Geoff Calkins

An Interview with Geoff Calkins

“You rise and fall on the strength of your work – that’s the beauty of this job – it doesn’t matter if you have a college degree. It only matters if you can relate to your readers, inform, entertain and outrage, and break news and tell stories – it doesn’t make a flip of difference where you went to school.”

“There’s a rhythm to the way anyone writes and when I’m writing I just hear it in my head. Some people hear it with a lot of commas, I don’t hear with a lot of commas…Why do I talk the way I talk or write the way I write – it’s just who you are. I write short sentences, period.”

“In Memphis there’s no universal language. In Boston there’s the Red Sox, in Buffalo the Bills, in Green Bay the Packers…there’s no one sport you can write about and know all the readers will be interested. So I try to reach for the universal that people can relate to outside of sports…I’m not burdened here by too many darn pro sports hiring and firings, transactions and draft picks.”

Geoff Calkins: Interviewed on February 9, 2007

Position: Columnist, Memphis Commercial Appeal

Born: 1961, Buffalo

Education: Harvard, 1983, history; Harvard Law, 1987; Columbia, 1992, MJ

Career: Anniston Star 1992-94; Sun-Sentinel of South Florida ‘94-96; Commercial Appeal 96 –

Personal: married, three children

Favorite restaurant (home): Gus’s Fried Chicken, Memphis “it’s impossible to pick the best barbecue place in Memphis but the best fried chicken is easy. Memphis is on everyone’s list of fattest/unhealthiest/greasiest/most profoundly deep fried cities in America and Gus’s is one of the reasons.”

Favorite restaurant (road): Charlie’s Kitchen, Cambridge, Mass. “the double cheeseburger special, which is all I could afford as a college student – I go back for pure nostalgia – in an ideal world, I’d be able to bring along a Sunday edition of the Boston Globe, circa 1980”

Favorite hotel: Grand Hotel, Mackinac Island. Mi.

Geoff Calkins excerpted from the Commercial Appeal, January 24, 2007:

To clear up any confusion, I would like to say to the media that, no, I have not asked The Commercial Appeal to trade me to the Chicago Tribune or any other paper. I love Memphis. I will continue to defend the CA shirt until the last of my …

Uh, did you say your CA shirt?

Right.

Is there a CA shirt?

There used to be. It said, “It’s all about you.”

And you defend this shirt?

OK, not so much. But I liked it when Pau Gasol said he’s going to continue to “defend the Grizzlies shirt until the last of my days.”

The last of his days? He’s gone from wanting to be traded to wanting to die as a Grizzly?

No, he still wants to be traded.

Then why did he say “the last of his days?”

I don’t know. Why did he say “I love being in Memphis?” If he loves it so darn much, why did he and his parents have a meeting with Michael Heisley to request a trade?

Good point. So, you’re saying Gasol is fibbing?

I’m saying that he’s made a hash of the whole thing. I don’t think Pau is a bad guy, either. He’s one of the most gracious players I’ve ever covered, a player who has been vastly under- appreciated during the course of his time in Memphis. But to ask for a trade this year, after his injury, was a serious mistake. He should have come out and admitted this.

What did he do instead?

He blamed the media.

Nooooooooooooo.

Yes. Can you believe it?

Q. Have you been traded to the Chicago Tribune?

A. I have not been traded to the Chicago Tribune. I don’t have a no-trade clause in my contract, either. I like Chicago – it’s one city I would consider being traded to. When I came to Memphis 11 years ago it wasn’t with the idea this would be my last stop but increasingly I think it will be. I’m dug in here – all three of my kids were born here – and it works. At what point do you trade happiness for the prospect of happiness at another job down the road?

Q. Do readers think of writers as tradable as players?

A. Clearly not. I don’t think people relate to us as they do players. I hope people in Memphis think of me as more a part of the community than any athlete. I have a stake in this place. I don’t think most athletes who come through have a particular stake in Memphis. To the extent that my column is effective, part of the reason is that people understand I’m here as a neighbor.

Readers don’t particularly notice bylines. I did, but that was because since I was twelve I wanted to do what I am doing. I tend to think readers notice column mugs just because they can’t miss them.

Q. Do you think readers are interested in you as a person?

A. I don’t think I write more than a column or two a year that has personal stuff in it. No question as a columnist you are not just the person who is relating the story. You are yourself a personality – you’re Katie Couric a bit – you just are. I don’t think I am indulging myself when I write about something that has to do with my life. For example, I had leukemia as a kid and I once wrote a column about that. Honestly, I think people relate to you as a human being. They turn to you for what feels like a morning conversation, though it’s obviously one-way. My voice is telling them about the world – through my eyes. So to know something about the experience of my life is probably useful. Honestly, the one place where radio helps is it gives a sense of you as a three-dimensional human being. I think it’s useful to occasionally let people into what you’re about.

Q. How many sports columnists went to Harvard and Harvard Law?

A. There’s a small fraternity of Harvard people – John Powers (Boston Globe), Gwen Knapp (SF Chronicle) – writing sports. But Harvard Law is a little wackier. A guy named Paul Attanasio went through Harvard Law and then became a screenwriter and TV producer. It’s always been my view that if you go to a liberal arts school and you’re good at school and you get out and think the world will embrace you and shower you with money and a wonderful position of responsibility and then you find it’s a lot harder than you thought – a lot of those people go to law school because it’s a path. They’re told they can do things with a law degree, and unlike medical school you don’t need organic chemistry to go.

I was good at school and I applied to see if I could get in, and then you get in and you think “Omigosh I can do anything with a law degree”. The truth is, you can do anything in spite of a law degree. It’s awfully expensive general education. I went out of a sense of need for a path in my life and found myself at age 30 quite unhappy working at a big DC law firm.

Q. How did you get from law to writing a column in Memphis?

A. When I went to school in Boston I knew it was a privilege to be reading the great Boston Globe, with Bob Ryan and Leigh Montville and Peter Gammons. I graduated from Harvard in 1983 and from the Law School in 1987 – so I was in Boston for 7 years with one year off – and for the Globe to arrive at my door every morning was a gift. I knew then I was reading a great sports section.

As an undergrad I had done a newspaper internship at Time-Life and the Miami Herald. Doing the summer internship after my senior year in Miami I was going to city council meetings – it wasn’t fun, and I honestly didn’t think I would like it. And even though I knew I wanted to be a sportswriter I thought it wasn’t respectable. I took the news internship because a guy from Harvard should be serious enough to do news and I didn’t like it.

I clerked for James Buckley on the U.S. Court of Appeals in DC. Then I went to a law firm called Hogan & Hartson and was there for 2 1/2 years before I took a leave of absence to go back to J-School at Columbia. It was a way of putting my toe in the water – I didn’t have to quit the law firm. People say I was courageous but I wasn’t that courageous. I started looking for jobs and the only one was in Anniston, Alabama, a 12-week internship for $225 a week. The Star was a good paper better known for its news side – I spent two years there.

I got a great break when Fred Turner, the SE in Fort Lauderdale – he took pride in finding talent off the beaten path – saw my resume on his desk. Gordon Edes was the baseball writer, a good friend, and he had just covered the inaugural season of the Marlins and wanted to be the national baseball guy for the Sun-Sentinel. I was 32 and all I had done was a year-and-a-half at Anniston – I wasn’t steeped in baseball and didn’t have the foggiest idea of what I was doing. Fred hired me – I went from making $15,000 to $50,000. Fred is responsible for my career – he also hired Gene Wojciechowski, Mitch Albom, Gordon, Bill Plaschke, Dave Hyde, Randy Mell and probably Steve Hummer.

So that was a great opportunity and he took a huge chance on me. After two years there I got this column, in January ’96. At the time it was less than four years after I finished at Columbia.

Q. Did your resume, with Harvard Law, make you stand out?

A. It probably made me stand out in this great sea of people applying. You notice. Honestly, there were times early on I felt some resentment that I got this job because of my bizarre background. But I did those things – I accomplished those things and they are a part of who I am. If in the end it helped me get the job I’m not ashamed of that. I don’t think it has anything to do with how effective or ineffective a columnist I am. Very few times have I been called upon to use legal knowledge.

You rise and fall on the strength of your work – that’s the beauty of this job – it doesn’t matter if you have a college degree. It only matters if you can relate to your readers, inform, entertain and outrage, and break news and tell stories – it doesn’t make a flip of difference where you went to school. No question I leveraged a law degree to get people to notice me early on but in the end you’ve got to do the work.

Q. Anything from your legal training applicable in writing a sports column?

A. In “The Paper Chase” the professor says, “you come in here with a skull full of mush and you leave thinking like a lawyer”. I don’t think lawyers think any different than any other group of human beings. In law school you have to present an argument in a logical fashion and write – same for a columnist. From that perspective there is some overlap in terms of the skills, but honestly, it took a lot more discipline to be a lawyer. There were times I would will myself through the day – take a deep breath and say ‘three more hours of working on this brief or interrogatory’. The idea of willing myself hour-by-hour was so repugnant – that’s why I stopped.

Here, in the act of writing a column I take the same breath – okay I have to address the task at hand – but the talking to people and making phone calls and finding stories doesn’t feel like work to me. Putting my brain to paper feels like the sort of work I did as a lawyer, but the rest of it is mostly an outgrowth of who I am: sit next to me on an airplane and I’ll probably know your life story by the end of the flight. You have to be naturally curious and interested in people’s stories and people’s lives. The writing is the real labor – that’s the same as being a lawyer.

I’m one of nine kids – I was the eighth of nine. Three are doctors – I was the third lawyer. Every one of us is hyper-professional – my parents thought they created a bunch of monsters. They were happy to see me do what I wanted to do – they knew I was ill-suited for the law before I knew it.

Q. You write with frequent one-sentence grafs – Bob Ryan’s pet peeve – any reason?

A. I think I overdo it at times. There’s a rhythm to the way anyone writes and when I’m writing I just hear it in my head. Some people hear it with a lot of commas, I don’t hear with a lot of commas. I did it more early in my career, but at times I think it’s a bit of a rut I fall into. Basically I write the way I hear it – it’s not for effect or anything else. Why do I talk the way I talk or write the way I write – it’s just who you are. I write short sentences, period. I would never voluntarily put myself into the same graf as Hemingway or Faulkner who each had different styles, but I don’t know that there’s controversy if you like one over the other. Do you like the way I do it or do you like the way someone else does it?

Bob Ryan writes very differently than I do – I liked Bob Ryan but when I was reading the Globe every day but I loved Leigh Montville. I’m not comparing myself to Leigh Montville but he doesn’t write like Bob Ryan – and I thought Leigh Montville was it. Different strokes. I related to Leigh Montville. People will ridicule Mitch Albom (Detroit Free Press) now because of jealousy and other things but I loved him coming up – I thought he was a different kind of sportswriter – he wrote with different rhythms. He wrote about people in a way Bob Ryan doesn’t. I think I write about people differently than Bob Ryan.

Geoff Caulkins excerpted from the Commercial Appeal, February 1, 2007:

DAVIE, Fla. – Each night, at slightly before midnight, Betty Jones would strap on her head lamp, and her battery, and then she would say a small prayer.

She would pray for her seven children, back sleeping in their beds. She would pray for her husband. She would pray that she would see them all again when her shift was done.

Then she would get in a small cart, smaller than a golf cart. And the cart would jolt to a start, and enter the yawning mouth of the cave, and begin its long trip through the tunnels and into the mountain.

Sometimes the trip would take 10 minutes. Sometimes, half an hour. And then the small cart would stop, and Betty Jones would step out, and work in the darkness for eight hours.

She would cut coal from the wall of the mountain. She would shovel it onto the endless conveyer belts. She would stop for 30 minutes, and try to find a place to eat her meal, and then she would cut and shovel until her shift was finished.

Q. Your Betty Jones (mother of Bears RB Thomas Jones) story was touching – how did that come about?

A. At the Super Bowl anytime you can talk to someone – as opposed to talking to Thomas Jones with 700 other people – you do it. I talked to the mama who went down to the coalmines – her story is an unbelievably compelling American story. She didn’t go to college, and her husband didn’t, but she went to the coalmines for 21 years. They have seven kids and everyone goes to college – it’s an American saga. I’m not the sort to write about Thomas Jones and whether he has the cutback ability against the Colts defense – but the saga of Thomas Jones is universal and compelling. The hard-core sports fan will relate to it but the person not particularly into sports will relate to it too.

In Memphis there’s no universal language. In Boston there’s the Red Sox, in Buffalo the Bills, in Green Bay the Packers. I guess the Memphis Tigers basketball team could be – but there’s no one sport you can write about and know all the readers will be interested. So I try to reach for the universal that people can relate to outside of sports – that becomes the column language. Talking about the American Dream in front of you at the Super Bowl – that strikes a chord. In Boston I couldn’t write about Jack Williams, an 11-year-old kid who hit a foul shot on the day of his mother’s (pre-funeral) visitation. In Memphis I can. That’s part of the privilege of writing here. I was thinking about going to the NBA All-Star Game this year and I realized there is nothing I can find there that will be among the memorable columns I write – Jack Williams was. I’m not burdened here by too many darn pro sports hiring and firings, transactions and draft picks. I have enough to keep me entertained.

Q. My impression is that your arsenal does not include vitriol.

A. John Calipari will tell you I have vitriol in my arsenal. Mike Fratello will tell you I do.

Brian Davis thinks I have vitriol – I wrote about his clownish effort to buy the Grizzlies. When Michael Heisley put the team on the market a year ago he had a bid to buy the team from two people, Brian Davis and Christian Laettner. Everybody knew it wouldn’t come through, but in the meantime Jerry West’s hands were tied, he couldn’t trade or fire anybody. The whole thing has gone into the toilet, and I blame ownership as much as anything else.

I hope I don’t have vitriol in my arsenal. It is odd, if you separate columnists into categories, I am probably one of the kinder and gentler. I write human issues as they come up. I had a conversation with Bob Kravitz (Indianapolis Star) – we were talking about Joe Posnanski (KC Star) and he said, “Yeah, he’s too soft for me – my job is to make arguments four times a week.” Well, mine isn’t. I don’t.

I cover college sports. In college sports the vitriol can only be directed at the coaches and what college sports have become. Unless an athlete has dragged his girlfriend down the stairs I don’t think it’s appropriate to hammer a kid. When it comes to civic issues – whether to build a stadium or not – I can get fairly worked up. I like to think I have three pitches – humor, feel-good or human stories, and hard-hitting on issues when I have to be. But I don’t do humor like Tony Kornheiser, I don’t do human stories like Mitch Albom and I don’t do hard-hitting like Michael Wilbon.

So I try to mix it up. Some of it is who you are writing to. If I were Chicago I don’t know that it would work next to Jay Mariotti – I don’t know if it would be effective there, but I would write a little differently because people are more quick to perceive you as being unfair in Memphis than in Chicago.

Oddly, in Memphis I am considered a hatchet man by many – my first two weeks here a guy wrote me and said I shouldn’t buy a house because of the way I wrote – I would be run out of town. Coming from South Florida, which was so competitive, I was astonished.

Calipari made a big deal that the only time he sees the Commercial Appeal is when he backs over it on his way out the driveway. So I’m Calipari Enemy No. 1 – some of it is just because of where I write – there’s a different sensibility down here.

Q. How is the Commercial Appeal business-wise?

A. We have had some reduction in staff – some layoffs and some vacancies not filled. I find the whole thing to be incredibly discouraging, looking around the industry. From my perspective the impact has been on deadline – we’ve zoned our paper so that in suburban Memphis it’s not called the Memphis Commercial Appeal, it’s called by the name of each suburban town. We do each zone edition separately. The consequence is that the sports deadline has moved from 11:30-11:45 to 10:30-10:45. That hour makes a huge difference. I write fewer gamers than when I first got here. You have to make a choice between writing a cogent column with complete sentences and talking to people in the lockerroom. Increasingly I find I can’t get to the lockerroom.

Q. And yet lockerroom access is what distinguishes newspapers from blogs.

A. Gary Parrish covered Memphis basketball for this paper and is now the national writer for CBS Sportsline. He is able to go to the games, watch, go into the lockerroom, think and write. I am jealous. The idea of watching a game without having three different versions of a column going seems like some kind of dream.

On the other hand, I’m not sure I want to read 5,000 words online. Breaking news is great online. But it’s hard to believe a lot of readers will read 5,000 words online, whereas if you pick up a magazine you will. Some things seem to fit in one medium better than another.

Q. How much radio do you do?

A. Two hours every morning, Sports 56, WHBQ. It’s a call-in show with George Lapidus – he does the heavy lifting. Gordon Edes is our regular baseball expert during the baseball season; Sam Smith does basketball. I do it to put a little extra bread on the table. If I won Powerball tomorrow I think I’d keep writing a column but I’d probably stop doing radio. I’ve got three boy, 9, 6, and 5. One of the payoffs of this job is that days generally are flexible. I used to make breakfast and take the boys to school but with the radio show it’s harder.

Q. Writers you admire?

A. Gary Shelton (St. Petersburg Times). Bill Plaschke (LA Times), Joe Posnanski (KC Star), Dave Hyde (Sun-Sentinel), Martin Fennelly (Tampa Tribune) – I’m stunned by how many good ones there are, honestly. Mike Vaccaro (NY Post). My dream staff would be Plaschke, Posnanski and Shelton. A guy who is underrated is Mike LoPresti (USA Today). He always sets himself up to write the right column and he works incredibly hard at finding interesting slightly offbeat columns.

Q. How do you stay informed?

A. I get the New York Times delivered. The Commercial Appeal. Sportspages.com – I am a subscriber – I actually expense it to the Commercial Appeal. I’m all over the Internet basically. My best friend in the world is Charles Fishman – a Harvard classmate – he wrote “The Wal-Mart Effect”. He doesn’t know a damn thing about sports but I talk to him five times a week about the art and craft of storytelling. He read me every chapter of that book aloud before it was published. Every important column I write I read to him aloud. At any paper you’re lucky if you get great guidance from editors, though it’s not inconceivable. You have to go to people you can rely on and trust. In Fort Lauderdale it was Gordon Edes. Here it was Geoff Grant, who is now a mucky-muck at mlb.com. He was an assistant editor here and he was that kind of guy.

Once you find someone you can talk with about writing and storytelling you keep him forever. I still call Gordon and ask him what he thinks of this or that – you have to assemble your own staff of editors. I’m not so confident that I think every idea I have is a good one. I like to bounce things off people. You have to find people whose judgment you trust. When I got here Geoff Grant said my column didn’t do it for him – I trusted him enough that I’d take another run at it. I don’t trust everyone. I take it to my kitchen cabinet and ask them about it. Editors can be great editors but not invariably so. Even if they are they may not relate to your style.

Discussions such as you have on your site don’t happen in the newsroom anymore – there’s very little discussion about writing newspapers, or how you do the job. It’s just ‘please do the job’.

Given the customs of today you don’t have to come into the office, and you can’t ask the writers to come in – there would be rebellions if you did. But there’s definitely something lost by not having a community of writers and reporters kicking things around.

Q. Do you blog?

A. I’m supposed to, but I’ve resisted it. I find I’m busy enough writing four columns a week and the radio show. I admire people who pull it off – John Canzano (Oregonian) does a good one.

Q. Worst team – Celtics or Grizzlies?

A. Celtics. The Celtics are 4 1/2 point underdogs tonight at home to the Nets. The Grizzlies are 2 1/2 point underdogs at home to the Timber Wolves. The advantage the Grizzlies have is they play in the west. Boston has to play Atlanta and Charlotte – teams they might beat by mistake. The Grizzlies will have an easier road to being the worst team, but I admit I am dazzled by what the Celtics have done in their losing streak. Their last win was here. I hate to say the future of the Grizzlies in Memphis could be at stake in this draft lottery, but it might be. Right now the franchise is in dismal condition from the ownership on down and it might take Greg Oden or Kevin Durant to save them.

Q. Who loses in a playoff for worst team – Celts or Grizzlies?

A. I think they split. Memphis beats them in Boston and Boston beats them here.

(SMG thanks Geoff Caulkins for his cooperation)

One-sentenc

Phone 901 488 9055

About Geoff Calkins

Some people say Geoff Calkins is brave. Could be he’s just nuts. Ten years ago, Calkins worked as a labor and employment attorney at a 500-lawyer firm in Washington, D.C. He had an undergraduate degree from Harvard College, a law degree from Harvard Law School and a future paved with . . . “Interrogatories,” Calkins says. “Billable hours, too.” This did not please him. Besides, Calkins really wanted to be a sports columnist. So at age 30, he junked it all — “came to my senses,” is how he puts it — and found a job covering high school sports in Alabama. Five years later, after a stop in Ft. Lauderdale, Calkins found his way to Memphis. He writes four columns a week and still doesn’t make as much as he did as a first-year associate at the law firm. “On the bright side,” he says. “I also don’t have to wear socks.” Calkins can be reached by e-mail
or by telephone at 901-529-2364.

Sports

Pau asked to be traded, and all I got was this stupid shirt —

Geoff Calkins

919 words

24 January 2007

The Commercial Appeal

Final

English

Uh, did you say your CA shirt?

Right.

Is there a CA shirt?

There used to be. It said, “It’s all about you.”

And you defend this shirt?

OK, not so much. But I liked it when Pau Gasol said he’s going to continue to “defend the Grizzlies shirt until the last of my days.”

The last of his days? He’s gone from wanting to be traded to wanting to die as a Grizzly?

No, he still wants to be traded.

Then why did he say “the last of his days?”

I don’t know. Why did he say “I love being in Memphis?” If he loves it so darn much, why did he and his parents have a meeting with Michael Heisley to request a trade?

Good point. So, you’re saying Gasol is fibbing?

What did he do instead?

He blamed the media.

Nooooooooooooo.

Yes. Can you believe it?

Sports

Don’t boo Pau; this ain’t the opera

Geoff Calkins

1174 words

27 January 2007

The Commercial Appeal

Final

English

To boo or not to boo, that is the question.

Or maybe you think that lead is hopelessly weary and cliche.

In which case you might already be booing over your breakfast cereal.

Boooooooo!

What a hack!

Can’t you do any better than that, writer boy?

So at least you’re in the proper frame of mind. Because booing really is the issue of the moment.

Do you boo Pau Gasol when he makes his first appearance at home since asking to be traded away from Memphis?

Do you boo him whenever he touches the ball? Do you limit your booing to the introductions? Do you stay silent?

On the Grizzlies message board, there is a long thread about all this.

From a poster named Al: “I know everyone is PO’d at Pau right now, and rightfully so, but let’s take the high road and not boo him on Saturday.”

From a poster named DaBobs: “Boooooooooooooo!”

So which is it, sports fans? To boo or not to boo? Is it better to offer the slings and arrows …

There you go, with that weak stuff again, writer boy.

Boo! Hiss! Boo!

umps of coal were Bear RB’s great gift

Geoff Calkins

1305 words

1 February 2007

The Commercial Appeal

Final

English

DAVIE, Fla. – Each night, at slightly before midnight, Betty Jones would strap on her head lamp, and her battery, and then she would say a small prayer.

She would pray for her seven children, back sleeping in their beds. She would pray for her husband. She would pray that she would see them all again when her shift was done.

Sometimes the trip would take 10 minutes. Sometimes, half an hour. And then the small cart would stop, and Betty Jones would step out, and work in the darkness for eight hours.

At which point, she would climb in the small cart again, and begin the trip back up through the tunnels, out of the yawning mouth of the cave, and into the morning sunlight.

She would shower. She would try, in vain, to wash away the coal dust.

And before she went to sleep, she would drive home and make breakfast for her seven kids.

Usually, she made pancakes.

What would you do for your children?

Anything, of course. All of us would.

But would you do what Betty Jones did? Would you spend the equivalent of 1,667 full days – or 4 1/2 years – living underground, in the darkness, breathing black dust, wondering if the next groan of lumber would bring a mountain down on top of you?

Would you do this so your seven children could go to college? So two of your sons could grow up strong and fast and play running back in the NFL? So one of them could play in the Super Bowl?

December 24, 2006

The kid stepped out of the crowd, grabbed the basketball and the cheer began to fill the gym.

“We want Jack! We want Jack!”

Jack tried to keep a straight face.

“If Jack hits this shot,” said the guy with the microphone, before stopping himself.

“When Jack hits this shot,” he corrected, “please don’t rush the court and mob him.”

It seemed a sensible precaution, given the stakes. Jack, who was then a fourth-grader at Presbyterian Day School, measured the distance to the basket.

“I’m a terrible free-throw shooter,” he said. “I usually hit, like, 4 out of 10.”

This was one shot. This was a shot he would remember all his life, whether it bounced out or fell true.

“I was a little bit nervous, but I tried to put that in the back of my head,” Jack said. “I knew if nervous took over my body I wouldn’t make it.”

Jack balanced the ball on his fingers, the way his mother had taught him. He bent his knees and extended his arm and the crowd had fallen silent by now.

The ball spun toward the rim.

“Even today, thinking about it gives me goose bumps,” said Lee Burns, the headmaster of the school.

Except, the shot looked to be short. Everyone who saw it said so.

“I thought it was short,” Jack said. “And then…”

Sports Illustrated picked Dwyane Wade as its Sportsman of the Year, and I suppose that’s a reasonable choice. He won a championship with the Miami Heat. He seems to be a decent enough guy.

Also, the people at Sports Illustrated probably never heard the story of Jack Williams. He’s only 11, after all.

Jack didn’t win an NBA title. He wasn’t on network TV.

But for the several hundred who crowded into the PDS gym on March 9 of this past year, Jack became the freckled embodiment of everything good and pure about sports.

“Nobody planned it,” said Burns, 38, the headmaster. “It just unfolded the way it did. And I don’t think anyone in that gym will ever forget what they saw that day.”

They saw a boy in pain, at first, grieving the death of his mother two days before.

Michelle Williams, 44, died after a nearly two-year struggle with acute lymphocytic leukemia. She left her husband, David, and three children, Chip, Jack and Mary Margaret.

You can imagine the darkness of those hours, the quiet planning of the funeral, the somber gathering of family and friends.

As it happens, the student-faculty basketball game at PDS was scheduled for the same day as the visitation. A friend offered to take Jack to the event, just to take his mind off things.

Basketball had always been a happy distraction in the Williams household. David, Jack’s father, was crazy about the game.

But Michelle had the touch. According to family legend, she hit 21 consecutive free throws on the hoop in the driveway when she was seven months pregnant with Chip.

“We believe that’s a family record that will never be broken,” David said. “Whatever ability the children have, they got it from her.”

At PDS, the student-faculty game is a raucous affair, pitting the sixth-graders who are about to graduate against their teachers. The whole school shows up to watch.

“We had no idea Jack would be there,” Burns said. “But we looked up shortly before halftime and there he was. So we started thinking, ‘Is there something special we can do for Jack?’ We had been bringing students out to hit foul shots for pizza or some little prize. We decided, when the game was over, we’d bring Jack out for something bigger.”

Ahhhh, but what?

“What’s bigger for boys than two nights with no homework?” Burns said.

So that was the answer. They would have Jack shoot to win the school a two-night homework reprieve.

“I had no idea it was coming,” Jack said. “They just announced it and the crowd pretty much went crazy.”

What a great idea, eh? No homework! All Jack had to do was …

Then it occurred to some of the plotters: What if Jack missed?

“He won’t miss,” Burns said.

No?

“It’s one of those things I just knew,” Burns said. “Every once in a while, God whispers something to you. He was going to use this moment to help this boy get through a difficult, difficult time in his life.”

Jack stood at the foul line and bounced the ball. He looked brave and confident and all alone.

“I remember thinking, in roughly an hour and a half, this boy will be standing next to a casket with his mom’s body in it,” Burns said. “How do you block out that?”

Jack released the shot.

“Everyone who was there told me they thought it was going to be short,” said David Williams.

“And then my mom carried it into the hoop,” said Jack.

Just like that.

She always did have the touch.

“It hit nothing but net, no rim, no backboard,” said Burns. “It was the cleanest swish I have ever seen.”

Naturally, the PDS kids ignored everything they’d been told about not rushing the court. It was boy bedlam and it was headed straight for Jack.

“I had to run away from them,” Jack said.

The kids caught him, of course. And pounded him on the back and and gave him triumphant piggy-back rides.

“I’ve never been so happy to have boys disobey me,” said Burns. “The school was looking for a way to shower Jack with love and that was their chance.”

And then, it was back home for Jack, and into his dark suit, and off to the visitation and a lifetime without his mom.

The shot didn’t change any of that. There’s a limit to what games can do.

But the shot helped Jack through one of his darkest days. It gave him a reason to smile and to believe that, yes, his mother is watching over him still.

“A sporting event was able to uplift the spirit of a boy,” said Burns. “What’s more powerful than that?”

To reach Geoff Calkins, call him at 529

One of the great fallacies of the law is that you think you’re out there standing up in court with your clients. The law as I practiced it was not a social endeavor – it was being at the library grinding through documents. You have all these social people and they become lawyers so they can put their talent to use and they find themselves for five years grinding away. A good day for me as a lawyer was a 14-hour stretch looking through documents or looking for precedents for this brief or that brief. Oddly, at its highest levels it can be a lonely profession. When I clerked for James Buckley it was the judge and three clerks wrestling with intellectual problems of the law. I’m not an intellectual. It takes a true intellectual to love that job.

Ken Burger

An Interview with Ken Burger

“I’m not a fan of fans… I’m constantly trying to figure out from a sociological standpoint how they get to the point where they care so much…They hook into the images of teams and I’m still trying to figure it out.”

“People wonder what it’s like to be a sportswriter and I tell them it’s not what they think – they think we’re out tailgating. It’s like being the designated driver at happy hour – you’re the guy working when everybody else is partying.”

“When I was a kid the big football players impressed the girls because they were fast and strong and I was none of those. Then I figured out I could write and that’s how I show off. That’s how I seduced all five of my wives.”

“You can’t walk around worrying about the next column – if you do you’ll never find it…I try not to think too much. I just write. It’s all I can do – my wife knows I can’t even change a light bulb.”

Ken Burger: Interviewed on March 23, 2007

Position: Executive Sports Editor and Columnist, Post and Courier, Charleston, SC

Born: 1949, Allendale, SC

Education: University of Georgia, 1973, journalism

Career: The Record, Columbia, SC 1973-79; The State 79-82; public relations 82-83; Charleston Post and Courier 1984 –

Personal: married; three children, one grandchild

Favorite restaurant (home): “any restaurant in Charleston”

Favorite restaurant (road): Waffle House, anywhere in the southeast “you can get in an out in 22 minutes when driving from Birmingham to Charleston – and the food is fine”

Favorite hotel: Holiday Inn Express, anywhere “they’ve got everything you need, they’re new and clean”

Ken Burger’s “A Sobering Trip Through the Madness”, from the Post and Courier, March 18, 2007:

Bars still smell the same.

They still reek of stale beer, Pine-Sol, cigarette smoke and that acrid odor of spent testosterone that hangs in the air like sadness after the fact.

It’s been 9,360 days, give or take a day-at-a-time, since I was a regular. And they’ve definitely gone upscale and added a lot of television screens during my absence.

The advent of wall-to-wall sports has simply added another dimension to the genre. Now there are TVs everywhere you look and people are encouraged to let their particular passions punctuate what once was a quiet, peaceful place to drink.

But underneath, it’s still a bar.

Each day the patrons add another layer to the mix, and on some days it multiplies depending on the rationalization rate. That’s the amount of money you have in your pocket multiplied by the number of reasons you have to drink.

Saturday was the daily-double.

Not only were the sports bars filled with folks watching games, they had the extra incentive of it being St. Patrick’s Day, our national drinking holiday.

All over the Lowcountry, people of all ages spent their Saturday afternoon in sports bars where they could watch our national basketball tournament in high definition on TV screens as big as basketball courts.

Joints today are strictly high-tech. They soften up the brain electronically as well as chemically.

One place had 67 television screens broadcasting every game being played on the planet. All at once.

The owner said his cable bill was $30,000 a year. But worth it. People flock to these places because other people flock to these places.

So I decided to join them.

At least in spirit.

My drink of choice these days is caffeine-free Diet Coke. I know, people look at you funny, but not as funny as when I drank alcohol.

If offered a drink I politely decline. I know better. I don’t have an off button. If I drink I’m likely to wake up a week later in Key West engaged to someone named Sookie.

So I refrain.

And watch.

And listen.

Four sports bars.

Four hours.

Madness, indeed.

All the bars had specials.

Cheap chicken wings.

Half-price pizzas.

Cheap martinis.

Green beer.

It doesn’t take long for all that to take effect. Drunk people become really interesting when they’re in a sensory-overload environment.

Interesting, of course, is a nice word for obnoxious.

Not all of them. Just some of them. Well, enough of them to make you wish Xavier had actually beaten Ohio State in overtime. But you can’t have everything.

This is what being a sports fan has become in America today. It’s all about taunting and high-fiving and fist-pumping and pretending to do play-by-play when you really don’t know what you’re talking about.

It’s about getting the best seat at the bar and wearing your team colors and yelling louder than the guy next to you and letting everybody know that you’re a bigger fan than he is.

Sports bars, in fact, have become the cartoon reality of sports radio. Everything is overdone. Everything is overstated.

But that’s what we like.

That’s who we are.

Well, maybe not all of us.

As I walked out of the last bar, the bright sun temporarily blinded me to the fact that I had just wasted a beautiful afternoon of my life.

Just like the old days.

Q. Why did you write the sports bar column?

A. I needed a column. I’m not on the road doing the playoffs this year – we don’t have a dog in the fight – and with four columns a week I’m always looking for something. Every now and then you think of something that’s not interviewing people – you do some writing. So I was out looking for a column – that’s the answer.

Q. Your thoughts on writing about something as personal as alcoholism?

A. I’ve never had a problem about that. I love this paper and town and readership – they’ve allowed me to be a writer in a town that’s not a big sports town. They’ve given me freedom to write and I’ve never been shy about talking about real life and myself. My readers always respond to my columns about myself – there’s a list of them. I wrote about my bankruptcy and how I finished dead last in my college class.

Q. Your description of sports fans was harsh. Why?

A. I’m not a big fan of fans. I’m not a fan and never have been. I didn’t grow up a sports fan. When I got hired as a sportswriter it was a great fluke of nature. I had never written a sports story. I got out of J-School at Georgia with poor academic performance. I was an alcoholic in college, which makes academic achievement tougher to attain. I was hired as a sportswriter for The Record in Columbia, South Carolina, and it kind of changed my life. Doug Nye, who is still around, hired me because of my writing, not my sports knowledge. I’m not a sports expert to this day.

After six years I got out of sports and became a business writer and a political writer – I was the Washington correspondent for our paper in the mid 1980s. I never thought I’d get back to sports again, but when I came back after two years in Washington they were looking to put me somewhere and I didn’t know exactly where. They wanted to make a change in the sports department and I said that might be fun and they asked if I would like to be the sports editor and I said yeah. I started running a 20-man department but I really wanted to write a column. After a year I was cut loose to write. It’s the perfect job – all I do is write. I don’t have to put the paper out, hire or fire, or design the pages. I don’t have any excuse not to be good at this.

Q. It’s refreshing to hear a sportswriter admit to not liking fans.

A. I’m not a fan of fans. I’m curious about fans. It’s a double-edged sword. I really appreciate their passion – that’s what makes sports great to write about. If they didn’t have passion we wouldn’t have jobs. I really admire and love their passion. But I’m constantly trying to figure out from a sociological standpoint how they get to the point where they care so much. Why do they care so much about what five guys do on a basketball court, or eleven guys on a football field. They hook into the images of teams and I’m still trying to figure it out.

People wonder what it’s like to be a sportswriter and I tell them it’s not what they think – they think we’re out tailgating. It’s like being the designated driver at happy hour – you’re the guy working when everybody else is partying. You see fans at their worst or best, inebriated and their passion runneth over. I pick on ‘em a lot because they’re fun to pick on.

Q. How do your readers take it?

A. Most people think it’s somebody else – it’s the other guy that’s crazy. Their level of behavior is fine. I enjoy all of them – I have a wonderful relationship with readers and fans. This is a big South Carolina Gamecock area – we’ve got Gamecock fans falling off the trees here. I got a call from a Gamecock fan after my first cancer column. He said “We’re Gamecock fans and we don’t agree with what you say but we don’t want you to die or nothin’.”

Q. Tell us about your cancer columns.

A. I’m writing a series on my prostate cancer. I was diagnosed on February 2^nd. I’m 57 and in good health and good shape and then I get a test back. It takes a day or two to get over. Then I went to my editor Bill Hawkins and said I want to write about this. He said are you sure? I said yeah – and this is newsroom humor – “it hits right in our demographic.” It’s a good story if I live and a better one if I die. He understood, being in the business for 30 years.

The response has been truly overwhelming from the four or five columns I’ve written. My wife says I now have another fulltime job, answering e-mails and talking to people. Everybody says it helps them when I write about this and I hope it’s true. I want men to get their check-ups – our stupidity is what kills us.

Q. Your cancer columns are running in the health section – why not the sports section?

A. That decision was made early on. The first one ran 1-A and we decided the rest would be in Health and Science, where they belong. They may not garner the readership of sports or 1-A but people certainly have found them. I’ve got all I can handle with prostates. I’ve heard from everybody who has it throughout the Low Country. It’s like buying a red Corvette and you think you’ve got the only one until you pull up at a light and see three others. I didn’t realize how many others have been through this – and they all want to help and tell stories – and I’m the conduit now.

Q. How many sports columns are you writing now?

A. Three a week, as I move up toward surgery. Surgery is April 17 at Johns Hopkins – they’re taking the prostate out, and hopefully that will be it. I’m doing the Masters and Heritage back-to-back before I go in. Those are my favorite two weeks of the year. I scheduled the surgery after.

Q. How does one become a good writer?

A. I don’t know. I think writers are born. I’ve been in love with writing since I was a young boy, when I wrote poetry and everything I could get my hands on. I was from a small town in rural South Carolina – this was in the segregated south – with dusty roads and the whole thing. I tell my friends I don’t look under the hood to see how it works – it just works. It’s a physical high to sit down and write – writing is the part of my job I enjoy the best. I’m writing when the game is going on because writing is the part I love. Everybody bitches about deadlines but we wouldn’t do this if we didn’t love getting high on adrenaline and getting pumped to do 750 words in 25 minutes and trying to make them sing. They don’t always line up like they’re supposed to but you do your best – I love it. With the power of words you can make somebody cry or laugh.

Thank God they invented the daily newspaper for people like me and Joe Posnanski and Geoff Calkins – we would be like tenor trumpet players – going around scrounging a gig here and there. How about a nut graf? Or a segue graf? I can write you a lead? But because of the paper we have regular jobs and insurance and expense accounts. It’s an amazing thing and I don’t know how it happened to me. You have to be at the right place at the right time with the right stuff, and the stuff can vary depending on where you are.

I get away with what I do because it’s Charleston, SC. I couldn’t do it in New York City. This is not a big pro town where people live and die with the teams. Because of this market I can write about anything. We cover our bases with the college teams and the Panthers, but half of my columns are about anything I want to write about. I’m extremely lucky to have that freedom.

Q. You are known to be more descriptive than opinionated.

A. I can be. I love words. They can do studies about readership but I still think people like to read good writing, whether it’s sports or about prostates. I really enjoy the fact that I get to write about something people want to read, and that they enjoy it. That’s all this is. When I was a kid the big football players impressed the girls because they were fast and strong and I was none of those. Then I figured out I could write and that’s how I show off. That’s how I seduced all five of my wives.

Q. When did you go on the wagon?

A. August 15, 1980. I showed up late and drunk for my daughter Courtney’s third birthday. It wasn’t the first time, and I went to AA the next day. I haven’t had a drink since. But I understand I’m a recovering alcoholic. I don’t preach about it but I do write about it – the human part of it – and people can relate to it.

Lots of people out there have drinking problems and family members with drinking problems – it’s epidemic. I don’t write about it that often but people who have read me a long time know it. Sobriety is the best thing that happened to me – I’d be dead. I was headed down a dead-end road like all alcoholics. It’s just a matter of when they pull up.

Q. Who do you read?

A. Not anybody regularly. I don’t want that to sound like it probably sounds. We all do the same thing differently. I know most of the columnists around the country – I’ve met this great fraternity of writers, all trying to do it the best they can. My way is a little different because I don’t know much about sports and don’t try to be an expert. I read other people’s columns when I’m in their towns.

Q. Where does your inspiration come from?

A. No idea. When you’re a columnist you’re always looking for a column, 24 hours a day. I’ll be driving down the road, or whenever, and sometimes it’s just a word, or a turn of phrase, or an event, that spurs an idea. I try to find some meaning in all of this. That sounds big time, but there’s got to be some lessons in this, some meaning.

We’re all a bit of a poet and philosopher. I used to think anybody can do it, but now I don’t think so. You have to have a voice that comes from somewhere. I just don’t look under the hood too much because I might screw it up.

Red Smith said, “God is good, God will provide.” My philosophy on writing is you don’t ever panic in this business. You can’t walk around worrying about the next column – if you do you’ll never find it. You have to trust that something will happen or some issue will come up, and if all else fails just write the hell out of something – write the most beautiful thing anybody ever read. I just start it up and let it go. I think you can over-think your talent. I try not to think too much. I just write. It’s all I can do – my wife knows I can’t even change a light bulb.

I wrote a column about living in a world of writers, a descriptive piece about the world we live in. It was kind of fun to write – I heard from a lot of writers. I’m flattered that a number of my peers check on my column now and then. The most flattering thing in this business is if another writer says you are a good writer, because another writer knows.

(SMG thanks Ken Burger for his cooperation)

orts

Ken Burger is a native of Allendale, S.C., and a graduate of the University of Georgia. In the mid-1980s, Burger was the Washington, D.C., correspondent for the paper. He has been executive sports editor since 1987, writing an award-winning sports column that has been hailed as the best in the country by the Associated Press Sports Editors three times. He has been named South Carolina Sportswriter of the Year several times and in 1999 was honored as South Carolina Journalist of the Year.

Chris Broussard

An Interview with Chris Broussard

“Usually when I send a blog in it takes 10 to 15 minutes before it’s up on the site. This one took probably eight hours.”

“One reason I wrote this column about the homosexuality issue is because everything I read, the overwhelming majority, basically came from a liberal standpoint.”

“In terms of being objective if a player was openly gay, that wouldn’t affect my coverage of him. A lot of players live lifestyles I won’t agree with but I won’t throw my personal beliefs into my coverage. People who know me know I’m a Christian and if a subject comes up I’m not ashamed to talk about what I believe.”

Chris Broussard: Interviewed on May 24, 2007

Position: senior writer, ESPN the Magazine, espn.com

Born: 1968, Baton Rouge

Education: Oberlin College, 1990, English

Career: Cleveland Plain Dealer 1990-94, Akron Beacon-Journal 94-98, NY Times 98-2004

Personal: married, twin daughters

Favorite restaurant (home): Amy Ruth’s, Harlem, “soul food – the honey fried chicken is what I usually get”

Favorite restaurant (road): Heaven on Seven, Chicago, “Creole/Cajun place”

Favorite hotel: Marriott “everywhere, for the points”

Chris Broussard’s blog, espn.com, Feb. 13, 2007:

I think the NBA is ready for an openly gay player.

By “ready” I don’t mean that everyone on the guy’s team or in his organization will like the fact that he’s a homosexual, or that the guy might not get called names by opponents on the court, or even that his own teammates might not chuckle behind his back.

But by “ready” I mean that players will tolerate a homosexual teammate or opponent. Like Charles Barkley said, some have been doing that already.

Just look at the comments made by players, coaches and Commissioner David Stern when asked about former player John Amaechi’s recent disclosure that he is gay.

The overwhelming majority of comments have been politically correct, even the ones that were considered homophobic by Philadelphia’s Shavlik Randolph and Steven Hunter.

Go talk to guys at an open gym in your neighborhood, and lots of the comments won’t be so polite.

But America has become so politically correct — not to mention that, in my opinion, much of the media and Hollywood are promoting the idea that homosexuality is a normal lifestyle — that many players are afraid to voice their true feelings publicly.

Thus, whenever a current player comes out as gay, you will hear overwhelming support for the guy. And while I think Mark Cuban went overboard in saying the guy would be “an American hero,”
I do believe he would be embraced by a sizeable segment of the population.

He would definitely get marketing/endorsement opportunities, and some folks in the media would champion him and the gay cause.

Well, anyone who reads this blog regularly knows I’m not concerned with being politically correct. So here’s where I stand:

I’m a born-again, Bible-believing Christian (no, I’m not a member of the Religious Right). And I’m against homosexuality (I believe it’s a sin) and same-sex marriage.

But before you label me “homophobic,” know that I’m against any type of sex outside of marriage between a man and a woman. That includes heterosexual fornication (premarital sex).

Some cats in the NBA run around, sleeping with different women in every city — I don’t agree with their lifestyles.

Some players run around, cheating on their wives — I don’t agree with their lifestyles.

It’s all wrong to me and against the biblical teachings I believe in.

I’m saying all that to say that if I can play basketball with a homosexual, just about anyone can.

I’ve played in several rec leagues with LZ Granderson
, who is an openly gay writer at ESPN The Magazine.

I consider LZ a friend. I’ve gone out to lunch with him, talked music, sports, politics and lots of other things with him. I greet him with a handshake and a hug, just like I greet lots of other guys.

By the way, LZ can ball. In a league in New York City that features several former college players, we both made the All-Star team. He was kind of like our Shawn Marion minus the dunks (though he claims he can still slam!) and I was like our Gilbert Arenas (high game of 39, thank you).

Anyway, when we play in our rec league games, I give him high fives and hugs. Same with one of his friends who is on the team and also gay. When we’re on the court trying to get a win — or in the office talking about a story, for that matter — his sexuality is not an issue.

Granted, I don’t shower with LZ after games like NBA teammates do, and I’ll admit that if I had to, it might be a little uncomfortable at first.

But if a gay player just goes about his business in the shower, showing that he has no sexual interest in his teammates and that he’s not “checking them out,” I think the awkwardness would wear off fairly quickly.

LZ and I know where each other stand and we respect each other’s right to believe as he does.

I know he’s gay, and he knows I believe that’s a sin. I know he thinks I get my moral standards from an outdated, mistranslated book, and he knows I believe he needs to change his lifestyle. Still, we can laugh together, and play ball together.

That’s real diversity. Disagreeing but not being disagreeable.

For the record, I covered Amaechi as a beat writer for the Akron Beacon Journal when he was a rookie playing for the Cleveland Cavaliers.

I like John. He’s intelligent, nice and you can have a good conversation with him. I haven’t seen him in several years but if I saw him today, I’d smile and give him a hug. I think dinner with him would be a blast, with lots of great discussion/debate about race, politics, religion, Africa and yes, sexuality.

Since Amaechi came out, I’ve read lots of columns about being “progressive.” The implication — or outright assertion — is that anyone who believes homosexuality is wrong is not progressive or enlightened.

That’s where this thing becomes problematic, because those who hold to that view are saying I must change my entire belief system/religion because of your belief system.

Where’s the diversity in that?

Those folks don’t want diversity. They want everyone to agree with their “enlightened” opinion.

Look, I’ll accept your right to have your own belief system and to live as you please, but I’m not changing mine. Diversity is not just accepting alternatives to what has long been perceived as normal, but it’s accepting the significant number of people who hold to long-standing “traditional” beliefs as well.

Millions of Christians who follow the Bible — and Muslims who follow the Koran and Jews who follow the Torah, as well as many nonreligious Americans — believe homosexuality is wrong.

That doesn’t mean they’re unenlightened. That just means their moral code doesn’t fluctuate based on society’s ever-changing standards. As long as we’re not being violent toward one another, as long as we can be civil, everything should be fine. We don’t have to agree.

And please don’t compare being homosexual to being black. I consider that insulting to blacks for a number of reasons. The fact that some blacks make the comparison themselves only shows how crushed our racial esteem has become because of America’s oppression (witness our insistence on calling ourselves the n-word).

You can’t hide your skin color, choose your skin color, change your skin color or switch your skin color back and forth. Some argue that you can’t do that with your sexuality either, but there are many scientists on both sides of the genetic debate, and I believe a truly objective person would admit the biological evidence for homosexuality is far from definitive.

Nor has the Bible, the Koran or the Torah ever associated a particular skin color with sin (it was only racist whites who twisted the Scriptures 400 years ago who did that, never the Bible itself).

I’m not trying to get into a religious or scientific discussion here, I’m just saying that some people will accept homosexuality as fine and others will not.

Some will write me off as a bigot for this article, but folks, this is real talk. Unfortunately, we can’t have real talk in America nowadays.

Whites can’t voice their real opinions — no matter how legitimate — about race for fear of being called racist, and everyone’s afraid of offending anyone. It seems the only person who can be openly criticized, or disagreed with, is the President.

How crazy is that?

Until we can honestly hear each other out — and be civil while doing so — we won’t get anywhere. One thing I hope this article does is encourage people to have frank discussions about sensitive issues such as this one.

Here’s the bottom line: If I can accept working side-by-side with a homosexual, then he/she can accept working side-by-side with someone who believes homosexuality is wrong.

If an NBA player can accept playing with a homosexual, then the homosexual must accept playing with guys who don’t agree with his lifestyle.

Believe me, when the ball goes up, his sexual preference isn’t going to matter.

Q. What was the reaction to your blog?

A. Reaction was overwhelmingly positive. Usually when I send a blog in it takes 10 to 15 minutes before it’s up on the site. This one took probably eight hours. They sent it to several editors, the top editors at espn.com as well as The Magazine, where I mainly work. It was controversial and they wanted different people to see it.

When they finally put it up I got about 1100 e-mails. I would say about 90 percent were positive. About 65 percent were from Christians who totally agreed with what I said. Another 25 percent were from people who disagreed with my view of homosexuality but liked the overall tenor of the article, including some homosexuals. About 10 percent were totally against it.

Within ESPN itself, from the things people said to me, it was received positively as well. A lot said they enjoyed it and liked it – I got that from several Christians who work there, as well as people of other religions and people who aren’t religious. It was read on “Mike and Mike in the Morning” – they really liked it. I thought the response within ESPN itself would tend toward the negative though I never doubted they would publish it. Then I thought public opinion would be 50-50 but it was overwhelmingly positive.

Q. Did you respond to the e-mails?

A. I put the results of the e-mails on my next blog. I responded to a few – I wouldn’t have had time to respond to all. I got a call from Athletes in Action, a Christian-based sports ministry – I was asked to appear at one of their events at All-Star weekend. They had me seated on the dais but I didn’t speak. There were over 1000 people at this breakfast.

Q. Would you describe yourself as a conservative?

A. No. Most African-Americans, socially, are conservative, largely because of their church background. In terms of my beliefs as a Christian I am against abortion and same-sex marriage. Socially, I would definitely say I’m conservative, but in terms of government and policies I would say I’m probably more in line with Democrats. I would love to have universal health care and I’m for affirmative action. I’m an independent – not registered with either party. No, I’m not a conservative in the technical sense of what a conservative is in terms of going back to the way things were. No African-American wants to go back to the way things were.

Q. But if you go back to the 1950s homosexuals weren’t claiming their rights – wouldn’t that appeal to you?

A. The big problem then and up through the civil rights movement was racism and the notion of white supremacy – those were the main problems. If I could remove the racism and the way people of color and Native Americans were treated then I do see a lot of great things about the overall culture that was America. It was more conducive to family values, which are important for any society and civilization to have. But the huge blind spot was racism. Obviously I liked the standards in other ways back then. In my opinion we’re gone way too far in terms of what we allow on TV and radio. You’ve got little kids watching these TV shows and being affected negatively, in my opinion.

Q. Does sports media tend to be liberal?

A. Media in general tends to be liberal. I was at the New York Times for six years and they were certainly liberal. Sports media – I would lean toward yes – but in sports it’s harder to tell. You’re not commenting on social issues. One reason I wrote this column about the homosexuality issue is because everything I read, the overwhelming majority, basically came from a liberal standpoint.

One black player said he was okay having a gay teammate as long he “don’t bring it on me”. He was ripped in all the columns I read. Anybody who made comments that were not pro-homosexual were taken to task as not being progressive. And I wrote before Tim Hardaway – that’s a whole different take.

Q. Do you find political correctness in sports media?

A. In this instance I did. I obviously butted my head against it. For the most part everything written before I wrote was politically correct. In some racial issues you don’t. Barry Bonds – you saw the poll numbers – the majority of African Americans support him. ESPN has been fair to Bonds and maybe has gone the other way. He had his own show on TV and the way they’ve covered his pursuit of the record they’ve taken it at face value – this guy has hit a lot of home runs. But columnists and talk show hosts come out negatively against Bonds. If you’re talking in a racial sense that political correctness means always giving in to people of color – I don’t think so.

That’s a hard question. Bonds wasn’t good to media so some of it is his personality. On the other hand he is going to break the record of an African American so you wouldn’t say it’s racism. But you might in comparing him to the treatment Mark McGwire got. We knew he was taking something, even though what he was taking wasn’t illegal back then. Steroids weren’t illegal when Barry Bonds took them – so he’s bearing the brunt of what McGwire got away with. Some people in the black community wonder about Roger Clemens. There’s no evidence that he took anything but there’s rumblings and certainly you have the circumstantial evidence on the field. To be getting better into his 40s is remarkable. Yet he’s still treated like a star and the Yankees shower tons of money on him.

Q. Where do you draw the line between acting on your beliefs and not acting on them?

A. When I’m talking basketball on TV or on a blog or in an article my beliefs govern how I interact with people. A lot of sportswriters talk about sex with athletes and who they’re sleeping with – the way guys do. I don’t do that. I’m not talking to an athlete about him cheating on his wife, about him out there fornicating. I don’t condemn them, but when we’re not talking about sports and I’m not interviewing them we may talk about kids, music, and numerous things. I don’t talk about those things with other people so I’m not going there with athletes.

In terms of being objective if a player was openly gay, that wouldn’t affect my coverage of him. A lot of players live lifestyles I won’t agree with but I won’t throw my personal beliefs into my coverage. People who know me know I’m a Christian and if a subject comes up I’m not ashamed to talk about what I believe. But I don’t bring it into the daily coverage when it has no place there.

In the blog I threw my personal beliefs in because it’s a blog and you’re allowed to do that in a blog. Columnists are allowed to do it in a newspaper and if I had had a column in the New York Times I would have tried to do that. Everyone who wrote a column about that issue brought their personal beliefs in. Most were ultra-liberal. Maybe their personal beliefs aren’t informed by religion but they’re informed by something that brought them to the side of being pro-homosexual. I brought my beliefs in and they happened to be on the anti-homosexual end. But what I did wasn’t different than anybody else.

My belief system is impacted by my faith. That’s what being a Christian is, and a Muslim and a Jew. I can’t have religion just on Sunday. It’s going to affect how I am at work. But when it comes to writing about sports – when it doesn’t deal with social or personal beliefs – I keep it objective.

Some people say you’re trampling on the separation of church and state. I don’t think so. I think I’m in line with the general principles of the founders. My view is that the intentions of the founders was not to divorce moral principles that come from religion – Christian religion in the case of this country – from the public discourse and public sphere. The Bible was used to teach kids how to read in school. The Ten Commandments were up in courtrooms. We still put a hand on a Bible to take an oath. The founders weren’t anti-religion – they just didn’t want one denomination persecuting other denominations or faiths. That had been the case in Europe.

Part of the idea of writing the column was that I felt a lot of people in the country were against homosexuality and I don’t think their viewpoint was being presented. You would think America was overwhelmingly pro-homosexual. That’s not the case. I felt it was 50-50 or even slightly tilted toward my view, and I thought in fairness this other view should be presented.

Q. What did your parents do?

A. My father was a personnel manager for Travelers Insurance Co. He stopped that after 20 years and began working with the federal court system. My mother worked in the school board. Some years she was at home and other years she was a teacher or administrator in the public school system.

My father got transferred a lot in his job. I was born in Baton Rouge and I lived in Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Syracuse, Des Moines, and Cleveland. I graduated high school in Cleveland. Oberlin College is near Cleveland. I stayed near Cleveland my first eight years out of college. Oberlin is a very liberal school. Homosexuality was out in the open – I had a good experience there.

I do interact with LZ Granderson and other people who are homosexual. LZ and I are friends – we play basketball together. There are other homosexuals at the Magazine – I don’t know how they feel about me personally now. I would say to them – just like I put aside my personal beliefs to work with them and be friendly to them – I would expect the same thing from them.

Another point in the article I wanted to get across. This thing I called “diversity” is not just a liberal thing. It’s not just if your viewpoint agrees with the so-called liberal standard of diversity. Diversity is when you don’t agree with the liberal standard. In my opinion diversity is accepting people – being able to disagree but not being disagreeable. LZ and I disagree yet we aren’t disagreeable. We can laugh and go out socially together.

Q. You write about black athletes having “leverage” to help black social causes? Do black sportswriters have “leverage”?

A. Oh yeah – the power of the pen. Especially if you’re a columnist, you can shape other opinions. Even a beat writer – in terms of how you present athletes in a different light than the mainstream white media.

Sometimes in the mainstream white media racism does play a part. Sometimes I think it’s just ignorance in not knowing black culture and understanding where an African-American player may be coming from. I remember when players started wearing cornrows and some white sportswriters associated that with thugs and gangsta culture. But cornrows have been associated with African-American culture forever. When I was a kid a lot of kids were wearing them and they weren’t gangsta. My daughters wear them.

As an African-American writer you can present a more balanced and accurate and fair viewpoint than another writer who may not be familiar with African-American culture.

Today with sportswriters gaining such prominence and being on TV – that increases the opportunity to help the black cause. Your job is talking about sports and being objective but inevitably the opportunity arises where you can present another side. I was on “Cold Pizza” a couple of years ago commemorating Martin Luther King Day, on a panel with Swin Cash and Jay Harris, who was moderating. We talked about the Ron Artest brawl in Detroit. I brought up the fact that it was not the first time an athlete charged into the stands and that white mainstream media seems to have selective amnesia regarding black issues. In the 1970s Rick Barry charged after a 15-year-old boy who cursed him. Ty Cobb definitely did it. We talk about today’s athletes and how much trouble they get into – that’s code for black athletes.

Let’s be honest, throughout the history of American sports athletes have had a lot of boorish behavior. We know about Babe Ruth’s behavior. Cobb was an avowed racist; Mickey Mantle was an alcoholic and the media protected them. I know the media is different today, but to act like the athletes of yesteryear were such moral pillars and now today they’re thugs and criminals and womanizers – it’s not fair and accurate. There’s subtle racism in that because of the makeup of athletes – a majority are black.

As a black sportswriter you do have the platform to bring out these truths that may not have come out decades ago when most sportswriters were white.

(SMG thanks Chris Broussard for his cooperation)

Broussard’s phony iconoclasm would compel a lot more if he’d also:

– called for the execution of children who strike a parent (Exodus 21: 15, 17)

– defended the slave-master’s right to beat his slave without mercy since “the slave is his money” (Exodus 21:21)

– called for the destruction of anyone who worships any other god (Exodus 22:20)

– blasted people who eat shellfish

– noted the uncleanliness of any menstruating woman or those who touch them (Leviticus 15:19-32)

– acknowledged that dwarfs, the blind or other “limited” people cannot be priests (Leviticus 21: 17-21)

– advocated the execution of blasphemers (Leviticus 24:16)

– noted that a man can force his wife to drink the “water of bitterness” and that if she dies, that proves she’s an adulterer (Numbers 5: 11-31)

– defended men’s rights to sell their daughters into sexual slavery (Exodus 21:7-11)

– noted that Jews are the children of the devil and the fathers of lies (John 8:39-44)

Broussard yearns for a victimhood equal to that of others because he follows one absurdist and self-contradictory (if often beautiful) book that even he doesn’t really follow. It’s preposterous, and unserious in rational discussion.

posted: Tuesday, February 13, 2007|Feedback
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