Regarding Chris Botta’s Opinion piece [“Who needs the press and all its flaws? We all do,” June 13-19]:
As a sports reporter of 25-plus years, I’d like to remind him that meeting with any athlete “the moment he steps off the ice (court) after a brutal loss so they [the reporters] can easily make deadline and have time for a martini” is such a shortsighted, ancient-stereotypical thought it defies belief. Most reporters today try to maintain as healthy a lifestyle as the athletes they cover (sans supplements).
His assertion that at Jason Giambi’s sham of a press conference that the lambs in the media let “the Yankees set all kinds of ground rules, even dividing the press into groups [and that the] reporters lined up like sheep and behaved exactly as they were told,” is a simple reflection of the unspoken threat to pull credentials that so many pro organizations use now to intimidate those reporters with whose coverage they are displeased.
Especially you, Botta.Oh yeah, I would’ve written sooner, but I had to knock off that last martini. And I put it on your tab.
Howard Schlossberg
Chicago
