Courtesy Naples News

(January 26, 2009) I have always believed that a public person has a tremendous obligation to the public. Meaning that someone like me, who makes their living because of your love of sports, has an obligation to make themselves available to you.

Athletes should sign autographs and accommodate their fans whenever possible. In my case, it is to always take the time to talk to anyone who stops me, while also answering all e-mails, letters and phone calls. Most everyone I've worked with over the last 22 years has said I'm nuts. I've never understood how someone like me could behave otherwise.

Last week, some hackers took control of my personal e-mail address. It has caused me a great deal of aggravation. I've lost so much personal and professional information. On top of that, the hackers are claiming that I'm in trouble and soliciting everyone that I know for money. It has not been fun.

However, a few good things have come out of losing my longtime e-mail address:

I haven't been told how much I stink in five days. (Too many times a day to count)

I haven't had someone tell me how they are going to try and get me fired in five days. (Daily happening)

I haven't had my life threatened in five days. (weekly event)

It hasn't been wished that my wife will die of cancer and my daughter of AIDS in the last five days. (Two weeks ago)

This doesn't include the "comments" left beneath my columns at www.naplesnews.com. I haven't read those in over a year because it's usually the same people saying the same things after every column. To summarize: "I'm a fat piece of ----."

So now it is time for me to get a new e-mail address. Which got me to thinking, should I continue to give it out to the listeners and readers? My first reaction was a quick "yes." I not only value what they have to say, but how can I relate to what the fans are thinking if I don't know what they are thinking?

Upon more careful consideration, I began to feel the same way that many of today's athletes feel toward today's fans. Contempt. Indifferent. Why bother?

Why bother? That's the key question to be answered.

Let me frame it this way. The two of us -- sports media/the sports fans -- are married. It's been a good marriage. Lots of give and take and mutual respect by each side for years. Lately however, nothing but fighting. The love remains somewhere but the respect and friendship part of the relationship seems gone. So now, I feel the way many in the sports media feel. Is this relationship worth saving? Can it be anything close to what it was before, or has there been too much damage done?

Don't get me wrong, we're going to stay married. Divorce is not an option. There are only two options. Will we finish our years as a loveless sham of a marriage? Or, will we realize that we've both lost our way and we need to find it again?

I can go either way. The first option is easier. I ignore you. I write my columns and host the sports-talk shows and go home. I don't read any of your e-mails. I do my thing and you do yours. I basically fake it for the rest of my career, while you don't seem to know or care.

I would prefer the second option. Maybe we spend parts of 2009 trying to salvage this relationship. The first thing they do in couples counseling is get each side to tell the other what is really bothering them. How about if you tell me what you really want? Now, from what I can gather, you only want a couple of things: Great things said about your favorite team no matter what, and horrible things said about their rivals no matter what.

I'm sure you want more than that, but that's about all I hear from you anymore.

What do I want from you? A realization that sports today is not something in which there can be universal agreement. Sports today is far more complicated than the "good ol' days." It needs to be OK to agree to disagree occasionally without the other side being a piece of ... . Otherwise, there are two options. Stop reporting and just print propaganda, or dumb down the conversations so that it all looks like one big message board.

I did not write this column to stop the e-mails of which I've referred to earlier. I wrote this column to get what Nixon once believed was "the silent majority" to think about where we go from here.

I will do the same. For the record, I've worn as a badge of honor the slashed tires, broken windshields, drinks poured on me, being cursed at in public, threatening postcards to my daughter ... because I've always believed that you (the silent majority) are worth it.

I'm not so sure anymore.

And that, far more than the angry words or threats, scares the heck out of me.

So where do we go from here?