Its time to cut Stevie Williams some slack

First appeared on August 9th, 2011
in The Lebanon Reporter

It needs to stop and it needs to stop now. What is “it” you may or may not be asking? To quote a once famous talk show diva: “Stop the insanity!” When Stevie Williams walked off the 18th green Sunday after caddying for Adam Scott during the latter’s win in the Bridgestone Invitational, a microphone was thrust in his face.
And while it’s only a mild news story that anyone would take the time to interview a caddie, the bombshell came when Williams, obviously still bitter over his recent firing by Tiger Woods, didn’t hesitate to show it. And it’s an understatement to say he threw golf’s most controversial player under the bus. Williams threw Woods under the bus, and then backed the bus up to let every sponsor who has ever dumped Tiger as a spokesperson climb aboard before running his former boss over again.

Don’t get me wrong, what Williams said was outrageous. In a win that was clearly more the product of Adam Scott’s steady play than anything Williams could have possibly contributed, the caddie referred to himself more than 20 times in a 2 minute interview.

But the real issue here isn’t that Williams spoke like he’d singlehandedly won the Tour De France, Super Bowl and Presidency of Burkina Faso all in the same day, the real issue is that someone approached him at a vulnerable time.

In the world of mass media, there’s muckraking and there’s pot-stirring. Unfortunately many today bend towards the latter. These King of backhanded compliments are expert needlers, highly skilled at creating stories in places they may be nonexistent.

For scientific purposes (which could lead to the possibility of securing future congressional funding for further study) let’s call this issue the “Jim Gray Syndrome”. Those media members afflicted with JGS have an uncanny knack for giving people a platform at the exact moment they realize their victims are about to say something controversial.

Causes of JGS are traced to both a chemical imbalance in the brain and because deep down inside, in places we don’t talk about at family barbecues or the waiting rooms of our therapists, most of us love sensationalism. We enjoy watching the rich and famous getting beat up during an interview or saying outrageous things (see West, Kanye).

But in this instance, despite the ridiculous nature of his comments, Williams deserves some slack. It’s only natural to expect caddies to have the rare combination of supernatural powers and the ability to remain grounded, but Williams was emotional. It’s tapping into these emotions that remains the inherent danger of shoving a microphone into someone’s face at the wrong time.

To avoid a JGS flare up, Athletes need time to “decompress” as George Costanza once put it. It’s called the heat of the moment and it’s more than just a song by Asia (which by the way is the single greatest rock group ever to be named for a continent). There needs to be a stronger effort made to avoid the heat of the moment.

The sight of Jim Gray swimming upstream through a crowd of World Series champions in the throes of excessive celebration just to shove a microphone in the face of someone who would rather give his manager a wedgie than talk to an announcer has grown tiresome.

It has to stop now. Unfortunately there’s no known cure for JGS; therefore more funding is necessary. This means we need either more congressional dollars or a telethon. In the case of the latter I’m picturing Jim Gray as host with a performance from Kanye West minus the 7 second delay.

© 2011 Eric Walker Williams