Allen Barra, author of the new biography on Yogi Berra, gives his considered opinion on two other titles that deal with the Hall of Fame: Zev Chafets’ assessment of the problem of the Hall of Fame, and the quartet of NY Daily News writers on a pitcher who would have been a lock to earn a plaque, Roger Clemens.
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“Cooperstown Confidential” is bold, intelligent, gutsy. Chafets is strongest on what is soon to be the Hall’s next controversy: steroids. There is, as he points out, “No proof at all that steroids . . . improve baseball performance in a way that challenges the competitive balance of the game. . . . I didn’t say there were not anecdotes, urban legends, theories, supposition or accusations. I’m talking about actual empirical data.”
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The four New York Daily News reporters who wrote “American Icon” should have read Chafets’ book first, because the things he mentions are just about all that make up this book. If you don’t like Roger Clemens – and there are so many who don’t that one questions why the authors would call him an “icon” – the book is a treasure trove of unflattering innuendoes. (For instance: He once threw a pitch high and inside to his own son, a minor-league prospect.)
Beyond this kind of gossip-mongering, the reader will find little new about Clemens’ alleged drug use. The authors even admit that his only real accuser, his former trainer, Brian McNamee, is “not a perfect witness.” That’s more evidence than they can present that performance-enhancing drugs actually boosted his performance. (Much space is devoted to Clemens’ “freakish, late career surge,” when, as numerous analysts have pointed out, there wasn’t any.)
In a news world that increasingly accepts trial by tabloid, this kind of lazy reporting is accepted as journalism. It’s easy to convince readers what they want to think. Never mind that what they think is based in large part on what the tabloids have already written. One justifies the other, and so the anecdotes and urban legends are transformed into fact.
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