Amber Roessner is an assistant professor at University of Tennessee's School of Journalism and Electronic Media. Her research focuses on the intersection of race, gender, and class within sports media history. She is also a freelance writer on topics such as health, education, and sports at large. Her essay, "Remembering 'The Georgia Peach': Popular Press, Public Memory, and the Shifting Legacy of an (Anti) Hero" was published in the Summer 2010 issue of Journalism History. The essay focuses on Ty Cobb and the role of the sports media in shaping the persona of an athletic hero. Recently, Professor Roessner was kind enough to talk to me about the essay.
Patrick Truby: Where did this Ty Cobb piece begin? How did it happen?
Amber Roessner: First of all, I would say it's really rooted in my interests. I was a sportswriter at the Gainesville Times for a couple of years. Then I was also the editor of a lifestyle magazine called Gainesville Life and an editorial associate at Athens Magazine in Athens, Georgia. From very early in my career, I was very interested in how relationships between subjects and writers/reporters impacted coverage, both on a personal level and then throughout the media. That transferred over and became a research interest for me when I started my graduate program. I've also always been interested in memory since I was a very young girl. I was very close to my great-grandmother, and she used to tell me all these stories about her life growing up during the Depression. I was always fascinated with memory from that early age and memory distortion. In my graduate work, I worked with Dr. Janice Hume at University of Georgia, and she focused a lot on the press's role in the creation of collective memory. That's where I got my start with that aspect.
With University of Georgia of course being in the South, one of my first projects (with Dr. Janice Hume) looking at collective memory was a study looking back at the collective memory of Sherman's March. There are these cities in Georgia, and to some extent Alabama, that have these rich legacies. Basically all the promotional literature of the towns say, "We survived Sherman's March, Sherman didn't burn our city." There are different stories in different towns, but basically it's because "This town was too beautiful to burn. Sherman spared it because it was so beautiful." In Augusta, GA, there's also a myth that Sherman spared Augusta because of a college sweetheart. We just took a look at memory distortion and also how memory changed over time in the press. Even up until, I think the last stuff we looked at was some websites for these towns, and even back in the 60s, it was a strong part of the region's collective memory. That's kind of how my foray into collective memory began.
PT: Obviously, there's also the sports background. Did you choose Ty Cobb and then go about the study, or did he sort of come out of the research?
AR: I chose Ty Cobb. This study is kind of a spinoff of my dissertation. In my dissertation, I look at this idea of hero crafting or the practice of producing or constructing heroes in the early 20th century. I'm looking specifically at Ty Cobb and Christy Mathewson because they were two of the most prominent heroes of the Dead Ball Era. Ty Cobb was the first person I thought of because, growing up in Georgia - I was born in Athens in 1980 - I heard about this "SOB" Ty Cobb, so I became interested in his legacy.
PT: Moving into contemporary sportswriters and contemporary mythmaking, do you think the mythic characters and sports heroes are made faster now because of the modern media?
AR: To an extent. I think we're still kind of in this fishbowl, and the historian in me wants to say ask me this question in about 15 years. I think perhaps so. I think instantly of Curt Schilling and the bloody sock, and that became this instant myth. I'm not sure if it's sped up, but it's an interesting phenomenon that we're seeing here now. And to that, if you're looking at national vs. local coverage, I think there is an interesting dynamic at the local level, this idea of people protecting the memory of a local legend.
PT: Curt Schilling is a good example, especially because, here in Boston he gets a pass from people in Boston no matter what he says, but he also touches on a few things as far as the difference between the national and local coverage. And he has his own blog, which touches on if the sportswriter's role is changing a little bit with athletes bypassing the mainstream press to reach out through their own blogs and Twitter accounts, though he sort of is the extreme example. Do you have any thoughts on that?
AR: Part of what you're getting at has historical roots. Part of the findings of my dissertation is that there's a strong like between sports journalism and promotion and publicity. At its most basic form, sports journalism is a type of promotion, and especially at the turn of the century. It was promotion. It became a little bit more objective as the 20th century moved on, but I argue in my dissertation that athletes have always had a lot of agency in how they were covered, especially in the early 20th century and also to an extent now.
Back in the early 20th century, sportswriters were riding on trains, playing golf, going out for beers with Cobb and Mathewson, so the formality of the relationship has kind of changed these days. They were in close contact, and because of that close level of contact, athletes did have a lot of agency in how they were covered. Of course it varies at what level and what type of writer you're looking at. With a ghostwriter - John N. Wheeler both wrote for Cobb and Mathewson - they had ultimate agency. They had a lot of autonomy on how they were shaping their legacy.
In fact, in Cobb's book, he basically tries to change how he's being considered at the time because he really did have this image of spiking infielders. At that point in time when he started working with Wheeler and after his career was over, he was actively trying to change his image. Even from the beginning of his career, also. There is this great anecdote: Grantland Rice was in the newsroom one day, playing cards with his coworkers, and this telegram comes in and basically it says, "This kid Cobb is so great you have to go see him play. You have to get this scoop." Telegrams were very expensive to send at that time, so Rice tosses the telegram and sends one back that says, "In the future, regular mail will suffice." Then Cobb sends a flood of mail from cities all across the South saying - this is when he was playing at Anniston and Augusta (in the minor leagues) - saying, "You need to come watch this kid Cobb." He's signing it in different handwriting and different names, so Cobb was very media savvy. I argue that athletes have always been media savvy. Beginning in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century sportswriters were blindly romanticizing sports figures. Then that kind of love with sports figures ends, and that's when you see, gatekeepers like Christy Walsh with Babe Ruth popping up, and then suddenly everyone has a PR person. Part of this dealt with local news coverage.
For instance, I think of something I remember pretty vividly: the Jim Harrick scandal at the University of Georgia in the early 2000s. ESPN came in and broke the story (instead of beat writers). Part of that is this idea of relationships in sportswriting and not wanting to break that code. You can only do so much investigative journalism and still maintain a relationship on a daily beat. What I think is changing today is, with blogs, players have a free forum for public relations and promotion, so their need for sportswriters is even less than ever. I think that's how someone like Barry Bonds can get away with being such an ass, for lack of a better word, to journalists for such a long period of time. He had his own PR forums, but it was his relationship with the national media of course that impacted coverage. And then though, what I think is interesting, I saw the other day he donated $20,000 to National Association of Black Journalists to start a scholarship fund. Basically, I think maybe he’s trying to change his legacy. Just as, toward the end of Ty Cobb's life, the philanthropic side of Cobb really came out in his area. For instance, he created the Ty Cobb Educational Foundation, and he created a hospital in the Royston area, where he was from. I think that changed his legacy, at least locally.
PT: Bonds is another perfect example. He was sort of a local hero in San Francisco despite all of his coverage everywhere else. I've heard magnificent things said about him from other players, but it's always the media that doesn't say anything positive about him because he doesn't deserve it from the media, but I think it does speak a lot to the relationship between athletes and writers, because if all the good things athletes say about him are true, then it's interesting that none of that would come out when he deals with the writers.
AR: And then, I want to go back, because, I've thought more about this as we're talking, and I kind of gave a cop out answer earlier regarding this idea of if the creation of public memory is sped up with the introduction of blogs and other social media. I'm thinking of my own experiences with this season with baseball. If you look at Braves player Jason Heyward and all the media hype that surrounded him in spring training. I was at opening day, not as a reporter but as a fan, and afterwards, he was being compared to baseball legends immediately. (Heyward hit a home run in his first at bat.) I think it has a lot to do with the 24/7 media cycle that we have. You're starting to see people being instantaneously compared to great legends. Journalists are doing it as a way to gauge greatness. Everyone wants news instantaneously and also wants their heroes instantaneously, and so journalists are searching for heroes.
PT: That makes sense. There's a line in the essay about why journalists create heroes and how the creation of heroes is a reflection of what society wants.
AR: Exactly, and it always has been. I also think that the speed in which it's done now is a reflection of society. We set this up because we want news at our fingertips. We want it at that instant. We want news how we want it. That's why we're starting to see more and more bloggers. You're seeing fans blog, you're seeing players blog because they would love to shape their images any way they can, and you're seeing professional journalists blog. Blogs are changing the jobs of journalists, and I'm kind of glad I got out of the industry before the blog craze hit. This is the realistic me talking, but in a way I'm glad that I did because there are so many more demands on a sports writer than ever before. There are so many demands on journalists in general than ever before. There are some positives to this. We have more active readers and listeners, and it's more of a two-way communication system, which is really nice. We definitely have our jobs cut out for us, and I think that fans, readers, and audience members expect constant analysis. They expect to feel like they're in the stadium. Maybe we’re moving toward a more fan-based media again. Of course, back between 1900 and 1930, sports was romanticized in so many ways, and I could talk about that all day, but I think that we're definitely moving back to this age where we're romanticizing sports. However, we have this knack in today’s society to make a hero out of someone like Michael Phelps and then knocking them off the pedestal weeks later.
PT: I feel like the creation of these athletic heroes happens a lot quicker than before, but we also seem very quick to tear people down. I was interested in your Cobb piece because I'm vaguely familiar with him and his dual role of the guy who spiked people but fans respect as a baseball hero. I feel like we don't have that duality anymore. The last person I can think of is Nolan Ryan, who was one of the best pitchers in baseball but people respected that he was willing to scare hitters, to throw inside and make hitters uncomfortable in a very mean and intimidating way. I don't know if it’s writers or fans or both who don't seem to allow for the duality of our athletes.
AR: I think you're right. I think you're touching on two things. On is the idea of a lasting hero. Cobb and Mathewson were lasting heroes. Now Cobb is more of a lasting national hero, and Mathewson was definitely a national hero in his era. Once again, this goes back to the the idea of heroes reflecting the needs and wants of society. Most people, unless you're an adamant baseball fan, don't know the name Christy Mathewson, and it's probably because he's "The Christian Gentleman," he's the ultimate symbol of sportsmanship, Christianity, and Protestant values that, at the national level, have eroded throughout the course of the 20th century. I would argue that Cobb is still well known in part because he was portrayed as a "man's man." And he's an ultimate character. You say that we don't have a lot of that duality, but if you look at a lot of our lasting sports heroes and heroes in general, there is definitely a personality there.
[Patrick is a Boston-based writer who grew up in Hawaii and Seattle. He once ate a raw chili pepper in exchange for Ken Griffey Jr.'s rookie card. He writes for There's No "I" In Blog. Follow him on Twitter. To read more by Patrick, check out his profile.]
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