Skilled reporting

Reading the sports page is one of those great joys in life. So, if longtime readers thought I went a bit over the top the other day in attacking Selena Roberts, you must understand that when her columns, or even her reporting appeared in the paper, it made me want to recycle the section immediately.

Well, her former colleague, Murray Chass, has no time for her, either.

The use of anonymous sources has come under increasing criticism from readers of all types of publications. Having used them frequently in my decades as a reporter and columnist, I am aware of the problems they pose. Reporters have to establish their credibility with their use of unidentified sources for readers to accept them.

Roberts and I were once colleagues at The New York Times, and I can’t say she established that credibility. She also didn’t strike me as being a top-flight reporter. As a result, I don’t feel I can trust her book full of anonymous sources. Even if every single A-Rod transgression she reports is accurate, it’s too easy for her to write one former teammate said this and another player said that.

Had she written these same reports for the Times, very little would have made it into the paper. I’m not familiar with Sports Illustrated’s standards, but I hope they’re higher than the Roberts book offers. Actually, if you remove the quotes and other information that Roberts attributes to anonymous sources in the 246-page book, it might be left with 46 pages.

In a recent column about Mike Piazza’s possible use of steroids, I quoted a passage from a book about Roger Clemens by Jeff Pearlman. What I quoted was a comment from Reggie Jefferson, a former major leaguer, that Piazza used steroids “and everybody knows it.” What I didn’t quote were comments from others who were not identified.

Using that rule of thumb, I could quote nothing about Rodriguez’s alleged use of steroids from the Roberts book. She alleges that Rodriguez used performance-enhancing drugs in high school and after he joined the Yankees in 2004, but she does not support her accusations with comments from people she identifies.

I initially had no intention of reading the book, but I already knew from news reports what Roberts was alleging, and I decided to see what her sourcing was. It was as bad as I expected it to be.

I should also disclose that after Roberts became a columnist for the Times I found her baseball columns to be shallow and superficial, and she demonstrates her lack of baseball knowledge in the book.

Writing about Rodriguez’s $252 million contract with the Texas Rangers, which he signed in December 2000, Roberts writes that the contract “compelled owners to adopt a luxury tax that would help small-market teams compete in the otherwise lopsided free-agent market.”

One problem with that statement. The owners already had their luxury tax and had had it for four years. They negotiated it with the union in the bargaining that followed the 1994-95 strike, and the agreement took effect Jan. 1, 1997.

As for Manny in his latest manifestation of "being Manny," well, one of his former colleagues said it best.

The veteran third baseman Mike Lowell was more candid, saying he could not understand, in this era of increased scrutiny, how a player could “come close to taking anything that could remotely result in a positive test.”

“In the past if guys did it, they had the crutch that they weren’t testing,” Lowell said. “Maybe there’s some stupid society that maybe I wasn’t invited to.”

And I realize the "steroids have ruined the game" (drugged) horse is out of the barn, but keep in mind when you, like so many players and so many of the scolds and reporters that cover them, are certain that the Incredible Hulk is better equipped to hit a small baseball coming at an equally small bat surface at 90+ miles an hour (with movement!) than was the Babe or Joltin' Joe, keep in mind that baseball players are not so smart about science and tend to believe a lotta shit.