OUR PROFESSION IS BECOMING MORE TABLOID THAN JOURNALISM.

Byline: Edvins Beitiks San Francisco Examiner 

It's going to sound like an old man's lament - you know, ``When I was a kid we had to write our way through snowdrifts as big as houses, by God'' - but it needs to be said. Modern-day sportswriting is full of itself.

From first-person twitters to maudlin stories about family tragedies to meaningless gossip about who's making what to a visible intellectual laziness, much of the stuff sportswriters turn out nowadays is an embarrassment. The writing may be better, but what's being written about is altogether sad - a grab-bag of rubber snakes, cupcakes and Barbie dolls.

It used to be you had to verify a rumor before you could put it in print - at least go through the motions of lifting up the phone and having some front office clone read off a list of lies you could put in the paper. No more.

Now a sportswriter will print a rumor as soon as it appears in another newspaper or spills from the fountainhead of ESPN. No calls. No quotes. No qualifications. Just, ``It was reported that ... '' That's lousy journalism.

Heard the Giants are willing to trade Rod Beck, even though they don't have anybody who could begin to take his place? Print it. Heard they want to add a catcher batting .238 and a winless pitcher with a 5.04 ERA for the stretch drive? Print it. Don't call anybody. Don't get a name on the record to back up your speculations. Print it.

There's so much unsubstantiated crap out there, nobody's going to hold you to it, anyway.

And as long as you're giving yourself over to gossip, you may as well go whole hog: drunken driving reports on taxi squad players, bar fights involving has-beens, clubhouse tug-of-wars between writers and ballplayers, and all those newsworthy gems that keep coming from Steve Howe and Darryl Strawberry and Steffi Graf.

And don't forget those back-alley ice-skating intrigues, self-serving quotes from team owners who throw money around at the same time they jack up ticket prices, and the daily bad-mouthing of Albert Belle because he hasn't been a sweetheart to the press. All grist for the mill.

Sure, the cigarette-and-whiskey days of sportswriting left a lot to be desired - denizens of the open press box tended to wink at players' transgressions and give short shrift to anything that happened off the field. But you wouldn't catch them playing talk-show host to a carnival of stupid rumors, either.

Faced with the latest lame stories about who's going and who's staying with the Giants, manager Dusty Baker said, simply, ``Sportswriting is getting more and more into gossiping and stuff that doesn't count.''

That's because sportswriters are taking their cues from TV. When some talking head says a deal is going down, newspaper people start running around in circles instead of making a couple of calls and dropping the story because there's nothing to it.

There are other ways the waters have been poisoned. Everything is a variation on that eternal boob-tube question, ``How do you feel?'' In the world of sports, 1996, we sit in the audience, eating popcorn and nodding our heads, while people scream at each other about not getting enough love or not having enough money. Tragedy, American style.

More and more writers, notably those in Sports Illustrated, can't offer a piece on athletes without wallowing in a theme of nobody-knows-the-trouble-I've-seen.

Whether it's a dominating father or a dog in a coma, sportswriters point to the athlete and sob, ``Hard times, hard times.'' They forget that ordinary people are hurting every day without any of the compensation or adulation that comes the athletes' way.

For modern-day sportswriters and their editors, it's not enough that Olympic athletes come through with a medal-winning performance in something they've dedicated their lives to for more than four years. No, athletes have to overcome astounding odds, winning in spite of anger or asthma or a car crash, in spite of the fish-eye or a broken leg or crazy parents. Nothing is as simple as winning or losing - the soap-opera demands of 1990s journalism won't allow it.

Who knows how this started? When columnists began three-dotting every trade rumor they heard on their way to the can? With the first breathless story on the salary of some backup infielder? When TV turned beach volleyball and the NBA draft into prime-time sports? However it started, it's got to stop. Here are some suggestions for making a change:

- Every sportswriter can float three trade rumors a year. If they turn out to be true, he gets three more the coming year. If they don't, he loses the option.