Writer’s note: One Sixty-Two is a season-long series of blog posts connecting baseball’s major-league players to life’s universal themes. Just as there are 162 games in a season, so there will be 162 posts in this series. Let’s play some ball.
Day Fifty-Six: Nick Swisher, New York Yankees
Throughout the year, ESPN has been running an innovative collection of documentaries titled “30 for 30.” In the series, the network celebrates its 30 years of existence by airing one-hour documentaries about sports events from the past three decades, created by various filmmakers.
Last night, ESPN debuted “June 17, 1994,” directed by Brett Morgen. Without conducting a single retrospective interview and using only video footage from that day, Morgen has created a breathtaking review of one of the most fascinating days in recent sports history.
The New York Rangers are parading down Broadway to celebrate their first Stanley Cup in 54 years. Arnold Palmer is limping along the course at Oakmont in his final U.S. Open. The World Cup is getting underway in Chicago, with President Clinton and Oprah Winfrey welcoming the world. Ken Griffey Jr. has launched a homer off of David Cone to reach 30 home runs in a season faster than any man in baseball history.
In Madison Square Garden, the fast, furious and physical NBA Finals between the Houston Rockets and New York Knicks are set to play Game 5 on this evening. Patrick Ewing and Hakeem Olajuwon are both in search of their first-ever title, and the teams are about as evenly matched as the 2010 Celtics and Lakers are.
So much sports excitement. And yet, it is all being pushed aside without a moment’s hesitation. The news is out of Los Angeles: One of sports’ most celebrated superstars has been charged with murder, and the L.A. police cannot find him. As O.J. Simpson and the infamous white Ford Bronco become visible on the highways of Southern California later in the day, American television news is quickly ushered into a new era. It is an era of news as entertainment, as soap opera, as sensationalism, as reality and as 24-hour Shakespearean drama.
It’s a day that altered the way our news is covered, and its imprint is all over the electronic journalism we encounter today – from the 24/7 oil spill camera, to the coverage of Tiger Woods and Michael Jackson, to the up-to-the-moment critiques and analysis of every political maneuver, to the constant overlap of news and reality television (balloon boys, White House gate crashers, American Idols, and YouTube sensations, to name a few).
My brother was showing me his Twitter account the other day, and he was explaining how it all works. He was using his iPhone to search around Twitter for people to “follow,” and he came across a very popular Twitter page for New York Yankees outfielder Nick Swisher. The people who follow Swisher’s Twitter page get any up-to-the-moment thoughts that the friendly Yankee slugger has to share each day. How was last night’s game, Nick? What are you up to today? Who are your Twitter friends? Swisher has voluntarily placed a portion of his life on display every minute of every day. He knows that his fans crave nothing less.
Technology has changed dramatically over the past 16 years. But the cultural shift of June 17, 1994, is guiding what we do with this technology: We create our own news, our own realities, and give ourselves the constant rush of something new. We want to be both consumers and newsmakers at once, so we take off for the highway overpass and wave to the cameras following the Juice.
You don’t get to follow a Ford Bronco through L.A. every day, with one of the best football players in history holding a gun to his head in the back seat. But when nearly 100 million people tune in to watch something as gripping as this, they want to know one thing: What’s next?
It’s June 17, 2010. Turn on your phone, your laptop, your TV. He’s still there, still in that Bronco. It never ends. It never has. There’s always something next.
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