NY Times enjoys its team, the Red Sox--10/19/2003

• ""We're sitting up there looking at each other, wondering, 'What's going on?'" said Fox Sports announcer Joe Buck.

It was two days after he'd witnessed the brawl of the fall: the American League'sbest pitcher, Pedro Martinez, taking down 72-year-old Yankees bench coach Don Zimmer in Game 3 of the American League Championship Series followed by a bull-pen skirmish that could result in criminal charges for Yankees pitcher Jeff Nelson and outfielder Karim Garcia.

It takes a lot to surprise Mr. Buck, who since 1996 has been the voice of the Yankees' October championship runs.

• "We all looked at each other and asked, 'What in the world did we just witness?'" he said. "It was just weird."

It was also the sourest note in what was otherwise a good, clean, if bare-knuckled fight between, arguably, the only two cities that love to hate each other more than Los Angeles and New York: Boston and New York. Sure, the Red Sox have their fans here-especially disgruntled Mets fans-but in a championship series, a city stakes its reputation on its home team, and neither Boston nor New York is ready to give up its good name without a fight.

• Which is why so many New Yorkers felt like they'd gotten a 100-mile-an-hour knuckleball to the head when they read the editorial in The New York Times on Oct. 8.

Propitiating the gods of objectivity, the board weighed in with a hopeful essay pining for the defeat of the New York Yankees, so that the Boston Red Sox could advance to play the Chicago Cubs in a tearful, one-of-them- has -to-win-now Boston-Chicago World Series.

• "With all due respect to our New York readership-Yankee fans among them-to George Steinbrenner and to the Yankees themselves," the editorial read,

"we find it hard to resist the emotional tug and symmetrical possibilities of a series between teams that seem to have been put on earth to tantalize and then crush their zealous fans."

• Take it as one more sign that The Times is reaching out to a national audience.

For New Yorkers who thought of The Times ' "other" readers as vicarious consumers of New York's politics, culture and ideas, it was a rude awakening.

• New Yorkers are some of The Times ' readers; in fact, they deserve some special consideration from time to time, whether or not that extends to the economic boon and civic uplift of a World Series championship. If the Yankees don't win, it's a shame-but look at the dramatic possibilities for the national audience!

The Times ' Boston readership is also a consideration. After all

• -though The Times didn't mention it in the editorial-

bought (with a consortium of partners) just before last season, and the Sox's cable-television channel became the broadcast outlet for the Times Company's stable of Boston Globe columnists and reporters. (The Times also owns the Globe .)

• "It is our policy to always inform our readers of The Times ' business interests in an issue when we are attempting to actually influence the outcome of something," said Times editorial-page editor Gail Collins when asked about the nondisclosure. ....
• There's always hope.

Of course, at The Times the editorial page and the newsroom remain as far apart as Metropolis and Krypton. And one might have forgiven The Times,

• if its coy equanimity and interest in baseball's dramatic possibilities-for other cities-didn't actually spill off the editorial page and onto the dress pages of the Sports section.

There, during these playoffs, Times readers have been treated to "A Boston View" of the series, with different Globe columnists taking top billing to wax poetic or prosaic on the preceding night's events, beneath schoolmarmish headings applauding both sides for keeping their tempers cool during

• the Oct. 13 match that squared the series between the Yankees

• and The Times' home team, the Red Sox.

Michael Holley and Dan Shaughnessy are Red Sox fans and great sportswriters-with all due respect to our Boston readership-for Boston. Writing before former Red Sox hero turned Yankees avatar Roger Clemens' last Fenway appearance, Mr. Shaughnessy (in what was incidentally a great piece of writing) asked in The Times : "Anyone in Boston remember Larry Bird's last game?" Times Sports editor Tom Jolly said he had "heard from people who really enjoy what the Boston view is.

• "There's no deeper meaning to this, except this is the Red Sox–Yankees, and it's a great series and, of course, a great standing rivalry, and we thought this would give a fresh twist to our coverage."

New York Times executive editor Bill Keller said he wasn't thinking about The Times ' stake in the Red Sox or the Globe when he came up with the idea of the "Boston View" and contacted Globe editor Martin Baron, on vacation in Turkey, to see if it could happen.

"I always forget about that until I read it somewhere," Mr. Keller said. "It's nothing that crosses my mind.

• It's a kind of bookkeeping oddity."

Whether the owners of The Times would call

• their considerable stake in Boston a "bookkeeping oddity" seems doubtful.

Mr. Keller said he had been hoping to generate more sparks on the page, and was happy on Monday, Oct. 13, when Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy weighed in with the best and harshest commentary of the series, chiding both Mr. Martinez and the fans that foolishly cheered him on.

"I thought there would be a little more head-banging than there's been," Mr. Keller said, "that the columnists would maybe go at each other a little bit, and I guess I thought the columns would be a little bit feistier."

• Sounds like the Boston view. Perhaps in the near-and far-future, any new toy The Times tries out will undergo the Howell test. Under former executive editor Howell Raines, efforts were made to spruce up the sections and offer, as it were, a view from the top; the question was always whether The Times could maintain its identity, its sense of place, and appeal to the hinterland at the same time.

Was Mr. Keller viewing the series from the point of view of his New York readership?

"We can't not be a New York paper," Mr. Keller said. "And some aspects of New York, including our sports franchises,

• rise above provincial local interest …. If the Yankees are in the World Series, it might be fun to try it in the Series with Chicago or Florida."

But The Times doesn't own the Chicago Sun-Times , the Cubs, the Marlins or the Miami Herald .

• Nor is New York or the Yankees locked in the same kind of culture war with Chicago or Miami as it is with Boston or its Red Sox.

All of which makes this an awkward time for The Times to make its most significant public alliance with the Globe since buying the paper from the Taylor family in 1993. Until now, 43rd Street-at least in print-had treated the Globe like The Times ' cousin in Millville, Ohio: a once-every-other-summer kind of affair. Not for long.

• "We've talked about whether there's some way for newsroom cooperation for the conventions, because the Democrats are there and the Republicans are here," Mr. Keller said of further projects with the Globe . "But we might find some way to benefit from each other's writers."....

From NY Observer article by Sridhar Pappu, "Times Sux Sox-Paper Coddling its Boston Team," 10/19/03

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