There are some athletes who were born to the broadcast booth, who belonged there even long before they belonged there: David Cone. Ron Darling. Phil Simms and Boomer Esiason. Keith Hernandez and Al Leiter, Paul O’Neill and Clyde Frazier, John Davidson and Chico Resch.
It isn’t that any of them went through the rigors of a Syracuse or Missouri or Northwestern or Fordham curriculum, places where they churn out well-spoken grads with dulcet tones the way Penn State cranks out linebackers. They just always understood, as players, that the media didn’t always have to be devil-worshipping scum, that sometimes it isn’t a terrible thing to be insightful and glib with cameras and notebooks around, the better to get your message across to the masses.
They may even have discovered that being gregarious in a locker room was a hell of a lot better than acting like a CIA spook. They enjoyed what they were doing and weren’t afraid to say so, and now they do exactly the same thing only with a microphone in their hand and an IFB in their ears, and it’s a secondary professional life well earned by all of them.
Then you wake up one day and the geniuses at ESPN have done one of the most inexplicable things ever: They have gone and hired Eric Mangini as an analyst.
Eric Mangini in the media! It would make more sense if Arial’s father, the preacher in “Footloose,” became a contestant on “Dancing With the Stars.” It would be less incongruous if Bruce Springsteen voted a straight Republican ticket. It would be less surprising if Charlie Sheen entered a monastery.
Mangini wasn’t just a believer in deceiving the media, he was a master in diminishing it, in doing everything in his power (and often stuff beyond his power) to make sure every syllable of his message was delivered through the sole prism of his own voicebox. Dissenters on his team — and there were some bright, funny players on both the Jets and Browns who were natural delights — heard about it first, then sometimes felt consequences.
Friends of Mangini’s always have sworn that he was funny and irreverent, an accomplished conversationalist, and that all may be true. And we should point out here: None of what Mangini did in New York or Cleveland was illegal or immoral or even, in the weird code of coaches, necessarily wrong. It was dumb and dull and petty and petulant, but whatever. If he wanted to be that way, he had the right to be that way. If he wanted to view the media as the enemy, that was perfectly all right.
Only now he is Enemy Mine. As Kevin Costner as Eliot Ness said in “The Untouchables”: “I have become what I beheld.”
This isn’t the first time ESPN has done this. Sterling Sharpe wouldn’t talk to reporters for years when he was a player in Green Bay, and ESPN was his launching pad into a post-playing career. Mark Schlereth, another football analyst, who tries now to come across as warm and cuddly with a built-in warm-and-cuddly nickname (“Stink”), as a player with the Broncos honored an offensive-lineman pledge to not talk to the media.
So Mangini isn’t the only one who’s changed his tune when pondering life after the locker room. Just the latest. And, judging by his early efforts, the one whose heart still seems left behind in a world where the media were considered cockroaches, not colleagues.
Vac’s whacks
* The thing that’s been lost in all of this seedy story at Miami: For all the love and all the dollars that booster Nevin Shapiro admits to tossing around … the Hurricanes haven’t been any good in basketball or football for years. Hookers and yachts just don’t bring the results they used to, apparently.
* How come Terrelle Pryor gets slapped with a five-game suspension by Roger Goodell for taking part in an NCAA violation, but Pete Carroll got to waltz into Seattle without even a harsh word after overseeing the cesspool at Southern Cal? Anyone? Anyone?
* I may be off by a day or two, but I’m pretty sure the last time I laughed during an episode of “Entourage” was 2007 or so.
* Whenever a dad teaches his son how to throw left-handed, there ought to be a shrine to Bruce Chen on site.
Whack back at Vac
Thomas Gogarty: Is it true that Robinson Cano is considering replacing his dad with CC Sabathia to pitch to him in next year’s Home Hun Derby?
VAC: Here’s my question: Has anyone else noticed that CC hasn’t been the same pitcher since he sat through all that rain against Seattle a few weeks ago?
Bryan Vivona: I want Mike Pelfrey off my team because 24 other players wearing the blue and orange seem to want to win pretty badly, and I don’t want a staff “ace” with a defeatist attitude. Learn to hold a runner on first base before you stick your foot in your mouth again.
VAC: I’m starting to think it may never quite click around here for ol’ Big Pelf.
Jeff Gorlechen: I think most people cheer for whatever laundry their old man cheered for. I have friends who had parents who didn’t follow sports, and every single one of them is a geographic mess when it comes to their fandom. But nearly everyone cheers along family lines.
VAC: My old man was a Yankees and a Giants fan. He kept me off drugs, kept me in school, gave me sound moral fiber, but never forced me to follow lock-step with his sports loyalties. Thanks for nothing, Pop …
Francis Splavac: As a Jets fan, should I be worried that the Patriots look like they can win any game they want to 72-0 in the preseason so far?
VAC: There are reasons to fear the Pats, but exhibitions aren’t one of them. Want to guess what the 0-16 Lions went in the preseason a few years ago? Yep. 4-0.