ESPN’s Cuban baseball coverage its worst failure yet
And just like that, ESPN’s last remaining shred of journalistic integrity dissipated without so much as a whisper.
Tuesday afternoon’s landmark baseball game between the Tampa Bay Rays and the Cuban national team was, by nearly all accounts, a joyous merger of two cultures long overdue for a reunion — because the literal broadcasts and written recaps of this game were so saturated with self-congratulatory praise it was almost as if this wasn’t a complete failure in terms of sports media and its mission.
The exception was an emotional piece crafted by Dan Le Batard, who used a series of personal anecdotes from his family’s Cuban heritage to provide more perspective and context for this game than the rest of sports media combined. Le Batard stood out as the only guy around willing to tear down the illusion that this game in Cuba was just dandy and worth riotous celebration, revealing instead a host of atrocities committed by the dictator now enjoying ball park franks with our own president.
Much has already been written regarding the politics of this particular event — particularly in the wake of a major terrorist attack on Brussels, Belgium. But it isn’t merely the context of the game that gives me pause. Instead, I find myself at a loss for why the worldwide leader in sports saw fit to disregard a major opportunity to use sports reporting to convey a more impactful message.
This has become a nasty habit for the sports network. Serious news surrounding the NFL’s prior knowledge of CTE and its harmful effects broke earlier this week — ESPN responded with mock drafts.
Deaths of workers essentially reduced to slave labor in Qatar will number in the thousands before the first game of the 2022 FIFA World Cup is played — but why not have some non-athlete celebrity come into the ESPN offices, and maybe do another mock draft.
Just because sports is in the entertainment media sector doesn’t mean sports reporting has to be devoid of anything with real impact. ESPN could find time for the serious issues affecting the world of sports and still discuss Golden State’s historic season. But no, only an agenda-laden format from here on out by the Disney-owned sports giant.
By no means did this happen overnight — Tebowmania, “The Decision,” the 2015 NBA Draft’s “fashion consultant” and the continued employment of Michelle Beadle all indicate to some degree or another the fact that true reporting has only existed as a peripheral part of ESPN’s mission for some time now.
It would rather be a part of the show, an appendage to sports themselves that celebrates awesome highlight-reel moments while willfully ignoring any potentially negative story regardless of that story’s potential to inspire important discussion.
And before you go thinking “So what’s the big deal? If you don’t like it, just don’t watch,” consider how widespread ESPN’s influence can be. As Gawker Media’s popular sports outlet Deadspin once put it, no single media outlet has as much sway over its corner of the culture as ESPN does over the sports world, and that’s why it matters when the Worldwide Leader decides to be stupid — ESPN’s stupid is oppressive.
There’s a running joke around the Statesman office that some of us writers really just stick around for sports. Literal shouts of the word “sports” accompany every work meeting I’ve ever been to. In a sense, this is what ESPN used to bring to a national audience — Sportscenter was once must-watch television for even casual sports fans, because its goal was to cover sports exclusively, and do it better than anyone else.
But now we’re in a place where sporting events and ESPN are wound a little too tight — its relationship with the professional sports leagues, the NFL in particular, has erased its ability to perform its most basic function.
Bill Simmons, one of the most widely-recognized sports personalities in the country, saw his all-star band of writers disbanded following his firing via Twitter in May 2015. Simmons’ pet project Grantland, perhaps the most creative and well-run online sports property out there, met its end with practically zero explanation. It didn’t matter that Grantland was incredibly popular or that Simmons was practically a national treasure despite his tendency to swoon over Rob Gronkowski. Grantland’s style didn’t match ESPN’s desired message, so now it’s gone.
The lack of serious coverage and insight into Tuesday’s Cuban baseball game is only the latest in a long string of failures that don’t appear to be causing ESPN much distress. I imagine the day will come for others, as it did for me this week, when the worldwide leader in sports gets to be too much for the average sports fan to take.
What an interesting day that’ll be.
— Logan Jones is a junior majoring in journalism. Contact him with feedback at logantjones@aggiemail.usu.edu or on Twitter @Logantj.