Press Box Revolution: How Sports Reporting Has Changed Over the Past Thirty Years by Rich Coutinho

Author:Rich Coutinho [Coutinho, Rich]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sports & Recreation, Business Aspects, Language Arts & Disciplines, journalism, history, Football, Baseball, Essays & Writings, Basketball
ISBN: 9781613219867
Google: Wm6CDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2017-04-04T23:40:27.206520+00:00

CHAPTER 12

1994: A Year to Remember

WHILE COVERING SPORTS OVER THE past thirty years, many memorable years stand out. Both the Mets and Giants won championships in 1986, 2000 featured the return of the Subway Series, and 2001 was unforgettable as sports played a huge role in helping to heal after 9/11.

All of those years were special to cover, but 1994 had everything, combining championship moments, the national pastime fighting over the almighty dollar, and a court case that would socially polarize America like no other case had in the history of this country. As a reporter, I covered it all and in many ways, these events symbolized both the end of an era and what was in the offing.

I quickly realized after that year that being a sports reporter had migrated to a job that makes you the combination of a sports expert, legal reporter, economic analyst, and a gossip columnist. Covering the ’86 Mets as well as athletes such as Mark Gastineau and Lawrence Taylor gave us a small taste, but 1994 brought it all front and center, changing the sports reporting world forever.

Once we lived through 1994, the game itself began to become secondary as those reporters who cared little about the game became more prominent and in some circles, more valuable than the veteran reporters who stuck to only reporting about what happened on the field.

The seeds for the baseball strike that cancelled the 1994 World Series were planted years earlier as the Major League Baseball Players Association became the strongest labor organization in the country through the hard work of Marvin Miller, whom I feel is one of the ten most important people in the history of baseball. I had a chance to interview him early in my career and I will never forget it. He was approachable and treated me like a veteran reporter but also explained labor issues, to me especially after I told him my dad was a loyal member of the United Auto Workers union.

Miller drummed up support for himself way back in 1966, visiting all the players in spring training and being named Executive Director of the MLBPA. In those days players were treated like cattle by the owners and Miller slowly whittled that away by negotiating collective bargaining agreements that gave the players rights they never had before. He got a 43 percent increase in minimum salaries as well as establishing the framework of arbitration to settle disputes, which would become the framework for years to come.

But these were all small victories with players trying to gain freer movement to go from team to team, ending ownership control. The efforts were not always immediately successful as star outfielder Curt Flood tried to challenge the reserve clause, which inhibited a player’s free agency, all the way to the Supreme Court—a fight he eventually lost. Flood’s battle ended his career as he sacrificed his entire livelihood to diminish the hold owners had on players with the reserve clause that bound players to their teams.

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