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When sports reporters
date players, watch out!
By BUCKY FOX
of TheColumnists.com
No wonder Derek Lowe can’t get a handle on the baseball. He has his hands full with Carolyn Hughes.
How Lowe can Hughes go? To this level:
She was co-host of the Los Angeles Dodgers' pregame and postgame
shows. He’s a Dodger pitcher. They’re reportedly dating
in Manhattan Beach.
If journalism ethics aren’t a contradiction in terms, reporters
don’t rendezvous with sources. At least Fox TV knew it,
so dumped Hughes from the Dodger shows and exiled her to some
high school feature.
You had to figure Lowe and Hughes would hook up. They’re both gorgeous. He looks like the actor John Corbett. She’s a stunning TV blonde, as if that’s not redundant.
The first time I saw Hughes gaze up at Lowe for a clubhouse interview on TV early in the season, it hit me: They won’t be able to resist each other.
It turns out I was late. Lowe’s wife, Trinka, says the affair started in spring training.
You can bet Fox TV knew about it these last five months. And it kept Hughes covering Derek and the Dodgers.
Maybe it figured since the Dodgers have been the worst team in baseball after their 12-2 start--with Lowe contributing a crummy 8-11 record--no one was watching anyway.
I’m naïve enough to think this love fest starring L.A.’s cool pitcher and hot broadcaster is steamy news. I’m jarred that in America’s No. 2 media market, everyone--Fox TV, the L.A. Times, sports talk radio--stopped the story.
Only the last few days when Ron Fineman posted Derek-Carolyn photos on his website … and when Tom Leykis interviewed Trinka Lowe on his sweaty radio show … did the Times feel, uh, OK, maybe we’ll run something inside.
No wonder mainstream papers are losing readers faster than you can click SPORTSbyBROOKS.com.
Maybe this will wake up sleepy sports editors: If Lowe and Hughes are getting it on, we can assume plenty of other athletes and broadcasters are. Which again brings up the nut of all this: We can’t trust reporters when they’re in trysts with their sources.
Fox TV’s knockout Leeann Tweeden told FHM magazine that Shaq tried to hit on her. Figure that 100 other NBA guys did the same.
ESPN’s Suzy Kolber had to fend off a drunken Joe Namath on live TV. You see cute Kolber interview Ray Lewis and other star players, and you know they want to try more than Namath did.
Ditto with Fox’s Pam Oliver, CBS’ Bonnie Bernstein, ESPN’s Dana Jacobson and Hughes’ fellow fox, Lindsay Soto. Gorgeous broadcasters amid Adonises.
Guaranteed sexy reporters get as close to rich studs as steroids. As a woman friend remarked, why else do ladies take those jobs?
Don’t get me wrong. Passion is good. It makes for happy people--and for fun topics to write about.
I mean, this is the spiciest story since Kobe-Kate two years ago. That was another case of an L.A. athlete closing in on a salty blonde.
Only Kate Faber was no reporter. We weren’t trusting her to tell us what the Lakers were up to.
We were trusting Carolyn Hughes to do that with the Dodgers.
L.A. fans can only hope she’s pushing
Derek Lowe to pitch at a high level these days.
©2005 by Bucky Fox. This column first posted Aug. 8, 2005.
You can visit Bucky Fox's website at www.BuckyFox.com
You
can comment on this column online. Please address your message
to either "The Editors" or Bucky Fox. To send an email,
click here: talkback@thecolumnists.com
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