond the pale. Mike Piazza is an actual, living person and if Chass wants to make accusations he needs to have something more substantial than back pimples and the publication of a jock book no one cares about anyway. If all he has are his suspicions and a wikipedia entry on the gross boils you can get from the 'roiding, then he should just STFU or, you know, do some actual investigating to see if he can corroborate his suspicions. And if he can't, again, he should continue to to STFU.
It will make a better book if he admits he was really two midgets standing on top of each other. That would have really fooled the voters and the fans.
Him not admitting to steroid use in the book is just proof that he's read Chass' columns, and is deliberately altering his biography to make Chass look bad. It's all part of the conspiracy.
If Chass were putting together sober, fact-filled pieces about Piazza's PED connections, well, I'm sure a lot of people still wouldn't like it, but they'd at least engage the argument more than they are here. I think the utter disrespect shown stems from the fact that the guy's approach makes him sound like he's from another planet. (The Proactiv thing I just described being of course an example of that.) I haven't read the followup articles, but at least originally, Chass' content boiled down to "the guy had a pimply back, and yet the New York Times wouldn't let me publish an article stating that he did steroids." Even if Chass is ultimately right that Piazza did PED, that is still crazy person talk.
"But it's evidence of steroid use. If a guy has a clean back and then all of a sudden has a back racked with pimples that's evidence of steroid use. His body is showing a newfound symptom of steroid use."
Pro tip: that is not how science works.
No.
I don't think Chass invented it; I believe he saw bacne. But, well, so what? Many things can cause bacne (including probably spending a lot of time in locker rooms), and many men have bacne through their 20s and into their 30s. The problem is that Chass is using bacne as a device to damage Piazza's reputation. Chass also comes off as petty and childish.
What seems to be going on here is that Chass suspected Piazza of steroids use, and then saw the bacne which confirmed in Chass's mind the steroids use. Then Chass, believing stupidly that he had found a smoking gun, tried to write about it in the Times, after which the editors rightly put a stop to it, which irritated Chass so much that he's come off as a crazy person with a vendetta against Piazza.
If Chass had found someone who claimed to have witnessed Piazza using steroids, or claimed to have supplied Piazza with steroids, or even claimed to have overheard Piazza admitting he had used steroids, that would be one thing. But Chass has found nothing of the sort. Chass witnessed nothing. Chass saw bacne, which may be one side effect of steroids use, but that factor is swamped by the many innocuous reasons why a non-user would have bacne.
Chass's behavior here is contemptible, and you ought not adopt it, SugarBear.
No. All Chass has written is "I saw bacne and therefore Piazza used steroids." Chass is not saying he witnessed Piazza using, but that he witnessed bacne. He's drawing the idiotic link from bacne to steroids, so we know he's stupid, but he's not saying he witnessed the steroids.
Even if Chass were making up the bacne thing out of whole cloth, Piazza would have little chance of prevailing in a defamation suit.
Still a lot quicker than George R.R. Martin.
Nobody living should ever be voted into the HOF again. We can't guarantee that they won't subsequently release a book with steroid admissions. So therefore, only dead people can be allowed in. Dead men write no books, and dead men make no steroid admissions.
Yeah, I don't know much about Piazza's personal life (outside of what he used to post here) but he doesn't seem as desperate for attention or money as Jose Canseco is.
I'm more trying to envision a world where the media was more alert about steroids, and it seems inevitable that that world includes a lot of "bacne" stories.
If you're demanding proof at the level of science, it seems implausible to conclude that you truly want(ed) a more active media in this area. (From which it follows that the media really wasn't as culpable as the users, an oft-stated and oft-insinuated sentiment in these parts).
Being more alert would mean noticing the backne and then investigating whether it meant anything, not screaming about the backne. The classic scenario was the reporter who noticed that supplement that is commonly used with steroids in McGwire's locker who was shouted down by his brethren in the media when he made the connection with steroids. The backne thing is so unbelievably stupid, and worse than that, it's malicious.
I don't think the media was "culpable." To the extent the media knew, they didn't care. What I've said was petty of them was to take something that nobody cared about in the '90s when the players were doing it and suddenly turn it into OH MY GAWD WHAT A CHEATER simply because people were hitting more home runs than Maris did.
I dunno, what if Bryce Harper said he's always used steroids, his old man shot him up in the crib, he has no plans to stop, but-----he's using a steroid that's completely undetectable.
I thought something like that when I read #17. I'd love to have a jock write an autobiography full of transparent lies along the lines of "I invented pita chips and gave every child in Brooklyn a pony." The sort of lies that are just completely off the wall and not not merely the sort of self-serving lies that are in most autobiographies. The sort of lies that make you question the sanity of the jock, the ghost writer, and the publisher. It could make for an entertaining classic that would be read for a long time and by people who aren't already interested in the jock in question.
Piazza could claim to be the inspiration for Chuck Barris's autobiography. The really impressive part is that he was about 15 when the book was written.
We can do both because Chass isn't providing actual evidence of steroid use. If he talked to players or steroid dealers and got one of them to speak on the record about Piazza using, or found evidence of steroid shipments going to Piazza's home, that'd be just fine. But instead, we have Chass jumping to conclusions based on Piazza's personal hygiene. It's shoddy work, and deserves to be called out as such.
A glimpse of a player's backne should be, at most, the suspicion that starts a real investigation, not the capstone to a journalist's work.
I definitely had bacne in my 20s, likely as a result of poor hygiene and generally being a sweaty, hairy dude. It certainly wasn't from steroid use. I assume it's only from being much more diligent about personal hygiene that it is not still a problem in my early 30s.
And he'll only stop if we pay him... ONE MILLION DOLLARS!
Different world but Clarence Clemons' "Big Man" was kind of like that. Not a great read narratively, but the tall tales made it entertaining.
I always found funny when Springsteen would introduce him as "the biggest man you've ever seen" or something like that. Dude was 6'5. I've watched an NBA game or 2.
Maybe he'll claim steroids turned him into a homosexual. That would be a thread to behold.
And Clemens threw the bat at him because he was ####### Andy Pettitte!
How awesome would it be if Piazza made an "I'm ####### Andy Pettitte" video for Roger Clemens in the Jimmy Kimmel/Sarah Silverman style? That alone would be Hall of Fame-worthy.
That won't make anyone's head explode. He should say he took steroids to stop being gay. Then homophobes who hate steroids users would be at a mental crossroad.
Carence, however, was also 6'5" wide.
#32 AROM - your jest is probably more accurate than you wish.
My guess is that if Piazza or any other player from the Sillyball era were to admit steroid use after getting elected to the HOF, it would probably be in hopes of putting that hurdle to rest for other players from the same era. A steroid user would already be in, so what's the point in keeping other steroid users out?
Unfortunately, if I know the BBWAA, they would probably react to it with something like "From now on, to protect ourselves from making this mistake again, no player who played at all during any of the years from 1987 to 2011* will ever get elected by the BBWWAA". Thus ensuring a very long dry spell for the HOF unless the Veterans group decides to put somebody in.
*Have to include 2011 because of Ryan Braun.
Sorry, that was supposed to be the BBWAA, not the BBWWAA but I realized subconsciously I was thinking Baseball Worthless Writers Association of America.
Perhaps, but as there's no evidence of that, nobody serious would conclude that Piazza used based on it.
There is also the excellent chance that Chass really does have nothing except bacne.
I bet he doesn't even really have a hungry heart.
#61 - if it was an open secret back then, you would think that someone, somewhere, would be willing to give Chass a quote at least on background to that effect now, even if they weren't willing to back then.
#64 - true. Although we know that Piazza was an MLB player, whose steroid usage was known to be higher than 1% (5-7% of players tested positive during the survey testing in 2003, for example). Take the midpoint of that range, then non-steroid users still need to have a 5.74% bacne rate for it to be 50/50, and I suspect that the rate of men in their 20s with bacne is significantly higher. I would also argue that the threshold for a journalist to print an accusation like this (let alone harp on it for years) should be a lot higher than 50/50.
Here is the Chass article in question.
This scenario sounds highly unlikely. Once one reporter told a another reporter that "off the record Piazza admits taking steroids" it would not be violating the first reporter's confidentiality with Piazza for the second reporter to print the story. I've never read this until now and I've followed Piazza's career.
I'm a Met and Piazza fan, but I think it's reasonable to guess that Piazza took PED's at some point in his career. I think more than 50% of MLB players took PED's and Piazza was a leading power hitter during that time.
I thought Darren Daulton had already written his autobiography.
The one guy in the sabrmetric community with specific expertise in the area is Rany Jazayerli (a dermatologist) and what he's said is not to disregard it, but not take it as a particularly strong sign of steroid use. (Taking the liberty of paraphrasing. I asked him the specific question and he gave a detailed answer that I can't find)
Or that he's joined a gym that doesn't properly clean their equipment. You can find any number of serious resources that recommend putting a clean towel down before using gym equipment for precisely this reason.
And Jefferson should know, since he played all but 5 games of his entire career in the American League, and played against Piazza's teams in all of nine games in interleague play. You can't beat first hand knowledge like that.
That's not true. Reporters aren't priests. If Piazza told guys off the record he'd use, all it would limit them is from reporting that Piazza confessed to using. That wouldn't preclude them from reporting Piazza used steroids if it were verified elsewhere, or independently investigate whether he used (which surely someone would have).
Moreover, off-the-record is more of a nonbinding promise. There would be no legal recriminations if someone revealed off-the-record conversations other than the ethical hit. If someone wasn't willing to reveal it then (hell, it would easy enough to do it in his own off-the-record conversation with a reporter not privy to Piazza's confession), then surely someone with that information would have left the profession by now and would no longer feel beholden to the very loose restrictions of off-the-record.
Now, since Chass has a very choosy attitude when it comes to application of professional ethics, he may very well have been spouting that. But it doesn't really make a lot of sense.
"Once one reporter told a another reporter that "off the record Piazza admits taking steroids" it would not be violating the first reporter's confidentiality with Piazza for the second reporter to print the story."
The second reporter can't print a story based on what another reporter told him.
SoSH is right on his first point. More like prosecutors than priests. The off-the-record confession would be "fruit from a poisonous tree" so not usable.
But if the reporter witnessed the same player buying boxes marked "STEROIDS: DO NOT LET MEDIA SEE" from Brian McNamee, and shot video of the buy, well....
:)
Not sure I understood the 2nd paragaph, frankly.
1. Canseco wrote that he stuck the ####### needle in McGwire's butt. Jefferson looked at Piazza's muscles from the opposing dugout for 9 whole games. Is "not the same" all you can say about that difference in proximity to the event?
If Jefferson is a credible witness, then what about the season ticket holders in the box seats next to the Mets' dugout? They had a better view of Piazza than Jefferson ever had. Why don't you ask them?
2. In response to Canseco's allegations, McGwire shut up. If McGwire had denied the allegations and Canseco's testimony had been as shaky as Brian McNamee's, I might have been much more willing to give McGwire the same benefit of the doubt I'm now giving Piazza.
The second reporter can't print a story based on what another reporter told him.
This is part of what the second paragraph is getting at. Ethically, the first reporter can't get around the off-the-record promise by simply telling a second reporter the information Piazza told him. However, in reality, if Reporter A tells Reporter B that Piazza admitted to using steroids, and Reporter B reports that an anonymous source reveals that Mike Piazza admits to using steroids, there's really no mechanism for punishing Reporter A for breaching that agreement. That's just one of the real issues with the use of anonymous sourced material, which has become a widespread practice in modern sports journalism.
Ultimately, what it comes down to is this: Ethically speaking, if Piazza made off-the-record confessions to steroid usage to reporters, that confession should never be made public by those reporters, either under their byline or filtered down to someone else. However, with no legal sanctions that accompany a violation of that off-the-record promise (there's no disbarment process, for instance), he would simply be taking it on faith that all of the reporters he shared this information with would act ethically from now until death. That's not a gamble I'd make, particularly in a constantly changing media environment.
I realize that folks routinely print "sources say X's political campaignworkers are unhappy!" stuff all the time, and I know they even have printed some pretty explosive and specific things that have been attributed to anonymous sources (e.g. "Terry Francona has a pain pill problem"). But even that is probably not going to mobilize Francona as much as a steroid accusation would mobilize Piazza. As mentioned, we know the Times wouldn't print it with anonymous sources, and I highly doubt they're alone. (Obviously, I can't say for certain that no newspaper anywhere would ever print it.)
I do agree with your latter point that Piazza would have to have one hell of a high regard for reporters to entrust them with this. Although it'd be funny that, after a century or whatever of modern media, it took criminal mastermind Mike Piazza to deduce that you could get away with absolutely anything as long as you confessed it to every reporter you saw.
As I said, highly unlikely. I suppose it's possible. But,...
1) People like to gab about stuff they know.
2) People lie sometimes when they say "I won't tell anyone".
3) People get drunk and gab even more.
4) People owe favors and give information in return.
Chass never claimed that though, unless you are remembering something from a subsequent column he wrote.
Personally if compelled to guess I'd make simple gossip as the single likeliest with direct knowledge a very low probability.
This might have been something one could kind-of rely on in the pre-digital age of media, when news was almost exclusively disseminated by professional newsgathering sources.* Things have changed considerably now.
The simple fact is, the Times wouldn't report Murray's bacne speculation because their editors weren't dumbasses, but we know all about it anyway because Murray took that information straight to us (and the only damage he's suffered has been to his reputation). And it only takes one unethical journalist, because we also know that once that speculation/report is out there, then many, many of these otherwise professional news organizations will report on the speculation/report itself.
* But again, with no real recourse for the victim, and no way to put the cat back in the bag, there's no way in hell someone would ever want to do it even if a previous era was more committed to professional ethics.
Rather than "not usable," I would call it "not printable." But a reporter can certainly make use of the information, and follow up by asking Piazza's teammates, Piazza's former teammates, Kirk Radomski, Bran McNamee, whoever he wanted to, if they knew of Piazza ever using steroids. They would even be justified in saying, "I heard from a reliable source that Piazza used steroids, though I can't tell you who. Do you know anything about that?"
The whole thing strikes me as very far-fetched. It relies on Mike Piazza (1) having a fairly nuanced appreciation of the reporter's code of ethics, and (2) trusting the famously fractious and competitive New York media to abide scrupulously by that code of ethics. I don't see either of those things happening.
Personally if compelled to guess I'd make simple gossip as the single likeliest with direct knowledge a very low probability.
Since Jefferson was never Piazza's teammate, the likelihood that he has any firsthand information comparable to Canseco's about McGwire is about as close to zero as it gets.
Which leaves four possibilities:
---Another player told Jefferson that he saw Piazza juice.
---Another player told Jefferson that Piazza had admitted it directly to that player.
---Another player told another player who in turn told Jefferson....
---Or like the many anatomists or forensic scientists we've seen here, Jefferson was speculating about steroid use because of Piazza's musculature or his cap size.
I've leave you and Chass to speculate as to which of these four possibilities is most likely, bearing in mind that Jefferson has never claimed even the third scenario, let alone the first two. It's a ridiculous comparison to the McGwire case, but then I wasn't the one who brought it up.
"if Reporter A tells Reporter B that Piazza admitted to using steroids, and Reporter B reports that an anonymous source reveals that Mike Piazza admits to using steroids, there's really no mechanism for punishing Reporter A for breaching that agreement. That's just one of the real issues with the use of anonymous sourced material, which has become a widespread practice in modern sports journalism."
In a professional journalism environment, Reporter B would have to explain to his boss who his source was. Once he explained that it was another beat guy, that would be the end of the conversation. Well, once the lecture was finished.
...........
"The off-the-record confession would be "fruit from a poisonous tree" so not usable.
Rather than "not usable," I would call it "not printable." But a reporter can certainly make use of the information, and follow up by asking Piazza's teammates, Piazza's former teammates, Kirk Radomski, Bran McNamee, whoever he wanted to, if they knew of Piazza ever using steroids."
Any reporter that dumb and unethical can, and should, expect to see his sources dry up in the long run. That's just not how the business works.
If this conversation actually took place, everyone involved is stupid. I don't know a nicer way to put that.
Yes, in most professional journalism environments, this is true (though, I'd hesitate to say all, considering the changing nature of media). But the environment for journalism also includes a lot of non-professional types (including many with audiences), individuals who may not be aware of the ethics of the profession, or feel bound by them. More important, they probably don't have those pesky editors throwing the brakes on poorly sourced material. Exhibit A: Murray Chass.
And that would be of little solace to the original guy he burned.
I'm sure a conversation took place. It probably did not happen the way Chass describes it though.
As for the alleged Times conversation, I assume that "Piazza, they said, had never been accused of using steroids so I couldn’t write about it" means that the Chass bosses were saying that no MLB official or court of law, for instance, had publicly accused him.
And I don't think that Piazza wants to gamble that everyone in the room is ethical, or that each one will be forever concerned about his career's flammability.
Moreover, any admission by Piazza to reporters would not preclude those reporter's publications from ever reporting that Piazza used steroids, only that the admission itself was off limits. In fact, it likely would prompt some of those publications to begin investigating whether independent verification could be found about Piazza's steroid usage.
For these reasons, it would be monumentally foolish for Piazza to admit steroid usage to reporters as a way of preventing his steroid usage from going public.
I wasn't a reporter for very long, but I was an editor for many years, and I have never, ever heard that "off the record" means "you can never use this, even if someone else gives you the same information." Otherwise, anyone who had ever committed any sort of malfeasance would be wise to confess it to every reporter they knew, as long as they prefaced it with "off the record." Barack Obama should call the entire White House Press Corps into the Oval Office and say, "This is off the record, but I was born in Kenya." You're saying it would be dumb and unethical to even pursue any other sources based on that information.
If you can verify "off the record" material through other sources, then of course, it's perfectly ethical to use it. That's exactly what Woodward and Bernstein did - they took off-the-record information (I think it was actually on "deep background," which is supposed to be even more secret that "off the record") from Deep Throat and verified it with other sources, then the Washington Post printed it. I've never heard them described as "dumb and unethical."
But if it did happen, you're saying that the reporter would then be effectively barred from doing any journalism that related to the story? That seems like a strange norm.
Hold on a moment, let's not put words into Chass' mouth. He does a good enough job putting his foot there on his own. Chass didn't say that Piazza told people off the record. That notion came from District Attorney in post 66 and hasn't been backed up.
* I am not making this up.
It'd be cool if any former star came out, but we've already done the gay ex-athlete in MLB, the NBA, and the NFL. No noteworthy players, but really at this point a former star wouldn't be a huge deal. If someone in the sub-Jordan stratosphere came out, if Piazza or Frank Thomas or Craig Biggio or someone like that came out, it would just mean that his endorsement deals and speaking engagements would be more extensive than they would be otherwise. I mean, who cares about Craig Biggio other than baseball nerds? If he came out he'd be on the cover of Newsweek and for a few years would command the sort of speaking fees that Colin Powell gets. There would be minimal potential repercussions; at worst a few Hall of Fame voters would write or say things that would allow BBTF to have a thread showing how morally superior we are. At this point I'm less impressed by a potentially out ex-star than I am by Sean Avery (of the NY Rangers) apparently unprompted going all-in on gay marriage in New York, and also somewhat bizarrely threatening to beat the crap out of any and all homophobic Canadian high school students. A vocally straight-but-not-narrow active player is a lot more interesting that a guy who came out once he was done playing.
American dude sports need their Gareth Thomas, who came out while he was an active Rugby Union player and whose experience proves that you can be gay and play a very butch sport without having someone try to rip your head off of your neck. Or at least no more than they would normally.
Me neither. Did someone say that?
If the same reporter gets a different lead a week later, he is free to pursue the same story.
But "off the record" doesn't mean you can take that info as a direct lead and immediately start asking questions based specifically on that conversation. It's supposed to mean, in my experience, that it's not usable as long as the only reason you know it is based on that single discussion. That all changes once you find out through other channels.
And yes, if your original source thinks, even erroneously, that you exploited that conversation, that would be problematic as well - even though no ethical corner was cut.
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