In today's culture, professional sports and media are two co-dependents who want nothing more than to break through the clutter. The New York Times recently published a story about sports blogs. As is the case with so many sports stories that somehow resonate with their fans, so too did this story resonate with myself, particularly the following passage:
When Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland A's, traded the team's two most popular pitchers last December, fans howled in disgust. A month later, Mr. Beane gave a lengthy interview to Athletics Nation, a Web log devoted to the team, explaining the deals. Afterward, the site's moderator, Tyler Bleszinski, polled his readers, asking if they now approved of Mr. Beane's trades. Fully 93 percent said yes.
Mr. Beane, the central figure in Michael Lewis's 2004 book "Moneyball," had given interviews to the site before. "The reason why I would opt to go do the interviews with them is that it's been a great forum to get the actual message across rather than having it filtered through someone else," Mr. Beane said. "There may be seven newspaper reporters covering one team, and they may be more interested in covering something first than covering something right."
There are changes afoot in media. Once you could only buy things with cash. Having a credit card opened up vast new vistas of consumptive behavior that reshaped America. Now, as we shift to the so-called Attention Economy, the very fact that we are interested in things is increasingly trackable, and therefore worth something. In that kind of world, professional sports - especially during a championship season - is very special indeed.
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