The Press Box - How the Ime Udoka Story Was Reported

Episode Date: September 26, 2022

Bryan and David discuss the news that Boston Celtics head coach Ime Udoka has been suspended following allegations about a relationship with a female member of the team’s staff. They dive into the chain of events since the news broke, talk through the details (or lack thereof), and ask critical questions about the allegations and how they're being reported (0:30). Later, they pay respects to New York Times watchdog Allan Siegal and touch on the new media era, with a focus on MLB home run chases (30:06). Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Associate Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Yossi Salick, and I'm the host of Bansplain, a show where we explain cult bands and iconic artists by going deep into their histories and discographies. We're back with a brand new season at our brand new home, the Ringer podcast network, tackling a whole new batch of artists, from grunge gods to Power Pot pioneers to new metal legends and many, many more. Listen to new episodes every Thursday, only on Spotify. Hello, media consumers. Welcome to the press box. Ryan Curtis, David Shoemaker, and producer Erica Servantes here. Welcome back, Erica. There is a big story, David, in the NBA this week that has a big media story attached to it. It's about the season-long suspension of Boston Celtics head coach IMEY Udoka and how that story was reported on and then opined on. The Boston Globes, Chad Finn, put together a really good story that served as a timeline

of all the reporting here. Do you want me to crib from that and then we'll just jump in? Yeah, please too. All right. So the initial tweet came down Wednesday night at 1035 p.m. Eastern from ESPN's Adrian Woznarowski, a.k.a. Woj. He tweeted, ESPN sources, colon, Boston Celtics coach E. May Udoca is facing possible disciplinary action, including a significant suspension for an unspecified violation of organizational guidelines. discussions are ongoing within the Celtics on a final determination.

So Woge at this point in time doesn't have what Udoca allegedly did. He doesn't have what the penalty is going to be, though he knows they're considering a penalty. How do we feel about reporting a story in that form? Presuming that he actually didn't have the information, I think that. I mean, it's big news, right? I mean, you understand the need to get that out there. If it seemed like you're not going to be able to report it out in the near future or by the time that the press conference happens, I mean, it seems, it does kind of feel like you're rushing against the clock and not quite sure what the clock is set on there, right? But what is the clock?

Because that feels to me like a report from the newspaper era where you're worried the papers. about to go to press and you're going to have nothing for 24 hours. So you're putting out a placeholder that runs somewhere on the front of the sports page until you get more information. Yeah. So is the clock Shams Sharani of the Athletic? Is that the clock that we're trying to beat here when we put out a story like that in that form? That it may be the case.

You know, he's hard to read in between these things. But Shams, I mean, that's the next beat on the timeline, right? that Shams tweeted with a little bit more detail. I don't know. I mean, based on nothing, I'm not, I'm not offended at the, at the Woj tweet. And I, and, you know, Woj did seem to, he saw him on TV and stuff. I mean, he got dragged in front of the cameras a few times and sort of, and I think he conducted himself about as respectably as anybody else, probably, maybe even more so throughout

the course of the week. I don't know. It's a really good question. I mean, the structure of his tweet, it could have been as, it could have been as simple as he got a call from the VP of PR at the Boston Celtics. And he was just like, I just wanted you to know the story's about to drop. And here's what I'm willing to tell you. And it was the substance of that tweet.

And then Wodz could have said, please tell me more. What else can I report, you know, and got on the phone. But that might have been all he got. And at that point, it does feel like a, like a, like, a. It was, it's a tweet and it's news in needing of much, you know, there's many blanks to fill in. But as a, but the first tweet, I don't think really stung me. What about you? Well, I was just confused by it when I saw it. Yeah. And the point is not to be, never to be confusing. Yes. And I have no doubt that he was trying to figure out the answer to all those

questions. But I think any news story that begs a ton of questions is a new story that feels like it should be put back in the microwave for a while, and you should try to get more answers to that. As you point out, it was about two hours and change later that Shams Sharani of the Athletic then tweets, Celtics coach IME Yudoka had an improper, intimate,

and consensual relationship with a female member of the team's staff. Sources tell at the athletic at stadium, it's been deemed a violation of franchises code of conduct. Yeah. A little more detail, though I think we should come back to what some of the words in that tweet actually means. I was going to say, it's a little more detail that begs even more questions. Let's just do it right now.

That was one of those phrases that wound up getting repeated over and over again on television. But I look at that tweet and I'm like, what? one is in the middle of the night on Wednesday night, Thursday morning, was he able to get comment from IME Yudoka and or his representatives, the member of the team staff he's referring to and or her representatives, and the team were all those bases touched here so that we know for sure that that's the way to describe. this relationship? I mean, that's, that's to me an interesting question.

And as we look at this as news consumers and look at what we're reading, you know, and hearing you, to me, immediately look at that and go, okay, is that right? Is that where we are? Because those words, again, would be repeated over and over again. Well, you know, there's one way of looking at this from which, one vantage point, from which the assumption is they knew the words, whoever gave the information knew that those words would be repeated, right? I mean, if this was a, if this was a, if this was a leak or a whatever

and trying to shape the news coverage going forward, it was successful. I think even if that's not the case, the use of the word consensual is really suspect. I mean, from the very beginning. And just because, I mean, you laid it out, you need to outline your sourcing, even if it's not, even if they're unnamed sources, because consensual means, well, certainly means different things in different settings, right? Inc, me, the HR department probably has a different definition of it

than some of the people involved. But there are three distinct, it's the teams and both people involved who have a claim on the legitimacy of that word. And so just the general, like, oh, I got, I got a, You know, a source that I trust told me this. I mean, that's not quite good enough. And I think, judging by the reaction that I saw online, most people sort of felt that same way, too, you know?

I mean, I get, there's a lot of reporters out there trying to be protective of people throughout this story. And the human element there is understandable. In some ways, it's the most important thing. you or I don't know the whole truth of the story or anything that's going on and we should say that I haven't called anybody or even heard any like solid rumors or anything like that I guess all of that is to say I guess you could make the case that that tweet minus the word consensual might have had a drastically different reading in the other direction and presume and if and if you have any if shams had any idea concept

of what the truth of the situation was maybe that felt more wrong but I think that's exactly why need to report the story and not tweet out a tweet, you know, if there's not, certainly not enough space for all the information to be conveyed there. And that's why you go back to the original sort of least favorable supposition. This was a source trying to shape the conversation. I couldn't agree more. And this is one of those times in insider culture where when you tweet out something like that, you know what I want? I want a link I can click on so that I can read a story and have you tease out and share more information and not just leave it in a handful of characters like that. Like if it's so-and-so is about to sign with the warriors,

some entertainment purposes only NBA story, that can probably be contained in a tweet. But it wouldn't be. I mean, to break the news. news, yes, but you're going to follow up 30 minutes later and say, here's my story. Right. But here I want a fleshed out story that tells me what those terms mean, who is using those terms, how they are being understood in this context. Because the use of those terms, that feels like the start of the reporting, not the end of the reporting.

If you just Google consensual relationships in an office, there is a vast amount. of complexity in those terms between the parties. And again, use of that word. And this is not going to be your employment law podcast here. But that is not sufficient to describe almost any professional relationship along these lines, simple terms like that. And then by the way, when Shams writes a story for the athletics sometime later, he writes this. Some members of the Celtics organization first became aware of the relationship in July, sources said. At that time, team leadership was led to believe.

by both parties that the relationship was consensual. But sources said that the woman recently accused Udoka of making unwanted comments toward her leading the team to launch a set of internal interviews. So already, between the time of that tweet and between the time of the story, the situation has grown a lot more, the story has grown a lot more complicated than what was initially laid out. Yeah. And there is, again, Celtics team sources are in there.

this is a this is a really difficult story to piece together i think in the in the normal manner that an NBA story news story would be would be pieced together right you can kind of check boxes in a much more simplistic way uh when you're talking about a contract situation or free agent signing or whatever else um even even written out even with even with clearly touching base with someone at the Celtics. It just seemed incredibly wanting. The notable feature of the story is

how little information there is. How little information has been reported. Chad Finn notes in his Boston Globe story that between Woj's initial tweet and the first statement by the Celtics of any kind,

23 hours passed. And those statements were a press release saying that Udoca had been suspended for the year for, quote, violations of team policy. And Udoca releasing his own statement saying he was sorry and that he had no further comment. And when I look at this, there's a couple of things that are pretty broken in sports media or maybe more specifically just incapable of dealing with a story like this sensitively and fairly. Yeah. One of those things is sports Twitter.

Because guess what happened during that 23 hour gap? A lot of Twitter users. started looking for women who work in the Celtics organization, started engaging in really gross speculation. Yeah. About those women? Yep. Amanda Plugrod, who is the team reporter and host for the Celtics, tweeted this as a

female of the Celtics organization watching these last few days in fold has been heartbreaking. Seeing uninvolved people's names thrown around in the media, including mine, with such carelessness, is disgusting. This is a step backwards for women. in sports who worked hard to prove themselves in an industry they deserve to be in. Brad Stevens mentioned the same thing

when the Celtics finally had that press conference. So there was that. Then there's a second part, David, that's broken. That's the ESPN opinion machine. Yeah. Where when you go on television on Thursday morning, morning after the story breaks,

you have to have a big opinion about the story. Despite the fact that there is little to know information even from your own news organization. Out there about it. Yeah. I mean, Twitter, we're kind of like, this is terrible. You know, do we report the accounts? Hope that the accounts engaged in that kind of speculation are, you know, shut down.

But ESPN, it seems like there's a, there's a solution to this, which is, can we not do this on Thursday morning? Yeah. and even Friday morning and, you know, come on and be like, here's my big take on the whole thing. I mean, the Stephen A, the first, one of his first rounds on this on Thursday morning was he said, I'm not defending E. May Udocha, made that very, very clear. But then he says, I have a bigger issue with the Boston Celtics allowing this whole story to be publicized and leaked. Mm-hmm.

Really? And I don't know if it was this sort of performative earnestness trying to, trying and sort of failing it, taking the situation, treating the situation with a great seriousness that doesn't attend some of the other conversations they have on the show, but he certainly seemed to be more, more like honestly worked up about the Celtics allowing this to become public than he did about any other aspect of the story. And let alone any other conference, any other loud argument he's had on his own television show over the past six months. You know, I mean, this seemed like there's nothing that, I don't know, that he was,

that he honed in on that to such a degree. I don't know, just it kind of said a lot. And he feels like, if that's your take on it, what, tell me what facts is that take built on? He seemed to be working from a set of facts that he was not making public. And whether that's one person's point of view or just personal point of view based on an accumulation of evidence, it was sort of perplexing. It is totally perplexing because it's like if you have facts to add to this narrative, Stephen A was a reporter, it's very connected in the NBA,

then surely this is the time for you to try to report those facts on your television show, rather than constructing a take on vague or non-existent facts that aren't out there. And I'm just like, I'm like, if I had that run in the next day was on Friday with Malika Andrews who would come on there and they have this sort of this whole thing, this whole back and forth and he tells her not to not to tell me to stop on my own show. And that was a very strange and cringy kind of thing to watch. Yeah. Happened. And I'm just like, if I could sell anything to him, I was like, if you come out on your television show on Thursday morning and

say, you know what? I'd love to have a big opinion about this NBA news. But I, I don't know enough yet. Right. I just don't know. And there are ways to discuss. There's certainly things we can discuss and talk about, but I don't know enough yet. I honestly,

this is maybe me being naive, but I think that would have a big impact on ESPN, where he is allegedly the most powerful person on sports Twitter, where first take is a thing. And there is something powerful about saying, me, the guy who is ready with an opinion on everything. does not have an opinion about this. Yep.

Or at least a conventional kind of, I'm coming down hard on one side or the other opinion on this. And it goes without saying, but if he did that, they wouldn't have to sit in silence for the next 15 minutes of the show in the space where they would have otherwise been talking about Eudoka and the Celtics.

Like they find plenty of stuff to talk about every day. But I think part of the, part of the difficulty in figuring, out, when you fail to cover something correctly, a lot of the times you can look back, especially at a format like first take and say it's a square peg round hole situation. Like if this, you know, there is a way to address a situation like this, like briefly and soberly on SportsCenter, but they don't have the, that doesn't fit into the rubric of first take, right? So if there's, you're right, what you said is what they should have done. But once it's been decided that we're

going to, that this is going to be a top of a conversation. it just gets put into the ringer. You know, it just, it's like, it's just wound up and immediately set up to be a borderline disgrace. Yeah. I,

I completely agree. And it's funny because one of, an ESPN YouTube account, this was, this was the headline. Stephen A is furious and disappointed after the Celtics email, Yudoka press conference. Furious and disappointed.

I mean, it's like what. And it's funny because, you know, first take often becomes the billboard of ESPN. It becomes when people complain about ESPN. That's specifically what they're complaining about. I watched a clip from the NBA today, Malika Andrews, our old pal Zach Lowe, Richard Jefferson, Woge, who you just mentioned and Jaylon Rose. They had a terrific conversation about it. They were able to have a conversation

about it that was interesting. It was that covered a lot of these bases. Zach made the point again and again about how much we don't know about this. And it is possible to have a television roundtable conversation about this. That is absolutely not impossible. So it's like, you know, I don't want to smear the, you know, smear all of ESPN because it definitely was there. Yeah, for sure it was. I mean, it does sort of still, and we'll get into some of the, we'll get into this,

I think next. it's hard to watch that roundtable, which was done incredibly well and incredibly tastefully and stood out in very stark contrast to what happened on first take. And they certainly treated the subject respectfully and appropriately.

There's still, at this point, it's just sort of a glaring hole where like the reporting is, right? I mean, this isn't just on woes or just on Shams or anybody at this point. It's just sort of, I don't know. listen, I don't, nobody's name needs to be out there. Nobody, you know, we don't, there's a lot of this that will fall under the banner of, like,

privacy and, you know, HR and everything else. But I think there's just some very basic mechanics of the story that are still just unclear. Even after a press conference with the ownership, you know, with the coach, with general manager, or not the coach, with the general manager, former coach, it's, it is, I mean, I guess for having to go on television, they did absolutely as well as anybody could do, right? For having a discussion about-NBA today is not pushing, it's not like a podcast. We'll record two hours later in search of greater insight or whatever. It's, you know, there's certain necessities.

But anyway, it was a very good conversation. Were you struck by the number of people in and around the media who were doing this kind of winking thing? like they knew more details about the case than they could say on television. Well, yes. So they were trying to intimate that to the public in some way or another? Yeah. I mean, that's sort of the next big chapter in the story, right? There is a lot of information floating around out there, obviously that we don't have access to all of it.

on, you know, the NBA show on the ringer's podcast feed, Logan and Rob, Logan Murdoch and Rob Mahoney, two of our very, very best. I mean, they're all great, but two of my favorite people to listen to and to read had a conversation about this in which they sort of said, don't like, don't get out ahead of your skis, basically. You know, I mean, it's like there's a lot of information out there. And if you don't have the information, maybe don't just start, just go out there and start working on, you know, with half truths and, and, and, and, complete information, which is correct. This is a very specific particular kind of story in which care and prudence and meticulousness is necessary. But we're in a very odd point in the media world where there is a vacuum needing to be filled and it is now being filled with them. And Ramona Shelburne, who went on Zach Lowe's podcast, again, incredibly good conversation. All these conversations are just as good as they could possibly be. But having the conversations about

the story and about the inability and the prudence what needs to take to report the story, they fill this void. And that says that says nothing about the people having the conversations. They're saying exactly the right things and the spaces they need to be said. But it is, it does become a bullet point on this timeline, right? I mean, this is how this space is filled. And then, of course, the most notable example is Matt Barnes, who came out in support of EMEU doka and then sort of, not sort of, did a full mea culpa, didn't backtrack, full Mayacupacolpa in a video he made while driving, or he said he spoke to someone in the Celtics organization or someone close to the situation. And it's so much a hundred times worse than anybody thought and these

prayers for everybody involved. And, you know, a lot of people, I mean, I'd say if there was any, it's not exactly an overworked Twitter joke, but I think the thing that I saw most repeated on Twitter over the weekend was, you know, Steve, if, if Matt Barnes thinks something is bad, then this has got to be really, you know, kind of a joke about his history. It's, so there's a lot, again,

the vacuum just gets filled with people's implication that they know more. And I think that you could see that even in the podcast that I referenced. on some level you have to have some idea of a deep you have less have a deeper understanding of what's going on than the average consumer if you're willing to go out there and say hey everybody take a beat take a breath don't you don't have to run out there and just assume or report or anything else so yeah i mean it's this is a very this is very much a symptom of the modern media world where it's not just that people know stuff that the regular consumers news consumers don't know it's that we're very aware of the we can look and point at the people who know more than the average person and the average the the the news consumer the NBA fan whoever just looks and says all these people know something why isn't anybody saying something no absolutely and i was what i was thinking about this i was looking at a richard jefferson tweet richard jefferson does a bunch of

espn shows the tweet is when you guys find out the truth eyes emoji and then it's a gif from mean girls. Okay. Are we, you know, are we also huddling with everybody in the ESPN newsroom right now, talking about how ESPN can work on this story if we're doing, if we're putting out tweets like that. Just to tell the audience that we know more about the story. And as you say, make the audience be like, wait a sec, you know something more about this? Are we all just, I assume that that conversation is probably happening within ESPN. because certainly ESPN wants, you know, again, like when we talk about the story from the very first woge tweet, this is not, there are people, people want to do more with this or responsibly more, David and I are not going anywhere here that's in irresponsible way, responsibly reporting. They want to do more on this story. I just hope that that's also happening while that kind of, that sort of tweet is going out there or the thing that Matt Barnes recorded is going out there. You're severely limited in what you can say, even if you, even if you, even if you, even if you,

reported it out, right? I mean, if you, if you've determined, you're, you as a reporter, I guess, more appropriately, the news organization that you work for may have determined that we're not going to use the name of the other party involved for any number of reasons. And that's entirely appropriate. But you also then can't start naming all the people who aren't the person, the other party involved, right? I mean, you saw somebody specifically, you know, a reporter said, It's not the person that you all are all naming. You know, just like, let's just get, get, take, let's stop hounding her, stop making this thing. Because obviously a lot of this comes down to people identifying the, the other person involved online or trying to, misidentify and trying to identify to blame that person for whatever, for the, the, the downfall of the Celtics, right?

Which is entirely inappropriate and probably entirely untrue. So you have to be careful about, obviously, take great care and great deliberation reporting all these things. I guess my question, though, is like, if we're not going to name the person, if you is your news organization not going to name, if you're not going to pursue a story beyond a certain point, or you're not going to report out a story in a certain direction beyond a certain point, is it incumbent upon the reporters to sort of make that clear? like here are the here here here here here the the the no fly zones and i've reported the story as far as i can in this direction um so don't expect anything else like is that is that an important conversation to sort of or like just statement to make yeah i think so and it's it's common you know when reporting these kind of stories that here is the policy of our news organization and just spelling that out for the reader to to know yeah absolutely and i think and i think as you as this story

story is reported on more. You'll see a lot of those paragraphs and a lot of those sentences. That's like, here is how we approach material like this. And that's, you know, something that's arrived at by looking at a style book, by a big conversation within a newsroom. Absolutely. And I think that would be absolutely appropriate on a story like this. Again, there's just so much we don't know about this story. And that's what's motivating this conversation. Like, you take it back to the very beginning of the conversation. We don't know what motivated Wojus tweet. And we're not He does not owe us that explanation. Like I said, he's acted entirely honorably, I think, to the entire course of this thing.

But we don't, the very, the most basic first thing, we don't know. We can only speculate why he tweeted that when he tweeted it, right? And nothing, very little has become more clear. The most clarifying, quote unquote, clarifying thing that's happened has been, I mean, it was probably Shams's follow-up tweet, which, again, as we said before, you know, your mileage may vary on it. I mean, and more significantly, you shouldn't be counting your mileage on that tweet.

We should have, you know, like, don't. That's the thing you don't tweet unless you have more information to back it up. And there's just not a lot that's come out since then. You know, elustates the situation anymore. Coming up in 30 seconds, David, let us talk about, and boy, what a time to talk about it, the death of the standard bearer of the New York Times.

But first, let's do the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees to at the press box pod where they are always gratefully received. Didn't really have a consensus overworked Twitter joke this week. So I threw it open to our friends on Twitter and just got some of the, let us call them the semi-consensus entries in this feature this week. one was the continuing really weird performance of Russell Wilson, the newly minted Denver Bronco quarterback. Any tweet that said let Russ cook and then had something gross being cooked, there was one with cereal with hot dogs and a slice of American cheese in it. One was the Pro Bowl going to a flag football competition. I thought the Pro Bowl was already

flag football. I remember of the St. Louis Cardinals, who has 681 home runs behind Albert Poo holes, et cetera. If you found any of those things funny, congrats. You made the overword Twitter joke of the week. All right, about the New York Times, David. Let me take you back to August 2005. You remember August 2005 because you and I were living together. Wow. I was a columnist at slate.com writing about pop culture. And I published a column about Target as in the retail store. And the next day I'm sitting in my office and I have that columnist afterglow. Oh, boy, I did a good job.

I made a piece of journalism here. And I get an email from a guy named Alan Siegel. And he points out and he works at the New York Times. So immediately my young writer brain is like, uh-oh, email from somebody at the New York Times. and he points out that I have a typo in the first sentence of my slate phone. Oh, no. I had misspelled the name of Eustace Tilly, the New Yorker monocle wearing mascot. Thought I'd done such a good job.

Alan Siegel died last week. No relation, by the way, to our Alan Siegel. This Alan Siegel was the standards editor of the New York Times. Papers Obit called him the exacting and unquestioned arbiter of language, taste, tone, and ethics. Basically, his job was to say, at the New York Times, this is how we do things. Within a paragraph, this is how we express things. This is what kind of paper we should be on a daily basis. How many publications in our lifetime would even have somebody that would think about occupying that role?

Times, maybe the New Yorker have a certain traditions and standards we need to do. Alan Siegel started at the New York Times as a copy boy in 1960. Did some reporting, not too much of it, helped edit, edit the Pentagon paper story significantly. And then after the 2003 Jason Blair scandal,

he was on a team that says, what should the paper do now? And he helped create the team created this position of standards editor. And he became the standards editor. Here are some of the examples that he gave or that the, excuse me, the obit gave about the standards he was upholding. He got mad that the Times had spelled foie gras in the paper incorrectly, or at least differently than they normally spell foie gras. He says, if this bumpkin spelling is the best we could do, we should stick to chopped liver.

according to the obit, the Times once published a headline that the old Bears coach, Mike Ditka, quote, should recover, end quote, from a heart attack,

to which Alan Siegel wrote, unless God returns our call, we shouldn't predict in such cases. He was the guy who decided that when the Times runs those wonderful obituaries, that the list of survivors should not be the last thing in the obituary. You end an obituary,

David Schumacher was, He is survived by his parents and his good friend Brian Curtis. That we're not going to do that anymore. We're not going to do that anymore. We should do that. And then we should have a telling anecdote about David as the last paragraph in the obituary. Or maybe a really good quote to end it on. Tellingly, the Times obituary does the same thing for Alan Siegel.

Here is a quote he gave about journalism. The best of style relies on reporters' ears and eyesight and on. simplicity, the unpretentious language of a letter to an urbane and literate friend. In that setting, the sudden glimmer of an unusual word, a syncopation, or a swerve in logic, lets the reader know that here is something richer than an hourly bulletin. Pretty good synopsis of newspaper journalism there. Yeah, that's pretty great. By the way, follow up to my note from Alan Siegel.

I was writing a column for the New York Times for the play magazine inside the New York times. And I tried to use the phrase talking about ESPN, appropriate to our discussion today, a man looks into a camera and relieves himself of an opinion. Okay. And I seem to remember, I cannot, I cannot confirm this to Alan Siegel's standards, but I seem to remember that we got a note at Play Magazine from his department saying that that was not the kind of phrase that should appear in the Times. I looked up the column and it did in fact appear in the Times. But maybe we had to tone it down a little bit.

I can't remember. R-I-P. Alan Siegel. By the way, Alan Siegel's name was spelled A-L-L-A-N-S-I-E-G-A-L. Now, for somebody who would later uphold the standards of the New York Times, do you think at some level of his being he was vexed by his name, constantly being misspelled. Yes.

Yes. That was his origin story probably. Yeah. This is like when we talk about the weather forecaster whose last name is stormy or something and it is destiny for them

to be a weather forecaster. It seems like destiny. If your name is spelled in a tricky way or a way that other people would find tricky, that you are going to be the person who upholds the standards

at the New York Times. Another topic for you, David. The MLB Home Run Chase we talked about the other day. Big moment of baseball history on Friday. Listen to what a 700th home run sounds like. So that was the Cardinals Albert Pooholz hitting the home run. But that was not the voice of Cardinals played by play announcer Dan McLaughlin.

That was the voice of Wayne Randazzo because that game was airing on Apple TV. This has been the weird media sub-story of the home run chases of 2020. They are on the conventional place that you find the broadcast. But then on certain days of the week, especially Friday for Apple TV, they air there. It was a big thing with Aaron Judge who's still sitting at 60 home runs. Oh my gosh,

we're going to get to hear Michael K of the Yes Network call, this climactic 61st home run that will tie Roger Maris's record. But then the game was on Apple on Friday. With an announcer who, was not Michael K. Do you find it funny that history is passing between television networks, cable networks, and then also these streaming services to see who will get to hit the lottery for the big home run? Well, I mean, it is a very kind of yield thing to have an announcer and a team so inextricably intertwined.

But so much about sports, as we talk about every week, is that, right? And if nothing else, as a, you know, sports league, as a sports broadcaster, you're trying to evoke the sort of sentimentality or, you know, the continuity at the very least. It comes with sports fandom. And, you know, in a vacuum, if you asked if somebody came over from another country and had never been exposed to baseball and you were just like, oh, my God, the announcer on the other channel had got to call that great moment instead of the one that I'm used to, and they'd probably look at you a little bit, a little bit perplexed, right? But yeah, these are the tradeoffs that we have to make in the new media era. And, you know, I hope that the teams are a little bit circumspect about that when they make some of these deals. I don't know. Would it make you feel better if, like, the conventional local announcers just recorded like overdubs and circulated that clip around?

It's like when Howard Cosell called those famous fights. but it was only for the re-air a week later on ABC Sports. Exactly, yeah. Like, down goes Frazier. That was not him. He was calling it live, but it was not airing live. It was a different call that was airing it. Yeah, maybe.

I mean, I think what people want is the clip. They want the clip to have the right voice attached to the clip, the voice that they're used to, right? So that when this gets replayed nine billion times, so they can just, you know, or we share it on Twitter that it's the right, quote unquote, right voice. it seems like radio is really the only way a play-by-play announcer gets to squat on the rights to have a call. Because radio is not only going to do every game, but radio is also going to follow you through the postseason. You know, your local TV announcers have to give up the team at a certain point. But radio will go to the end.

So the radio announcer will get the call all the way to the end of the World Series, if applicable. Exactly. The radio announcing job is becoming the real, like the bard, right? The bard of the team, the person following along and lending their voice to every game of the season. I mean, it's actually true. You know, I'm sure that people are aghast when other people were calling their teams for Monday night football or whatever, you know, but these are the tradeoffs you kind of have to make for expansion, right? I mean, it's, it's, it's, it. not ideal, but whatever else. I mean, and listen, maybe we'll be, maybe just like Monday night football, maybe we'll be looking back in 10 years and thinking if Wayne Rundazzo is the voice of Major League baseball.

And of course he calls all the games that happen because Amazon is the only place we watch them now. We have no idea how we're going to revisit this. Wayne is the Mets announcer, by the way, in his, in real life. So Wayne is the voice of a lot of baseball in this season because Mets are good, a lot of really important baseball. Just throwing that out there. A lot of this feels baseball.

baked into the job of announcing totally. When Vince Scully died and we're talking about how he did the World Series every other year through a big chunk of the 80s because the off year was or the on year, depending on how you look at it, was Al Michaels doing it for ABC? So Vince Scully got to call the World Series in 86 when the ball goes through Bill Buckner's legs. Amazing moment that has his voice on it forever. Two years later, he gets to do the World Series.

Kirk Gibson hits a home run game one for the Dodgers. It's like awesome. But that was just hitting the lottery. Al Michaels got to be the voice of the announcer when the earthquake hit the stadium in 1989 because he was doing the odd years. So I think a lot of that just baked into the job. A tweet I wanted to send to you that was interesting. Leticia James, who is the New York State Attorney General,

when people complained that the game was going to be on Apple TV instead of the Yes network, she tweeted this. Millions of New Yorkers paid their cable bills, expecting to see live sports programming, denying them the chance to watch Aaron Judge step up to the plate to make history tonight is wrong and unfair. I'm calling on MLB and Apple to open up tonight's game to the Yes Network. That set off an interesting reaction because people are like, wait a second, in 2022, what is more accessible?

Apple TV, which is free, so long as you have a smartphone and our computer or something like that to watch it on, or the Yes Network, which requires cable or cable-like thing and possibly a television to watch it on. Right. I thought that was interesting. It's good. And if the Yes Network, I mean, here's a thing with all the local broadcasters, right? They become, local sports broadcasters become such a fix in your life. You know exactly they're on the speed dial on your phone. I mean, on your, on your remote control at home,

you know a channel it is probably by memory. But like as soon as like once every, what, like eight years, the cable company will like mess around with the channels or the rights package will shift to a different channel. And that is a, is a catastrophe on such a different level than, than trying to find something,

you know, trying to make Amazon TV work, right? I mean, like those, that we forget about those moments as soon as they're resolved, but that is serious stuff, let alone, And that means set a set, I mean, completely separate from that is the fact that like every cable package, whatever, has a different channel for this stuff. So if you show up at the sports bar, you're like, can you put the, can you, you know, can you put the Dodgers game on, whatever your local sports team is?

Then they're like, okay, well, I have Xfinity. What channel am I trying to push right now? And if you don't know the answer, you're never getting to see that show, right? I mean, it's like, that could be a whole half hour of Googling before you figure out what and before you figure it out. fully exasperated the bartender by then, and good luck getting your second bloody Mary. But it's a lot more difficult. We forget how difficult it is, except in the moments of greatest exasperation, which are

in TV land still very extreme. We're not doing the only in journalism words bit anymore. But occasionally, David, we still get only in journalism words. And this one from listener Charlie Couts was fantastic. It's a tweet from the Wall Street Journal. a former Mississippi Human Services Director pleads guilty

in a welfare scandal that has, wait for it, enmeshed, former NFL star Brett Favre and former Governor Phil Bryant. Enmeshed.

Again, it feels like a word you're using very purposely when you have a story about legality and guilty, please.

You're making sure you're not throwing anything out there that could be wrong. So in meshed, Red Fri Fri. Sort of like in battle. There's absolutely no status you're implying to Brett Fart. Legal status. He's just in mesh. Another good one I heard over the weekend. I was watching the Packers Bucks game yesterday. Tom Rinaldi comes on for Fox and he used an only in sports broadcasting word,

which he said that the Packers offensive line was going to try to staunch the Buccaneers defense. Oh. So we often have staunch as in like as an adjective. Yeah. Stanch conservative being a very popular one in politics. But in sports, you can staunch a defense and use it as a verb. Wow. I tweeted this out and a bunch of people tweeted back in me, oh, the Brits do this all the time.

I'm not familiar with that. But in America, and only in sports broadcasting word, staunch as a verb. It's time for David Shoemaker guesses a train pun headline. Yeah. Thursday's headline about the large number of dudes set to sit on the British throne was it's raining men. Today's headline comes from valued listener going off topic. It's from both the New York Post and the New York Daily News,

some rare synchronicity between the tabloids. Last Tuesday, the Yankees, Aaron Judge, the aforementioned, hit his 60th home run of the season. tying Babe Ruth, what was the posts or the Daily Newses? Strain pun headline. Okay.

They both had the same one. Actually, it's a little bit different, but we'll get to that. Right, it's the same pun. Aaron Judge. Tying Babe Bruce record. Judge. I mean, Judge has got to be in the Babe.

Why don't we go with that? Why don't we go with Babe? Babe. Tide. Babe caught. Babe matched. Maybe a maybe a song from a popular. There we go.

Okay. So the daily news is I got you, babe. Oh, I got. Yeah, I got it. I've got you. I got you, babe. Now, the post went one pun step further. Can you think of that?

and think of a popular only on the sports page term for tying someone. A verb is the two teams are what? Tied, locked up. Even older than locked up. No, I know. God, why can't I think? Are blanked at five runs apiece. Are, oh, what is it?

I don't even, I can't think of it. What about knotted? Oh, knotted. Right. So the New York Post headline was not, I got you, babe, but Not, I not you, babe. I not you, babe. Yeah, that's not okay.

That sounds like Borat. I know. Doing American journalism. I not you, babe. Sometimes you just turn the wheel one too many times. Yeah. He is David Chewbaker. I'm Brian Curtis.

Production Magic by Erica Servantes. Coming up later this week, David, the legendary Sports Center anchor in Los Angeles Dodgers Play-by-Playman. Charlie Steiner is going to be on this podcast. That will be up Wednesday, and David and I are back Monday

with more lukewarm takes about the movie. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.