Please indulge me a long post, as I’m at the end of a two-week trip down memory lane. I’ve been working at the US Open, my first since being a member of the USTA PR department from 2002-2006. It’s been great to catch up with so many old friends, and every day seems to bring back another memory from my early days in the business. Here are a few of my favorites:
The time I taught Rick Reilly how to be a ball boy
It’s hard for some to remember now, but for a long time Rick Reilly was one of the very best sportswriters in the country, and his back page column in Sports Illustrated was a weekly must-read (and for sports PR people, a huge hit). In 2005, we got word that he was interested in doing a first-person account of life as a US Open ball boy, and it fell to me to see him through his journey. To his credit, he took the gig extremely seriously, completely immersing himself in “ball person culture” a la George Plimpton for two full days. He wore the outfit, did intensive training, hung out and ate meals with the kids, and refused to go out on the court for a real match until the supervisors were confident he was ready. When he finally did work a match, I made sure to let the other SI writers on site – including Jon Wertheim, S.L. Price and the immortal Gary Smith – know so they could join me on the Grandstand to watch Reilly do his thing. Here’s the resulting back page column.
The time Billie Jean King remembered me
My very first assignment on my very first day of my very first US Open in 2002 was to wait out front for Billie Jean King’s car to arrive, and then escort her inside for the US Open draw ceremony. When I saw her emerge from a car I walked over, and before I could say anything she extended her hand and said, “Hi, I’m Billie Jean King.” I blurted out, “I know,” and she smiled. From there we walked and made idle chit chat for all of 90 seconds before parting ways. Fast forward a year later, I’m sent to go find her and ask if she’d be willing to do an interview. I approached and introduced myself as a USTA PR guy, and she interrupted me by saying, “I remember you, from last year’s US Open draw.” Obviously seeing my draw drop, she explained: “Jeff, I meet a thousand people a week. Figure that’s 150 or so every single day. I make a point of remembering five of them each day. I suppose you were one of the lucky ones that day.”
The time Federer met Tiger
To appreciate this story, you have to remember the pre-2009 version of Tiger Woods, the most dominant athlete of his day. Until Roger Federer started piling up majors, that is. Entering the 2006 US Open, 25-year-old Federer had won eight grand slam titles, including four straight at Wimbledon and the previous two US Open titles. Despite having never met before, Tiger flew into New York to sit in Federer’s box for the final against Andy Roddick. Roddick, who had won the 2003 US Open, was still a formidable threat to Federer at that time, and they split the first two sets before Federer won in four. After the match, I was assigned to babysit the trophy while Federer did the post-match media rounds. And it was there that I found myself the only person in the room along with Federer, his wife, his agent and Sports Illustrated writer S.L. Price, as Roger recounted meeting Tiger for the first time in the referee’s office after the match (here’s the resulting piece). According to Roger, when he walked in the room, exhausted after a tough challenge from Roddick, he just looked at Tiger and exhaled. Tiger – literally the only other person on earth at the time who truly understood what Federer was feeling – just looked at him, smiled, and said, “Yeah, dude, I get it. I know.”
The time I took Federer to the REAL top of the Empire State Building
This one’s cheating because it was actually a year after I left the USTA, but it’s my post and I can do what I want. Anyway, one of my clients at Edelman was the Empire State Building, so I worked with the USTA to coordinate a photo opp with Federer after his fourth straight US Open win. After we finished the typical photo opp on the 86th floor observatory, we brought Roger and his wife up to the 102nd floor observatory, the one inside the dome at the very top of the building. But then our client surprised us all by inviting Roger and his wife to check out the super-secret “103rd floor,” which involves climbing up a rickety staircase that leads to a single door that opens to… essentially the King Kong spot. Nothing but a waist-high ledge, a wire to hold on to, and the sky. For a guy who’s not a fan of heights, it was a challenge to hold it together and act professional as Roger casually rested the US Open trophy on the ledge and I imagined a gust of wind making it – and him – fly away.
The time Mr. Met tried out to be a ball boy
One of my first non-intern assignments at the USTA was to promote the ballperson tryouts. In 2004, in an attempt to get more publicity, we arranged for Mr. Met to come across the street to “try out.” As a lifelong Mets fan this was a big thrill, and it was even cooler to get to know the mysterious man behind the costume. He had a blast hamming it up for the crowd, but after about 15 minutes of pratfalls near the net, his handler came up to me and said very seriously, “We need to get him out of here.” Apparently they had a set of secret hand signals, one of which clearly indicated “It’s 95 degrees out here and I’m dying!” I escorted him to a nearby bathroom, where he promptly ripped his giant head off to reveal a purple face dripping with sweat. Nervous that I was about to be responsible for killing the greatest mascot in sports history, I asked if there was anything I could do. Fortunately he laughed and said, “Nah, I’m fine, just need some water. This is fun, but I am definitely not used to moving around like that!” [Funny postscript: 10 years later I’m at MLB and Mr. Met comes to an event at the MLB Fan Cave. During a quiet moment I lean in and say, “Hey, not sure if you’re the same guy, but I used to work at the USTA and we had Mr. Met at the ball boy tryouts, and….” And he interrupted me with his giant head nodding, pointing to himself to indicate that it was him. He looked left and right to see if anyone was within earshot, then broke rule #1 and leaned in to say something to me. I will never forget the incongruity of a voice coming out of that giant smiling baseball head saying, “Dude, that was the hottest *#$@ing day ever!”
The time Kristen Davis asked me about my giant balls
The US Open is always a popular event among celebrities, and the USTA does a great job of maximizing the publicity they bring. In 2003, we created a red carpet that essentially led straight from where their cars dropped them off directly into a cocktail party, so we could ensure they passed by the media. As a lowly intern, I was tasked with asking them all to sign one of those oversized tennis balls so we could auction it off for charity. All's going fine and everyone's happy to sign -- Ed Norton, Ben Stiller, Alec Baldwin, Chevy Chase, Edie Falco, a young Jimmy Fallon, etc. Then, just as I'm about done and all the celebs are inside enjoying a cocktail and assuming their obligations to us are over, a colleague comes running up to me with a second ball and asks me to go back in, saying he promised a top player that he'd get him a similar ball for HIS charity. So I go back in and sheepishly ask them all to sign again, mostly without incident. However, in a moment thankfully captured forever by a friendly photographer, I approached Kristen Davis (of whom I was a huge fan and who of course looked fantastic) just as she was leaving the bar area. I try to stammer in about how sorry I am to bother her, but she interrupts me, throws her hands in the air in mock indignation, and shouts (so all around can hear), "Another one?! How many massive balls are you going to bring over to me today!?"
What Happened Last Night: Nobody's Fault and Everybody's Fault
In the wake of last night’s almost-trade between the Mets and Brewers, it seems everyone is looking for someone to blame. “It was the media’s fault!” “No wait, it was Twitter’s fault.” “Well, obviously it must have been the Mets’ fault, because #LOLMets.” As new information came out by the minute and everyone scrambled to keep up and make sense of it all, no one seemed to agree on anything, except for the fact that someone must be to blame.
But the truth is, we’re all to blame. We are all part of this new social media landscape, and we’ve all played a role in creating, fostering and feeding the environment in which we all currently live, work and play. We demand information NOW, don’t care that things often take longer to happen than we want them to, and then get pissed off when they don’t go the way our earlier false assumptions convinced us they would.
Last night’s situation was a perfect storm of many factors. Mets fans are starved for the club to make a deal for a big bat, feelings that have been intensified over the years by constant media feedback loop of the New York tabloids, WFAN, blogs/Twitter and, yes, the actual moves (or lack of moves) the Mets have made. The reporters covering the Mets do their jobs and report the facts, but they are also susceptible to the realities of their profession and often steer towards the skid. Just as TV programs are judged by ratings, media outlets track pageviews, social media engagement and other metrics to evaluate their employees. Who can blame a reporter for focusing on the types of stories that generate the most attention/traffic? (For more on the media’s ever-changing role in this, I highly recommend this from Ken Rosenthal)
In fact, everyone who uses social media also risks the seduction of feedback. Every single retweet, favorite, like or comment is a little shot of dopamine to our brains. And like any drug, once we get a taste we want more. This leads to the constant game of one-upmanship in which it’s not enough to simply share and react to news, but to come up with the funniest, snarkiest, meme-iest reaction so we can get a taste of that sweet, sweet RT action. It leads otherwise smart and thoughtful people to fall prey to lowest common denominator jokes, stifles real introspection and constructive dialogue, and results in nothing meaning anything except for how we can either make fun of it or express outrage at it.
All of which leads to the events of last night. When the first reports came in that the Mets were closing in on Gomez, how many of us were willing to wait for confirmed facts before expressing our thoughts? When it was reported – accurately and responsibly by the vast majority of reporters involved – that the clubs had agreed on the players and terms of the deal but that it was pending physicals, how many of us truly processed that and waited for official confirmation? When poor Wilmer Flores was standing out there at shortstop in tears, how many of us wondered whether there might be a communication mix-up or perhaps more to the story than meets the eye? Nope, just fire up the outrage meter and tweet away!
Will anything change as a result of this experience? Perhaps the next time a trade is reported, there might be an ounce more understanding that it’s not done until it’s done, but more likely we’ll just continue carrying on like this. But really, this isn’t about the trade deadline, or baseball reporting, or the Mets or Twitter itself. At the end of the day, we’re all chasing that dopamine and we all need someone to point the finger at, but we never want to take the time to consider that there might be more to a story than can fit in 140 characters.
