Some of you may have read in this week’s magazine, a story under my byline in which I refer to the fact that ESPN columnist Bill Simmons reported in his column he received a personal email from Ed Clark requesting that he stop referring to Boston’s TD Banknorth Garden as “Whatever the hell the Garden is called.” I repeated this anecdote as part of a short story in our magazine about the enormous inflation in prices for arena naming rights.
Some of you may have read in this week’s magazine, a story under my byline in which I refer to the fact that ESPN columnist Bill Simmons reported in his column he received a personal email from Ed Clark requesting that he stop referring to Boston’s TD Banknorth Garden as “Whatever the hell the Garden is called.” I repeated this anecdote as part of a short story in our magazine about the enormous inflation in prices for arena naming rights.
Anyhoo… turns out, the story is apocryphal. It seems somebody sent Simmons an email to that effect, claiming to be Clark, but it wasn’t Clark who sent it. TD emailed this morning to notify me of my mistake. (At least I think it was TD who emailed…who can tell anymore?) I see that ESPN has removed that item from their website.
So, I apologize to Ed Clark, and to any and all readers to whom I fed misinformation. One of the key rules of journalism is “confirm everything.” I foolishly assumed that the original writer did the confirming for me. That is not an excuse, it’s a stupid rookie mistake.