Please stop unbelieving

Scribes who have a healthy respect for the English language and an equally unhealthy disdain for clichés consider among their thankless tasks the locker room interview.

It goes like this: The reporter walks up to the conquering hero, the star athlete, and asks him a question. It could be an insipid question — “How do you feel?” — or one that’s creatively crafted to provoke an interesting response: “So, did you ever see yourself hoisting a Stanley Cup back in the day when you were playing Atom hockey in Belle River, Ontario?”

Inevitably, the answer is the same. And the word is almost always the same too: “Unbelievable.”

It’s a hollow word, drained of all its force and meaning.

I first noticed its pervasiveness years ago while watching the celebrations that followed a Stanley Cup championship. Player after player interviewed on CBC TV repeated the same word to describe what they were feeling. I can’t remember the team or the year but that doesn’t matter — the pattern repeated itself in the years that followed.

And it wasn’t just the National Hockey League championship. It happened in every sport, at every level, professional to amateur.

“Tell me what you’re thinking?” the reporter would ask.

“This is just unbelievable!” the jock would chirp.

“What’s going through your mind?”

“This is just an unbelievable feeling!”

“What’s your opinion of impoverished youth who can’t afford to play an expensive game like hockey?”

“Unbelievable!”

You get the drift.

It doesn’t stop with unbelievable either.

When athletes stretch for superlatives, all originality flies off them like so much sweat. Problem is, we all get sprayed with their filthy sweaty prose.

I was reading a newspaper story about the Pan American Games torch that came through Windsor, Ontario en route to Toronto where the competition kicks off July 7 when it became apparent how, well, unbelievable is the pervasiveness of “unbelievable.”

Mary Spencer had the honour of lighting a cauldron in front of Windsor City Hall. I respect her excellence as a boxer and I empathize with athletes who are put on the spot during interviews to come up with an original comment when all they want to do is play. I also dare not diss a three-time world champion and five-time gold medal Pan Am winner who also finished fifth in the 2012 Olympics — she can probably kick the snot out of me.

But it pained me to read the superlatives that she punched into the heads of people who gathered for the celebration.

“I feel unbelievable,” she said after lighting the cauldron.

“I feel incredible,” she added.

“It’s just amazing to be here in Windsor, in my hometown, in front of all of you, and lighting the flame for the Pan Am Games. It’s awesome.”

It didn’t stop there. Asked how she felt about not being able to defend her Pan-Am gold medal because she didn’t qualify for the 2015 games, Spencer said carrying the torch was the next best thing.

“Well, the Pan Am Games was an amazing experience for me and I couldn’t wait to be here in front of my community with that flame four years after I competed myself.”

A random search over the past few weeks of other sports stories in The Windsor Star revealed that Spencer isn’t alone in feeling unbelievable.

Here’s Toronto Blue Jays manager John Gibbons on pitcher Scott Copeland’s debut in a 7–2 thumping of the Miami Marlins June 10:

“He was unbelievable.

Andre De Grasse, a Markham, Ontario native and budding track star at the University of Southern California, had this to say after competing in the NCAA track and field championships June 12:

“It was just an unbelievable feeling.”

Another baseballer, commissioner Rob Manfred, had this to say about franchises as civic assets:

“I think they’re really important to the communities in which they exist. It’s why we have shown — I believe — unbelievable loyalty to the communities where we play.”

See. He believes in unbelievable loyalty.

Team Canada’s women soccer coach John Herdman is a believer too. Here’s what he said after being confronted by about 100 media members in a news conference as his team prepared for its June 6 opener in the World Cup:

“This is unbelievable.”

And in golf, Billy Horschel went from “spectacular” to “unbelievable” without skipping a beat when it came to describing Chambers Bay’s greens at the U.S. Open:

“I think this is one of the most spectacular settings that I’ve ever seen in a golf course. I thought Pebble Beach had unbelievable views, I thought Royal County Down had unbelievable views, they are my top two scenery golf courses to play. And this one by far beats (them).”

Well, you get the picture.

For sure, athletes aren’t the only ones riding the unbelievable bandwagon. You’ll see its use in any number of stories whenever and wherever people are being interviewed.

It’s also not fair to criticize sports alone when it comes to clichés. Politicians are known to parrot inane comments. They, along with business leaders, also seem prone to spouting out buzzwords.

One of the most grating is the over-use of the noun form of “ask” which is polluting our airwaves, digital devices and printed products these days.

Here, for instance, is Essex MP Jeff Watson’s take on an automaker’s demand for government funding to invest into the Windsor Assembly plant:

“If Chrysler is asking for $200 million, that would be one of the largest asks of the federal and provincial governments, other than the bailout of Chrysler and General Motors,” Watson said in January 2014. In a radio interview at the time, I heard him use that form of ask three times like a sermon that he was trying to get us to believe in and repeat.

Ask not what your government can do for you, but what your government MP’s ask is of you.

All I ask is for people to show a little respect for the English language and keep things simple. And I’m asking other scribes to think twice before repeating these pearls of wisdom that are cast before us like spatter from so much swine.

I remember Terry McConnell, a former publisher, giving me this piece of advice as a young cub reporter: “You should only quote people when you can’t say it better yourself.”

That’s a purest’s position, but he recognized that too many people being quoted in the paper were saying too many stupid things. He also thought that should stop.

And I believe him.

To read more of Claudio D’Andrea’s writing, click on his profile on Medium.com or LinkedIn. Also check him outon Twitter @cdbytor.