THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 14, 1996 TAG: 9607140205
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BOB MOLINARO
LENGTH: 63 lines
Why can't a world that is dysfunctional enough to embrace Dennis Rodman accommodate Albert Belle?
Belle must be thinking the same thing.
Rodman is getting his own TV show, albeit on MTV. Belle gets nothing but grief.
Maybe it's the hair.
Rodman may be a cross-dressing, head-butting, body-piercing, semi-intelligible freak, but his ever-changing hair color helps make him appear clown-like, comical ... even harmless. At least, that's the guess here.
Rodman flaunts his weirdness and ends up in the company of Cindy Crawford and MTV bimbette Jenny McCarthy. Belle, meanwhile, is linked with menacing Marge Schott, a crude, chain-smoking outcast.
It's no wonder, then, that Belle said last week at the All-Star Game that he believes he is the target of a ``smear campaign.''
You don't hear the phrase ``smear campaign'' used much anymore. Sounds like a holdover from the McCarthy Era (That's Joe, no relation to Jenny).
Smear is an odd word to use in 1996, when every athlete's problem, it seems, boils down to ``getting no respect.''
Maybe smear leaped to Belle's tortured mind because he was in Philadelphia, home of cream cheese, the stuff you smear on bagels.
In any case, Belle is right about one thing: He can't seem to please anybody who isn't a Cleveland Indians fan.
Rodman, at first a mascot for the navel ring set, is inexplicably gaining mainstream celebrity. Albert, on the other hand, is a long way from receiving the No-Belle Peace Prize.
``I feel more like a politician than a baseball player,'' said Belle, who makes Bob Dole seem as cuddly as Barney.
Belle can't fathom why the media and baseball public have turned against him. Maybe it has something to do with his attempt to become the first 50-50 man.
Mr. Warmth wants to hit 50 homers and 50 sports writers.
But this still doesn't explain all Belle's problems. If the anti-hero shtick works for an extraterrestrial like Rodman, why doesn't it do anything for Belle's image?
Maybe it has something to do with baseball's demographics.
As if the Nielsen ratings weren't low enough for baseball's All-Star Game, viewership among teenagers and children under 12 was even more abysmal.
The most depressing statistic for baseball is this: The highest rating for the Midsummer Night's Snorefest came from men 55 and older.
Baseball may be in bigger trouble than people thought.
Was the National League's routine 6-0 victory a factor in the ratings? Apparently not. The Nielsens were lowest in the early innings.
The MTV crowd, the kids and teenagers who find Rodman amusing, might respond favorably to a baseball player as rude, angry and temperamental as themselves. They might admire him as a rebel.
They might, that is, if they were watching baseball. If they thought baseball was more interesting than calculus.
Too bad for Belle that baseball is most favored by the gray and aging, people incapable of seeing the humor in the Indian slugger's outbursts and belligerence.
Most of Belle's problems are of his own making. Those that aren't are created by demographics.
There's no smear campaign going on here. Belle can't be baseball's Dennis Rodman because baseball's fans aren't Rodman's audience. by CNB