Carol Williams said she doesn’t want to sound like she’s whining when she questions Union-Tribune coverage of her husband’s La Mesa championship baseball team. “I’m just a proud wife,” she explained.
Williams, who met her husband, Richard, when she was a Grossmont High School song leader and he was on the school’s basketball and baseball teams, was among readers who complained about Union-Tribune coverage of championship youth and adult teams. Their comments were prompted by Sports section and front-page stories and photos of the Oceanside American All-Stars who played in the Little League World Series last month in Pennsylvania.
“The coverage of the Oceanside Little League Team has been great,” she wrote in an e-mail. “Being at the World Series is HUGE for those boys and their community.” She noted that she and her husband of 42 years watched all the televised Oceanside games.
Even so, she wanted to know, why hadn’t Sports covered the senior softball team — her husband’s team — that won a gold medal at the Senior Olympic Games in Baton Rouge in July?
In fact, an article about her husband’s team appeared in the Union-Tribune Aug. 4. However, the story did not appear in Sports. Although it ran on the cover of the B-section, readers who get their Union-Tribune in San Diego, National City or Oceanside wouldn’t have seen it. The article appeared only in the edition that goes to East County.
“If Little League coverage makes the front page, I feel senior softball gold medal/(senior) Olympic coverage at least deserves a comprehensive piece in the Sports section so that the whole county can read about this accomplishment,” she wrote.
Williams isn’t the only one to question why the newspaper does not give other championship teams the same kind of coverage the Oceanside Little Leaguers received.
The Union-Tribune carries scores of local teams involved in regional or national tournaments, but that’s bare-bones information. Printing of the scores depends on whether the team or the tournament organizers provide them in a timely fashion. Even then, they appear in the small type used for sports statistics.
On Aug. 24, the day the Union-Tribune reported on the front page that the Oceanside boys lost to the Bronx, there was another story in the paper about the Vista girls’ softball league that brought home its second national championship in two years.
The disparate treatment of the two teams did not escape Lucy Saltmarsh of Encinitas who noted the winning girls were on the cover of the North Coast edition while the boys were on the front page of the A-section.
Another reader cited at least five other boys baseball teams that have taken national honors in their leagues.
“I knew we would have complaints,” said Sports editor Chuck Scott. “There are a lot of youth teams that I knew would see the (Oceanside) coverage and say it’s not fair. It’s a very legitimate point to make.”
Part of the problem is that youth teams in particular are victims of their own success. There are so many teams locally, not just for baseball and softball, but for soccer, water polo, basketball, football. Name the sport.
“That’s where you have to make a call on what we cover and what we don’t and be consistent and fair. If you do a big story and a photo on a 12-and-under softball team going to the national championship, you have to do the same thing with the 14-and-under softball team.”
That still doesn’t explain why Oceanside American All-Stars received the coverage they did.
Scott explained that interest in their games went beyond the family and friends of team members and coaches. Little League was founded in 1939, and the first championship game was televised in 1963. Television coverage of the World Series helps promote interest beyond those who know someone on the team or a coach.
“I remember watching it as a kid when it was on ABC’s ‘Wide World of Sports,’” Scott said of the Little League World Series. Interest in the series has mushroomed to the point where 19 games were televised this year, he said.
The reason the Oceanside American All-Stars received so much space in the newspaper is the same reason some professional and college sports are covered so thoroughly and others are not. Reader interest. The sports that attract the interest of many thousands of readers rather than a few dozen or even a few hundred are the ones that the newspaper makes sure it covers.
It may not be fair, but it’s the reality.
