We were shooting some interviews for the Baseball Show yesterday and we cornered Chris Carter to ask him about his at-bat music, Hulk Hogan’s old ring-approach song, “Real American.”
Carter was happy to oblige. He said he liked Hogan growing up and that the song got him pumped up. Nothing really groundbreaking.
But I’m a jackass and these pieces are supposed to be entertaining, so I pushed it. Playing off the lyrics, I asked him if he fought for what’s right and fought for his life or something stupid like that — I’m pretty sure I even botched the lyrics a bit and screwed up the joke.
Carter tensed up a bit and I soon realized why.
“I, ahh, I don’t know about that question,” he said, “but I really support what our troops do and, ahh…”
I stopped him and he looked relieved. I said I was just playing off the lyrics and that we wouldn’t use that part. He was cool about it and even said we could include it in the show for laughs — we won’t — but I think it’s an interesting example of how careful these guys have to be. The whole Walter Reed thing is apparently fresh in everyone’s mind but mine, and Carter was obviously being cautious — overly cautious, maybe — about walking into any traps.
And don’t get me wrong, knowing how to deal with stuff like that is part (albeit a small fraction) of what baseball players, as public figures, get paid to do.
But — and this won’t win me any favors with some of my colleagues — since there are certain members of the press ready to spin every word out of an athlete’s mouth into something shocking or sensational, you understand why some players clearly think it’s easier to clam up or turn into cliche machines than to actually say what they’re thinking.
I wasn’t out to make Carter look bad and he figured that out pretty quickly, but he doesn’t know me from any of the 30-odd reporters slouching around the clubhouse.
And so though it might have seemed a bit odd to me, he was probably right to protect himself when I asked him a stupid question about fighting for his life. For all he knew, I could have seized the opportunity to excoriate him for hating America, as is trendy these days. There’s Web traffic in that, I’m sure.
Look: It’s downright silly, and certainly something for which Jeter deserves to be taunted mercilessly by opposing fans. But he exploited the situation to gain a competitive advantage. Is that cheating? Kind of, but if you’re going to get bent out of shape every time a player tries to mislead an umpire you’re going to have a whole lot of blustering to do. It just so happens that this example was particularly egregious, the evidence proving it nonsensical particularly strong, and Jeter’s reaction particularly absurd.
Tedquarters 