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Thursday, December 05, 2002

Illustrious author David Halberstam spoke here. Pulitzer Prize winner Frank McCourt, he of "Angela's Ashes," spoke here. Ronan Tynan, the Irish tenor, doctor and Paralympic athlete, is scheduled to speak here next spring. So when Frank Deford strode to the lectern inside the Upper St. Clair High School theater Tuesday as part of the Town Hall South lecture series, he struck another blow for sportswritingkind.

You go, guy.

"As a sports writer, I was tremendously intimidated by that list," Deford told the crowded theater. "Thank you very much for going slumming with me."

Right there, he summed up the state of sports writing and sports media today: slummed up. He is a commentator on National Public Radio, a contributor to HBO's "Real Sports," a prize horse in the Sports Illustrated stable for much of the past 30 years and the author of 13 books, so Deford is the perfect renaissance media man to speak about sports in print, on radio, on TV. Take the stick-and-ball stigma out of the equation, and Deford is simply a grand writer who can speak about anything intelligently.

Forget about "Tuesdays with Morrie" or whatever is the book-club weepie du jour. This author's story about his 8-year-old daughter dying from cystic fibrosis, "Alex: The Life of a Child," is three times the book and would have been twice the bestseller were Oprah Winfrey around in 1983. Its shelf life of the heart lasts longer, too.

Not that he is a typical sports writer -- few of us graduate from Princeton. He even received an honorary doctorate in letters from a college that once sent me a letter. The way this literate fellow invoked words Tuesday like "heterogeneous" and "prescience," most guys I know would've thunk he was talkin' about milk and Christmas. Hence, when Deford speaks on sports media, we should listen.

To put it in today's patina: He has a take, and it doesn't suck.

*Sports journalism has changed: "It's a 'gotcha' press more than it ever was before." It used to be that writers tried to get the story and tell a tale well. "Now, unfortunately, when you hear 'You really got 'em,' it means you exposed him, turned him upside down, snared him. That expose is what [the readers and viewers] want, I guess. That negativism, that 'gotcha-ism' prevails in so many of our institutions, politics ... even business, religion and comedy."

*Sports reporting is too much about the games, too little about the people, their stories: "I think part of the problem with sports writing is there are so many darn games. You don't get a chance to write anymore. I don't think there's as much writing as there is statistics." He cited as an example a hypothetical feature story comparing the games of the Magic's Tracy McGrady and the Lakers' Kobe Bryant, replete with 87 pages of statistical analysis. "TV brings everyone the games. We take our cue so much from TV."

*Unfettered sports-talk radio means rumors, innuendo, maybe even blatant falsehoods: "That's the troubling thing about sports radio ... different standards apply. You perpetuate what starts off with rumor, and you don't know what it can do after that. And then the Internet, with all those chat rooms. No standards." If Deford seems to sound like a fuddy-duddy here, just stop to consider a close-to-home case in point about the spread of potentially hurtful rumors -- Kordell Stewart.

*Sports on TV ain't much better: "That's why I'm very proud of 'Real Sports,' because we tell stories. It's not as satisfying as writing -- I go out with a producer and a cameraman. But I think that's still one of the few shows on TV that tries to tell stories and deal with the substantive issues."

Program notes

"And welcome back, Thor." With that, Steelers Coach Bill Cowher concluded the Tuesday Cauer Auer and the four-month radio vacuum without Thor Tolo -- who could be heard asking questions at the widely broadcast news conference. ("Good to be back with the homies," Tolo mused.) Ousted after seven years from his KDKA-AM gig last summer, Tolo has made occasional appearances on PCNC's news-conference replay and is scheduled Tuesday for "Night Talk" with John McIntire. He emcees banquets and still hopes to land a steady TV job locally.

Steelers fans underperformed Sunday. The market finished fifth among NFL cities with a 41.2 rating for Steelers-Jaguars, a 6 percent decrease from the week before. By the way, Milwaukee set the season high with a 75 share (percentage of turned-on TVs tuned in).

WBGN-TV will air a one-hour show at 7 p.m. today featuring amateur champ Verquan Kimbrough and four other fights from last week's boxing card at Mountaineer Race Track & Gaming Resort.

Wicky Wacky, a high school coach? HBO's "Inside the NFL" will broadcast a story at 8 p.m. today about Sam Wyche, a longtime Bengals coach and former broadcaster who has become a teacher and unpaid quarterback coach at Pickens (S.C.) High. You can look it up, you read it in the PG first: Talking about his future, Wyche told Ed Bouchette in October 2001 that he always wanted to be a high-school teacher.