Deadspin has it now, but they cite a forthcoming Philadelphia Inquirer piece detailing the allegations.
Bill Conlin resigns
- Thread starter CoolPapaBellhorn
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Tell me about it, at least this stuff is getting reported now and he won't be able to do it again, and hopefully this causes more of the abused to come forward and report it.
The rash of sports-related molestation charges coming out is reminiscent of the Catholic Church's dark times about ten years ago. Just unreal.
I'd be curious to know if he wrote any articles about sandusky and if so, what was his take. I would assume every sports columnist has written something about it, no?
Here's the Philly Inquirer story:
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/breaking/20111220_Four_say_Philly_Daily_News_writer_Bill_Conlin_sexually_abused_them_as_children.html
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/breaking/20111220_Four_say_Philly_Daily_News_writer_Bill_Conlin_sexually_abused_them_as_children.html
The story is up now.
The lack of action by the kids' parents (after learning of the abuse) is mind-boggling:
The lack of action by the kids' parents (after learning of the abuse) is mind-boggling:
It was a different time back then. The parents undoubtedly wanted to spare their kids from having to appear in court to accuse him and make their "shame" public, and probably thought that if you sternly warn someone like Conlin to stop, that would be enough to make them stop. Unfortunately that sort of innocence is part of the reason why we now know that these monsters will continue to indulge their sick desires if not locked up.
The story is quite remarkable, in the sense that the "kids" all seem to have reported it at the time and no one did anything about it except to try to keep Conlin away from the victims.
The most amazing thing to me is what happened when one of the victims - Kelley Blanchet, who is now a prosecutor in New Jersey and is also Conlin's niece - decided to attend the funeral of her aunt (Conlin's wife Irma.)
The entire thing is a bit surreal.
The most amazing thing to me is what happened when one of the victims - Kelley Blanchet, who is now a prosecutor in New Jersey and is also Conlin's niece - decided to attend the funeral of her aunt (Conlin's wife Irma.)
After this incident, Blanchet decided that she and others could no longer stay quiet, so they went to prosecutors in Gloucester County and gave sworn statements. The prosecutors apparently managed to uncover more victims, but none were within the statute of limitations. After the Penn State case broke, the group apparently decided to bring the story to the press.
The entire thing is a bit surreal.
I agree 100%. A similar incident happened to a few members of my junior high basketball team in the early 1980's. The perpetrator was allowed to walk away scott-free without the police being involved when he should have had a nice stay behind bars. The worst part was that this happened right under my nose and I had no idea that it was going on. I was just a kid, but it never occurred to me back then while adult hindsight has shown me that a few warning signs were there.
Conlin always came across on tv like the perfect bully, just civilizing himself enough to be acceptable in whatever forum it was. You couldn't help but imagine that in another circumstance, with no one or no likely repercussion to keep him in check that he'd be a complete and total asshole. And so he was.
That really is startling phrasing given what now appears to be true.
It somehow reminds me of the 1st or second season of Saturday Night Live where Belushi appeared in a fake commercial about a Rape Hotline "Because after a man's committed a rape . . and feels bad about it, a man might need to talk to someone." Conlin probably didn't realize it was a joke and wrote down the number.
The brazenness of his practically inviting attention with "I know first-hand . . " is amazing.
It seems to me that you are reading what natty said, the "I know first-hand..." as if it were a direct quotation from Conlin. Unless I missed it in the article (or I'm misinterpreting your post Rough) he did not actually say that. Natty was just saying that Conlin's description of the bystander effect in the Kitty Genovese case reads as if he were saying that.
And yet, we'll see the morality clause invoked to keep people who may have used steroids out of the Hall of Fame.
I hope Sandusky and Conlin are not cellmates, I hope that their cellmates are extremely large gentlemen who have a fetish for older fellas.
Fuck the BBWAA, and the hall of fame. So here's where we stand. Gambling.. NO BANNED FOR LIFE. Child molestation? Nothing to do with baseball, we're good.
Unfortunately, the statute of limitations has long since passed on Conlin's crimes, so he won't be spending time in any cell.
Unless newer allegations are uncovered, he will be pilloried in the court of public opinion and made a social pariah. Just have to hope that's enough for people to keep defenseless children away from him.
I covered Penn State football with Conlin during the 1970s. He was a perfectly normal guy, sort of the George Kimball of Philly, only with more writing talent. We were together on New Year's Eve in New Orleans when Clemente's plane went down and his sadness was palpable. I considered him a friend. So once again, just like with Paterno and Penn State, people you thought you knew, you really didn't.
Well, fuck that guy. It's kind of sad how many people are turning out to be total shitheads these days.
Conlin has been portrayed as a verbal bully by some people since the news broke. Truth is, he sometimes paid for what he wrote. Back in the late 1960s after mocking the Phillies in print, Bill got on an elevator during a road trip. Three Phillies got on at the next floor and by the time the elevator reached the lobby, Conlin was laying in the corner, having been pounded on by the angry players. To his credit, he took it as part of the job. You write bad stuff about players, sometimes you pay the price. If athletes did that today, they'd be arrested and the story would be all over the Internet.
Wasn't there some writer who worked in Philly for a year or two who said that Conlin and a couple other of the long time writers there acted like a junior high school clique on steroids trying to make the other guy write things the way they did?
Yeah, a good one. Bill Conlin. He used to tell the story on himself to much guffaws. He got beat up by a Penn State assistant athletic director once, too. That might have been a one-punch affair, if memory serves.
As for Rough's inquiry, I have no real evidence, not having worked in Philly in 30 years. (I actually worked in the suburbs.) A sports writer from my Pawtucket paper did eventually become a Philly baseball writer. He found Conlin to be gruff on the outside but eventually my friend was accepted by the old-timer. Conlin stayed way too late at the dance, writing until he was 77. His writings for the past decade were way too fixated on the old days, and he made himself look silly by arguing against sabremetrics, saying he preferred to believe what he saw with his own two eyes.
TN, did it ever occur to you he was lying/exaggerating the story to enhance his own perceived toughness? I would have trouble believing a single word out of his mouth considering he's been covering up his own misdeeds for years.
Conlin's writing that I've seen was beyond awful, his TV appearances were reminiscent of Skip Bayless and he appeared to revel in his own ignorance and bullying. Like Mariotti getting arrested for domestic violence, Conlin getting into legal hot water doesn't make me sad in the slightest.
Conlin's writing that I've seen was beyond awful, his TV appearances were reminiscent of Skip Bayless and he appeared to revel in his own ignorance and bullying. Like Mariotti getting arrested for domestic violence, Conlin getting into legal hot water doesn't make me sad in the slightest.
Well, the punch line to his story was he got beaten to a pulp. If anything, it was a self-deprecating story whose moral was one that all sports writers know: If you write bad stuff, be prepared to face the music in the locker room the next day. That only goes for beat writers, of course. The modern radio talk show people like Felger and Mazz and even Michael Holley rarely venture inside a locker room anymore.
I appreciate your linkage to Mariotti. The cases are similar. Two overblown scribes with massive egos. I have no syympathy for either, too. But what Bill's case, and Paterno's, has taught me is that any of us can ruin our names and our legacies with one major blunder, especially in an era when nothing is shoved under the rug. The good news is, most of us are really good people who don't make those kind of misjudgements.
The reason I don't buy the story is that it does reinforce his "toughness" even if he's seen as a victim. If you believe him, he quite literally "took one for team" and then acted like a stand up guy by not saying anything. (Except for telling all his friends in the media.)
The other reason I don't believe it is that it simply doesn't ring true. There have been many instances of athletes or coaches getting hot and popping a writer (which is why I believe the story about a Penn St. AD) but I have literally never heard about athletes ganging up on a sportswriter and beating him to a pulp, if only because the risks involved for the players are high, and the odds that they were going to be exposed are also high. I mean, you beat up a member of the media and I think it's a pretty good bet that he's going to write about it.
On course, I can rip off a number of examples where people make up stories about themselves being attacjed to either excuse behavior that they are trying to hide or to glorify themselves. Seems likely that this is one of those.
And to Awesome Fossum's point, the stories indicate that Conlin was likely molesting a lot of kids over a period covering decades, so you might want to rethink the notion of "one major blunder."
Rough, I think that was written up on a sportswriters' message board { http://www.sportsjournalists.com ?}
The reporter who got frozen out was Michael Bamberger, then of the Inquirer and now of SI. Conlin wasn't involved -- he was no longer the baseball beat writer. I'm pretty sure he was a columnist by then, which presumably kept him in town more often to be close to his young victims. It was veteran writers from other Philly-area papers. Here's the memoir (good piece. It would actually really suck on many levels to work as a major league baseball beat writer):
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1011214/index.htm
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1011214/index.htm
Pretty interesting back-and-forth between Conlin and Daulerio before the news hit:
http://deadspin.com/5870204/a-conversation-with-bill-conlin-the-day-before-the-inquirer-dropped-its-molestation-story
http://deadspin.com/5870204/a-conversation-with-bill-conlin-the-day-before-the-inquirer-dropped-its-molestation-story
In the end, this guy says, we only know ourselves:
http://www.philly.com/philly/sports/20111222_Bob_Ford__Allegations_portray_a_Conlin_that_fellow_columnist_never_knew.html
http://www.philly.com/philly/sports/20111222_Bob_Ford__Allegations_portray_a_Conlin_that_fellow_columnist_never_knew.html
nattysez said:
Whate Conlin actually wrote:
“Everybody says he will do the right thing,” Conlin wrote. “But the moment itself has a cruel way of suspending our fearless intentions.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/11/sports/bill-conlin-sportswriter-who-quit-after-molestation-claims-dies-at-79.html
E5 Yaz said:
Oh, you mean like the cruelty of a tattle-taling 7-year-old suspending your fearless intentions to sexually abuse her, Bill?
I hated his pompous, condescending, bloviating ass from the very first moment he opened his mouth on The Sports Reporters. And that was long before the accusations became public. I hope his carcass gets raped by centipedes and fire ants for all eternity.
mabrowndog said:
I met the guy in 1998. I was working for the Wilmington, DE team of the short lived Maryland Fall Baseball League. He came to one of our games (we had Phillies prospects and we were close to Philly) and the guy was a total ass. He sat in our Single-A pressbox like he was King of the World and complained about everything. He complained about the price of the games, which I think were 5 bucks, and of course, free for him. He complained about the lack of a crowd, his "working conditions", the food, the stadium and the weather. Everything. His complaints were then laid out in the newspaper the next day. What a jerk.
At the risk of Godwin-ing the thread, that seems like adding an anecdote that Hitler was a bad tipper.