Zuri
Zuri Berry is a sports writer and producer for Boston.com, the website of the Boston Globe. He's a graduate of California State University, Chico and originally from San Francisco. He currently resides in South Boston.
What else?
After today’s Boston Marathon, I’ve now covered all of the major sporting events in Boston. You’d think I would’ve scratched this one off the list pretty early because of the throngs of people the Boston Globe dedicates to marathon coverage. But in the two years prior to today, Marathon Monday, I had been on desk duty — the other half of the equation in our amazing coverage. Today I helped produce our live broadcasts on Boston.com from Hopkinton.
The Boston Marathon is one of those unusual events in the sporting landscape, one I would easily equate with the Super Bowl, NBA Finals and Stanley Cup, which I’ve also covered. Not because of its popularity outside of the running community, but because of its festive atmosphere, prestige and the throngs of coverage thrown its way. It’s a great event, filled with tons of stories on redemption, determination, exuberance and filled with people who flaunt a never-say-quit attitude in front of the world. It’s the runner’s Mecca, better than NYC and more serious than the wacky Bay to Breakers.
Which leads me to this: What’s next? I’ve now covered every major sport in the area. You name it, I’ve done it. Red Sox, Patriots, Celtics, Bruins, Revs, high schools. I haven’t touched a college event yet, including the Bean Pot, but I have been to a few press conferences. I can’t imagine I’d want to be near a regatta, but a Head of the Charles might be cool enough to warrant extra coverage in the future.
What else is there?
If I’m truly blessed, and so are the Red Sox, maybe a World Series. Is that too much?
Wondering out loud why spring is such a vexing season
It’s spring. That’s been the official word for more than a week now. But don’t let that stop the weather here in Boston from messing things up.
Did you know it actually snowed in some parts of Massachusetts this past week? True story. In Boston we’ve had to deal with rain while the weather has hovered around 40 degrees. My heat is still on.
But besides my gripes with the weather, my focus currently is shifting from the basketball and hockey seasons to spring sports. I’m turning my attention to high school baseball, softball and lacrosse. And as always, my mind will be on the Patriots. I’ll likely be working the NFL draft again from Gillette Stadium and I know everybody wants to know what kind of move Bill Belichick will make now that the free agency boom is over. (Just a thought: The Pats probably won’t draft a receiver.) And then there’s the opening of the MLB season. The Red Sox begin their quest for another World Series title on April 5. There’s also the Bruins and Celtics getting ready for the playoffs.
All things considered, there’s a lot to think about and mentally prepare for.
I write all this to say that of the things that my focus often fall to, high schools coverage often comes first, even it is of least importance. It remains in my peripherals partially because of both my professional responsibility and personal pride. But of all seasons, spring high school sports can be the most confounding.
Consider this: High school baseball and softball in Massachusetts had 23,209 kids participate last year, according to the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association. (12,923 for just baseball.) That easily surpasses the singular juggernaut in every local district, which is football, as the second most engaged sport in the state. Football had 20,399 student-athletes last year to be fourth. Lacrosse netted 15,491 for fifth behind basketball at 22,518 which is third.
The most popular sport, again adding boys and girls together, is soccer: 26,809 kids participated last year in the state. From our coverage at the Globe, you wouldn’t know it.
(I should note here that I’m omitting the numbers for Indoor and Outdoor track & field as they occur in separate seasons and often carry the same students, thus making their actual figures hard to pin down. In all likelihood, those numbers would definitely shake up this Top 5.)
Our big thing at the Globe and Boston.com, as it is every year and for every newspaper around this country, is football because of its popularity. Nothing draws clicks in the fall like football. No soccer feature or extra game coverage can change that, despite being in the same season.
Conversely, the same can be said of hockey, which had 9,143 kids participate in the winter of 2010-11 — far behind the participation numbers of basketball. And yet, no basketball feature or game coverage could move the dial as our hockey coverage did.
This has been proven to me time and time again that despite the the size of engagement in a sport, its popularity here in Massachusetts is not as obvious. Parents may encourage their kids to play soccer and run track, but secretly they want to watch them and read about them playing football, hockey and lacrosse. Which brings me to the point of my writing this.
Why is lacrosse the king of spring? Without even a smidgen of understanding, I ventured to Boston three years ago thinking that baseball was the No. 1 sport in this state. What with the Red Sox and all it would seem that a foundation was likely in place for kids and parents to be drawn to to the sport at the high school level. I imagined fist fights in the stands over whose kid was the better pitcher.
Participation-wise, I haven’t been disappointed. But when the needle begins to measure the traffic for baseball/softball coverage, in direct comparison to football coverage, hockey coverage, and lax coverage, all logic flies out the window faster than a Dustin Pedroia laser bomb. It doesn’t even come close and there is no explanation worthy.
I’ve discussed this with some colleagues in the high school coverage bubble here and they too agree it’s a weird conundrum, one which I do not think there is an easy answer. But in the interim, the traffic patterns are encouraging coverage decisions that I would not normally make. While football may be behind soccer in participation, it by no means is behind because of shallow numbers. In fact, hockey and lacrosse are more easily relatable because they defy the engagement/popularity enigma that I’ve been puzzling.
Do I feed the insatiable taste for lacrosse stories and photos as our No. 1 sport of choice? Do I give the lax feature top billing over the baseball feature? Where does my time go? And so on, and so on.
This is a vexation I have that’s only applicable it seems to this state. And with each year living here, it’s easier to pin down which sport gets a certain amount of my attention. However, that doesn’t mean any of this makes any sense. And that doesn’t mean that everyone will be satisfied.
In review: Thomas Peele’s ‘Killing the Messenger’ fills in the details
To be a journalist and not know the story of Chauncey Bailey is tantamount to being a presidential candidate and not know the implications of Roe v. Wade.
Surprisingly, it’s embarrassing how many journalists don’t know Bailey’s tale. And fewer know the details. That’s why Thomas Peele’s new book “Killing the Messenger: A story of radical faith, racism’s backlash, and the assassination of a journalist” is such an important tome. It provides the background necessary for future historical context on a number of subject matters, including the exhaustively reported reasons why Bailey was murdered. And in true respect to the’s book subtitle, the details of the murder and the culprits behind it spell out the radical history that influenced the violence against Bailey and the attack on the first amendment in doing so.
Bailey, the editor for the Oakland Post, was murdered Aug. 2, 2007 in Oakland, Calif., while working on a story about Your Black Muslim Bakery, the front for a black muslim cult that was an offspring of the Nation of Islam. The group’s patriarch, Yusuf Bey, was an alleged murderer, rapist and child molester. He has anywhere from 25 to 45 children according to the book, but was never convicted of his crimes. Charged with 27 counts of rape, he died of cancer in 2003 before he ever went to trial. His followers were equally violent, often taking in ex-convicts among their ranks while claiming to rehabilitate black men in the community. In the aftermath of Bey’s death, the cult warred over control of his fledgling bakery business before his son, Yusuf Bey IV, came into power. Under Bey IV’s stewardship, the bakery was going through bankruptcy in 2007.
Bailey’s story, which has never been printed, was aiming to shed light on the illegitimacy behind the bakery’s bankruptcy. But it also was aiming to report on the sordid, violent history within the cult’s North Oakland compound and the San Francisco Bay Area. Bailey was going to use an unnamed source to back his reporting, something to which his publisher was loathe to permit, fearing the retaliation of the cult’s followers.
It was typical of Bailey, Peele wrote in the book, to not dig as an investigative reporter like the author would. If he did, he’d have all the documentation he needed to write a solid report on Bey IV. Peele’s tepid opinion of Bailey as a journalist, if that much can be gleaned from the book, plays heavily into telling of Bailey’s story as well. Before he was killed, Bailey was on a downward spiral in his career. Fired from the Oakland Tribune for ethical lapses, and far from his days at the Detroit News where he did his best work, a story on the notorious black muslims in his community was a surefire way to keep his name abuzz, if anything.
All of which is the background to Peele’s reporting with the Chauncey Bailey Project, a nationally recognized and awarded investigative coop in which Peele was the lead reporter. In the aftermath of Bailey’s death, Peele and scores of other journalists came together to pick up the pieces of Bailey’s reporting and flush out the story behind the bakery, the culmination of which is this book.
History is key here, particularly to understand the perverted and misguided nature of this black muslim offshoot. The Nation of Islam, from its days in Detroit under W.D. Fard in the 1930s, and the Noble Ali Drew’s Moorish Temple in Chicago of the 1920s, are explored in equally exhaustive detail. There’s no fact summarily undocumented, as exemplified by Peele’s extensive bibliography. It’s the roughest part of the book’s 441 pages to stomach, but paramount to understanding how a cult like Your Black Muslim Bakery can exist in the 21st century and how the group’s followers are colored by a dogma that promotes racism and antisemitism, which originates from the racism that helped spur the Nation of Islam’s founding.
All of these influences — the journalism, the history and locale — helped pique my interest. But there’s more for me personally in the pages of this book that go beyond my being a former intern at the Oakland Tribune.
I grew up in San Francisco in the Fillmore and went to Galileo high school where I played football with Richard Lewis, a Your Black Muslim Bakery follower who is now serving a life sentence in prison for his crimes in association with the bakery. I also grew up in the same townhouses as Antoine Mackey in the Fillmore, the convicted gunman in one of the bakery’s murders. And I am acquaintances with Bob Butler, a key reporter in the Chauncey Bailey Project and an NABJ board member, a group I am affiliated with. But I also can remember a time when I purchased bean-pies from the bow-tied members of the bakery, not interested in supporting the group as much as I was interested in their tasty treats. I also remember a time when they served as security for a number of functions I attended in Oakland and San Francisco. They were always a peculiar group, despite my ignorance of them.
So there are a number varying interests I have here, none of which I believe have warped my views of the atrocities committed by this group. It’s Lewis’ presence, whose crimes are outlined with clarity by Peele here, that drew me to Chauncey Bailey’s coverage with a rabid appetite. This is someone I knew well. Someone who surprisingly had an evil streak in him. In high school, I could never take him too seriously. He was a goof. And, above all, he was a follower. But as things stand, he’s convicted of torture and kidnapping. What he did was despicable. Mackey, whom I’ve known since he was a little boy, seemed destined to live this life. He’s serving a life sentence for helping kill Bailey as the getaway driver and killing another man, Michael Wills, because he was white.
In reading “Killing the Messenger,” one relives the four and a half years of stories written by the Chauncey Bailey Project while getting the added caveat of knowing the outcome. But it’s the details tied together in Peele’s thorough style as an investigative reporter, the historical influence of racism among black muslims, and the revelations only top-notch journalism can produce about this cult, that makes this book a must read for journalists and historians alike. Or if you’re like me, to figure out what happened to your high school buddy.
“Killing the Messenger: A Story of Radical Faith, Racism’s Backlash, and the Assasination of a Journalist” — Crowne Publishers, 2012. $26 hardcover, $12.99 e-edition.
Jeremy Lin inspires both the positive and negative
Jeremy Lin is a sensation in the NBA. (REUTERS)
It didn’t take long before the puns turned to racism. For me, the beginning was the borderline New York Post back page “Amasian.” But early Saturday morning, it was the brazen “Chink in the armor” headline from ESPN that so angered the masses.
ESPN has since fired the headline writer and has suspended an anchor for using the same slur on a telecast.
I knew it would come to this. I just didn’t think it would be ESPN.
Since the moment Jeremy Lin started lighting up the Garden and the eyes of respective fans around the world, there’s been an endless stream of puns put forth to play off both Lin’s name and heritage. As if “Linsanity” wasn’t enough, you’ve got “Linvincible,” the “all he does is lin” chants and many more. It’s added to what has been a remarkable story about a point guard that was one step away from being out of the NBA. But it’s also added a layer of racism around the coverage of the most popular professional Asian-American basketball player ever.
What’s more, the blatant racism has re-opened what I would like to call ever-fresh wounds. Lames excuses like this one, delivered as a comment on Jim Romenesko’s site, continue a perpetual sense of “gray area” when in fact headlines like “Chink in the armor” are clearly racist:
“I’ve used “chink in the armor” many times — and never thought of it as racist. People need to get over it.”
Because a phrase like “chink in the armor” can stand alone means nothing to me. The fact that it was used in conjunction with a story about an Asian-American man, when it clearly wasn’t necessary, is all the evidence I need to throw out the race card.
What pisses me off, and I’m pretty sure every other person of color in this great country, is the idiots that try to excuse away what is obvious and offensive. It’s why the wounds are ever-fresh. Not only are the folks who use these tactics are saying forgive the offender, but they are also diminishing what others are legitimately calling out as racist, thus continuing the cycle of offensiveness.
Over the past few years, I’ve seen this become the tactic of choice for racists — particularly on comment boards. They see the bigotry of some as a chance to defend, downplay and delegitimize the concerns of others. It’s no surprise that they’ve capitalized on moments like these. But it’s heartening to know that wherever intelligent conversation takes place, this kind of hackneyed racism is shot down immediately. It’s just unfortunate that it has to sully a great story in Lin, who as a classic underdog with an exceptional background deserves the attention and popularity he is getting.
My hope is that organizations like the New York Post, ESPN and others, take into account the responsibility they have to handle Lin’s story with care, particularly in regards to racism. There will always be some that excuse away their behavior, whether it was born of ignorance or hate. But news organizations like these are smarter than that and they do know better.
In a post football world, there’s only two things left
Well, really, there’s lots more left to concern myself with. As winter winds down, I’ll be focusing more and more on high school sports content for the Boston Globe. That includes prep hockey and basketball. But if I weren’t such a nut, I wouldn’t be here. So I’m also going to be paying close attention (not reporting or anything like that) to the Boston Celtics and the Boston Red Sox. Spring training is a hop skip away and the Celtics are in full swing. The only thing that’s missing is my presence on both topics. I’m sure I can rectify that right here. Stay tuned.
Give Rob Gronkowski a break
Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski has caught a lot of flak for his post Super Bowl activities. (Stan Grossfeld / Globe Staff)
After the Patriots lost to the New York Giants 21-17 in the Super Bowl, it’s more than conceivable that fans would want to blow off some steam.
Whether that was on message boards, blogs and elsewhere, there were a number of rants to be made on the demise of Tom Brady and company. One would only have to turn to their left and then to their right to get varying opinions on the outcome. And frankly, blaming it on Brady, Wes Welker or whoever else is your choosing.To each his own condemnation. But in the aftermath of a loss with this magnitude, it appears that some venting is entirely without merit. Particularly, how the Patriots deal with a loss.
For Brady, it meant draping his heads in a towel for minutes on end to digest the previous 60. For Welker, it meant borderline crying in front of strangers when having to explain what his drop meant for his team. For Brandon Spikes, it meant walking into a room full of reporters with shades over his eyes, desperately trying to hide his emotions. For others, it meant ducking the media.
But for Rob Gronkowski, the Patriots tight end who for two weeks had the most famous ankle in the world, it meant going dancing shirtless.
Context, please!
After finishing his second NFL season with the most dominant display a tight end has ever put forth (90 catches, 1,327 yards, 18 touchdowns), Gronkowski went out partying post XLVI. Without hesitation, he was ripped mercilessly by former players (Rodney Harrison) and pundits alike. The general consensus of the folks in the “Gronk can’t party because he lost crowd” is pretty simple. Partying after a loss gives off the perception that an athlete does not take the loss as seriously as, say, Brady. But this isn’t grounded in anything other than spite. Not one person can lay claim to know how Gronkowski feels. Not you, not I. And yet, the perception remains despite overbearing evidence to explain Gronkowski’s actions post-Super Sunday.
At 22 years old — only one year removed from the legal drinking age — might a culture of alcoholism explain what most Millenials already know? Gronkowski was out doing exactly what most 22-year-olds would do after bitterly going on vacation for six months. Given the nature of the video, the way he sloppily grooved back and forth, and, yes, his lack of clothing, there is some probable cause to believe that Gronkowski was imbibing fire water. (Is anybody even arguing it?)
Forget the setting and circumstance for a moment. The real question for Gronkowski is why get hammered? Why, for generations of young men, do they turn to alcohol to cope with something depressing like a Super Bowl loss?
Before this starts to sound like a pamphlet for your local AA, remember the circumstances of the professional athlete. There’s the public persona, the voluntary and involuntary privacy, the pressure of playing in the National Football League, and then the responsibility that comes with it all. Now understand, sans camera, that no one would question how Gronkowski felt about losing to the Giants. Instead, you and I would point to his postgame interview, judge his demeanor in answering those questions (he was sullen) and then conclude what most in Indianapolis observed long before any video leaked, that No. 87 was upset like the rest of the Patriots.
Is it all the more salacious that he was out and about shirtless? Yes. Of course it is. Does it matter? No, not in the least bit. In seeing Gronk bop back and forth, slaphappy, one could see the reigns being loosened on the 6-foot-6 tight end. He looked like a guy that hadn’t had a drink in months. And being of his age, he looked at home on stage with LMFAO, relaxed for once. Cut him some slack. After his surgery, he’s going to be on the sofa for awhile.
I’m more worried about his dance moves.
For the Patriots, soul searching
INDIANAPOLIS — This time, like last time, the New York Giants owned the New England Patriots in the stretch. But unlike last time, there was just too much funny business for Tom Brady and the gang to pull it out. And it showed in key plays as the Patriots lost 21-17 in Super Bowl XLVI at Lucas Oil Stadium.
For starters, Ahmad Bradshaw’s 6-yard touchdown with 57 seconds left in the game was bizarre. Given the Giants’ lengthy drive, and the amount of timeouts the Patriots had remaining, Bill Belichick decided that it was time to play some situational football. What does that mean? That means that Bradshaw got an open lane for a touchdown on 2nd-and-goal at the Patriots’ 6-yard line. The Patriots’ defensive line just stood up while its linebackers watched as Bradshaw hunkered at the 1-yard line, unsure if he was supposed to take the easy touchdown. Turns out, Eli Manning was yelling at him to not score. Manning, also thinking situational football, wanted to kill some more clock before letting Brady have at the Giants defense.
The question is simple: Do you hold for the field goal or lay down and put the game on your offense? Belichick says there’s a 90 percent chance of making a field goal at that range. That would put the Patriots down 18-17 with as little as 10 seconds remaining.
As much as it seems logical to allow a touchdown, everything about it feels wrong. And that proved true as Bradshaw’s touchdown became the game-winning score.
Maybe it’s my junior football mind speaking, but I want that 10 percent chance for something to go wrong. I want the opportunity to load up and go for the block and win the game rather than allow the loss.
These are the kind of decisions that keep you up at night.
Outside of the allowed touchdown, Wes Welker’s drop was every bit as critical as the wide receiver proclaimed it to be in his emotional postgame press conference. It’s tough because Welker’s usually sure hands would normally make that catch, a deep throw that was a little bit behind but still in a spot for him to get his hands on the ball. A reception there would have put the Patriots in Giants territory with a little more than 4 minutes remaining. Surely the Patriots would’ve finished the drive with at least a field goal. Instead, another incomplete pass to Deion Branch forced a Patriots punt that led to the Giants’ game-winning drive.
It was uncharacteristic of the Patriots. Much like Brady’s safety on New England’s first possession, there were too many mental errors for the team to recover. And then there was too little time.
For the Patriots to win the Super Bowl, with the way they played, they needed some help. And unlike the AFC championship, they were the ones making mistakes. For a team known to be smart, that distinction is unfortunately up in the air.
Zuri’s Tumblr- How interested are you in the best baseball player “you... May 17, 2012
- New York Times Co. sells its remaining stake in the Boston Red Sox - The Boston Globe online May 11, 2012
- Alex Smith says no rust on Randy Moss in first San Francisco 49ers workouts - ESPN May 11, 2012
- Globe circulation grows for the first time since 2004 - The Boston Globe online May 1, 2012
- "Now, following Belichick and company selecting Syracuse’s Chandler Jones and Alabama’s Dont’a..." April 27, 2012
-
Recent Comments
- Redesign this! | Zuri Berry: [...] What is Addisports? [...]...
-
Charlie Peters: Gotcha. I didn't read the story, and figure...
-
Maurice: My only problem is they should've fired the...
-
Zuri: In regards to the New York Post headline, i...
-
Now you can add comments to my site via Facebook
I’m not sure why it took me so long to do this. But I recall when Facebook commenting first went public, the plugins for WordPress sites like this one were overly complicated. So much so that I had to step away from the computer and wipe my memory after hours of tinkering. As of this morning, it took me only 10 minutes to find the plugin I wanted and set it up. That’s the beauty of the web. One minute it infuriates you, the next it’s the easiest thing in the world. C’est la vie.