The hunter becomes the hunted

There was a point in time where athletes - and for the sake of this post, baseball players - were pretty normal guys.

Before inflated salaries made "sports star" a high end profession on the pay scale, most players made a few thousand a year and lived comfortably, but not miles apart from a mechanic, baker or reporter.

I've read pieces that suggest players and reporters traveling together on the team's dime wasn't such a massive conflict of interest in the 30s and 40s because they were all in the same basic pay grade.

That's what was interesting about this interview that Deadspin - how do you categorize Will Leitch? Kingpin? Founder? Overlord? - writer Will Leitch did on ESPN Radio.

The question about Deadspin's Super Bowl coverage came up and Scott Van Pelt's assertion that ESPN's on-air talent was being stalked as the bloggers waited for them to screw up.

All of this is reminiscent of the change the sports world saw when players went from being categorized as athletes and became celebrities and entertainers.

Not so much fun, is it fellas?

I'd need a lot more space than would be interesting or worthwhile here to get into the whole dynamic and what I consider to be out of bounds - not that I have any great insight, I just have a lot of opinions.

There are a lot of other facets to the interview and larger discussion - mainly the emergence of Internet journalism versus it being a new format for knuckleheads to spew stupidity - but it seems that the years of peace and professional courtesy afforded by the established media are coming to an end.

(Image from: thecia.com.au)