Padecky: Seeing is believing when sports and social media mix

It used to be that when someone referred to “Murderer’s Row” it meant the first six hitters in the New York Yankees’ 1927 batting order: Earle Combs, Mark Koenig, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Bob Meusel and Tony Lazzeri. Not anymore.

Today’s “Murderer’s Row” is TMZ, Twitter, Facebook and Deadspin batting cleanup. If there is any celebrity meat left to chew, Instagram, Tumblr and Flickr will mop up the remaining parts of privacy and dignity.

If, by poor chance and really dumb decisions, you find yourself in the crosshairs of all seven social media at once, change your name and move to some place where there’s no electricity. Otherwise your life is a raging sea and you’re sitting on a piece of cardboard.

“Every day I am out in public,” said Ben Lynch, the former Analy and Cal offensive lineman who played four years with the 49ers, “I assume everyone around me has a smartphone. To think otherwise I’m fooling myself. Thank God there were no cell phones when I was in college. I wasn’t a drug user but I did some pretty goofy things.”

Lynch’s approach to living his life is good advice to anyone who doesn’t live in a cave but it becomes especially relevant to athletes. The higher the profile, the more people watch to find cracks in the celebrity armor. Not everyone is in awe of the famous and wealthy. Once upon a time, however, most athletes escaped scrutiny.

“When I played,” said Sebastopol’s Keith Dorney, a nine-year offensive tackle for the Detroit Lions in the 1980s, “I was definitely told to keep my mouth shut. In fact, I was told explicitly what to say. It was a very controlled environment.”

As events of the last week have shown, it ain’t the ‘80s anymore, Bucky. Almost feels like Tombstone out there, with social media sending image-piercing bullets everywhere.

On the campus of the University of Missouri in Columbia, student protests were underway over racial intolerance. One student began a hunger strike with a subdued reaction. Thirty members of the football team, all African-Americans, said they wouldn’t play the Tigers’ next game. More traction was gained. Still, it was a simmering story.

Then head football coach Gary Pinkel tweeted: “The Missouri Family Stands As One.” Boom. The story exploded. The white guy stood with the black guys. The regional story began national. The picture of the 30 players became social media must-see. Within 48 hours the president and the chancellor of the university resigned.

“A kid is putting his life in danger with a hunger strike and nothing happens,” said Dr. Lauren Morimoto, a sports sociologist who is an associate professor of kinesiology at SSU who is Director of the school’s Diversity and Inclusion program. “But football might not be happening? Oh damn!”

But social media provided the gas. When Pinkel’s tweet joined his players’ twittering, profound credibility was established. It wasn’t just a bunch of college kids venting. Authenticity was achieved and don’t think this will be the last time.

“Without social media,” Dr. Morimoto said, “this story might not have achieved the prominence it did. I anticipate a growing role (of social media) in college. College kids (by their nature) are exploring new ways to find outlets for their frustration.”

Best believe that every college athletic director in America is paying attention to what happened at Missouri. Missouri is a conservative campus. As an example, Cal Berkeley isn’t. Of course, this wasn’t the first time college athletes tried their voice. In 1995, before the NCAA basketball tournament was to begin, UCLA, Massachusetts and Wake Forest threatened to boycott their participation over economic exploitation of student athletes. The protests fizzled. Players were intimidated. The story never became more than a small regional headline because it lacked the national scream.

Deadspin (founded in 2005) wasn’t around. Neither was TMZ (2005) or Instagram (2010) or Flickr (2004) or Twitter (2006) or Tumblr (2007) or Facebook (2004). What if they were? Dr. Morimoto makes the point with a story that was international news.

“What if social media was around in 1994 when Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman were killed?” Dr. Morimoto said. “How would that have played out? I imagine it might have played out quite differently.”

Imagine the Twitter traffic on O.J. Simpson. Imagine the unkind Facebook postings on Simpson. Imagine TMZ or Deadspin getting photographs of the bodies. Imagine Simpson being hunted like a wanted man and it’s not the police doing the hunting. Imagine all that within, say, 24 hours. The trial would have had to be held in the Himalayans.

As a not-so-small example, in 2013 there were 492 million tweets about sports events, according to Forbes.

I’m guessing here but how about 492 BILLION tweets after the Deadspin photos were released of Greg Hardy’s former girl friend, the police photos of her with bruises and raised flesh across her back and neck? The woman accused Hardy, now a Dallas Cowboy, of domestic violence. The case eventually was dropped but only after the woman stopped cooperating with authorities, the prosecution stating they believed Hardy paid for her silence.

And there the discontent stayed, in grumblings, until the photos hit social media.

“When we hear about domestic violence,” said Dr. Morimoto, “we might think it involved maybe one shove, which is not right. But the photos show more than one shove. Oh, now we see what that (domestic violence) means. With social media now it’s become this: It’s like an expectation. We want to see the evidence! We see it. Now we have visceral proof. It’s not real until we see it.”

That’s where social media has taken us. That’s troubling. Any woman, sports fan or not, should be troubled by the reaction to the Deadspin photos. Dr. Morimoto certainly is.

“What does it take to believe a woman who says, ‘I was beaten and I called the police’? “ Morimoto said. “Do we really have to see the photos to believe her?”

Do we really need any more social media on the Greg Hardy case? No, but we got it anyway on Wednesday.

“Innocent until proven guilty” is what Hardy tweeted.

Sometimes you don’t need photos to feel disgusted.

“That’s the thing with social media,” Dorney said. “You have to take the good with the bad.”

So I asked Dorney about this possibility: A NFL player is on his last team. He’s almost out of the league. His ego can’t accept that. He feels the team is persecuting him. He hasn’t done anything wrong. So he takes his smartphone into a team meeting and surreptitiously records a coach yelling and screaming and cursing. He then sends the tape to Deadspin. Is that a possibility?

“That’s not far-fetched at all,” Dorney said. “In fact, it’s not a matter of if. It’s a matter of when.”

It’s a matter of ego. Someone has to listen to me. Do I really care what people think? Nah. The truth is out there, says Greg Hardy, and I’m going to tell it. Oops! Wait a minute! Did I say Greg Hardy? I’m sorry. That was a mistake. I don’t mean it and you can believe me. Why? Because I haven’t put it on Twitter.

To contact Bob Padecky email him at bobpadecky@gmail.com.