The Bocker.com

This is my first entry in a series of postings on how the media, mainly in sports, fails the fan. Today’s entry will concern how ex-ballplayers turned media men have failed in properly covering MLB’s steroid crisis.

Throughout the coverage of Major League Baseball’s steroid scandal, journalists and writers often stated that while they may not have pursued the steroid issue far enough, they also felt that they could not close enough to the steroid action in order to implicate any individual players of steroid use. However, the sports media was populated with people that could provide indisputable testimony needed to break this story wide open; Ex-players.

ESPN, FOX and the local cable stations all hired retired players in order to provide their audience with inside information and gain viewership. ESPN alone employed no fewer than a dozen former big leaguers, including fan favorites John Kruk, Eric Young and Rob Dibble. Additionally, these outlets would supplement their postseason coverage by adding active players from non-playoff teams to their broadcasts, including Bret Boone, Vernon Wells and Eric Byrnes. Most of these players did average to fair jobs in providing the fan with inside analysis, but all failed in their journalistic responsibilities to report the truth when it came to steroids.

When the Mitchell Report was published, some of the players implicated as steroid users were now members of the media. Additionally, these juicing journalists all had track records of defending accused steroid users and denying their own personal use of steroids. Three of these media personalities are F.P. Santangelo, David Justice and Fernando Vina.

Santangelo played in the majors for parts of six and used HGH supposedly to recover from injuries in 1997 and 2001. When he retired, Santangelo eventually ended up as a host of a morning sports radio show in the Bay Area. As a member of this show, F.P. gave the benefit of the doubt to such supposed roiders as Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire and Brady Anderson.

Fernando Vina played for parts of 11 seasons and even made 2 all-star teams while playing for the St. Louis Cardinals in 2000 and 2001. In 2007, Vina was a featured analyst on ESPN’s Baseball Tonight. In this role, he had every chance in the world to come clean in a public forum. Moreover, he had every chance to fulfill his obligation as a journalist to find truth for his audience. Vina failed miserably on both accounts and only when he was named in the Mitchell report did he admit his use of HGH. In this ESPN interview with Bob Ley, Vina seems to be backtracking and lying about his use of HGH for all of the 5 minutes that Ley questions him. Vina seems to rationalize the use of HGH and even defend the integrity of cheaters more or less saying that HGH caused his injuries to worsen, therefore it can’t possibly make a pro baseball player better. This is not a TV Analyst speaking, rather a cover up artist looking to C.Y.A. on behalf of crooked baseball players.

David Justice had a long and distinguished career in the bigs and is known as a classic playoff performer. In retirement, Justice worked a a commentator at ESPN and then moved on to the YES network, the Yankees-cable channel. Justice was YES’s primary studio analyst and on several occasions had opportunities to discuss steroid use in and around baseball as few suspected and known steroid users, namely Jason Giambi and Roger Clemens, played for the Yankees while Justice was at YES. Justice never spoke truthfully about steroids in baseball, being quoted in 2002 as saying :

“….I look around the clubhouse, and I don’t see anybody with signs of steroid use. I don’t know of anyone who came to camp 20-30 pounds heavier.” (USA Today, Jul. 7, 2002)

He too was named in the Mitchell Report as having bought HGH from Kirk Radomski, the primary source of the Mitchell Report. Now in a radio interview with Colin Cowherd of ESPN just after the report was released, Justice denied even knowing Radomski, but did go on to say that he had asked Brian McNamee, Yankees Strength and Conditioning coach, about the benefits of HGH after his 2000 season with New York. McNamee was the primary source in the Mitchell Report for all of the evidence related to Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte. Pettitte admitted that McNamee’s testimony on Pettitte was true. Supposedly, Justice was offered a chance to try HGH via McNamee, but he turned it down because of the risks.

How does David Justice basically deny that steroids exist in baseball and that no one appears to use them when he himself witnessed how effective they were as a teammate of Roger Clemens and was at the very least offered the chance to use HGH? Where is his defamation of character law suit against George Mitchell if Justice is so innocent of the charges?

These three parties are all did wrong on their own account, but they wronged the public when they took jobs that required their openness and truthfulness when addressing the public. So far, each is still employed in the sports media even though each defrauded his audience and failed at his end of the journalistic agreement. If they had worked for a news outlet and lied to this extent, each would certainly be fired because their work would have no credibility. Santangelo, Vina and Justice are all still currently employed at their places of work, meaning that ESPN and the YES network do not respect its audience enough to give them truthful and reliable analysis. So far, these three players have proven to be cheaters on the field and liars off of it, yet their is still a place for them in the media. If they have lied about their involvement with steroids thus far, why won’t they continue down this route, especially considering that these three have never faced any punishment at all for their actions?

While these three remain employed in their roles as journalists and supposed purveyors of the truth, the media fails US again. All the sports fan has for information is the media. The sports fan has to rely on the media for information because their is no other channel for information coming from the teams and players they are interested in. If the media is not honest with the fan and employs liars and cheats, the fan is defrauded.