Media Spectacle & Media Milestones
Incessant Mainstream Coverage of Baseball Breakthroughs
With three major records in baseball history achieved this week, the mainstream media's obsession with sport as a show, has once again been on display
In North American news, everything from politics to celebrity feuds, and international crises to environmental debates, are treated as sporting events by the mainstream media. The tendency to cover events in this manner begins, of course, with the obsession with professional and amateur sports themselves. Anything construed as a sporting contest by ESPN, and this includes hotdog-eating competitions and spelling bees, receives sustained and intense media coverage.
American Identity and Baseball
There is perhaps no sport more American than baseball: this is the sport that people unequivocally associate with the United States. Baseball as a profession also has a long history in this country: the MLB, Major League Baseball, has been a league since the late 19th century. The beginning of this league occurred years before Americans knew what baseball or hockey were, and before organized American football became the national obsession it is today.
Baseball Today
While baseball may be losing fans, to the NBA, NASCAR and the NFL, the statistical story of the game is still fascinating to many. It is this reason that baseball records, whether they are being broken or tied, elicit so much attention from the mainstream media.
Broken Records
Baseball fans across the world can be forgiven for thinking that the first week of August 2007 has been pretty spectacular. Three major records have been broken or achieved by three of the games big stars. First, Alex Rodriguez, Yankees third base extraordinaire hit his 500th home run, which puts him into an elusive class. Secondly, Tom Glavine, grey-haired 40-year-old that he is, won his 300th game for the cubs. And finally, the moment that everyone had been waiting for, Barry Bonds broke Hank Aaron’s record of 755 home runs with his 756th on Tuesday night.
Sport as Spectacle
The lead-up to the breaking and tying of these three records has been relentless: the media, both sports and otherwise, have covered the stories of Rodriguez, Glavine and Bonds with insistent attention.
Tuesday July 31st could have been the day that all three men tied or broke big milestones in sport, and the media was certainly tuned in. Super Tuesday, as it was dubbed by many media outlets, had multiple reporters at each event. The seriousness of the occasion was stressed multiple times, and the disappointment palatable in the air when each of the records was not broken or tied was phenomenal – and mostly fabricated. While baseball fans were curious about all three of these events, it is also the case that they were not obsessed with these events in the way that the media portrayed.
In the case of Tom Glavine, watching him win his 300th game on ESPN was actually painful: if the t.v. cameras had showed his young wife and children one more time, viewers may seriously have forgotten which television program they were watching. Alex Rodriguez, arrogant and cold he may be, got off relatively easy because of the focus on Mr. Bonds: his achievement was celebrated by many in the New York media, but did not become particularly cumbersome to the team. Barry Bonds, on the other hand, had to deal with the fact that the incredible media attention he was receiving for his efforts were actually disturbing the team- the 450 media passes requested for the game in which he broke the record by far surpassed the number of passes ever requested in the past.
Conclusion
The anti-climatic nature of the tying and breaking of these records can be attributed in many ways to the coverage given to baseball by the mainstream media. The spectacle created by journalists at sports events is unprecedented, and may indeed not be seen again. Sports heroes of this generation, including Bonds, Glavine and Rodriguez, may not always want the media attention given to their record tying and breaking achievements but, as the situation stands now, they have no choice but to accept this media spectacle, and go about their business.
