‘NEW Joe Torre book causes uproar, will retail for a few dollars more in Canada, ESPN’s Chris Mortensen reports, confirms, reports again.”
There’s nothing quite like a tell-all/told-to sports book to stir the gut juices, to bring out the Chris Russo in all of us. The fallout almost always makes for at least as much silly fun as the book.
For example, Joe Montana, Charles Barkley and David Wells all expressed surprise and dismay to learn, post-publication, what had been written in their autobiographies.
“What else is in there about me?” they perhaps worried. Or maybe, as a matter of honor, they simply refused to be party to such trash. “I won’t even dignify my comments by commenting on them.”
To that end, Torre doesn’t seem completely convinced that the new tell-all to which he has attached his name is a legit representation of a tell-all to which he has attached his name.
One even gets the feeling that he may have devoted more attention to the terms of his book deal than to reading, pre-publication, his book.
So what that Torre causes doubt among the dubious by attaching his name to a book that includes a passage in which he unfavorably compares Alex Rodriguez to a main character in the 1992 movie “Single White Female.”
So what and big deal. Only the most cynical book buyer/reader would consider that he or she is being unfavorably compared to the main character in the 1979 movie, “The Jerk.”
Welcome, friends and family, to the P.T. Barnum Maternity Ward, where a nice new one arrives every minute.
That’s why we should always admire Darryl Strawberry. In his 1992 autobiography, Strawberry’s quote transcriber, Art Rust, Jr., apparently heard Strawberry to be a scholar on pre-Civil War American history.
To his lasting credit, Strawberry has never denied that. He has stood by the contents of his autobiography, never once claiming that he’s not really that smart.
Monday’s two New York City daily tabloid newspapers gave the Torre book story roughly the same play while focusing on the same impossible-to-ignore written-to-be-read content of the book.
Yet, during his WFAN show, co-host Joe Benigno relentlessly trashed this newspaper’s coverage, denouncing it for its abandonment of credibility. And his co-host, Evan Roberts, jumped in, mouth first.
Fine.
But why such a selective prosecution?
Kinda made one wonder whether Benigno’s other paid gig, as a regular on an SNY TV show named for and sponsored by the other newspaper, had anything to do with that.
On that show he often sits with that paper’s sports writers.
Odd, too, that two fellas in the sports news and opinion delivery service would make such a blanket attack on any news agency’s credibility, given that those two are eager to report that they attend Jets’ games – road games, too – dressed in Jets’ sweatshirts and/or team jerseys.
To hear them this week deliver a long lecture on sports media credibility was, well, slightly amusing, like watching chimpanzees on roller skates.
Come to think of it, if Benigno and Roberts were attached to a detection device that emitted a beep every time they lifted something out of this newspaper then spoke it as their own, independently learned info, their show would sound like an emergency broadcast alert test.
For that matter, where do you suppose radio fellas such as Benigno and Roberts spend their most time foraging for talk topics, around the teams, or in the newspapers, reading the reports and opinions provided by those who cover the teams?
Thank goodness that Mike Francesa’s show followed, thus restoring worldly and sophisticated order to the station. Francesa suggested that whatever may or may not be in Torre’s book, it comes as no surprise; it’s all old news to him.
Among Francesa’s countless attributes, perhaps his most admirable is his patience.
He always waits – and waits, and waits – until after the news is reported elsewhere before he modestly admits that he already knew it.
Credibility detectors for all! I wear mine in the shower!
Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeep!
*
That late-1970s New York Post star James Brady, who died at 80 Monday, knew your name was plenty neat by itself.
That he knew your name, read your stuff and offered encouragement and nourishment was thrilling. He was that kind of big shot.
To later learn that Brady was a decorated 23-year-old platoon commander during the Korean War came as small surprise.
