The second-last time I went to a Phillies game to write a column I was surprised to see Stephen A. Smith there doing the same thing.
It was a Saturday afternoon game, and there weren’t many media people there, but Smith was, and he asked Charlie Manuel some decent questions afterward, and his piece, which appeared in the following day’s Inquirer, wasn’t bad.
It appeared that maybe Stephen A. had turned over a new leaf and decided to get serious about reporting and writing his column.
That was not correct, I guess. In the wake of a slew of sloppy mistakes, the Inquirer has taken away his column, and offered him a gig as a general assignment sports reporter. He’s vacationing, and hasn’t decided if he’ll accept the offer.
This comes as a shock to no one in the business. Smith is all over ESPN, and I actually like him OK as a broadcaster. I find him to be honest and colorful and distinctive, and I say that understanding that one man’s colorful and distinctive is another man’s bleed-from-the-ears annoying.
As a writer he has one thing going for him, and it’s a considerable thing: access to African-American athletes, who apparently somehow think they get a sympathetic reading for him, or are at least comfortable around him. If you want to get TO on the phone, and there was a time when everyone in Philly did, Stephen A.’s the go-to-guy.
Otherwise, he makes endless mistakes in reporting and thinking, and from the Inquirer’s point of view, he’s in New York most of the time. Those problems combined when he famously criticized Phillies’ GM Pat Gillick for running the team from Toronto when in fact Gillick lives in Philly, and spends more time there than Smith does.
Also: He can’t write. Not even a little. That still counts for something, or should. Smith’s obliviousness to detail might be even more of a problem for a straight reporter than for a columnist, so the Inquirer’s job offer is strange, unless the paper is assuming Smith won’t take it.
Unlike many in my business, I don’t dislike Smith. I don’t want his career to nosedive, and this doesn’t mean it will. But you’ve got to applaud a newspaper for recognizing that being a sports-media celebrity doesn’t make you a sportswriter.
