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Howard Altman Columns
Last month, I had another of my occasional opportunities to return to the world of sportswriting, popping into Port St. Lucie for a feature about a baseball player.
It was a freelance piece and one I was more than happy to do for a variety of reasons, including being an interesting change of pace.
Though a nice break from covering war and its aftermath, it also served as a reminder that the world I cover here is far more familiar. And ultimately, far more important.
Even though I grew up playing baseball, wanting to be a baseball player when I grew up, and coaching it when I finally did, the professional locker room is a foreign place.
There are, of course, similarities between covering athletes and the military. We in the media are not always thought highly of by either and trust is hard to earn.
I don’t mind having to earn trust. I think it is a worthwhile process that benefits the readers when successful.
It’s the end result that makes me wonder.
An athlete can tell you about how an important play was made, how an injury was suffered and how a contract is being negotiated. Maybe Game 5 of the 2015 World Series seemed like a matter of life and death to Mets fans.
But my sources in the military tell me real stories about life and death. About living through the horrors of combat, or sending troops into harms’ way, or how and why this nation will spend half a trillion dollars a year on the armed services.
The difference between covering the military and sports really hit home when I was working on a profile of Mets pitcher Matt Harvey for The New York Observer.
As I do with any such story, I reached out to people who knew Harvey, including his father. I wanted to know what Harvey was like as a child, as a young man and as a ballplayer.
Ed Harvey was Matt Harvey’s coach at Fitch High School in Connecticut, so for me there was an added bonus. As someone who coached his kids, I wanted to talk about the sheer joy of that, one of the best experiences of my life. I had a similar discussion last year with the parents of Jacob deGrom, who live on a large plot of land not too far from Daytona and were as gracious as could be. It was a conversation, however, set up by the Mets.
Apparently, reaching out to the Harvey family on my own was the wrong move.
There was consternation from the Harveys that I reached out without going through official channels. So much so that I almost blew the interview.
I smoothed things out, explaining that I usually cover the military and that whenever I do a story like this I reach out to family members.
Like, for instance, when I profiled William McRaven before he came to Tampa to command U.S. Special Operations Command, I reached out to his sister. By calling directly, not going through the Socom public affairs shop or any other official channel.
Or the too many times I have had to reach out to the family of a service member, or law enforcement officer, killed in the line of duty.
There are no official channels to wait on in those cases.
Far more often than not, those families generously give of their time at the worst moment when asked to talk about their lost loved one. To tell of the hopes and dreams and service to the nation. Because more than explain the story behind a box score, it is a chance to talk about someone who gave their life in defense of the nation.
This is not a knock on Harvey, who sat down with me for almost an hour, or his family, or the Mets, who were, as always, extremely helpful during my short parachute visit into their world.
Those are the established ground rules I violated, albeit unwittingly.
But the situation, to me, speaks volumes to the difference between the two worlds.
Athletes are adored since school, and rewarded lavishly with large contracts and endorsement deals.
Those who serve, on the other hand, are not.
For comparison purposes, let’s look at Harvey, who is 27 and is in his fourth season in the majors and at an Army sergeant with the same amount of time in uniform.
Harvey this year will earn about $4 million, a salary likely to jump to at least $30 million per year when team control runs out at the end of the 2018 season.
A sergeant going into the fourth year of service will earn a little more than $31,000. Even Army Gens. Joseph Votel, the head of U.S. Central Command who is in charge of U.S. military operations in the Middle East and Southwest Asia, and Tony Thomas, who runs Socom, earn “only” about $237,000 a year.
And while Harvey did blow out his elbow, the sergeant faces death or injury, in combat or during training. And while no one should cry for generals when it comes to perks, to run an operation like Centcom or Socom makes puts the pressure of performing in the World Series into perspective.
Not that pitching in a World Series is easy.
If it were, I would have, because that was my dream growing up.
But there was this little issue of talent, of which I had not nearly enough.
Beyond the remuneration discrepancies, the difference between the two worlds I’ve covered boils down to this: Far more people in this country can tell you who won last year’s World Series than anything about what’s going on in, for instance, Afghanistan, where 10,000 U.S. troops still remain.
And while I like sports, and remain a huge baseball fan, I find this dismaying.
Which is why I think it important to remind readers, regardless of how they feel about the military or war or U.S. involvement in foreign affairs, of those costs. In blood and treasure. Because those expenditures are made in their name on and their dime.
I don’t envy sports scribes who have to cover games then stand around waiting for an athlete to give them precious morsels of wisdom, generally delivered from the Acme Institute of Cliche playbook (not that the military doesn’t have its own cliches, the difference usually being that they are often inexplicable).
As much as I love watching a pitcher strike out the side, or see a great play at short, or watch a long home run, I much prefer being in an MRAP, or at MacDill Air Force Base, or at James A. Haley Veterans’ Hospital then in the locker room.
Sure, watching the Royals beat the Mets last year stung.
But it’s what happens on the battlefield, and in the aftermath, that really matters.
❖ ❖ ❖
The Pentagon announced a death last week in support of Operation Inherent Resolve.
Airman First Class Nathaniel H. McDavitt, 22, of Glen Burnie, Maryland, died April 15 in Southwest Asia as a result of injuries sustained after extreme winds caused structural damage to the building in which the airman was working.
He was assigned to the 52nd Equipment Maintenance Squadron at Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany.
There have been 2,347 U.S. troop deaths in support of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, 21 U.S. troop deaths and one civilian Department of Defense employee death in support of the follow-up Operation Freedom’s Sentinel in Afghanistan, and 13 troop deaths and one civilian death in support of Operation Inherent Resolve, the fight against the so-called Islamic State.
haltman@tampatrib.com
(813) 259-7629
Twitter: @haltman- See more at: http://www.tbo.com/list/military-news/altman/the-military-battlefield-not-the-ballfield-is-life-and-death-20160417/#sthash.6c0P5LB9.dpuf
