East Coast Bias

Andre Dawson played 21 major league seasons, swatting 438 home runs (many of them at the cusp of The Steroid Era), knocking in 1,509 runs with a .279 batting average. He was an MVP, a Rookie of the Year, an eight-time all-star outfielder and the kind of five-tool player (at least early in his career) that comes around once in a generation.

His name came up this week on a random sports talk radio show that my Sirius dial happened to land on, during a conversation about the Baseball Hall of Fame. The consensus, between hosts and caller, was that Dawson was worthy of consideration, but probably will never be enshrined.

"If only he had played in New York," they lamented, and I paraphrase.

East Coast Bias kills another supposed immortal.

ECB is an accepted condition in the sports world, like the annual injustice of the Bowl Championship Series and the curse of the Sports Illustrated cover/EA Sports cover/trading a fat drunk to the Yankees in order to fund your wife's Broadway musical. Like most myths, there is evidence that can debunk ECB, but sports fans will never let facts stand in the way of a good stereotype — like, for example, how ESPN's Dan Patrick this week referred to "how people view black quarterbacks" in the NFL and how Warren Moon bucked that trend ... a trend that didn't exist when Moon evidently began bucking it.

ESPN, as you know, is the worldwide leader in ECB. Californians complain. The Midwest complains. Don't these people know how difficult it is to present a complete picture of the American sports landscape and be the Iraqi Information Minister for the Boston Red Sox? ("Faltering forces of Bronx infidels cannot just enter a Fenway Park filled with thousands of fans and lay besiege to them! We have retaken the airport! There are no Yankees there!")

But Bostonian sports obsession is a symptom of ECB, just like those college polls that consistently weigh the accomplishments of Florida teams in football and ACC/Big East teams in basketball heavier than those out West. None of these symptoms speak to the cause, the epicenter of ECB, which is and always will be New York City.

What, do you honestly believe Boston's recent sports legends didn't need the Big Apple to achieve mythic status? That the Knicks/Celtics wars didn't have anything do with turning Boston basketball into Larry's Legend? That if the Red Sox's foil had been Toronto instead of the Yankees we'd continue to be deluged by Boston baseball stories, sights, and sounds? Can you imagine how much more celebrated the Patriots would be had they defeated the Giants in any of their Super Bowl wins?

ECB exists in some forms, no question about that. Look at Joe Namath, a quarterback whose off-field hype was amplified by the New York media far beyond his actual impact on the game. Look at Dwight Gooden, who generously had four great seasons, but in reality, wasn't much better than Bob Welch statically in the end. Harry Carson is in the Pro Football Hall of Fame because of the jersey he wore and not because of anything he did while wearing it. Gary Carter is in the Baseball Hall of Fame because of one season: 1986. And don't get me started on Patrick Ewing.

But as Robert DeNiro said to Al Pacino in "Heat," "There's a flipside to that coin." There is another kind of East Coast Bias — bias against East Coast players, and the pressures they overcome to succeed where others have failed.

I was reminded of this as Mike Piazza made his return to New York as a member of the San Diego Padres this week. He was warmly received by the same fans that were, at many times, cold to him during his seven-and-a-half-year tenure as a Mets catcher — because he never won a World Series for the franchise and, in fact, lost to the Yankees in his only trip to the championship round. Here's a player who had 655 RBI, 1,028 hits, 220 home runs in 972 games for the Mets and it wasn't good enough for some fans. Here's a player who competed through daily criticisms of his defense, demeanor, and leadership skills in the media, which also relished splashing stories about his sex life (and sexual preference) on the front pages of their tabloid newspapers.

That Piazza has had the Hall of Fame career he's had, playing for just over six seasons in Los Angeles and over seven in New York, is nothing short of extraordinary — imagine the numbers he could have put up had he remained in the cozy, unassuming confines of Miami instead of under those microscopes. But you'll never hear that mentioned as a factor in his immortality, because ECB doesn't swing that way — ECB props average players up, but never keeps star players down, evidently. Derek Jeter is going to have borderline Hall of Fame numbers by the end of his career, but there are more fans that see a good player elevated to greatness by a biased East Coast media than a great player who has endured under the most blinding spotlight in sports.

I think surviving in the most intense media market in the nation — and in front of the most demanding fans outside of the maniacs in Philadelphia — should be included as a measure of greatness for those players who thrived in the Big Apple, just like it should be a knock on any player who excelled outside of major market media scrutiny. I loved Dale Murphy as a player, but there was zippy/zilch/zero chance that the guy has a fraction of the success he had in sleepy Atlanta if he was the centerfielder for the New York Mets. He would have crumbled in that kind of spotlight, just like countless others have upon their arrival on the New York sports scene: Kenny Rogers, Ed Whitson, Danny Tartabull, Brett Saberhagen, Charles Smith, Pavel Bure, and countless others.

We're seeing another test of a great player in Pizza's replacement, Paul Lo Duca. Here's a guy who's been able to come in for the best hitting catcher of all-time and lead the Mets in batting average. Now, he's front-page news in New York, with a messy divorce and slander about massive gambling debts making headlines. All Lo Duca will have to do for the rest of the season is balance being the Gotham's newest tabloid target with trying to lead the Mets to their first world championship in 20 years.

Meanwhile, in Minnesota, Joe Mauer's biggest concern is what kind of gum to chew during the game.

Look, there's no question that ECB influences everything from Hall of Fame voting (Phil Rizzuto!?!) to sports television scheduling (Boston, Philadelphia, and the Rangers will appear on OLN a combined 22 times next season; Stanley Cup champion Carolina will appear four times).

But to ignore how much East Coast athletes must overcome in order to excel in the games they play is just as biased as the annual diagnosis of ECB by the rest of the nation's sports fans.

(One last note: if Andre Dawson makes the Hall of Fame, so does Jim Rice. And that would just lead to more crying about ECB, wouldn't it?)

Greg Wyshynski is the Features Editor for SportsFan Magazine in Washington, DC, and the Senior Sports Editor for The Connection Newspapers of Northern Virginia. His book is "Glow Pucks and 10-Cent Beer: The 101 Worst Ideas in Sports History." His columns appear every Saturday on Sports Central. You can e-mail Greg at [email protected].