Learning from Baseball, NASCAR … and the U.S. Navy SEALs
A guest editorial by Mark Gardiner

On the Monday following the AMA national at Fontucky, I went surfing at Coronado, off the public beach between the Naval Air Station and the U.S. Navy SEAL training center. After drying off, I hit a local café for a jolt and the papers.

I was pleasantly surprised to spot a color photo of Mat Mladin atop the San Diego Union-Tribune’s sports section. The banner referred me to the back page, where I found a detailed write-up and several large color pictures. It was the most extensive coverage of an AMA national that I can recall seeing in a major-market newspaper.

Mentally, I chalked up a win for AMA Pro Racing. After all, our sport attracts—at best—a niche audience in the U.S., so we crave attention from the mainstream media. When Bubba Stewart was profiled in Sports Illustrated, the SI story was treated as news in motorcycle magazines.

Then I read the text, written by the Union-Tribune’s Bill Center, in which he compared AMA Superbike racing to baseball and NASCAR—a writer’s trick he used to draw in mainstream readers.

"Want to see great racing that will put your hair on end? Watch an AMA Superbike road race.... In a word, breathtaking,"

So far, so good, eh? The stuff AMA dreams are made of. But Center continued:

"Which is about what you can expect to get from America's best riders off the track—a word.

“And Yogi Berra would have been so proud of Mladin’s answer when the rider was asked about the failed clutch that prevented him from winning all five of the races run so far in 2005.

“‘Yesterday is yesterday, today is today,’ Mladin said. ‘We’re living and breathing fresh air and it’s that old saying, racing is racing.’

“But Berra said those things with a twinkle in his eye. Mladin was cockily dead serious.”

Center finally admonished Mladin, "Lighten up, Mat, make your sport interesting to the masses. Sell it."

A close reading of Center’s argument makes it clear that he thinks AMA Superbikes are more exciting than NASCAR (duh!) but that stock cars are vastly more popular because their drivers project more “personality” than our riders.

Center is right, but for the wrong reasons. These days, our guys come across as boring because their real personalities have been homogenized by sponsor-thanking, sound bite-friendly PR spin directly inspired by NASCAR’s successful jump into the mainstream. Mladin’s content-free quote is exactly the kind of vapid comment we hear coming from every Nextel Cup winner’s circle. Which proves that in today’s money- and fame-obsessed America, context and delivery are everything.

My take on Mladin is that he’s reciting the contemporary NASCAR script, but that he’s making no effort to spin the man behind the words. To me, he’s an unapologetic, calculating hardass with a stone for a heart and a chip on his shoulder. I saw the same look in the eyes of several U.S. Navy SEALs running on the beach at dawn.

I think the San Diego Union-Tribune’s Bill Center was disturbed by the dissonance between Mladin’s script and his delivery. Maybe when Yosh lost the services of Ammar Bazzaz they should have drafted in Dale Carnegie. But I don’t think so.

Center takes Mladin to task for not being more likable, like Yogi Berra. But Mladin is not our sport’s Yogi Berra. He’s our sport’s Ty Cobb. A guy who doesn’t give a rat’s ass who likes him, as long as his opponents fear him. I know I could never beat Miguel or Aaron or Ben or Jake, but I truly give thanks that I don’t have to race against Mat.

My advice to Mat Mladin—not that he’s asking for it—is to drop the clichés and say only what’s really on his mind. I bet his comments would be few, far between, and fall on a spectrum from “The fact that you could ask that question proves you couldn’t appreciate the answer” to “Drop dead.” He would not be any more lovable. He probably wouldn’t even be likable. But he wouldn’t be any more sullen than Ty Cobb was, and he wouldn’t be boring. Trust me. There was something weirdly compelling about those SEALs out for a morning jog, and they were completely silent.

Mark Gardiner can be reached at markegardiner@yahoo.com.