“If I thought it were newsworthy, I would write a story about it,” blogs the Houston Chronicle’s Jose de Jesus Ortiz, in a post that’s headlined “McNair’s death not a lesson to one idiot”.
…after a recent game, a Major League Baseball player asked a female intern from another media outlet if she’d like to join him at a club in Houston later that night.
That was the first stupid decision made by the player, who just happens to be a married father. The young lady then accepted his phone number, which was a major no-no in the context of how it was offered.
As if that weren’t silly enough, the young lady, who has nearly 700 “friends” on Facebook, decided to post this message on her Facebook account for over four hours: “Was asked out by (team name and player name) last night and I have his cell phone number to prove it.”
I’ve deleted the team’s name and the player’s name because I’m not going to mention any names.
I have since informed two of this young lady’s mentors how irresponsible this Facebook post is and how it appears as though she is bragging about getting the player’s phone number. Things you post on Facebook can get you in serious trouble. The Baseball Writers’ Association of America has worked hard to gain the generous clubhouse access media get to major league clubhouses. And women have gone through tremendous pain to earn the right to be let in and treated with respect in major sports clubhouses and locker rooms.
All dead on the money as a journalism issue. But I’m afraid the only lesson any extracurricularly inclined pro athlete’s gonna take away from Steve McNair is the one this major leaguer already has down: “don’t cheat in your own town.” With perhaps another, if the stories out of Minnesota have some truth: “don’t cheat on your mistress.”