Forgive me, but it remains no less outrageous today than in 2017. And I continue to write it because I don’t know what else to do. I can’t suffer in silence what ESPN did and continues to do to an innocent man.
Who wouldn’t be eager to unshackle a man convicted and sentenced to a life of despair and misery based on a single bogus claim quickly followed by a mad rush to judgment based on zero evidence?
With the start of the Australian Open on ESPN on Sunday, ESPN’s bosses — from Disney CEO Bob Iger to ESPN chair Jimmy Pitaro and all who played and still play a role in the logic-defying persecution and prosecution of an innocent man — have another opportunity to admit that what they did to longtime tennis analyst Doug Adler was cruel and cowardly, making for a lasting injustice.
Why are those in position to remedy an indisputable wrong avoiding their responsibility and accountability — not to mention consciences?
To refresh, Adler was summarily fired for racism in the first degree when, during the 2017 Australian Open, he praised Venus Williams with this:
“You see Venus move in and put the guerrilla effect on.” And then, to make himself absolutely clear, he added “charging,” as in charging the net.
Also known as poaching, the use of ambush or “guerrilla” tactics had become so commonplace that Nike had previously produced a TV ad series in which Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi played “guerrilla tennis.”
To that end, I challenge any and all Disney and ESPN shot-callers to appear in a public forum, listen to Adler’s actual words on tape — “You see Venus move in and put the guerrilla effect on, charging” — then declare in public that Adler, for no apparent reason nor sensible context, called her “a gorilla.”
In an act of revolting cowardice, ESPN, instead of defending Adler from such a ludicrous claim issued on Twitter by an attention-hungry and reckless N.Y. Times tennis stringer, immediately fired Adler as a racist.
Up at ESPN it quickly became “Run for your life! The N.Y. Times may come after us in its next day’s edition! Act fast! Fire that guy, ASAP! Dee-fense! Dee-fense!”
But the Times, likely because it knew its stringer was dead wrong, did nothing. The Times just let it go, never mentioning the injustice that had befallen Adler based on a Times reporter’s fabrication or, at best, twisted guesswork.
Put it this way: Had Adler called Williams “a gorilla,” that would have been Page 1 in the New York Times.
Still, the Times, paragon of reporting social injustice from near and far, has allowed the injustice it helped perpetrate against Adler from within, then acted as if it were none of its business. And still not a word.
And six years later, no Disney or ESPN exec has had the decency to act on Adler’s behalf. Let him rot.
Weeks after his termination as “a racist,” he suffered a heart attack to add to his destroyed career, reputation and mental health. You think ESPN even knew that Adler, an All-American at Southern Cal, annually hosted, with no pay, a tennis clinic for poor black kids in Washington?
The entire sports media and tennis world, including the social injustice activist Williams sisters, played stupid or unconcerned. They didn’t want to be involved in such an unpleasant matter. The truth be damned!
ESPN’s John McEnroe and Chris Evert aren’t nearly the candid, truth-be-told tennis commentators we hear and read about. Even if an innocent man was sentenced to life, there was, uh-oh, a racial element, thus to hell with the truth!
So why doesn’t Disney/ESPN display the courage of its convictions? Play that tape in public of what Adler said then declare in a public forum that he called Williams “a gorilla.”
It won’t happen because it didn’t happen. And the Disney/ESPN bosses know it!
Yet, Robert Griffin III, a black ex-NFL QB and now a nonsensical ESPN football analyst, last month let slip a grotesque slur for African-Americans. Fired? Suspended? Publicly censured? Nope. Nothing. ESPN just let it slide.
So Doug Adler, 65 this week, for a sixth consecutive Australian Open sits and awaits vindication — maybe even an apology — that won’t be coming. You can’t shame the shameless.
And everyone who allowed this to happen to him, with not a word of dissent then or now, are guilty of rank, inhumane cowardice. They continue to allow the destruction of an innocent man.
Zach didn’t get guidance from QB vets, or LaFleur
Interesting that recently dismissed Jets offensive coordinator Mike LaFleur last week said QB Zach Wilson would have benefitted had he been on the sidelines learning from veteran QBs as they played.
That brought to mind the tough-to-shake images from this season’s Jets preseason telecast on CBS. Several times they showed an injured Wilson seated in a PSL Stadium luxury box, having a drink and a good time while watching the game with friends.
Seemed Wilson should have been in school that day, on the sideline or in a booth with an assistant coach, learning something about defenses and more about quarterbacking, perhaps to pick up something that could benefit him and his team during the season.
But it was time wasted.
Another fella who I’d like to be seated beside during a football game: Jets QB Mike White.
Stop the presses! FS1 facts-free blowhard Colin Cowherd last week checked in on the Giants with this inside enlightenment: “So I think they’ve made a decision upstairs: They’ve told Brian Daboll, ‘We’re not gonna get rid of ya.’ ”
Yep, after a winning season and making the playoffs for the first time since 2016, the Giants, according to Cowherd, are likely to retain Daboll.
FAN duo delivers slam dunks
Chris Carrino and Tim Capstraw, as heard on WFAN’s Celtics-Nets on Thursday, still call a strong game — no shouting, no gimmicks, no rah-rah silliness, just clean, candid you-are-here basketball.
As hip and happening as Bleacher Report sells itself, it still features Stu Feiner as a gambling tout. Feiner was fined by the NYC Department of Consumer Affairs for “false and misleading advertising” — for being what’s known as a “scamdicapper.” Sports Illustrated once tracked him going 19-32 — while advertising that his clients were “cleaning up.”
Fox’s Greg Olsen is the analyst on today’s Giants-Vikings. Don’t suppose anyone from Fox has encouraged him to speak a bit slower and a lot less, do you? Nah, such good advice is never spoken within any network.
Because football is statistically presented as baseball, and because it’s bound to come up Sunday as something Fox deems significant, the Bears, the worst team in the NFL at 3-14, converted 41 percent of their third downs. The 9-7-1 Giants finished at 37 percent. And remember: All third downs and their circumstances are exactly the same!
With the NFL choosing Atlanta as a neutral site if there’s a Chiefs-Bills AFC Championship, reader Tim Crowe suggests that Rob Manfred’s removal of the MLB All Star game from Atlanta due to Georgia’s “Jim Crow” legislation may have been a case of purely political pandering.
We close today with the wisdom of Jed Clampett, who — when asked by his nephew, Jethro Bodine, how to attract women — said: “Well, if you wanna know what kind of bait they’re bitin’ on, ask the fella who’s catchin’ his limit.”
