I never used to criticize the media. Never. I felt as if I should be loyal to my profession, so I assumed those attacking the press were idiots looking for an easy hit.

No more.

I despise TV news. And nothing represents this better than the coverage of the swine flu. In short, how about not looking so damn excited? People are getting sick and dying, and half the reporters I see on the tube appear thrilled to scare the living f%$# out of you. Seriously, I’m still waiting for someone—anyone?—to explain, literally, how dangerous this really is; how real the threat of death might be and how much more worried people should be of this than of the normal, everyday flu that kills shitloads of folks.

I actually e-mailed a doctor pal of mine, and this is what he wrote back. Found it more informative than anything from CNN, MSNBC, etc …

Hey Man,
Agree, media has way overblown. Definitely not a bam you die thing. Here’s my take from the info I’ve been getting daily from the CDC, the Dept of Health and media I’ve been following; seem like the cases that have been contracted primarily in the US haven’t been so severe as those in Mexico. So far the only death in the US seems to have been in a toddler who probably contracted in Mexico. I’m not sure any of the confirmed cases contracted in the US have even been hospitalized. The concern when this first came to light was the 10% death rate in the cases in Mexico. It also seemed that those who died were reportedly young healthy adults. Keep in mind the flu kills thousands to tens of thousands each year, you never hear about this though. The dead are usually children, the elderly and the infirm. Young adults dying made this very scary. Doesn’t seem to be the case here in the US. The experts don’t seem to know why. Flu typically kills more in less developed countries so maybe that’s why. So my take is be concerned, plenty of hand sanitizer. I plan to wear a mask at home if I get a febrile illness in the next few weeks. I don’t want to spread this to my kids. The antiviral medicine seems to work for this as well. We’re having issues with supply here so that may be a problem. Wearing a surgical mask to protect yourself hasn’t been proven. It’s good for preventing those who are infected from spreading though. Don’t quote me on this, I’m certainly not a flu expert, just an ER doc whose been inundated in an already overtaxed ER. Everyone with a cough, sniffles or fever thinks they have swine flu and are clogging the already overcrowded ERs. The panic that has come from this is pretty scary. All that being said, I had the flu 10 years ago and it really sucked so I hope to avoid it this time.

A final thought: This evening someone e-mailed me “rumors” about the swine flu, and I wanted to kill her. Perhaps this is World War III: Germs vs. Humans. Perhaps it’s not. But the need to fan flames is crazy …

As we speak, I’m on the phone with Tom Young, a radio host on News 88.9 somewhere in Canada. He’s a nice guy, and he’s asking lively questions about The Rocket That Fell to Earth, and blah … blah … blah.

But, clearly, he hasn’t read the book.

No disrespect to Tom Young, but I hate this. I mean, it’s a real pet-peeve. I was actually shocked a while back to read how Tom Verducci, my former colleague at Sports Illustrated and the co-author of the excellent The Yankee Years,teed off on a radio host after it became clear he hadn’t read the material. Tom is very, very mild-mannered, so for him to go off … well, it had to be a major transgression.

Truth is, I don’t even care whether you read the entire book. But at least skim a few chapters; read the notes … something. Anything. In this case, I can always tell if someone’s ignorant of the material by:

A. All the questions being about steroids.

B. Roger’s brother never being mentioned.

C. They call me “John Pearlman, “Joe Pearlman” or “Jeff Pearl.” (I never correct them).

Anyhow, that’s how I feel about that.

In another note, a second excerpt was released, RE: American Icon, the new Clemens book coming out in early May. Here it is, and—I’ve gotta say—pretty darn good. The swimsuit/Debbie stuff is really interesting. Sorta wish I’d spent more time delving into it.

So earlier today the Yankees announced that they will slash their highest ticket prices when (gasp!) few people wanted to spend $2,600 to watch a baseball game in the midst of a financial crisis. I am shocked! Shocked!

I actually wrote my SI.com column last Friday about the ticket issue, which leads me to an obvious conclusion: I, Jeff Pearlman, have singularly changed the pricing at new Yankee Stadium! I, Jeff Pearlman, am important, dammit! I really am! (True story: When I was a kid, I used to call in every Sunday morning to WVIP Sports Talk with Tim Malsbury and Joe Bucchino. I was usually one of, oh, three callers, and Joe would always greet me with “My man! My man! My man!” Anyhow, once I suggested on air that the Yankees sign Ivan DeJesus, who had been released by the Cardinals. Low and behold, a few days later they signed DeJesus—and I was convinced George Steinbrenner stole my idea. Alas, this would be unlikely, considering there were three of us listening: Me, Mom, Dad).

I digress. Now that the Yankees have cut ticket prices, you can expect the inevitable, “We love our fans, they’re the best in the world and blah … blah … blah” spin. But the truth is, the Yankees trapped themselves. They thought they could milk their diehards out of, literally, millions of dollars, and when that didn’t work they were left with two ugly choices:

1. Empty seats.

2. Close-out sale.

I’ve made this mistake before, but this really smells like a bad season for the Yanks. The new stadium just doesn’t look right; the team, once again, seems stale, old and listless; the Red Sox are better in myriad ways. I’ll go out on a limb and say Joe Girardi is out of a job come, oh, July 1. I hope not, because I actually think he’s a quality manager. But it’s probably not in his control.

Oh, well.

So I decided I’d start Twittering today. Then I started Twittering. And that was that.

Literally, I have nothing to Tweet about. Nothing.

Picked my nose. Felt nice. Breathing better.

Have never had ham or bacon in my life. Feel good about that.

Was just thinking about Sugar Ray Leonard. He was fast.

My sandwich isn’t very good. It came with onions. I don’t like onions. Maybe I should take it back. Should I? Maybe. I don’t know.

Short people are funny. But my wife is short, and not all that funny. But I love her anyway.

My shoelace is untied. Right shoe. White lace. Draggin’. Damn.

Why are these shorts itching? Did I not wash them? Hmmm

See? I’m boring as all hell. I could go all Skip Bayless, and pretend I’m angry about things I didn’t even know existed three minutes earlier (Seriously, this clip sums up Skip—who can’t even name five rappers, yet can comment at length on Eminem). But where’s the value in that? I only crave attention when my books come out—and I don’t have any upcoming releases. So, well, yeah. No Twittering for me. Hell, I don’t even text. Really, I don’t.

I love the NFL. Really, I do. I love the action. I love the strategy. I love that most teams enter the season with a chance of winning. Hell, I even love the J-E-T-S, the team that—throughout my youth–brought me more heartbreak than the numerous crushes who rejected my overtures.

That said, I HATE Mel Kiper and Todd McShay.

When I say ‘Hate,’ I don’t mean I personally dislike the men. Hell, I haven’t met either one. But, in the weeks and months leading up to the draft, I have spent waaaaaay too much of my time having these guys yell at me, via the TV, over why so-and-so 20-year-old is better than so-and-so 20-year-old.

Hence, this bit of advice, to both men: Get a life. Really, get a life. You are both adults; both well-paid; both moderately respected. Get a life. Lives. Stop chasing around these kids, desperate for their text messages and Facebook updates. Stop stalking them, talking about them, praising them, worshiping them, overhyping them, digging through their garbage cans for moldy pizza boxes (”Rumor has it Smith has put on weight!”) and stained underwear (”I question his control!”). It’s creepy, weird, baffling, pathetic. I’m sure Mike Crabtree is a nice kid, but, c’mon. You’ve got a mere eight or nine decades to live, and you’re devoting much of that to learning the size of his calves?

Stop. Please, just stop.

PS: Mark Sanchez=Browning Nagle. Mark my words.

Pat Tillman died five years ago yesterday. Man, time flies. I still consider the cover-up one of the greatest indictments of the Bush Administration. A purely evil way to use a true hero’s death for purely political motives.

Anyhow, Keith Arnold blogged beautifully about it here. Worth a moment of your time.

Well, received an e-mail from the athletic director. And this was attached. Big, big props to the school, the AD, the coach. Takes character to openly admit a mistake. So I take back any negative thoughts, and give credit where credit is due:

April 23, 2009       Contact: Paul Plinske

Athletic Director

(262) 472-4661

• plinksep@uww.edu

Statement concerning actions by Warhawk football coach

WHITEWATER – University of Wisconsin-Whitewater head football coach Lance Leipold  apologized to the Royal Purple, the campus newspaper, for his use of inappropriate language to a reporter and his banning of the newspaper from covering the team. Leipold  promises to cooperate with the Royal Purple in the future.

In an email to the Royal Purple reporter, Leipold offered his sincere apology for his behavior, especially his use of inappropriate language. He acknowledged that the reporter, the UW-Whitewater campus community and alumni expect and deserve better from the head football coach of a nationally recognized football program. He also agreed to meet with the reporter to further discuss the matter.

Athletic Director Paul Plinske said Leipold’s behavior was unacceptable. Plinske expects all of his coaches to behave in a professional manner both on and off the field. “I am disappointed that Coach Leipold responded in this manner,” Plinske said. “This is by no means a reflection on Warhawk Athletics. Instead, it is an instance where an excellent coach allowed his passion for the program and his team to get the best of him. Coach Leipold knows his behavior was unacceptable.”

Chancellor Richard Telfer supports Plinske in this matter. Telfer also believes that the relationship between the Warhawk football team and the Royal Purple can be repaired. “Lance Leipold admitted that he behaved poorly and he has apologized. It is my hope that we learn from this situation and move forward,” Telfer said.  “The Warhawk football program is one of the best in the nation and we want to focus on continuing to improve the program.  Coach Leipold understands that the program needs the support of the entire campus community, and that includes the Royal Purple, to be successful. I know we can put this unfortunate situation behind us.”

So this morning I read about Lance Leipold, the head football coach at the University of Wisconsin—Whitewater, who has banned the student media from covering his team next season. Leipold was angry about an editorial in the college newspaper that accused three football players of acting arrogantly. (College football players … arrogance … noooooooo!)

I’ve had myriad chats with my wife about why I never, ever want my kids to play organized football. It has nothing to do with injury/bodily harm, and everything—absolutely everything–to do with men like Leipold. Put simply, I hate football coaches. Not all of them obviously. In fact, not most of them. But there’s a certain breed that, well, just irks the hell out of me. They bark out inanities like, “Real men eat steel!” and “Be the ball!”; call their teams “programs”; think sensitivity is for wimps. They lack any sort of world view, seeing only the green grass (or turf) that covers 100 yards of glory.

Because I’m a freelance writer, I no longer feel tied down to biting my tongue. (Ah, the liberation that comes with $1,200 monthly health insurance bills) So earlier today I sent Leipold and the school’s athletic director, Paul Plinske, an e-mail, urging them to cut the crap. When I was in college, I had several professionals stand up on my behalf, and I think it’s important to do the same.

Anyhow, here’s what I wrote. It’s not great, but I believe this man (his e-mail address is WarhawkFootball@uww.edu, in case you want to write, too) must back off and take a chill:

Coach:

My name is Jeff Pearlman. I’m a former Sports Illustrated writer, author of a bunch of books, etc. I just read about your ban of the student journalists, and am writing to STRONGLY urge you to change your mind on this ill-conceived decision.

First off, student media is the primary source for students to learn the ins and outs of your team. They provide an important conduit, which surely benefits your program 99% of the time.

Second, you can’t win with this one. You come off looking silly; like a bully and a fool. Do you think Randy Shannon or Urban Meyer or Steve Spurrier waste this sort of time on the student media? It’s small beans—not worth the time you’ve already used.

Most important, just like your players, student journalists are here to learn. They’ll make mistakes, have errors in judgment, run poorly written stories … it’s all part of the process. That’s what college is for. To educate and inform and allow people to make mistakes.

As it stands, from afar you look like the prototypical dolt high school football coach who thinks he can stomp over people. I’ve read your bio—you’re a helluva lot better than that. Seriously, the best thing you can do is step up, apologize (it seems you owe a HUGE apology to the soccer coach, by the way, who you sorta tossed under the bus) and admit that you were speaking emotionally, not logically.

Otherwise, you lose.

Best,

Jeff Pearlman

CC: Paul Plinske

So I saw today that some people at Sportsjournalists.com were curious as to why Sports Illustrated excerpted the new Daily News-generated Clemens book, and not mine. I am, after all, not only a columnist for SI.com, but also a guy who spent six years with the magazine, many of those as a senior writer.

Well, there’s no controversy here. First, I didn’t seek out an SI excerpt, the reason being that, in this area, print is (to cite Dr. Egon Spengler) sorta dead. Given the choice, I always go for the online excerpt, because readers can click directly from what they’re reading to the Amazon order page. In this era, it’s a huge bonus. Hence, I had four excerpts—SI.com, Yahoo, Foxsports.com and Deadspin.

Second, Teri Thompson, one of the four authors of the book, is married to an SI editor. I’m not saying that’s the reason why the magazine ran the excerpt, but it surely at least provided an in. There’s certainly nothing wrong or unethical about that.

Third, maybe the editors at SI simply liked what they received from the Daily News folk.

Clearly, this isn’t my most interesting post. But I just wanted to make clear that I’m not angry, frustrated, upset at SI. Only surprised, because, as I said yesterday, I felt like the excerpt lacked something.

PS—Final thought: The Daily News and the book’s publisher is hyping the thing as “the definitive book about the dominant pitcher and his Hall of Fame-caliber career.” Again, no beef—but I must disagree.

So today Sports Illustrated’s website ran an excerpt from the upcoming book, American Icon: The Fall of Roger Clemens and the Rise of Steroids in America’s Pastime. Obviously, having also written a Clemens biography and having busted my tail to beat their book to the shelves, I was pretty interested to see what they had.

My reaction: Meh.

Considering that our industry is melting and book sales are drooping, I hope the folks who did American Icon—all members of the New York Daily News’ investigative sports team—sell a million books. I really, truly do (I’d be jealous, admittedly, but happy for them and for the business). Unlike The Rocket That Fell to Earth, which focuses on Clemens’ entire life, this offering details only 1998 through today. So it’s much different. That said, just being honest, I was really, really, really, really, really, really underwhelmed by the excerpt. To me, it speaks directly to the tough situation newspaper reporters are placed in when they write a book on a subject their employer is assigning them to cover. The authors were being paid by the Daily News to dig up as much Clemens goop as possible, so they couldn’t really hold the good stuff for the book. Hence, we’re left with the heated leftovers that appear in the excerpt.

I’m excited to read American Icon, because it’s a subject that consumed much of my life, and I know those guys worked extremely hard. I wish the writers well, and—again—hope it sells. But thus far, as a reader, I’m not dazzled.

Here’s their release, in case anyone’s curious about the book (I’m baffled why the publisher used such weak language, including, “and suggests that he may have perjured himself while testifying before Congress.” Ahem, no need for ‘he may have.’ He did.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Roger Clemens Subject of Devastating Portrait in New Book
by Award-Winning Daily News Sports Investigative Team

Sports Illustrated to Excerpt American Icon in print and on SI.com

NEW YORK, 20-Apr-09 — A new book by the award-winning New York Daily News Sports Investigative Team portrays Roger Clemens as both a compromised player and a person of questionable conduct, a man destroyed by his own pride, dishonesty, and judgment.  The book, AMERICAN ICON: The Fall of Roger Clemens and the Rise of Steroids in America’s Pastime (to be published by Alfred A. Knopf on May 12), explores Clemens’s use of banned substances, details his dalliances with women, and suggests that he may have perjured himself while testifying before Congress.  Sports Illustrated has purchased first serial rights to the book, and will excerpt it on SI.com April 21 and in its April 27 issue (on newsstands April 22).

“No player in baseball’s long and rich history has fallen from grace as fast and as far as Roger Clemens,” the authors write in AMERICAN ICON. “Clemens’s fall is straight out of Greek mythology: The very traits that made him dominant on the pitcher’s mound, his tenacity and mercilessness, contributed to and possibly even caused his downfall.”

AMERICAN ICON is the first book to offer compelling, insider details on Clemens’s life between 1998 and 2009.  Drawing from a damning trove of documentary evidence and interviews with people who have never before gone on record, the authors paint a stark picture of Clemens.  Their reporting culminates with Clemens unraveling in the wake of the Mitchell Report, when a series of choices transformed him from a Cooperstown shoo-in to the subject of a Justice Department perjury investigation. “This is a drama about cheating and lying and fame,” the authors write, “all the elements that seem to have taken over and dominated what once was America’s purest and favorite sport.”

The Daily News I-Team—Teri Thompson, Nathaniel Vinton, Michael O’Keeffe, and Christian Red—are known for their deep sourcing and authoritative reporting (they recently won an APSE Award for Best Investigative Reporting in 2008, for their Clemens coverage). The I-Team has been at the forefront of many major sports stories since it was formed in 2000, and for this book, the team’s reporting took them all over America. They unearthed thousands of pages of court documents, congressional depositions, e-mails, text messages, police reports, medical files, and transcripts of secretly recorded phone calls. They interviewed hundreds of people—among them Hall of Fame baseball players, steroid suppliers, trainers, doctors, gym rats, porn stars, drug dealers, Major League Baseball executives, Players Association officials, congressional leaders, law enforcement agents, attorneys, and doping experts. During their investigation, they were threatened with both lawsuits and violence. “It was challenging and difficult work,” they write.

The I-Team made repeated requests to interview Roger Clemens for the book. All of them were denied.