The Sports Guy Blocks Peter King

I sent an email to Bill “The Sports Guy” Simmons critiquing his recent column on Knicks fans. This is the response:

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Now, I’ve taken a lot of flack over the years for being an old media guy, but I challenge you to show me one old media sportswriter who has so seamlessly integrated the world wide web into their repetoire. In any discipline! George Will? Dean Koontz? Phooey. Just because I’m the new backpage columnist for the most important sports weekly in the world, doesn’t mean that I look down on the little guy writing for a dot-com.

But when I try to reach out to a new media blogger, in this case Bill Simmons, he’s blocked me. Im not saying he’s afraid. I’m certainly not saying he’s become just like a sports radio host who hangs up on callers who disagrees with him. I just sense that the internet is some kind of exclusive party with a “No-Old-Media-with-Several-Sportswriting-Awards-Writers Allow” policy.

For the record, this was the email I sent:

Hey Bill!

What’s new in cyberspace? As you know, I like your work. Wouldn’t say I *love* it. But I like it. You’re a bit of a homer, but, hey, so am I. Your foray into Old Media, “Now I Can Die in Peace” was a strong first effort. God for you.

Your recent column on the Knicks was a bit, well, hypocritical. I understand that the web is sort of like the Wild West. No real rules apply. But you still have to adhere to the basic principle of internal consistency, right? Additionally, your jokes and references don’t make any sense. I mean, come on!

Here are a few excerpts of what I’m talking about (Italics Yours):

 

After four years of enduring Isiah Thomas and James Dolan’s screwing up their beloved franchise, a seedy sexual-harassment trial and a Marbury-Isiah feud have pushed the collective venom and hopelessness to a new level. Stuck “rooting” for another expensive, unlikable lottery team, Knicks fans have morphed into a loony hybrid of pre-2004 Red Sox fans and PETA members protesting the latest fur-ridden fashion show. They don’t just hate what has happened to their team, they actually hate their team.

See what I’m talking about? I have no idea what you’re talking about here? The latest fur-ridden fashion show? Is this something that happens nowadays? I understand that you didn’t go to journalism school like me, but you really need to work on your imagery and use of metaphor. Badly.

You can’t overstate the level of passion and frustration here. I have rational, thoughtful friends sending me e-mails like, “I turned down courtsides tonight because I would have ended up walking over to Dolan’s seat and punching him in the face.” Across the board, Knicks fans believe this is an unthinkable turn of events — the deliberate slaying of basketball in the NBA’s signature city — with the implication being that such abject dysfunction should never be foisted on them. It can happen to other franchises, but not to the Knicks. Not to their Knicks.

Here, for instance, you take the time to acknowledge that Knicks fans’ frustration and passion cannot be overstated. Which, I think, is to say that you’re acknowledging their pain is real and probably not worth challenging. I personaly wouldn’t take these people on at this point. I, for instance, have never made fun of The Bengals fans. They’ve suffered enough – and, as a Red Sox fan, like you, I know what suffering is about. I also had a stutter my whole adolescence and had been 40 pounds overweight my whole life until three years ago.

Talk to a long-suffering Knicks fan over 40 and before long he’ll be waxing poetic about the Willis Reed game and those Bradley-Frazier teams. They’ll spin Bill Brasky-like tales about Bernard and Micheal Ray and drop a few f-bombs as they rehash the Charles Smith game and John Starks’ 2-for-18. They’ll tell you how much they loved Pat Riley’s tougher-than-nails teams and tell you where they were when LJ hit his four-pointer. They’ll tell you how much they miss hearing those electric crowds at MSG and how that’s the biggest shame of all — the deader-than-dead crowds at the World’s Most Famous Arena.

And all of it will be genuine. Still, it’s a stretch to assign the phrase “long-suffering” to Knicks fans, no matter how fervently they believe it fits. So they’ve had lousy teams for the past few years. It happens. They’re not Pacers fans, who had to endure the damaging and incomprehensible Artest Melee, which derailed a potential championship season and set the franchise back 10 years. They’re not Sonics fans, whose team is bolting within the next three years. And they’re not T-Wolves fans, whose franchise wasted the prime of a beloved icon and traded him too late for too little.

I’m not sure any people over 40, except me, read your column or any of the internet, so your point about any Knick fan over the age of 40 is irrelevant. Know your audience, Bill.

But, you’re right. Knicks fans aren’t fans of other teams with different issues. That’s indisputable! After all, homeless people in Santa Monica aren’t homeless people in Detroit, so they have that going for them. And homeless people in Detroit aren’t starving, disease-ridden boat people in the Pacific Rim. Later in your column, you’ll defend Celtics fans for being insufferable last year because it’s tough knowing what you’re missing out on – sellout crowds, electric atmosphere and the like. Knicks fan had that too throughout the 90’s, but they don’t have the most storied franchise in the NBA and 16 titles to fall back on. No Knicks’ fan under 40 remembers a Knicks’ championship and no Knick fan reading your column actually saw Micheal Ray Richardson play. It’s a cheap point – and, as many of your brethren on the internet will tell you – I know a thing or two about cheap points.

Just look at what’s happened to the Blazers since they won the 1977 title. They saw a potential dynasty implode when Bill Walton’s fragile feet couldn’t carry them. They drafted Sam Bowie over Michael Jordan, for heaven’s sake. And although they won 179 times from 1990 to ‘92 and made the Finals twice, they infamously self- destructed in countless close games. During Game 7 of the 2000 Western finals, they mailed in one of the mammoth choke jobs in NBA history. In this decade alone, they’ve suffered through the much-despised Jail Blazers era and a prolonged rebuilding project that was capped off by having Greg Oden fall into their laps, only to have his rookie season derailed before it began. Imagine if the timeline in the previous paragraph had been the Knicks’. We’d never hear the end of it. So why haven’t the previous three decades of Blazer woes received as much attention as the travails of the Knicks have? Because they don’t play in New York, that’s why. The Knicks have the most fans, the most writers, the most people dissecting the team … I mean, how many Blazers fans have you met in your life? Two?

No one’s saying that Blazers fans aren’t suffering here, Bill. It’s not a contest, and it’s not fair to make it a contest. Had we made it a contest for who’s suffering the most, starving children in Darfur would have barely beaten out all sports fans a long time ago. Also, I do read all your columns, because I’m new to the internet and you seem to be good a getting this demographic. I dare say that you talk about the disastrous Isiah Thomas regime more than any national sportswriter (assuming we can call you both ‘National’ and a ‘Sportswriter.’ For the sake of the argument, I’m okay with it.)

You cannot understate the ability of a swollen fan base and a swollen media corps to distort the peaks and valleys of a big-market team. Just look at the 2004 Red Sox compared with the White Sox of a year later. Both last won a Series during WWI, both battled a “curse” (Babe Ruth; Black Sox) and both had generally tortured fans who never imagined their boys could ever turn it around. Yet when the big day finally arrived, Boston received significantly more attention. Why? Red Sox Nation.

Thanks, Doctor.

Consider these two indisputable sports truths:
Truth No. 1: The most agonizing baseball moment since Bill Buckner’s gaffe was Francisco Cabrera’s series-winning single for Atlanta that killed Pittsburgh in the 1992 playoffs. Not only did the Pirates blow a ninth-inning lead, not only did Cabrera, a no-name, deliver the final blow, not only did comically slow Sid Bream somehow beat a Barry Bonds throw home, not only was it the Pirates’ third straight October defeat … but Bonds signed with the Giants a couple of months later, banishing the Pirates to small-market hell. They haven’t been heard from since. The franchise was effectively murdered by one play.

Truth No. 2: Over the past 40-plus years, no sports city has had it rougher than Buffalo. It doesn’t have a baseball team. Its NBA team fled west to become the Clippers — a double whammy. Its greatest and most famous athlete is O.J. Simpson. It has suffered three of the toughest losses ever, all of which are so infamous they can be described in three words or fewer: “wide right,” “no goal” and “Music City Miracle.” Its beloved Bills lost four straight Super Bowls and currently have the second-longest NFL playoff drought (eight years and counting; the Cardinals haven’t gotten in since ‘98). Is any under-45 American sports fan more scarred than the one who lives in Buffalo?

Yet another example of meaningless comparisons. What’s your thesis here, Bill? Why should I consider these two “indisputable sports truths?” Just to consider them? Are you using them to illustrate a point. Are you just making the same point you’ve made over and over again – other cities suffer? Based on your system of who can and cannot complain, why are Pittsburgh fans allowed to complain? They’ve won 5 championsohips – one of them 3 years ago – and had Mario Lemieux. Why even bother mentioning Pittsburgh?

The reason Cabrera’s hit hasn’t been mythologized like Dave Roberts’ steal and no great book has been written about the desperate Buffalo fan is a simple matter of numbers. The Red Sox and Knicks have more people who care about them, talk about them, write about them. (People like me: I was only one of about 60,000 writers who pumped out a post-Series Sox book.) That constant chatter and attention contribute to the illusion that big-market teams are more important than they are. Without anyone to carry the mainstream torch for teams like the Blazers, Pirates and Bills, they and their fans toil in relative anonymity.

The reason there is no “great” book about the desperate Buffalo fan is because you probably haven’t read it. It’s called “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Buffalo Bills: Heart-Pounding, Jaw-Dropping and Gut-Wrenching Moments from Buffalo Bolls History” by Scott Pitoniak. You can buy it here: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Buffalo Bills: Heart-Pounding, Jaw-Dropping, and Gut-Wrenching Moments from Buffalo Bills History. You ought to.

Which brings us to the difference between suffering and insufferable. When Celtics fans like me were pulling the woe-is-us routine after last May’s NBA lottery, outsiders found it distasteful that any fan base that had been fortunate enough to have enjoyed the Russell, Havlicek and Bird eras could complain about anything. In our defense, it was almost worse to have lived the high life (16 titles) before falling on hard times (14 mostly terrible years) than never to have lived the high life at all. We knew what we were missing: big playoff games, the sound of a sold-out crowd, rooting for a franchise that meant something. And because there were more of us, our suffering made us loud — and, yes, insufferable.

Even though I’m older than your average writer by a decade and a half, I assume they all had the same thought I did: “You’re some hypocrite.”

Same goes for Knicks fans now. In a sports world that is increasingly defined by big money and big markets, the Knicks play in the richest, biggest market of all. You can’t drown out their fans and can’t reason with them, so don’t even try. They will just have to figure out for themselves that they’re lucky they don’t live in Buffalo or Pittsburgh, where nobody hears you at all.

Look, I don’t know you personally. I know you’re marginally successful. But my daughter Mary Beth’s male friends, who read you (and eat their own boogers, but that’s neither here nor there) say you built your whole career by whining about the Red Sox and Celtics?

I’ll tell you a secret – you were considered for a job here at SI.com a year and a half. The vote was much like the hall of fame vote. 13 members of the editorial department sat in the conference room and we made our case for you. Some were for you, some were against you. (If you ever see Jon Heyman, you should buy him a drink, I’m just saying.) The final vote was mine and I voted against you. Why? You make awful comparisons and rambling points that seem borne of your anger and self-importance and never make a strong argument. Looks like you haven’t proven me wrong yet.

All the best with the new baby!

Peter

—END OF EMAIL—

Too bad he blocked me, along with, I’d imagine, all Old Media types trying to figure out this crazy thing called the Internet.

I, unlike “The Sports Guy,” will never block any emailers, and never delete your comments. Peter King is a King of the people.