Derek Jeter has seen the look a thousand times.
A person approaches him in public, cell phone camera in hand, and asks him to pose for a photo. He declines, but offers an autograph instead.
A look of frustration and anger follows.
“They’re like, ‘Why? Are you too good to take a picture?’ ” Jeter says. “They don’t get it. They don’t understand. They say, ‘It’s just for me.’ Well, I heard that the last time and then it was all over the Internet with a fake story to go with it.”
This is the new media landscape for professional athletes. The rise in popularity of cell phone cameras, blogs, YouTube and social networking sites over the last decade has created a treacherous landscape for high-profile sports stars. Seemingly everyone with a cell phone is looking to catch them in a misdeed or at least in a situation that can look like a misdeed.
“Now everywhere you go it’s picture this, picture that,” Jeter said last week. “You don’t need to catch anybody doing something wrong to make up a story. You can take a picture of me standing next to her [pointing to a female reporter] and come up with a story. That’s happened to me before. That’s how it is.”
In Jeter’s scenario, the athlete is falsely accused, but in many cases he or she is just caught in the act. Swimmer Michael Phelps is the most famous of these cases. Photographed at a party in South Carolina last fall smoking marijuana, Phelps learned just how costly a public misstep can be. The photo surfaced in the tabloid News of the World in February and the fallout led to a three-month suspension from swimming and a permanent stain on his public image.
Phelps is not alone. Matt Leinart’s most famous moment in the NFL came in a hot tub with four women. Video of Shaquille O’Neal rapping about Kobe Bryant jumped from someone’s phone to the lead on “SportsCenter.” Web sites such as drunkathlete.com and thedirty.com exist to catch athletes in compromising positions.
Other sports blogs such as Deadspin and The Big Lead see spikes in traffic when they land a photo of an athlete with his new girlfriend or with a drink in his hand.
“As much as sports fans enjoy banter about on-base percentage, 3-point accuracy and the cover-2 defense, there’s massive interest in the off-field interests of the athletes, too,” Jason McIntyre, the founder and editor of The Big Lead, said in an e-mail. “When Thomas Jones is photographed with actress Megan Good, or David Wright is pictured with a model, it’s the kind of post that can go viral because it can cross over to the entertainment blogs as well as the sports blogs.”
McIntyre ran photos last summer of a birthday party Wright threw for his girlfriend, Molly Beers, a model. The photos drew so much interest that McIntyre left a link to them on the home page.
The Mets star shrugged when asked about the photos recently. He said he knows someone is always watching and keeps that in mind when he does go out.
“You just have to be aware that . . . you’re going to be under a microscope especially being here in New York, and there’s going to be young kids out there looking up to you,” he said.
Though the Internet creates many challenges for athletes trying to maintain control of their image, there also are opportunities. The mini-blogging service Twitter has become a very popular way for athletes to communicate with fans. You can find out what new Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez thought of the play “Wicked” or how CC Sabathia feels about his latest outing in short posts.
“It’s a way to communicate with the fans,” said Yankees outfielder Nick Swisher, a Tweeter. “It’s pretty simple.”
The service enables athletes to talk to fans, who follow their Tweets, without going through the mainstream media. Athletes such as Lance Armstrong, Tiger Woods and Curt Schilling have done this in recent years through their Web sites or blogs, as well.
Jets kicker Jay Feely uses Twitter, and said he enjoys following other people’s Tweets as much as doing it himself. He provided Jets fans with updates after the team’s practice last Monday.
“I think it gives you a medium where it’s a lot more immediate and I can say what I want to say,” Feely said. “[Reporters] may not write anything that I want to write. It may not be a story you guys want to print but I can write it and I can say it.
“It’s interesting. It’s fun reading other professional athletes. Lance Armstrong — I like reading what his training regimen is. Shaquille O’Neal is hilarious. I think it’s fun. It’s definitely a phenomenon that’s caught on.”
Bucks forward Charlie Villanueva got into some heat this year for Tweeting during halftime of a game.
The athletes are not the only ones in sports using the service. Several NFL teams, including the Jets, sent out their draft picks over Twitter moments before they were announced on TV.
Player agents also have gotten into the act. Drew Rosenhaus won’t return reporters’ calls but he sends out updates on his clients through his Twitter account. The updates give him the opportunity to push his agenda without facing any difficult questions.
Leagues and teams have begun educating and advising their players about the perils of the new media.
“We tell them, ‘You’ve got to assume anything you do will become public,'” said Jason Zillo, the Yankees’ Director of Media Relations. “Everyone is a reporter now.”
Mike Bantom, the NBA’s Senior Vice President of Player Development, tries to give NBA players guidance on the constantly evolving topic.
“Basically since the explosion of these different types of media and camera phones, we’ve been telling guys how much more aware and careful they have to be of their actions, and of their image,” Bantom said. “You never know when you’re being observed. It’s not just being observed by people who are present when you are present, it can be broadcast around the world within minutes.
“It’s about conducting yourself in proper way at all times. People are looking to capture you at your weaker moments and that can define you for the rest of your life.”
Mets outfielder Gary Sheffield would like to see tougher laws governing the way people can use celebrities’ images on the Internet.
“It shouldn’t be against the law to take the picture, but to post it and say something negative I think should be against the law,” Sheffield said. “It’s like an invasion of privacy.”
Most of these Web sites run legal disclaimers that there may be inaccurate information on the sites to protect themselves. But those disclaimers provide little solace to the subjects of false reports.
So what is an athlete to do?
“Stay home,” Jeter said. “There’s nothing you can do really.”
Additional reporting by Bart Hubbuch