An Interview with Wright Thompson

“I don’t consciously imitate other southern writers but I write like I talk and I was born in Clarksville, Mississippi. The voice is southern, simply because that’s the only voice I’ve got. There are certain phrases and a certain bit of nostalgia in looking at things that comes through.”

“The ideal interview is for a person not to feel interviewed but to feel like they sat down and had a conversation. When somebody starts cursing that’s always a good sign, because you’re just talking now, you’re not thinking about every word that comes out of your mouth. If you hear ‘fuck, shit, hell, goddamn’ I know you’re not parsing words. You’re just talking.”

“I’m an early riser – I was raised on a farm. I try to get up early – that helps. You need to spend the hours. The most important thing is, if you don’t have the information to come home and write, you’re royally screwed. Nothing reads as flimsy as an underreported magazine story. I obsess about these things – they consume my life.”

Wright Thompson: Interviewed on September 14, 2007

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

Born: 1976, Clarksdale, Miss.

Education: Missouri, BJ, 2001

Career: New Orleans Times Picayune 2001-2002, KC Star 2002 – 2006, espn.com and ESPN the Magazine 2006 –

Personal: married

Favorite restaurant (home): City Grocery, Oxford, Miss. “as good a restaurant as there is anywhere – a world class bar upstairs with a balcony that overlooks the whole square – a home away from home – few places make me happier”

Favorite restaurant (road): Le Fou Frog, KC “best steak in KC, a French restaurant – when you walk inside you feel like you’re in Marseilles; PJ Clarke’s, New York, “the béarnaise bacon cheeseburger – if Scarlett Johansson were food she would be a béarnaise bacon cheeseburger”

Favorite hotel: Hay-Adams, Washington, D.C. “I don’t stay there much because it’s really expensive, but it was my daddy’s favorite hotel – it’s one of the places I can feel his presence. I don’t know if that makes me nuts but I swear it’s true.”

Wright Thompson, excerpted from espn.com, August 30, 2007:

OXFORD, Miss. — Two friends, both unhinged football fans, got married earlier this year. During the wedding reception, the bride’s father somehow got the Ole Miss band to march into the room, a blaring chorus of starched uniforms and shining brass. The groom conducted. The crowd stomped and cheered. You’d have thought folks were celebrating a 12-play scoring drive, not holy matrimony.

Soon after the wedding, I watched video of this event. Immediately, I recognized the feeling deep down in my gut. It’s something I’ve felt in so many cathedral-like stadiums. I closed my eyes, and the familiar notes sent me rushing months into the future, longing for a tailgate that escalates from simmer to burn, for the chill bumps that always come in the moments before kickoff, for the evening breezes rustling the white oaks when the game is done. My body sat in front of a computer screen. My mind was in a stadium. It was only April, and I longed for September.

I missed football season.

As you might have guessed, I live in the South, a little town named Oxford, which means my life is governed by a set of rhythms as familiar as the white-columned mansions up and down Lamar Boulevard. I love air conditioning, and I love cocktails in the gloaming on the City Grocery balcony, and I love a plate of shrimp and grits when the sun finally goes down. I love honking at Faulkner’s grave on the way home from the bar. I love cruising 18 miles an hour through campus, the speed limit set in honor of Archie Manning’s college number, passing pretty blondes driving foreign cars, courtesy of Daaaaddy, and seeing a boy sporting khakis and an SEC haircut and realizing our fathers looked just like that a half century ago. I love “Dixie” played slow and the Bob Dylan song. I love the magnolias blooming in the late spring and the incandescent heat of the summer but, mostly, I love the insanity of the fall.

Q. Do you think of yourself as a southern writer?

A. I don’t. But I hear from people all the time who think I am. I don’t consciously imitate other southern writers but I write like I talk and I was born in Clarksville, Mississippi. The voice is southern, simply because that’s the only voice I’ve got. There are certain phrases and a certain bit of nostalgia in looking at things that comes through.

My pet topic is disappearing America, and things that once were and are no longer. Those things popped up in a story in Nazareth, Texas about the girls high school basketball team, and in the Mark McGwire story. I would love to write a book about disappearing America, and what it says about America today. This comes from growing up in a place that is both disappearing physically and is losing some of its long-held idiosyncrasies.

Q. You mean like obesity?

A. We’re number one in obesity and teen pregnancy and 50^th in education. In Mississippi we like to say ‘thank god for Arkansas’. That shit’s real. This is a messed up place, dude.

Q. But you love it.

A. It’s part of being from the south. It’s what Willie Morris wrote – being from the south is about having an intense love of so many things yet, if you are of a certain frame of mind, also having pretty deep regrets and embarrassments and other adjectives about the racial history of it. I had a line in my southern football story – “I love Dixie played slow and the Bob Dylan song.” That’s the essence of the south – you love the history but you also love the fact that other people had to come in to force it to change. I went to a day of the Bobby Cherry trial – as a southerner I needed to see this – to sit on those hard benches in a sultry courtroom and see racial reconciliation 40 years too late. Rick Bragg’s lead the day after it was over is one of the most amazing things I’ve ever read.

Q. Do you feel the spirit of Faulkner tapping at your window?

A. No. I just feel my editors, Jay Lovinger or Chris Berend or Kevin Jackson, wondering where the fuck their story is.

Q. As a long-form writer, are you a dying breed?

A. I don’t think so. The Internet has created a world where you can have all different forms – they can all co-exist and be successful. On espn.com we can run a 3600-word story about a young man from Georgia named Genarlow Wilson who is or isn’t wrongfully imprisoned, and also a Bill Simmons column about the Celtics. Both can appeal to different people or the same people, and both can be well read and well received. We do a lot of different things well at espn.com.

If you ask young writers who they want to be a lot will still say Gary Smith. I have Gary Smith’s phone number and I won’t call it because what am I possibly going to say to Gary Smith? A lot of people still want to be Gary Smith or Scott Price – one of those people who write those stories people remember long after they forgot who wrote them.

Q. Are there readers for long form?

A. I think so. Absolutely. Poynter did a study that showed people are more likely to read long stories online than in the newspaper. I know this anecdotally and also I get a lot of hits on stories that require an investment of time and emotion from people. Think about it. You’ve got a captive audience of people at work, bored to death in their cubicles. They’re more likely to get through a long story at work than at home when they’re trying to make lunches, get the kids ready for bed, or walk the dog.

Are there as many people who want to read Gary Smith as want to see Jenna Jameson naked? Probably not. But different story styles suit different kinds of stories. There are long stories for a reason.

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Q. Would you describe your job as rarefied?

A. I want to answer that without sounding like a jackass. That’s true. Everybody knows those jobs are harder to get than they are to do. Frankly, I think I’m very lucky – there are a lot of people who could do my job. By hook and crook and a lot of hard work I happened to get it – I’m incredibly lucky I’m allowed the time and resources to write stories important to me, my editors and readers. It is a kind of rarefied job, not a day goes by I’m not incredibly thankful for it. I love it. I love getting up in the morning to do my job. I was transcribing tape today for a magazine story and as much as I hate doing that I love it too.

Q. You seem like a humble guy.

A. If you ask a lot of people who know me I’m a stark raving egomaniac. I think everybody’s life is interesting. I think that most of the time the story is about them – which is not to say I won’t write myself in when it helps the arc or makes it clearer. While I like first person I don’t necessarily like ‘I think I think’ stories – I think x about y so therefore z’. I like stories that are about people and especially about places. The only way to go to a new and strange place is with a little bit of humility because no matter what you know about you are talking to people who know everything about what you’re reporting on. You can’t help but go hat in hand to those places that are foreign to you.

Q. What makes a good story to you?

A. People and place. It needs to be about people. If the readers feel when the story is over that they’ve been to a place you’ve done your job. All the things Jon Franklin (“Writing For Story”) talks about – conflict and resolution, an arc – it should be muscular and flow in a logical way, and be cinematic. It’s the old movie test – if you paid seven bucks to see a story would you get up and walk out? I think it’s hysterical that we have a graf to tell people about what we’re about to tell them. Can you imagine if that happened five minutes into “The Departed”? You want to give people a road map in the story so they don’t feel lost in the desert, but also in a cinematic way that’s interesting to read.

Q. Explain cinematic.

A. In your own head you need to think about words a movie director would be thinking about. Look at the scene and character and how that first scene would introduce the character. Report visually – write down moments that are striking to you – if you write that way it will be striking to the reader. I did a road trip through China for a story and had reams of notes and I found when I looked at those notes, if I could remember it without the notes, it probably should go in. That’s the whole thing with quotes – if you can’t remember the gist of it it’s probably not that great a quote.

Q. What is your interview technique?

A. Professional interviewers might read this and have a heart attack. I try to sit down and talk to somebody. I tell them things about myself if I feel it’s relevant – it’s a two-way conversation. I look for common ground if we have similar life experiences. We just talk. The ideal interview is for a person not to feel interviewed but to feel like they sat down and had a conversation. When somebody starts cursing that’s always a good sign, because you’re just talking now, you’re not thinking about every word that comes out of your mouth. If you hear ‘fuck, shit, hell, goddamn’ I know you’re not parsing words. You’re just talking.

Q. Where do you do your best talking?

A. You have to catch me at the bar at City Grocery – on the balcony.

Q. What’s your drink?

A. Gin and tonic, if it’s still light.

Q. After dark?

A. Makers Mark and Diet Coke. I apologize to serious whiskey drinkers out there. I need a little caffeine in my life.

Q. Do your editors help you conceptualize?

A. I have great editors. A lot of times I have heavy conversations with them before I make a phone call and then during the entire process. My main e-ticket editor is Jay Lovinger – Jay is one of the deans of American magazine editing – it’s a daily honor and privilege to have his phone number, much less to call him, which I do, obsessively. His poor wife and kids must wonder who is this psychopathic redneck that keeps calling his house. His boss is Kevin Jackson, one of the head guys at dot.com and one of the smartest guys I’ve ever worked with. My editor on the column length stuff is Michael Knisley, who is a former newspaper and magazine reporter himself. He gets it.

Any success I’ve had at dot.com has a lot to do with those guys. At the magazine it’s a guy named Chris Berend, the senior articles editor who came over from Esquire. He’s great on the front end and I talk to him when I’m reporting – this is what I saw today – almost like dailies on movies. My old boss at the KC Star, Mike Fannin, was another great editor. His attitude was don’t go somewhere and scrape your nuts on the pavement – don’t waste time.

Q. How much time do you take on a story?

A. I’m so much better with more time. Reporting on a tight deadline you have to get things you know are going to work. If you do a magazine story or a long form piece for dot.com you talk to everybody and the more you talk the more you funnel it down to the essential people. I’m sure some is a crutch – I over-report to the nth degree. I’m petrified of sitting down and realizing ‘oh my god I didn’t do this’. I don’t want to stare at another flight.

I’m an early riser – I was raised on a farm. I try to get up early – that helps. You need to spend the hours. The most important thing is if you don’t have the information to come home and write you’re royally screwed. Nothing reads as flimsy as an underreported magazine story.

I obsess about these things – they consume my life.

Q. Is that healthy?

A. I don’t know. It’s the only way to do it right. You’ve got to live. The amount of stuff I read before and during a story is endless. I’m an Amazon junkie. You should see my bookshelf for ‘History of Mistrust’, which I wrote in August.

Q. How are you on deadline?

A. It’s easy to me. It’s much easier when you know this story has to be written and done at this time. You just do it. I write quick anyway. It’s instant gratification. It’s the greatest thing ever if you don’t have to spend months doing it.

Q. Do you see yourself writing outside of sports?

A. I might do something like that, probably on the side. Knock on wood – I’d like to have my job for as long as they want me. It’s a big audience. These are people who are passionate about great work and know what it is when they see it and know how to make good work great. I sound like a freaking SportsCenter commercial but I really mean it.

I like writing under the aegis of sports – you have all these people together in a lockerrom or on a team for no other reason than they hit the genetic lottery. You have a really random cross-section of people – a Jason Grimsley and Mike Sweeney in the same clubhouse, one of whom is a big cheater and the other might be the best person in sports. That’s interesting to me. Through sports I get to look at all the themes interesting and important to me.

I have two dreams. I want to write in celebration of food – there’s no food I don’t like. And I’d like to be a Waffle House short order cook one day a week.

Q. Who do you read?

A. Rick Telander (Chicago Sun-Times). Scott Price (SI). At the risk of offending a lot of my friends I think Eli Saslow (Washington Post) might be the best reporter in America. Seth Wickersham (ESPN), a dear friend, does the NFL as well as anyone. Jim Sheeler (Rocky Mountain News), wrote the Pulitzer Prize winner on the Marine who has to knock on doors. Ben Montgomery at the St. Pete Times doesn’t do sports either. Rick Maese (Baltimore Sun).

Larry Brown, a fiction writer in Oxford. You read him and you think in a million years with a million typewriters I couldn’t do this. It’s not helpful – it’s just annoying. Joe Posnanski (KC Star) is great. Brady McCollough (KC Star) who covers Kansas, is a talented young guy who writes long form stuff.

There’s lot’s of amazing talent out there. Sally Jenkins (Washington Post). Eric Adelson at The Magazine is as good a writer as there is. The E-Ticket group – Eric Neel, Wayne Drehs, Jim Caple, Patrick Hruby. It’s really exciting when you make a list – it restores your faith.

Q. How much time do you spend reading?

A. People send me stuff – I have Google alerts for people I like, for Eli and Geoff Caulkins (Memphis Commercial Appeal). I try to read the long stuff. There’s a group of us I read before it comes out and there are people I send to. Eli is always a big help. Seth is a big help. Eric Adelson is helpful. Patrick Hruby has really good stuff to say. It depends on the story – you know who can be critical or helpful. You want people who aren’t going to say ‘I love it’. You want them to say ’Here are the flaws.’

Q. Do you think gamers are obsolete?

A. They’re obsolete unless you’re writing about high school in a town, and they’re obsolete if done wrong. But they’re incredibly relevant if done right. The word ‘gamer’ kills this process before it starts. It’s a story about a game – there’s a subtle difference. There’s a reason all the winning game stories at the APSE are columns – because they’re not writing in some archaic form as dictated by an editor. They’re trying to write the most interesting story. People love those. They can be like an SI story done well, with excellent access. like Michael Silver on the balcony of John Elway’s hotel room. That’s always relevant, because it’s new.

Q. Should sports matter as much as they do?

A. Of course they should. We’re not cheering for only the Redskins or whoever. We’re cheering for their past and our association with the team. We’re cheering for and with friends who use this as social pivot. We’re cheering for our father who loved that team, for our grandfather who only wanted to see the Cubs win a championship, or for our brother who went to Bama.

These teams are physical manifestations of feelings people have for where they’re from. As people move around and are less rooted it’s a way to hold on to things that matter to them, to hold on to some part of their identity. Absolutely, it should matter. Do we have people who are obsessive – yeah. Do people seem to be more concerned about sports than politics – absolutely – and that’s ridiculous.

One of the things people have a hard time verbalizing is that down there in front of me someone is physically like me but mentally stronger. There’s a normal person who somehow can withstand the stress of making two free throws after the clock ran out. We like seeing people who are theoretically like us but can do things we can’t do.

Q. How did you approach the Mark McGwire story?

A. The initial thing was to contact everybody he ever had contact with – I called a lot of them. I kept thinking about how McGwire in essence was a story about legacy, and how legacy, if you look at it, is the things we leave behind. I wanted to go to where he came from and see the things and places he left behind and what if anything it said about where he is now. That was the concept. It started from an esoteric conversation about what is legacy – after that it was easy. You just went to the places. I got lucky with the USC alumni game – I didn’t know it was going to be on when I picked my date to travel – so the journalism gods were looking out for me. Which happens a lot – I’m amazed at the number of things you stumble into.

Wright Thompson, excerpted from espn.com, December 4, 2006:

IRVINE, Calif. — In the last house on the left, behind two gates in a heavily secured Orange County community, Mark McGwire is reinventing himself.

One part of his life, the public part, is over. A second act, in a new place with new friends, is just beginning. Bunkered within the walls of his exclusive enclave, across the street from a U.S. congressman of all things, he can look out the windows and see the mountains rising in the distance.

He likes it here on lots 82 and 83 in the Shady Canyon neighborhood, billed as a place for folks with “quiet wealth.” Far from the glitz of Beverly Hills and from the O.C.’s ocean-front palaces, it’s for people who don’t want to be found. A computer system scans license plates for undesirables; security guards stop strangers and, if a home owner doesn’t say “yes,” send them on their way. From the outside, the houses look like battleships.

This is where the 43-year-old McGwire spends his days. Five years ago, he retired as one of baseball’s most beloved players. His legacy is different now. The Hall of Fame ballots went out last month, and no one knows if he’s in or not, or if he even cares or not. That’s how he likes it, of course. He’s not here to talk about the past.

He sidestepped questions from Congress. He doesn’t do interviews, including one for this story. He didn’t go back to St. Louis during the World Series. But it’s more than just avoiding the media and fans. McGwire never seems to talk about the past. To anyone. In fact, he seems intent on leaving his past behind.

“I haven’t even spoken to him since he retired,” says Randy Robertson, a buddy from childhood and one his college roommates at Southern Cal. “I don’t know who his best friend is now.”

“I haven’t spoken to him in a while,” says Mark Altieri, the slugger’s former spokesman.

“I haven’t seen him in ages,” says Tom Carroll, his high school baseball coach.

“He just wants to slink away,” says Ken Brison, son of a former McGwire foundation board member.

“We never talk about politics or baseball,” says U.S. Rep. John Campbell (R-CA 48th), his neighbor.

His Mediterranean-looking mansion at the end of a cul-de-sac is such an unlikely end for a star of one of the most magical summers baseball has ever known. McGwire’s future will be inside Shady Canyon, with his new wife, Stephanie, and young kids, Max and Mason, and at the breathtakingly expensive golf course nearby.

“That’s where he is all the time,” says friend Justin Dedeaux, son of the late Rod Dedeaux, McGwire’s coach at USC. “He stays behind those walls and that’s it. No one ever sees him. He just completely dropped out. I don’t know if he talks to anybody.”

“But what of the past that he wishes everyone would forget?” Even if he cuts ties, it’s still there. The places where he grew up, the friends he once knew, the life he once lived, that’s McGwire’s legacy. Even if he doesn’t speak, it speaks for him….

(SMG thanks Wright Thompson for his cooperation)

An Interview with Ian Thomsen

“It’s always a ‘person’ story in sports. If a story has any merit it’s anecdotal. You have to find out a way to find the information you’re looking for. It’s always a matter of getting somebody to tell you. Nobody can teach you how. It’s about relating to people.”

“I go to SI.com a lot because of my affiliation. But I really don’t go to websites to get a fix the way a lot of people do… I find a lot of what you read on bigger sports websites is distracting from what I want to know. A lot of people writing on the web don’t know what they’re talking about. They’re sort of wasting everybody’s time.”

“The sportswriting business would be better if they hired somebody who actually hung out in bar and knew the bookies and saw things the way Will McDonough used to see them.”

Ian Thomsen. Interviewed on August 18, 2006.

Position: NBA reporter, Sports Illustrated.

Born: 1961, Montreal, Canada.

Education: Northwestern, BS, 1983.

Career: Boston Globe 1983-89, The National 90-91, International Herald Tribune 92-97, Sports Illustrated 98- present.

Personal: married, two children.

Favorite restaurant (home): Caffe Paolina, Swampscott, MA

Favorite restaurant (road): Mandarin House, Evanston, IL

Favorite hotel: The Standard, Miami

Ian Thomsen excerpted, with Luis Fernando Llosa, from Sports Illustrated, September 3, 2001:

The Little League World Series final at Howard J. Lamade Stadium in Williamsport, Pa., on Sunday had a thrilling finish that in other years would have served as the tournament’s most unforgettable image. For the second time in three years the series was won by a team from Japan, as Tokyo Kitasuna scored both runs in its 2-1 victory over Apopka, Fla., on a bottom-of-the-sixth single by Nobuhisa Baba, a 5’1″ third baseman…

But Sunday’s events seemed almost anticlimactic after the show put on earlier in the series by Danny Almonte, a remarkably poised lefthander from the Rolando Paulino All-Stars of the Bronx. As his team advanced to last Saturday’s U.S. championship game, in which it lost 8-2 to Apopka, Danny, a native of Moca in the Dominican Republic, seemed like a man among boys, using his lanky leg kick and effortless release to blind his overmatched foes with 70-mph-plus two- and four-seam fastballs–the equivalent, given that Little League pitchers throw from a mound just 46 feet from home plate, of 92-mph major league heat–and bamboozle them with sharp curves and changeups…

Such was Danny’s celebrity that during the tournament he received a good-luck call from his idol, Cincinnati Reds centerfielder Ken Griffey Jr., and as a child version of the Arizona Diamondbacks’ towering lefty Randy (the Big Unit) Johnson, the 5’8″ Danny earned the nickname the Little Unit. Even before the tournament his physical and mound maturity had caused some to wonder if he was, as the Paulino All-Stars claimed, 12 years old -the maximum age for Little League eligibility…

According to birth ledgers in Moca examined by SI, Danny’s birth date was registered with the Dominican government in December 1994 by his father, Felipe, as April 7, 1987. (In the Dominican Republic it is not uncommon for parents to wait years before officially declaring the birth of a child.) That means that when Danny Almonte was blowing away batters in Williamsport last week, he was officially 14 years old.

Q. Which of your stories had the biggest impact on readers?

A. When I was at the Globe, two football-playing twins in small coal-mining town in Pennsylvania were in a car accident and one died. Very tragic. That was the one I heard most about.

Q. What about the Danny Almonte story for SI?

A. That one probably got the most attention. But the real work on that was done by Luis Llosa at SI, he was in the Dominican researching another story and he discovered Daniel Almonte’s birth certificate, which proved he was two years older than he claimed he was. I always thought that was his story more than mine. My own feeling is people pay way too much attention to the Little League World Series. It puts a lot of pressure on kids. It’s mind-boggling that the President of the United States goes to watch the final. It only puts more pressure on these kids to perform. It’s just all wrong, I think.

Q. Do fans want investigative exposes?

A. On interesting subjects, which almost never get written, because they’re impossible to gather up. They wanted to know if Daniel Almonte was 12 or 14. I don’t think they want to know if some minor infraction of NCAA rules takes place. I don’t think they care if NFL players are on steroids. It’s almost accepted they want them on steroids because they want them as big and fast as possible. They do want to know about Barry Bonds on steroids. So it’s a very narrow frame of investigation. Ultimately they want to be entertained. They don’t want to take it seriously to the point they have to approach it like reading a tax manual.

Q. Aren’t sports supposed to be an escape from life’s grimness?

A. I never bought the idea that it’s an escape. If you’re a sports fan that’s just part of your life. People get awfully upset about sports. You hear all these people who call in to talk radio – they’re not escaping anything. They’re getting more upset about sports than other things in their lives.

Q. How does someone become an informed sports fan?

A. To me it all depends on how much common sense you have personally. You have to read in between the lines to know what’s going on. You rarely get the full story out of any one newspaper article or magazine article. And then because it’s such a subjective avocation it’s all a matter of opinion anyway apart from the hard stats. A lot of it in a larger sense doesn’t matter anyway. It’s for fun. To me people should get out of it whatever they put into it. If you want to be a hard-core junkie you can figure out your own route to learning. It’s like my business. You figure out your own way to what a story is. You come to your own opinion and conclusions.

Q. Where do you get your sports information?

I focus mainly now on the NBA. For NBA information I use a couple of websites that provide daily news compendium: Insidehoops.com and hoopshype.com. Both give a good roundup of what newspapers are reporting everyday. I read SI every week. I read the Boston Globe. I get very little from TV. I don’t watch a lot of SportsCenter. Almost all is from print.

Q. What about the major sports websites?

A. Only when I’m really looking for something. I go to SI.com a lot because of my affiliation. But I really don’t go to websites to get a fix the way a lot of people do. Don’t feel the need for it. Everything I need I still get through the traditional vehicles. I’m a dinosaur. When I try to go to espn.com I feel like I can just get lost in there.
I find that there’s just so much drek on the web I don’t’ want to waste my time sifting through to get to what I’m looking for. The conventional sources get right to the point of what I’m looking for. I find a lot of what you read on bigger sports websites is distracting from what I want to know. A lot of people writing on the web don’t know what they’re talking about. They’re sort of wasting everybody’s time.

Q. Writers you admire?

A. The Globe writers – Jackie MacMullen, Bob Ryan, Ron Borges, Dan Shaughnessy – all are very reliable – you don’t miss much reading the Globe every day. That will fill me in on what’s going on in Boston and around the country. Everybody who writes for SI is reliable and gives you a deeper perspective.

When I first got into the business sportswriting was in a golden era – there were so many terrific writers writing about sports. That era in my mind has passed. It’s hard for me to find many people who live up to that standard. Hard for me to read this stuff knowing how good it should be. Same complaint I hear from people talking about the NBA. They remember the 80s with Bird and Magic and now it’s hard to watch it knowing how it should be.

Q. NBA reporters you admire?

A. A lot of good ones. But I’m competing with them so I don’t want to give them any ink. Mention that I laughed when I said that.

Q. How useful are insidehoops.com and hoopshype.com?

A. All the people who work in the NBA look at those websites to get a roundup. They don’t catch all the news but they cast a wide net. So you get a roundup. They don’t just go to the bigger papers. They miss the point sometimes but do a pretty good job. It’s a good starting place.

Q. What is your work schedule?

A. Out of four weeks I probably travel parts of three weeks to NBA cities. When I’m working at home on a typical day I’ll start online to see what the news is. Depending on what my assignment is I’ll start making my calls. And fish around to see what I can find to write about. I go online to find out what not to do. If something is already written I’ll cross it off my list and try to find another direction to go. The magazine comes out five days after I file a story. It has to hold up. That’s the hard part of working for SI but when it works out it’s the rewarding part, too.

Q. How is your job on family life?

A. No harder than other jobs. Lawyers work 70 hours a week. Salesmen travel all the time. Every job requires balance.

Q. Can sportswriting be taught in a textbook?

A. No. It’s all common sense. It’s always a ‘person’ story in sports. If a story has any merit it’s anecdotal. You have to find out a way to find the information you’re looking for. It’s always a matter of getting somebody to tell you. Nobody can teach you how. It’s about relating to people. Which is exactly how fans relate to sports. It’s a personal process. That’s why to be a sportswriter you really don’t have to go to college. You just have to have street smarts and be able to figure out how things work.

The sportswriting business would be better if they hired somebody who actually hung out in bar and knew the bookies and saw things the way Will McDonough used to see them. It’s become very academic now. We don’t hire people in bars. There’s nobody like Willie around. There never was. If Willie tried to get a job today at the Globe I’m convinced they wouldn’t hire him. Because the qualities that used to be so obvious to newspapers are now almost shunned.

Q. What’s your advice for young sports media?

A. If somebody wants to be a big star as a sportswriter they should try to be a very good stylish writer and develop a voice. There is so little of that going on anymore that’s how you really stand out today and you’d provide a service. More people than ever are reading sports news and yet the quality of writing has suffered in spite of a growing audience. If somebody would take a 1960s or 1970s approach they’d be a big star in the business.

Everybody talks about the Sopranos as cutting edge TV. What is it except old-fashioned story telling? The producer didn’t go into the future – he went into the past and conjured up all traditional themes of storytelling. That’s what people should be doing if they want to set themselves apart. Be like Leigh Montville or Jim Murray. Don’t worry about breaking news so much but worry about how to tell a story.

(SMG thanks Ian Thomsen for his cooperation)

An Interview with Grant Wahl

“Although Beckham would not do one-on-one interviews specifically for the book – his handlers wanted a lot of money to participate, and I don’t pay the people I cover – he was available to the media before and after games – twice a week…”

“I write differently about soccer for Sports Illustrated magazine than I do for SI.com. Soccer journalism in the U.S. is still very much Internet-driven, and I write for the hardcore soccer fan – American and otherwise – on SI.com.

When I write for SI magazine, it’s always a challenge because I have to write for the mainstream U.S. sports fan and include things that will satisfy the hardcore soccer fan too.”

“Writer’s block used to be a big problem for me when I started at SI. I actually used to tie myself to a chair through the belt loops of my pants to keep me from going anywhere. But thankfully I don’t seem to get The Block anymore – knock on wood.”

Grant Wahl: Interviewed on July 12, 2009

Position: Senior Writer, Sports Illustrated

Born: 1973, Merriam, Kansas

Education: Princeton, 1996, BA in Politics

Career: Miami Herald sports intern 1996, Sports Illustrated 1996 –

Personal: Married, no kids.

Favorite restaurant (home): Jack’s Bistro, Baltimore. “Quirky slice of Baltimore with great food that wouldn’t be out of place in a John Waters or David Simon production.”

Favorite restaurant (away): Shiro’s Sushi, Seattle. “Not fancy or high-priced, but the best sushi you’ll ever have, anywhere – and I’ve eaten a lot.”

Favorite hotel: The Plaza, Buenos Aires. “A classic hotel in the heart of my adopted city.”

Author of: The Beckham Experiment: How The World’s Most Famous Athlete Tried to Conquer America http://tinyurl.com/layry6
)

Grant Wahl, excerpted from ‘The Beckham Experiment’:

Meanwhile, Beckham made an effort to fit in, and on his first MLS road trip he endured an only-in-America experience. After his first training session with the Galaxy, in Washington two days before a nationally televised game against D.C. United, he helped organize a dinner with 10 other players at Morton’s steak house in Arlington, Va. Beckham had enjoyed the players-only meals at Real Madrid, and if he was going to be just one of the lads in the Galaxy locker room, things needed to get off on the right foot. Not long after they took their table, the waiter asked if anyone wanted wine. They all raised their hands.

“O.K.,” the waiter said. “I need to see some I.D.’s.”

“I don’t have my I.D. with me,” Beckham said.

“No I.D., no wine!” the waiter announced, theatrically snatching Beckham’s wineglass.

Beckham thought it was a put-on. “Is this guy taking the piss?” he asked. But the waiter was serious. When the Galaxy’s Portuguese defender Abel Xavier couldn’t produce an I.D., his wineglass disappeared too. “What is this?” the 34-year-old Xavier thundered. “I have a kid who can drink.” The other players laughed hysterically, partly because the waiter hadn’t recognized the world’s most famous athlete and partly because Beckham and Xavier were so used to being mobbed in Europe that they didn’t bother carrying identification. Welcome to soccer in the U.S., guys.

The Morton’s dinner was the first time Beckham had held center stage at a players-only meal, and he came out of his shell, answering questions and telling stories about his days with Manchester United, the English national team and Real Madrid. The vibe was comfortable. There was no awkwardness with Beckham. “You can break his balls,” said defender Chris Albright, “and he’ll break your balls right back.” Kyle Martino, a midfielder, was stunned that Beckham could be such a regular guy.

And then the check came.

Beckham was earning a $6.5 million salary, and his income, with endorsements, would balloon to $48.2 million. Martino was making a salary of $55,297 — before taxes — and living in one of the U.S.’s most expensive cities. Nearly everyone at the table was thinking, Is Beckham going to pick up the check? But nobody said anything. Beckham, meanwhile, had never been in this situation before. The players on his other teams had all been millionaires, and Real Madrid paid for all team meals anyway. The Galaxy provided only a $45 per diem on the road. What would Beckham do? What should he do?

Donovan eyed the bill from his seat. He had paid for teammates’ dinners in the past, and he’d made his position clear even before Beckham’s arrival. “He’d better be picking up meals too,” Donovan had told teammates, “or else I’ll call him out on it.” But defender Chris Klein, one of Donovan’s best friends on the team, had a different viewpoint.

“If you’re out to dinner with the guys and you pick up a check here or there, then fine,” Klein said. “But if you start to feel like you’re being used, these aren’t your friends anymore. These are leeches. You can look at it two ways: Here’s this guy that’s making a lot of money, and maybe he should pick up the tab. But the other side of it is, maybe he’s trying so hard to be one of the guys, if he’s paying for everything then he’s not one of the guys anymore.”

Beckham didn’t pick up the check. He put in enough to cover his share and passed it along. That would be standard operating procedure at meals throughout the season. “None of us care,” said Kelly Gray, one of Beckham’s frequent dining companions. “It’s just nice to go out to dinner.”

Donovan didn’t call Beckham out at Morton’s after all, but he could never get over Beckham’s alligator arms when the bill arrived. Nobody would have believed it, he thought: David Beckham is a cheapskate.

Q. Beckham chose not to pick up the tab at his first dinner with his Galaxy teammates? What would you have done if you were him, assuming you could not expense it to SI?

A. It’s a fascinating debate, not least because reasonable people can disagree over whether Beckham – annual income: $50 million – should pick up the check at a fancy steakhouse with teammates earning under $20,000 a year.

If I’m Beckham in that situation, I would have picked up the check at the first meal in a heartbeat – and if I didn’t want to do it all the time, I would have just put in my share for future meals. If it was me personally – making my SI salary – then I would have been making similar money to several other players at the meal, and I probably wouldn’t have tried to pick up the whole thing. Then again, if I was one of the other players, I wouldn’t have wanted Beckham paying for everything all the time. I would have felt that my money was as good as his money, and I wouldn’t want to feel like Turtle from Entourage.

Q. Your access to Beckham was described as “unparalleled”. How so?

A. I saw that someone else wrote that – not me or my publisher – and I don’t think I would use that term necessarily. Beckham has done his own – ghost-written – books before, and those writers have had more access to him – even if every word is carefully approved by Beckham’s management team.

I have always had a solid working relationship with Beckham, have interviewed him more than any other American journalist – for major stories in SI – and material from those one-on-one interviews appears throughout my book.

Our arrangement for The Beckham Experiment was straightforward: Although Beckham would not do one-on-one interviews specifically for the book – his handlers wanted a lot of money to participate, and I don’t pay the people I cover – he was available to the media before and after games – twice a week, in other words, or far more accessible than at any point in his European career. I asked him a lot of questions in those sessions, and his voice and thoughts are in the book. I also spoke often – on background – to Beckham’s handlers in the interest of fairness and good journalism.

I do think I got unparalleled access inside a Beckham team. Nearly everyone on the Galaxy – including Landon Donovan, Alexi Lalas and ownership group CEO Tim Leiweke – gave me exclusive interviews during the 16-month process of reporting the book. They were very candid, and to their credit they continued to speak to me even when the team’s fortunes started declining on the field.

Q. It’s not your job to promote MLS, but if it were, what would you do to grow the audience?

A. I think star power does matter, and I hope that this Beckham experience doesn’t turn off MLS owners to the notion of bringing in other big-name players. They just need to make sure they bring in the right players and handle how they work with the team on and off the field. But you need more than one really good player per team. Soccer is the ultimate team sport, and the level of the players – and salaries – needs to increase across the board.

Q. What does your SI soccer beat entail?

A. It seems like a bit more every year. College basketball is still my main beat at SI, but I cover all the major international soccer tournaments and provide coverage of MLS and the U.S. national team for SI and SI.com. I’m really lucky to be covering the two sports that I love—and, not coincidentally, the two most popular sports – soccer and hoops – on the planet. How could anyone ever complain about covering the two coolest sporting events in the world: the NCAA basketball tournament and the World Cup?

Q. Do you write soccer different for an American audience than you would for an audience in England or Brazil – to name a couple of soccer hotbeds?

A. I write differently about soccer for Sports Illustrated magazine than I do for SI.com. Soccer journalism in the U.S. is still very much Internet-driven, and I write for the hardcore soccer fan – American and otherwise – on SI.com.

When I write for SI magazine, it’s always a challenge because I have to write for the mainstream U.S. sports fan and include things that will satisfy the hardcore soccer fan too. But I do think there are ways to pull that off, and it’s getting easier to keep everyone happy as tournaments like the World Cup become big-time mainstream events in the United States. The U.S. television audience for the 2006 World Cup final – 16.9 million – beat out the average audiences for that year’s NBA Finals – 12.9 million) – and World Series – 15.8 million).

Q. Who were your career influences?

A. Far too many people to name here, but I’ll mention a few. The former New York Times war correspondent Gloria Emerson taught me in a writing course during my freshman year of college. She scared the hell out of me at first, but this 65-year-old woman became one of my closest college friends—I wrote my senior thesis – on politics and soccer in Argentina – at an office in her house. David Remnick of The New Yorker taught me in another intensive writing seminar in 1995; learning how to approach literary non-fiction from him was an amazing experience.

I got hired at Sports Illustrated by Bambi Wulf, whose record of writing hires at SI included Steve Rushin, Austin Murphy, Jon Wertheim and Jeff Pearlman. The entire staff of writers, editors and photographers at SI has had a huge influence. It’s a great place to work.

Q. How difficult or easy is writing for you? Ever suffer from writer’s block?

A. Writer’s block used to be a big problem for me when I started at SI. I actually used to tie myself to a chair through the belt loops of my pants to keep me from going anywhere. But thankfully I don’t seem to get The Block anymore – knock on wood. Good thing, too, since I had to write The Beckham Experiment in less than three months. My wife was working in South Africa for a year as an infectious-disease doctor – she’s the star of the family – and I landed in Johannesburg on Thanksgiving 2008 to start my leave of absence from SI – now over. I outlined for two weeks, then wrote 112,000 words in 72 days—10 hours a day, seven days a week—to make the March 1 deadline for my manuscript. It was good to learn that I could do it, and even though I wrote fast I still feel good about the quality of the book.

Q. Who and what do you read to keep up with sports – mainstream and non-mainstream?

A. I only really follow the two sports that I cover: soccer and college basketball. My wife kind of hates sports, so when I’m off the clock I’m off the clock, and I’m plenty busy staying on top of the two sports that I cover since there are so many teams.

I follow several writers in college hoops, including Alex Wolff, Seth Davis and Luke Winn from SI; Mike DeCourcy (The Sporting News); Andy Katz,

Pat Forde and Jay Bilas (ESPN); Jeff Goodman (FoxSports.com); Gary Parrish (CBS Sportsline); and John Feinstein (Washington Post). There are also a ton of good columnists who do college hoops, including Rick Bozich (Louisville) and Dan Wetzel and Adrian Wojnarowski (Yahoo). I could go on forever.

Soccer-wise, there’s some good journalism being done out there in the U.S.:

Steven Goff (Washington Post), Ives Galarcep (ESPN.com), Jeré Longman and George Vecsey (New York Times), Mark Zeigler (San Diego Union-Tribune), Beau Dure (USA Today), Michael Lewis (New York Daily News), Greg Lalas and Jonah Freedman (SI.com) and Andrea Canales and Kyle McCarthy (Goal.com) are some who I read a lot, but there are several others too. One of the best ways to keep up with all the soccer news is a blog called Du Nord (dunord.blogspot.com) by Bruce McGuire.

Q. Assuming that reporters root for the best story, your feelings when the U.S. lost the Confederations Cup final to Brazil?

A. Well, that would have been a great story, wouldn’t it, if the U.S. men had won their first international soccer tournament by beating No. 1-ranked Spain and World Cup favorite Brazil four days apart? If the U.S. had held on to the lead, it almost certainly would have been the cover story in that week’s Sports Illustrated. Instead the U.S. lost, and a five-page cover story turned into a 1.5-page Inside Soccer column. I’d be lying if part of me didn’t envision a cover photo of captain Carlos Bocanegra holding up the trophy under the coverline BYE-BYE BRAZIL! But that’s okay. The U.S. run got people in America excited about next year’s World Cup. It would be an even bigger story if the Yanks got to the final of that one.

Q. What would have to happen for the U.S. to win the World Cup in 2010?

A. A lot of unexpected things. Realistically, the U.S. is one of the top 15 teams in the world, but it’s not anywhere near the top five. Then again, strange things can happen in the World Cup. The U.S. outplayed Germany in the 2002 WC quarterfinal (losing 1-0), and a win would have given the Americans the chance to play South Korea for the right to be in the World Cup final. You never know what the future may hold, but this is an exciting time to be covering soccer in America.

Grant Wahl, excerpted from ‘The Beckham Experiment’:

In August 2008 Leiweke napalmed the Galaxy’s dysfunctional management structure, pushing out Lalas, Gullit and Byrne, thereby damaging his relationship with Team Beckham. Not once did Beckham address the players as L.A.’s free fall continued, and in October he used a yellow-card suspension as a reason not to attend L.A.’s most important game of the season, a loss in Houston that eliminated the team from playoff contention. Four days later news broke of Beckham’s clandestine push to be loaned to AC Milan. Donovan was furious.

Over a lunch of lamb pizza and a peach salad at Petros, a stylish Greek restaurant in Manhattan Beach, Donovan took a sip of Pinot Grigio and exhaled deeply. It was 24 hours after he’d learned of Beckham’s desire to move to Milan, and instead of enjoying a Thursday off from practice, he was miserable. The Galaxy’s awful season hadn’t ended yet, but all the talk was about Beckham’s possible departure.

Donovan himself was convinced that Captain Galaxy had vanished in spirit weeks earlier. “My sense is that David’s clearly frustrated, that he’s unhappy and, honestly, that he thinks it’s a joke,” said Donovan, who was about to clinch the MLS goal-scoring title. “I also kind of feel [he has taken the team] for granted. I don’t see dedication or commitment to this team, and that’s troubling.”

The longer Donovan had been around Beckham, the more he’d asked himself, Who is this guy? Why is he so secretive? Donovan had tried to have a conversation with Beckham the day before, but he’d gotten nowhere. “So you’re going to Milan?” Donovan had asked.

“We’ll see,” Beckham replied. “I’ve got to stay fit somehow during the off-season.”

“It’s a nice city, right?”

“Some people say it is, but I don’t know.”

And that was it. Their lockers were side-by-side, but they might as well have been a million miles apart.

No, Donovan decided, Beckham communicated far more clearly with his actions than with his words. Donovan still couldn’t fathom why Beckham had stayed in England for nearly three days after a national-team game the previous week, had refrained from traveling to Houston to support his teammates in the most important game of the year. It didn’t matter that he was suspended, Donovan thought, didn’t matter that he’d been given permission by the Galaxy to stay away. He was the captain of the team.

“All that we care about at a minimum is that he committed himself to us,” Donovan said. “As time has gone on, that has not proven to be the case in many ways — on the field, off the field. Does the fact that he earns that much money come into it? Yeah. If someone’s paying you more than anybody in the league, more than double anybody in the league, the least we expect is that you show up to every game, whether you’re suspended or not. Show up and train hard. Show up and play hard. Maybe he’s not a leader, maybe he’s not a captain. Fair enough. But at a minimum you should bust your ass every day. That hasn’t happened. And I don’t think that’s too much for us to expect. Especially when he’s brought all this on us.”

Donovan had wanted the Beckham Experiment to work, and there was no reason in his mind that it still couldn’t be successful in 2009. But not if Beckham continued acting the way he had during the last half of 2008. “When David first came, I believed he was committed to what he was doing,” Donovan said. “He cared. He wanted to do well. He wanted the team and the league to do well. Somewhere along the way — and in my mind it coincides with Ruud being let go — he just flipped a switch and said, ‘Uh-uh, I’m not doing it anymore.’ “

By now, in fact, Donovan no longer agreed with the “good teammate, bad captain” verdict that so many other Galaxy players had reached on Beckham. Donovan was convinced that Beckham wasn’t even a good teammate anymore: “He’s not. He’s not shown that. I can’t think of another guy where I’d say he wasn’t a good teammate, he didn’t give everything through all this, he didn’t still care. But with [Beckham] I’d say no, he wasn’t committed.”

The most fascinating aspect of Donovan’s barrage was the even manner in which he delivered it. He sounded like a scientist revealing the findings of an experiment. The way Donovan saw it, he was just sharing his conclusions about a coworker, one who happened to be David Beckham.

Donovan didn’t know what would come next, but he did know that things would have to change if he and Beckham were teammates in 2009. “Let’s say he does stay here three more years,” Donovan said. “I’m not going to spend the next three years of my life doing it this way. This is f—— miserable. I don’t want to have soccer be this way.”

What could he do? “That’s my issue too,” he said. “I’ve got to confront it somehow. If that’s the way he’s going to be, fine, then hold him accountable. Bench him. Just say, ‘We’re not going to play you, we don’t think you’re committed.’ “

As disgusted as he sounded, though, Donovan still thought his relationship with Beckham could be saved — if Beckham returned to being the kind of teammate who at least wanted to come support the Galaxy the day after an England game. Then again, it all might have been moot, given the Milan news. Donovan knew how the soccer world worked, knew how Beckham and 19 Entertainment operated too. “It could be that it’s just a loan now,” Donovan said, “but he could play a few games and go, ‘S—, I want to stay here.'”

Donovan was right. Beckham produced two goals and two assists in his first five games for Milan and announced that he wanted to stay in Italy instead of returning to the Galaxy. Thus began a monthlong global saga of negotiations involving Milan, L.A. and MLS. The result: Beckham would finish the Serie A season and rejoin the Galaxy in July, midway through the MLS season.

By the time Beckham returned, Donovan planned on finally confronting the Englishman over his commitment to the Galaxy. Now, however, the tables had turned. Donovan was wearing the captain’s armband again.

(SMG thanks Grant Wahl for his cooperation)

An Interview with Michael Weinreb

“The worst thing about freelancing is that I can no longer steal office supplies. Also, it is impossible to know how much money to save at any given time, and I pay several thousand dollars a year for my health insurance – then again, who doesn’t – and I’m still not great at being pro-active and pitching ideas all the time, but I cannot say the lifestyle disagrees with me.

I do not like mornings very much. I’d rather work into the evening, sometimes until 1 or 2 in the morning, and I tend to write in great bursts and then spend a few days or weeks thinking about where I’m going next.”

Position: Freelance writer/author

Born: 1972, Bronxville, New York

Education: Penn State, 1994, B.A. Journalism; Boston University, 2001, M.A. Creative Writing

Career: Akron Beacon Journal, 1995-2000; Freelanced for Boston Globe, Boston Magazine 2000-01; Sales and Marketing Management Magazine “no, I am not making that up” 2002-03; Newsday, 2003-2006; published Girl Boy Etc., a short-story collection, in 2004; freelancer, New York Times, ESPN.com, others, 2006-present

Personal: Lives with girlfriend (Cheryl)

Favorite restaurant (home): Bar Tabac, Brooklyn. “Perpetually crowded French place a few blocks from our apartment; if you can wade through the cloud of hipsters, the mussels are excellent”

Favorite restaurant (road): Golden Wok, State College, Pa. “Still the best Chinese food I’ve ever had anywhere in this country, including New York. I cannot explain why this is the case.”

Favorite hotel (non-Marriott division): Imperial 400 Motor Inn, State College, Pa. “Actually one of the most disgusting hotels I’ve ever stayed in, but I have fond memories of doing unspeakably stupid things here in my twenties.”

Michael Weinreb, excerpted from espn.com, June 2008:

…I do not know whether Len Bias was a martyr, or whether in death, as his mother often says, he has brought life. I do not know whether, as Jesse Jackson claimed in eulogizing Bias — likening him to Martin Luther King Jr., Mozart, Gandhi and Jesus — that the Lord “sometimes uses our best people to get our attention.” I do not know whether Len Bias died for any reason at all, divine or otherwise, beyond the fact he ingested a massive amount of dangerously pure cocaine in a brief period of time, short-circuiting the electrical impulses to his heart muscle. I do not know whether, as many claim, the Boston Celtics would have extended the Bird-McHale-Parish dynasty by several seasons if Len Bias had lived. I do not know if he was the catalyst for another decades-long New England curse. I do not know whether he would have been better/as good as/in the same stratosphere as Michael Jordan if he had lived to play in the National Basketball Association. We can argue these issues all we like, but I believe that, because the answers to such questions can never be determined, the questions have become irrelevant, obscured by the mythology that Autopsy No. 86-999 has engendered.

I do know death — especially sudden and premature death — has a way of obscuring many truths (see: Dean, James; Cobain, Kurt; et al.).

I do know I was 13 when Len Bias died, and it scared the hell out of me. It was supposed to scare the hell out of me; this was a moralistic passion play, an after-school special come to life.

I do know the public narrative was deceptively simple: Len Bias had just experienced the most euphoric moment of his life, and he had an unquestionably bright future, and he had chosen to experiment with illicit substances for the first time — perhaps, some errant rumors went, it was crack cocaine — and in a freak occurrence of bad karma, his heart had stopped.

And I do believe that because of this public narrative and the consequences of this narrative, the death of Len Bias can be classified as the most socially influential moment in the history of modern sports…

Q. Tell us about the Bias piece – soup to nuts. Why do it? How did you report it? How did it affect you emotionally? Describe the writing and editing process.

A. This was something I’d been thinking about for quite some time, actually—since the spring of ’07, when I started contemplating what my next book might be. I wanted to write about the ‘80’s as kind of the gateway to the modern era of sports, as viewed through the lens of what was happening societally – I really enjoyed the concept and execution of Jonathan Mahler’s “The Bronx is Burning”. I narrowed it down to 1986 for several reasons–I wrote a profile of Bo Jackson last fall that is also a piece of that puzzle–but in part I chose ’86 because of the scope and impact of Bias’ death.

I always think, as journalists, that we don’t look back at things as much or as comprehensively as we should, largely because in daily newspapers, you don’t have much time to do it. So I’d been thinking about it for quite some time, and then with my editors’ approval, I just dove in.

I spent three days at the University of Maryland library, digging through the university archives, watching old Betamax tapes in a dark room – which was truly haunting – and reading books and trying to get as much of a feel for that time and place as I could. I went to see Lonise Bias speak in South Carolina, then went to see her again in Maryland, and I contacted as many people as I could find. A lot of them either didn’t return my messages or declined to speak to me, and I spent several weeks trying to figure out what I had and what it all meant, and then I spent another few weeks trying to write the first paragraph. I don’t normally work this slowly, but I had the luxury of time and space here, something I’m still not accustomed to coming from a background in newspapers. The editors of the E-Ticket pieces, Jay Lovinger and Kevin Jackson, give us so much freedom to explore our creative notions that it actually scares the crap out of me.

This was definitely the most difficult and complex story I’ve ever had to write – also the longest—sorry about that. I didn’t want to merely rehash what had already been written. I wanted to explore the mythology, from the inside-out, and it took a long time to figure out how to even begin to approach that, or what the voice would be. Fortunately, in the midst of this, my girlfriend and I went on vacation, and the day we came back, I wrote what became the first sentence. I often can’t go much further until I have a lead. Then, at the suggestion of a friend of mine, I requested a copy of the autopsy report, and the structure started to adhere a little. I was never more nervous than when I sent that story off to Jay, and I was never happier than when he wrote back and assured me that it wasn’t an incoherent mess.

Q. Reaction to the Bias piece?

A. A lot. Mostly positive, people sharing their memories of where they were that day and how it affected them. I think that’s why I included my own memories in there—because I was 13 at the time, and because for our generation, and especially for nerdy kids like me who always read SI cover to cover every week, that was one of the first shared tragedies we’d ever known, along with the Challenger explosion that same year.

Some people accused me of glorifying the legacy of a drug user, which I don’t think was the point of the story at all. One guy wrote me and blamed everything on hippies. Some people accused me of engaging in hyperbole for declaring it the most socially influential moment in the history of modern sports, and they make a fair point. I should have clarified that I consider the “modern era,” in my own deeply confused mind, to be the 80’s and beyond.

I know that there are also people who think that the modern era began with the retirement of Three-Finger Brown, so that’s my fault.

But I also think a lot of people—including me—weren’t aware of the implications of the mandatory minimum sentences evoked in Bias’ name, and the thousands of people jailed for an disproportionately long time because of what happened in ’86, and the panic that ensued. And that’s a pretty heavy legacy.

Q. What are the best and worst aspects of freelancing? Are you tempted to go for a regular paycheck?

A. The worst thing about freelancing is that I can no longer steal office supplies. Also, it is impossible to know how much money to save at any given time, and I pay several thousand dollars a year for my health insurance – then again, who doesn’t – and I’m still not great at being pro-active and pitching ideas all the time, but I cannot say the lifestyle disagrees with me.

I do not like mornings very much. I’d rather work into the evening, sometimes until 1 or 2 in the morning, and I tend to write in great bursts and then spend a few days or weeks thinking about where I’m going next. I spent nine months in 2002-03 working a day job at a magazine geared toward sales professionals, and I felt like I’d been sent to a Turkish prison.

Certainly, if the right opportunity came along, I would consider it, but I’ve been incredibly lucky the past couple of years to have made enough money to support myself and live in New York City and write on my own schedule, and my primary motivation at this point is to do that for as long as I can, however I can.

In the meantime, I’m happy doing what I’ve been able to do for ESPN.com, and to share ideas with ridiculously talented writers like Wright Thompson and Eric Neel and Patrick Hruby. I love working for Jay Lovinger, as does every writer who’s had a chance to work with him, as far as I can tell. He’s the only editor I’ve ever known who’s told me, in discussing the structure and formation and reporting of a story, “You don’t have to do anything.”

Q. Did writing ‘Game of Kings’ improve your chess game?

A. My chess game was terrible when I began, and it was terrible when I finished. For several months in-between, I suffered a colossal string of losses to a trash-talking chessbot on the web, which reminded me why I attended a state school in the first place. Fortunately, there is not a lot of technical detail in the book—it is the stories of the lives and personalities and obsessions of these kids with such incredibly diverse backgrounds, who were all drawn toward chess. And they were willing to explain things, and then explain them again, until they gave up and began throwing pieces at me.

Q. Is chess a sport? Is it a metaphor for everything? If there were a professional chess league, what would it be like to cover on a regular basis?

A. Chess is probably not a sport, but golf is not really a sport, either, and it is covered on the sports page. As is bowling. There is a component of physical exhaustion in chess, but more important, it is perhaps the most purely competitive pursuit on the planet, which is why it is evoked as a metaphor for everything. And for that reason, I think “Kings” is probably as much a book about sports as is “Friday Night Lights” or Darcy Frey’s “The Last Shot.”

And, in fact, there is (well, sort of) a professional chess league. (See http://www.uschessleague.com/
) There are no beat writers that I know of, but if there were, they’d probably sit around and argue incessantly about whether Fischer could have beaten Capablanca, and then complain about the lack of a buffet.

Q. How do you keep up with sports? What and who do you read?

A. The only sport that I follow with what you might call “religious fervor” is college football. I grew up in a college town – State College, Pa. – and went to school in that same town, and so this is my obsession. Other than that, I mostly read to find interesting stories done by interesting writers who explore interesting ideas, in any genre. Sometimes I find stuff on blogs, or in places like the Wall Street Journal’s Daily Fix column.

I’ve always read a lot of magazine journalism—when I first started working in Akron straight out of college, I would try to write 400-word game stories that sounded like Gary Smith, and they were predictably terrible. I’ve long been unhealthily obsessed with both Charlie Pierce and Tom Junod of Esquire – Junod’s recent piece on the Iraq sniper was probably the best thing I’ve read all year not written by Cormac McCarthy or Richard Price. At SI: S.L. Price, Jon Wertheim, Jeff MacGregor, et. al. At the New Yorker: Everything, but especially Susan Orlean, Malcolm Gladwell, Ben McGrath, Larissa MacFarquhar. Vanessa Grigoriadis (Rolling Stone). When I was working on the Bias piece, I was in the midst of a David Foster Wallace obsession, which was both energizing and annoying.

Mike Vaccaro forces me to read the NY Post. Greg Couch (Chicago Sun-Times). Adrian Wojnarowski (Yahoo!). Jason Whitlock (KC Star). Joe Posnanski (KC Star) could spin – and probably has spun – a compelling 12,000-word yarn about sanitary socks. In fact, it’s kind of amazing how the KC Star has become perhaps the most well-written sports section in the country, right up there with the NY Times and the Washington Post. I wish more papers would follow their lead.

Beyond that, I’ve been trying to read historical tomes, like those of Halberstam and David Maraniss, to attempt to figure out what the hell I’m doing with this book. What I’ve learned so far is that I’m a terrible reporter.

Q. What did your interview with The Big Lead do for your career?

A. I don’t think anyone read it, simply because I am not feuding with anyone in the business and I do not appear on Around the Horn and I was not wearing a bikini and cowboy boots in my photo. But even if they did, I would hope that an interview on a blog would not hurt/help my career any more than any single story I’ve written. I certainly have no beef with anyone—including a blogger—who is able to carve out a niche for him/herself by working hard, as TBL seems to have done.

But I do fear, as my friend and colleague Chuck Klosterman wrote, that “the future of media is an ever-increasing number of people sardonically commenting on an ever-decreasing amount of information.” It takes time and space to do good work, and a lot of great journalists don’t have either one anymore, and bloggers, instead of mocking the decline of traditional media, should be as freaked out about that as we are, since we are often their content providers.

Michael Weinreb, excerpted from espn.com, June 2008:

…So perhaps this is one of those wishful notions — perpetuated by Len Bias’ negative drug-test results (easily manipulated), and by the claims of friends and family, and by the medical examiner’s initial opinion (later revised) that this might have, indeed, been Bias’ first experience with cocaine — that benefits everyone and harms no one. Perhaps, in burnishing a legend, the claims of Driesell and Lonise Bias (who still believes her son had never tried cocaine before, and might, in fact, have tried it accidentally, or even been poisoned that night) actually proved far more positive for society than the truth might have.

As evidence, I return to myself, at age 13, and all the other children of my generation, products of the skewed value system of the ’80s, for whom the most potent advertisement for the “Just Say No” campaign might have been the notion that a single splotch of cocaine — and this is how I imagined it as a child, that Bias had simply touched several stray crystals of processed coca leaves to his nostrils, and shortly thereafter departed this mortal coil — could kill us without prejudice, if our bodies were so genetically inclined. This is no doubt a major reason why I have never touched cocaine myself, and why, several years ago, when an acquaintance of mine who was a product of the same generation tried cocaine for the first time, he thought immediately of Len Bias, as I’m sure hundreds or thousands of others did, too.

“All of us like to generalize our experience,” says Eric Sterling, an expert on drug policy. “But it’s a big country, with a lot of different kids. I wouldn’t say that it ‘worked.'”

Still, I ask: Would Bias’ story have achieved the same status as a cultural touchstone if we had known he — while probably not a habitual user — had dabbled in cocaine for months, or that his close friend was apparently dealing cocaine, or that the truth was far more nuanced than the mythology? Is there then something to be said, at least in this case, for a (seeming) lie proving far more powerful than the truth?…

(SMG thanks Michael Weinreb for his cooperation)

An Interview with Seth Wickersham — Part One

“Tank loves the rush of pulling the trigger. I had never shot a gun before, so on the advice of my editor, Gary Belsky, I went to a shooting range and squeezed off a few rounds of a semi-automatic rifle, just like the one Tank used to own…it helped me interview him about what he feels when he fires a gun.”

“ESPN hired an interview consultant, John Sawatsky, and he’s changed my entire approach to interviewing. His methods sound basic and elementary – ask short, open-ended questions; don’t disguise statements for questions; listen to the subject’s answers and work off them – but so many journalists don’t use them.”

“For that story he wasn’t very cooperative…Finally I pulled Peyton aside after a press conference. I had enough information to write without him and I knew specifically what holes I had. The interview lasted seven minutes but I got what I wanted out of it. You don’t need these guys to pull off a story.”

Seth Wickersham: Interviewed on January 4, 2008

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

Born: 1976, Boulder, Colorado

Education: University of Missouri, 2000, journalism

Career: ESPN the Magazine 2000 –

Personal: married (Alison Overholt)

Favorite restaurant (home): PJ Clarke’s, Manhattan; Peperoncino, Brooklyn “love the spicy gnocchi”; Chocolate Room, Brooklyn “best desert in New York”

Favorite restaurant (road): Moose’s Tooth Pizza, Anchorage “I grew up in Alaska but I never get sent there for work”

Favorite hotel: Marriott Towers, San Diego – “a roof deck and a gorgeous view of the harbor”

Seth Wickersham excerpted from ESPN the Magazine, October 24, 2007:

Nobody needs to tell Tank Johnson why this bubbly, petite, frosted blonde is suddenly not so bubbly, why her blue eyes are darting around, why her hands are fidgeting and her voice is unsure. He knows.

The two are standing in the lobby of the Ashton, an upscale apartment building in uptown Dallas. Johnson, who’s been living out of his suitcase, is wearing the same outfit on this hot October Tuesday that he has worn for the past few days: black hat turned sideways, basketball shorts, white V-neck, metal cross dangling over his chest.

The woman is one of the managers evaluating Johnson’s rental application for this 21-story slab of luxury that offers, among other things, panoramic views of the city, valet parking, a rooftop pool, a wine room, an art gallery, a gym and a library. Johnson, the Cowboys’ new nose tackle, can afford the rent. But he can tell by the manager’s edginess as they discuss his application status that money isn’t the issue.

“We’re just, um, checking on a few things,” she says, twisting her locked hands, eyes avoiding contact. She’s trying hard to be friendly, because it’s her job.

Johnson is trying hard to be friendly too, because he knows what a Google search will bring up: that his fascination — obsession, really — with guns has led to all kinds of legal problems in the past two years; that while he was a member of the Bears last December his suburban Chicago home was raided by a SWAT team, where, according to reports, six guns, 500 rounds of ammo and two ounces of pot were found; that police feared for the safety of his fiancee and their two young daughters and escorted them out of the house; that the following night Johnson went to a club and his best friend was shot to death; that he served 84 days of house arrest last winter and 60 more in jail this spring, both for violating his probation on a prior gun charge.

Suddenly, Johnson feels the need to make his case. He asks the manager, “Can we talk alone for a moment?” Behind closed doors he tells her he’s a good guy who’s had a few credit stumbles. Never does he mention his affinity for guns. Never does he mention that his guns have been confiscated.

And never does he mention that he misses them…

Q. What’s it like being inside of Tank Johnson’s head?

A. (pause)

For me it was foreign. What you’re looking for whenever you do a story is to find some moment where you share an emotion or you can understand where somebody is coming from in a human way. When it came to Tank his specifics didn’t resonate with me, but here was a guy looking for redemption and acceptance. In some ways every person has been in those shoes, albeit not as extreme as the ones he was in.

Q. How do you cross the cultural gap between you and someone like Tank?

A. By listening and asking as many follow-up questions as you can. I don’t know what it’s like to grow up in the circumstances he grew up in. I had no idea how dangerous some areas of Chicago were that he talked about visiting. The best I can do is just listen. That’s the best you can do under any circumstance. Do your best to understand where he’s coming from.

It’s so easy to write these guys off as being crazy or detrimental to society – he was put in jail for a reason. Your job is to listen and get a sense of these guys. Their judgment may not always have been sound for past actions – you want to understand that. Mike Sager has a website and tips for interviewing people. He said interviews are for listening – reserve judgments for when you’re writing.

There’s so much media today – it’s harder to get time when you can listen, to sit down and have a conversation and get into the details of somebody’s life. I have it good. ESPN helps so much. It’s beat writers and other people I feel bad for – they have to deal with the sheer quantity of people more than I do.

Q. Describe your reporting and writing process for the Tank piece.

A. I spent four days with him shortly after he signed with the Cowboys. He’d pick me up at my hotel early in the morning, and we’d go to the Cowboys facility for his workouts, then drive around Dallas the rest of the day and grab a bite at night. Obviously, we spent a lot of time together, but I wouldn’t say we ever really hit it off. A lot of it was awkward, just me watching him interact with people, including lots scenes that I didn’t use. We’d go 15, 20 minutes without saying anything. I’d wait until he started bringing up his obsession with guns on his own and then tried to get as much out of those sessions as I could.

One day, we went to a high-rise apartment building. He was applying for residency there. Once I saw how the building’s management treated him — they initially rejected him based on his problems with the law — I knew that would be the story’s arc. He was searching for acceptance every minute — from his new teammates; from the NFL; from this building’s management; from me, to an extent — while deep down missing his guns and wishing he could have them back.

Tank loves the rush of pulling the trigger. I had never shot a gun before, so on the advice of my editor, Gary Belsky, I went to a shooting range and squeezed off a few rounds of a semi-automatic rifle, just like the one Tank used to own. Frankly, I didn’t see what the big deal was. But I’m glad I did it, because it helped me interview him about what he feels when he fires a gun.

Q. Frustrations and difficulties of covering the NFL?

A. Access. People assume that when you show up from ESPN the Magazine, you get the keys to the place. Not true. Sometimes, you have to be pushy. But once you get access, you have to do something with it. You don’t want just scenes. You want moments.

Q. How do you do a story in which access is too limited?

A. You have to report around it. That’s the basics of the job. You make all the calls you do anyway even when you get access – you always want to over-report.

A couple of years ago when Peyton Manning set the NFL record for TD passes I wanted to do a story about his hand signals at the line – about why he was annoying fans by draining the play clock to the final seconds. Those audibles are his identity – a lot of people are annoyed by him and yet have a great appreciation for what he does – most have both.

For that story he wasn’t very cooperative. I worked the lockerroom, called his friends, called his parents, and talked to at least one starter at every position on offense – I even took a receiver out to eat. Finally I pulled Peyton aside after a press conference. I had enough information to write without him and I knew specifically what holes I had. The interview lasted seven minutes but I got what I wanted out of it. You don’t need these guys to pull off a story.

Q. What about the game itself – how do you reconcile with the violence?

A. By not having any illusions about it, and sharing what I know and have seen with readers so that they don’t have any illusions, either. In 2005, I spent a week in Houston with Broderick Thomas, the former linebacker whose post-NFL body is a mess. One night he unnecessarily slapped one of his sons upside the head because the kid was misbehaving at the dinner table. The child wasn’t doing anything other kids don’t do. But patience requires energy, and Thomas has none because he’s in so much day-to-day pain.

Last year, I wanted to know why (Albert) Haynesworth lost it after getting hit in the knees by a cut block and how he would prevent it from happening again. Sure, he went to league-mandated anger management counseling. But he also took an approach that, depending on how you see it, was more realistic: He went to a pass-rushing specialist in Atlanta who taught him how to break an offensive lineman’s ribs or forearm legally. And he didn’t tell his anger-management counselor about it. You can find those types of conflicting currents in almost every NFL player, albeit to widely varying degrees. So I reconcile with the violence by getting as close as I can to it and understanding it.

One of the best stories I’ve read in a while was Tom Farrey’s essay in ESPN the Magazine making a case for the NFL to legalize HGH. It was one of the most thoughtful, smart opinions I’ve ever read about the realities of pro football.

Q. What do you think about legalizing HGH?

A. I saw Tom’s point, but I haven’t investigated it as much as he did. It was a provocative essay that got people thinking ‘look, if the NFL really cares about these guys they’ll consider letting them use HGH in administered amounts – so they can heal faster.

Q. How do you explain the size of NFL players compared to 20 or 30 years ago?

A. Often I’m in the lockerroom and I wonder who out of this group of players will be one of the guys whose quality of life will be impacted by the moments they’re enjoying now. I think about that constantly.

Q. Will history view NFL writers as naïve?

A. I don’t know. It would take something like what’s happened in baseball for that to be the case. I have no idea how many NFL players are on steroids or HGH. I’d imagine the figure is higher than people would think, but I don’t know if it’s a majority.

I think if people want to be proactive about this they should listen to some things Tom wrote in that essay. He really has a forward-looking stance and a smart one and I think the league would be wise to consider it. Already some NFL players have medical clearance to use it – we just don’t know which ones. That’s one thing he uncovered. He said for medical reasons the NFL should allow some players to be administered doses of HGH. The league already does – obviously he’s on to something.

Q. What condition qualifies for legal usage?

A. I don’t think he had the details on that, but I’m not sure.

Q. How did you learn to report and write?

A. I wish I could tell you that I’ve learned. Try learning. One of my most basic reportorial lessons occurred in college with my best friend, Wright Thompson (espn.com) Missouri’s offensive coordinator had just been fired, and Wright and I were co-writing the story. We played paper-rock-scissors to see who would call the athletic director versus the canned coordinator. I lost and had to call the AD, which I did and got a few quotes. Wright called the coach, got his answering machine and said, “Look, I realize I’m the last person on Earth you want to talk to right now, but if you can find a moment to call me back I’d really appreciate it.” That was a quick lesson: Be human.

ESPN hired an interview consultant, John Sawatsky, and he’s changed my entire approach to interviewing. His methods sound basic and elementary – ask short, open-ended questions; don’t disguise statements for questions; listen to the subject’s answers and work off them – but so many journalists don’t use them. Here’s an example of John’s methods in action. During one of my interviews with Haynesworth, I asked him what he wanted to accomplish when he stomped on (Andre) Gurode. Out of context, that question would get my ass kicked. But it was prefaced with two hours of questioning, basically in chronological order, of events that lead to that point. That’s John’s thing: Get subjects into moments and keep them there. So once Haynesworth’s mind was in that timeframe, with his foot lifted, the question was fair. And Haynesworth answered honestly.

My writing has been helped most by my friends and editors, specifically Beth Bragg at the Anchorage Daily News, Greg Mellen at the Columbia Missourian, and Scott Burton, Chris Berend, Chad Millman, Gary Belsky and Gary Hoenig at the Magazine. Friends like Wright, Steve Walentik, Eric Adelson, and Bruce Feldman have been great through the years. My wife, Alison Overholt, is a senior editor at the Magazine, and she reads my stories before I file. As she does, I’ll pretend to be reading, cleaning, watching TV — anything to disguise my obsessing over what she’s typing into the Word document. She’s always right — about my stories and everything, for that matter.

Q. Journalistic and writing influences?

A. There are specific things that I’ve learned from reading great writers that I hope to someday grasp. Tom Junod at Esquire combines stylish writing with incredibly deep reporting — his profile of Frank Sinatra, Jr. is beautiful. Rick Reilly (ESPN), Tim Keown (ESPN) and Tom Friend (ESPN) are versatile in terms of sports and style and can write with personality without using first person — read the stories on Marge Schott, the horse jockey and a man who thought he was Mike Tyson’s brother. Great stuff. Reilly wrote his Schott story at 5,000 words without a single section break — a clinic on transitions. Rick Telander (Chicago Sun-Times) puts sports into a societal context without resorting to clichés. Dave Fleming (ESPN) knows the NFL so well that he effortlessly finds three or four universal truths about football in every story. Their skill is inspiring … and depressing.

Q. Who and what do you read to keep up with sports?

A. I depend on beat writers the most. I start every day by going to redzone.org – it has every link for every NFL story the local papers do. I go through those the best I can. The work those guys do keep me connected as a writer and as a fan. I appreciate the ones who do it well – often I see a phrase or a quote in a story that could turn into a story for me.

I go to espn.com, si.com, and yahoo as far as daily stuff. I read our magazine, SI and Sporting News when I can – they’ve done some smart stuff in the past year.

I try to get up early to do it. By 7 or 7:30 so it doesn’t eat up the entire day. You could literally spend all day going from link to link.

Q. Non-mainstream media?

A. I go to thebiglead.com. Aside from that I might go to Deadspin or profootballtalk.com. I don’t go to too many blogs – nothing against them.

Q. Can you be a professional journalist and a fan?

A. You have to care about what you’re doing. Dan Jenkins said the best way to write about sports is to care about them. At the end of the day you have to be at an event, or sitting across from an athlete, and you want to like what you’re doing enough that it doesn’t feel like work.

Q. How often do you write?

A. Once a week for website. I average 10 or 12 stories a year for the magazine.

Q. How much time do you get for a magazine piece?

A. Depends. The Haynesworth piece I worked off and on for over a month – I visited him twice. It wasn’t the only thing I was working on. With Tank Johnson, and Favre-Jennings I had two weeks lead. Maybe less.

Q. Why couldn’t Missouri beat Oklahoma?

A. Hard to say. I wish I could break it down like a coach could. Sam Bradford is really good. Missouri made its name this year passing the ball and Oklahoma just matches up well – they were able to break through Missouri’s pass protection and the receivers just couldn’t get open like they could against other team. They never were going to be the number one team in the country. We got lucky for that week.

As soon as they were number one in the BCS Wright and I booked a hotel and restaurant – Jacquimo’s – in New Orleans. We cancelled four days later.

Q. Is there an NFL angle to the presidential race?

A. If there is tell me because I’ll take it.

Seth Wickersham excerpted from ESPN the Magazine, January 4, 2007:

THAT’S JUST the thing: Few understand.

Haynesworth knows the hypocrisy of what we want from him. We want him to rid himself of the dark currents that pushed him to bloody a man’s face, and once purified, to be a better father, husband and man. And when he’s done with that, we want him to beat on his opponents and punch his way to the quarterback. Haynesworth is human enough to be sick over what he did, but not naïve enough to be shocked. Nor was he shocked when, shortly after his return from suspension, Chargers defensive tackle Igor Olshansky was fined for punching Broncos center Tom Nalen over a cut block. Or when Giants linebacker Antonio Pierce drilled Michael Vick out of bounds as restitution for the Falcons O-linemen’s doing much the same thing. Or when Patriots defensive end Richard Seymour stomped on the helmeted head of Colts offensive tackle Tarik Glenn after Glenn attacked the All-Pro’s knees.

The rogues who are paid millions for their brutish talents understand; they can relate to each other’s struggle to be violent on the field and virtuous off of it. That’s why Haynesworth says one of the “greatest deals of this whole thing” came not from Peters or Smith or even from Stephanie. It came in October at an Atlanta Waffle House, where Haynesworth and Smith were eating. A Lamborghini rolled up, and out walked Patriots safety Rodney Harrison, a renowned hard hitter and one of the most fined players in the NFL. Haynesworth rose to introduce himself, and Harrison broke into a warm grin before saying, “Oh yeah, I know who you are.” As they ate lunch, Harrison told Haynesworth that everybody makes mistakes, to ask God for forgiveness and to keep playing. Before leaving, Harrison gave Haynesworth his number and said, “If you’re not back with the Titans we’d love to have you.” Haynesworth says now that “just to hear it from him, a future Hall of Famer, was awesome.” It meant someone understood, in a way that even his counselor, Dr. Sheila Peters, can’t.

When Haynesworth brings up Smith’s teachings in his Monday counseling sessions, he “doesn’t go into detail because it’s just football.” And Peters doesn’t press him.

What about his wife, Stephanie? After witnessing Albert traverse both of his therapeutic paths, she says, “He’ll never admit this, but that play might have been the best thing that’s happened to him.”

During his suspension, she says, she and Haynesworth went from not communicating to, well, communicating in their own way. Right before Albert’s reinstatement, he and Stephanie were at the dinner table when suddenly he pulled out his cell and started to tap. Momentarily, his wife’s phone buzzed. Weeks later, she still hasn’t erased the text message she received. “Thanks for being w/me thru thick & thin,” it reads. “I luv you a lot.” She loves that note. She loves that her husband started going to church with her while he was suspended and even talked about getting baptized. But as soon as Albert was playing football again, helping the Titans finish the season by winning six out of the last seven, she noticed that all his emotional progress began to disappear. Stephanie had to wonder if he could be a better husband at the same time that he tried to be a better player.

And if not, which path he’d take….

(SMG thanks Seth Wickersham for his cooperation)

An Interview with Frank H. Shorr

“Future opportunities for employment in the sports media field lay on the local fronts…Community newspapers and small market television stations… Though they won’t pay on the same scale, the chances of working should be greater and if a journalist can bring multimedia skills to the table, he or she should be able to find employment.”

“Knowing how to cover the story is only half the battle, presenting and marketing the story are just as important. Can you shoot your own video? Can you edit on your laptop? Do you have your own website? Are people following you on Twitter? A no answer to any of those questions can be disastrous if you’re starting out.”

“On-air types get the money, the credit and most of the publicity but a good producer is muchharder to find. You’re part assignment editor, writer, editor, shooter, reporter and all too often, baby sitter.”

Frank H. Shorr: Interviewed on July 27, 2009

Position: Lecturer, Boston University; Director, Sports Institute at BU

Born: 1948, Bay Shore, New York

Education: Boston University, B.S. in Business Administration, 1970; BU, Masters of Science, Broadcasting and Film, 1973

Career: Warner Cable, 1973-1980; WCVB-TV, Boston 1979-80; WNAC/WHDH Channel 7, Boston, 1980-2001

Personal: Married, 3 children, 30, 16 & 11; two dogs: Weezer and Rufus

Favorite restaurant (home): Giancarlo’s, Marblehead, Ma. “took my wife there on our first date…we still laugh about the strolling minstrels!”

Favorite restaurant (away): Chevy’s, Orlando “raised all my kids there and we love the flautas!”

Favorite hotel: Grand Cypress Hyatt, Orlando “great food, great pool, links style golf…a luxury in the middle of the theme parks.”

Excerpted from the course prospectus at The Sports Institute, 2009:

http://www.bu.edu/com/sports_institute/courses.html

Sports Journalism: Punch your own ticket. Write your way to The Show. Sports Journalism as a practical writing course covering the major formats of game stories, features, columns and player profiles. Learn reporting and interviewing skills, story structure and ways to put color in your copy. The course also offers a look at the job market and the freelance writing business.

Broadcast Sports Journalism: Train to be a Sports Anchor. During each class, we will produce a half-hour episode of “Sports Summer”, a program combining hard news, feature stories, commentary and live guests. We will format, write, edit and produce the show within the three-hour class time. Students will get hands on experience on the Anchor desk and in reporting sports stories from the field. Your resume tape starts here!

Multimedia Sports: Today’s audience wants more than can be delivered through the straight broadcast or print story. In order to stay competitive, today’s outlets are leaning heavily on young journalists with fresh ideas to get the rest of the story out. Learn how to take the time-honored techniques of good storytelling and new techniques in multimedia – video, audio, photos and text – to the web with tools like Final Cut Pro, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, WordPress and other content management systems. At the end of four weeks, you will have a state-of-the-art web presence that will impress and entice future employers.

Sports Seminar: A panel of working journalists will join students in a discussion of a topical sports issue. The panel will be interviewed by the Director of the Institute, followed by a Q and A period by students.

Seminars will cover: Sports in the Television Newsroom; Women in Sports; Agents and Jobs; Sports Journalism; Radio/Internet Sports

Q. Size up future opportunities for employment in sports media?

A. Future opportunities for employment in the sports media field lay on the local fronts. Community newspapers and small market television stations provide the only coverage of those areas,

While major markets concentrate on national sports news, no one but the local newspapers and local TV stations are covering high school and hometown college sports. Though they won’t pay on the same scale, the chances of working should be greater and if a journalist can bring multimedia skills to the table, he or she should be able to find employment.

Interesting enough, however, is that these jobs, long the starting spot for graduating students and first timers, are also being coveted by the people being laid off in larger markets. Their desire to stay in the field is causing more competition at the lower levels.

Q. If you were starting out today how would you prepare for and go after a career in sports media?

A. First and foremost, I’d make sure I was as technologically savvy as I could be. Knowing how to cover the story is only half the battle, presenting and marketing the story are just as important. Can you shoot your own video? Can you edit on your laptop? Do you have your own website? Are people following you on Twitter? A no answer to any of those questions can be disastrous if you’re starting out.

Q. Describe your program at Sports Institute at BU?

A. The Sports Institute is an education-based program combining four sports journalism courses regularly taught at Boston University. Packed into a month, the students get to enjoy Boston and take with them life skills and hopefully the tools for a successful career.

Give us four weeks, we’ll give you a lifetime!

Q. What sports media do you consume and why, and what do you avoid and why?

A. I still read the daily newspapers – old habits die hard – but ESPN.com keeps me up-to-date nationally. I love Boston Media Sports Watch to keep track of the local market. WEEI sports talk radio and Comcast SportsNet are good sources of opinion. NESN, for all its promise, still hasn’t figured out what it wants to be and its insistence on Red Sox, Bruins coverage all the time, is disheartening.

Q. Tell us about your career and your history with John Dennis (WEEI radio, Boston).

A. John and I started working together in 1980 when local television was coming into its own. We saw the birth of live coverage and spent a lot of hours figuring it all out. But it was also the most sustained time in Boston local sports history for non stop high caliber action. For 18 years we worked shoulder to shoulder through an amazing time. John was, and still is, the best interviewer in Boston and I always knew when he was covering a story, we’d have the best material on air. That’s all a producer can ask for.

Q. The good, bad, and ugly of sports talk radio?

A. I guess I expected more journalism from sports talk radio but perhaps that’s my own bias. As Glenn Ordway (WEEI) points out, it really is “narrowcasting”. It’s entertainment. There’s too much yelling from time to time but that’s what happens in a good sports argument, right? It’s an interesting debate.

Q. You were a producer – what makes a good producer?

A. On-air types get the money, the credit and most of the publicity but a good producer is muchharder to find. You’re part assignment editor, writer, editor, shooter, reporter and all too often, baby sitter.

A good producer is truly the person who has to act as intermediary between theforces of evil that stand in the way. While many in the newsroom have very specific jobs to perform, a good producer has to know how to do them all. It helps to be prepared to take the heat and like a good fight.

I’m reminded of a scene in the movie Broadcast News when Holly Hunter’s character, Jane Craig, is cornered by an Executive Producer. He says, “It must be nice to always believe you know better, to always think you’re the smartest person in the room.” And she says, “No. It’s awful.”

She was totally serious and I understood exactly how she felt. The end result is still the same, did the job get done, butit’s the producer who improves on the recipe, a pinch of this, a pinch of that – dessert is served.

Q. Your thoughts on ESPN’s size and influence over sports coverage?

A. ESPN has fulfilled everything it started out to be and I think right now they are trying to stay current. They are stretching and sometimes not always in the right direction. Their first two ombudsmen, for example, had virtually no television sports background – was that by design? It will be very interesting to see if Don Ohlmeyer sinks his teeth into them. Their penchant for only covering sports they have rights to raises the eyebrows. World Wide Leader, for sure, but not without faults.

(SMG thanks Frank H. Shorr for his cooperation)

An Interview with Mike Sielski

“It’s a story that touches on a lot of themes and topics: the connection between sports and the military – as much as there is one – small-town America, football, the war, parents’ feelings over their son’s decision to join the military, the impact that sports can have on someone’s life. It was important to me to find a story like this to explore in depth; I didn’t want this to be a stereotypical sports book.”

“On one memorable night, with my tape recorder running, I did my best to go beer-for-beer with a half dozen members of Bryan’s company, hoping that I wouldn’t pass out before the Marines finished telling stories about Fallujah. “

“Usually, I’m chewing my fingernails and slurping down a cup of cold, bad, press-box coffee while I’m typing. But the sense of accomplishment you get from writing something halfway decent under the gun often exceeds the satisfaction that accompanies reporting and writing an in-depth takeout.”

Mike Sielski: Interviewed on August 21, 2009

Position: Sports Columnist for Calkins Media Inc., syndicated in the Bucks County (Pa.) Courier Times, (Doylestown, Pa.) Intelligencer, and Burlington County (N.J.) Times.

Born: 1975; New Brunswick, N.J.

Education: La Salle University, 1997, BAs in Communication and English; Columbia University, 1998, MS in Journalism.

Career: The (Doylestown, Pa.) Intelligencer, 1996-2002; The (Allentown) Morning Call, 2002-03; Calkins Media, 2003-present; Adjunct professor at La Salle University, 1999-2002 and 2008-present.

Personal: Married (Kate)

Favorite restaurant (home): Bridget’s Steakhouse, Ambler, Pa. “Great atmosphere, great burgers, great steaks, and a shitake mushroom sauce that will buckle your knees.”

Favorite restaurant (away): River City Grille, Dallas Airport Marriott South. “Hard to beat a restaurant that stayed open late on Christmas night 2006 to feed a dozen hungry Philly scribes who had just covered an Eagles-Cowboys game.

Favorite hotel: Conrad/Hilton Maldives–Rangali Island. “My wife and I went to the Maldives for our honeymoon, and the place was unlike anything we had experienced or will experience again.”

Author of: “Fading Echoes: A True Story of Rivalry and Brotherhood from the Football Field to the Fields of Honor”

Mike Sielski, excerpted from “Fading Echoes: A True Story of Rivalry and Brotherhood from the Football Field to the Fields of Honor”:

Tuesday, September 1, 1998

The football field wasn’t so much a football field as it was an expansive lawn with goalposts, fit for the front of one of the elegant, colonial-style homes that rose, alp-like, from the emerald earth of central Bucks County, Pennsylvania. A slight hill sloped up from the student parking lot behind Central Bucks High School East to one sideline, and beyond the opposite sideline were trees, nothing but trees, a wall of them tall and green and brown. There were no bleachers or stands surrounding the field, just a low, gray chain-link fence and an oval track of charcoal gravel; it was a practice field, nothing more. But on days like this, when the sky was clear and the sun was warm and practice felt like one of the touch football games he had played with his father in the yard, Colby Umbrell was happier nowhere else.

The previous spring and summer had been memorable for him — life-changing, in a way. He had attended a football camp at the U.S. Military Academy, an experience that reconfirmed a lifelong desire: to become a cadet and then an officer in the U.S. Army. The thought had been a daydream for him when he was a young boy; his family’s annual vacations to Washington, D.C., and to Arlington National Cemetery stirred a sense of patriotism within him, and after he experienced firsthand, if only for a few days, the history and honor at West Point, his mind and heart were fixed on the goal of getting there. Since participating in the camp, he had received a nomination to the academy from his congressman, Republican Jim Greenwood, and playing football for Army now had become an option for him, too, because he had bulked up so much over the previous months. Charlie Packman, the new strength coach for CB East’s football team, the Patriots, had had players pair up as workout partners during the off-season, and Colby and one of his best friends, quarterback Steve Kreider, had attacked Packman’s weight-training program with vigor. Kreider had put on fifteen pounds, but Colby had put on thirty-five, adding mass and muscle in anticipation that he would change positions on East’s offensive line from his junior year to this, his senior season. He had played center the year before; he would play offensive and defensive tackle this season. The extra weight took him up to 240 pounds. Standing six feet one, he had a puffy blond crew cut, a slight gap between his two upper front teeth, and a large lower jaw that jutted forward as if it were in search of a left hook. During practices and games, he usually did not say much.

Colby’s reticence had been the reason that Larry Greene, East’s head coach, at first hadn’t selected him to be one of the Patriots’ team captains. At the team’s season-ending banquet in 1997, Colby had sat stunned at his table when Greene announced the names of East’s senior captains for ’98 — Kreider, Phil Laing, and Bryan Scott — and he wasn’t among them. Greene, like everyone else on East’s team, didn’t question Colby’s work ethic, but he just wasn’t sure that Colby had the right personality to be a captain. Kreider? He was gregarious, the quarterback, a natural choice. Laing? He was the sort of kid, Greene thought, who looked like he’d started growing facial hair at age six. Laing was going to start at fullback and middle linebacker. Scott? He sang in the school choir, started for the varsity basketball team, was an all-district-caliber sprinter, was respected and well liked by most of East’s student body—and was perhaps the best high school football player in Pennsylvania. A tailback and safety, Scott seemed to have an NFL-ready body at age eighteen, a chiseled six feet two, 205 pounds. Penn State was the front-runner in the race to recruit him.

Eventually, Greene reconsidered his decision and named Colby a captain, too. But that initial disappointment was a lasting memory for Colby for years afterward, perhaps because he had looked forward to his senior season as his last, best chance to change the dynamic of a football rivalry that for nearly thirty years had defined his hometown of Doylestown. For most of those years, CB East had been the redheaded stepchild to its neighbor in the school district: Central Bucks West. It wasn’t that East didn’t have a respectable program. The Patriots had won a league championship in 1979; had reached the district playoffs in 1996, Colby’s sophomore year; and were perennially a better-than-average team in the Suburban One League National Conference, which comprised ten schools in the suburbs north of Philadelphia. It was that West was the premier high school football program not just in the National Conference, but arguably in all of Pennsylvania

Q. What drew you to the ‘Fading Echoes’ story?

A. There are just so many layers to it. Here were two guys – Colby Umbrell and Bryan Buckley – who were from the same small town in suburban Philadelphia – Doylestown – and were the same age. They knew each other but weren’t close friends. Each of them was part of a great high school football rivalry – Central Bucks West vs. Central Bucks East) – and each of them embodied his respective side of the rivalry.

Bryan grew up wanting nothing more than to play football for CB West, for the greatest program in the state. Colby grew up wanting nothing more than to play football for CB East — and to beat CB West. By 1998, Doylestown was not the stereotypical Pennsylvania high school football town, not a steel town or a coal town. It’s quite affluent, with boutiques and high-end restaurants and a Quaker tradition and an accent on the arts. Yet not only did the East-West rivalry flourish there and reach its peak in 1998 — Colby’s and Bryan’s senior season — but these two men, independent of each other, then followed parallel tracks over the next several years to the elite of the armed forces. Colby became an Army Ranger; Bryan, a Marine. They ended up serving in Iraq at the same time, and one of them didn’t come home.

It’s a story that touches on a lot of themes and topics: the connection between sports and the military – as much as there is one – small-town America, football, the war, parents’ feelings over their son’s decision to join the military, the impact that sports can have on someone’s life. It was important to me to find a story like this to explore in depth; I didn’t want this to be a stereotypical “sports book.” I know I’m not breaking new ground by saying this, but the best sports stories always get beyond the minutia of the games and the transaction ledger. If you read David Maraniss on the 1960 Rome Olympics or Adrian Wojnarowski on St. Anthony High’s basketball team, you’re not just reading about Rafer Johnson or Bob Hurley. You’re getting a sense of time and place, of sports’ context and importance, the way it fits into our history and our society. That was the sort of book I wanted to try to write, and Colby’s and Bryan’s stories allowed me to do it.

Q. How did you report ‘Fading Echoes’?

A. I had certain advantages and disadvantages throughout the reporting process. My first full-time job in sportswriting was as the Intelligencer’s beat writer for Central Bucks West and East in 1998. I covered most of Bryan’s and Colby’s games that season and had kept boxes of notes, articles, and interview transcripts from the five years I spent covering East and West. I watched game tapes, and I interviewed and re-interviewed many players, parents, and coaches to gain the fresh perspective of hindsight. Because of my familiarity with the schools, the teams, the players, and the coaches, and because of the resources at my disposal, I could reconstruct that ’98 season with relative ease.

Things were more challenging in reporting the non-football aspects of the book: Colby’s and Bryan’s college years, their military training, their tours in Iraq. I had seven months, from July ’08 to February ’09, to finish the manuscript, and unfortunately, I had neither the time nor the financial resources to travel to Iraq. Even though I had arranged to take three months of part-time leave from Calkins to work on the book – I was supposed to write two columns a week from Oct. 1 to Jan. 1 – the Phillies decided to complicate matters by winning the World Series. So for all of October, I was paid part-time wages for working full-time hours covering the Phils. Meanwhile, I was also teaching two writing classes at La Salle and researching and writing the book. It was exhilarating … and exhausting.

To make up for my inability to get to Iraq, I read everything I could about the country and the war just to have the requisite background and knowledge. I’m an Amazon addict anyway, so I bought and read what I hoped were the most authoritative books available on the subject. I tracked down as many members of Bryan’s and Colby’s units as I could, mining them for as much detail and perspective as they could give me. I drove to Washington, D.C., to meet with Colby’s commanding officer, a Seattle resident who happened to be visiting the East Coast for a few days with his wife. I spent a week in Jacksonville, N.C., near Camp Lejeune, talking with several Marines who had served with Bryan. On one memorable night, with my tape recorder running, I did my best to go beer-for-beer with a half dozen members of Bryan’s company, hoping that I wouldn’t pass out before the Marines finished telling stories about Fallujah.

And the Umbrell and Buckley families were as open and honest and accommodating as I could have hoped for them to be. I spent hours and hours speaking with and observing them, and they provided me with military documents and letters and e-mails from Colby and Bryan that added touch, texture, and detail to the narrative.

Q. Hollywood loves films about high school and teenagers – why is that?

A. I’m no expert, but I’ll take a shot at this. A teenager’s life can include much of the drama and many of the serious problems that an adult faces, but it’s also flavored with a sense of promise and potential. Plus, teenagers don’t have wrinkles. They’re young and fresh and handsome and beautiful, and mainstream Hollywood generally doesn’t fancy films about older people — unless Morgan Freeman is driving Jessica Tandy to the Piggly Wiggly.

By the way, if you’re suggesting that “Fading Echoes” would make a darned good Hollywood movie, I’m not going to argue with you. Any chance Steven Spielberg or David Fincher reads Sports Media Guide?

Q. They do. What does it feel like to write a column under deadline?

A. It’s a rush. Usually, I’m chewing my fingernails and slurping down a cup of cold, bad, press-box coffee while I’m typing. But the sense of accomplishment you get from writing something halfway decent under the gun often exceeds the satisfaction that accompanies reporting and writing an in-depth takeout. The hard part is that you have to remind yourself that, when a reader clicks on your column link or picks up the paper the next day, he or she doesn’t know how much time you had to write — and doesn’t care.

Q. Best and worst columns you’ve written?

A. I guess it depends on how you define “best” and “worst.” I’ll start with “worst.” If I file a column with a typo or a factual error that somehow sneaks past the copy desk, I’ll beat myself up for a good long while. That’s happened more than once, and that’s one kind of “worst.” The other kind is when I offer an analysis or opinion that turns out to be flat-out wrong. For instance, when the Sixers hired Jim O’Brien as their head coach in 2004, I wrote that the hire could mean that the Allen Iverson era would end soon. After all, O’Brien had left Boston after Danny Ainge had traded away a couple of defensive-minded players and brought in a shoot-first guy in Ricky Davis. It seemed logical, then, that O’Brien and Iverson would clash. Instead, by the time Billy King fired O’Brien a year later, Allen was one of the few people in the organization that O’Brien hadn’t totally alienated.

As for the “best” columns, again, it depends on how you define “best.” As Rich Hofmann mentioned in an earlier Q&A here, we have a group of terrific columnists in the Philadelphia market, and it’s a challenge to distinguish oneself among them. I try to base my columns around my reporting. These days, anyone can spout off on a blog, on a message board, on talk-radio. Hell, lots of columnists do it. And there’s a place for it. But not everyone has the access that professional media are afforded, and in this age of unlimited opinion, it’s vital that we take advantage of that access, that we report thoroughly and write eloquently.

I want to be the guy who makes the extra call, reveals the new angle or fresh take, or gets the athlete/coach to open up about a sensitive topic. Over the last few years, the columns I’m most proud of are the ones where I’ve done that: following Jeremy Rose into the jockeys’ room after he and Afleet Alex won the 2005 Preakness, a race in which Rose could have been trampled to death; getting Brian Dawkins to explain how dealing with the premature births of his twin daughters affected him, his family, and his play; listening to the Philadelphia Flyers complain about biased officiating in the playoffs, then calling them out for their baseless whining, then showing up the next day to take the heat. Yes, showing your face after you criticize someone still matters. It should, anyway.

Q. What sports media do you consume – and avoid – and why?

A. Ah, the name-dropping question. Just kidding…

I consume as much as I can of the local sports media because Philadelphia is such a parochial market: phillyburbs.com , which is the site for the Calkins papers, philly.com , i.e. the Inquirer and the Daily News, delcotimes.com, delawareonline.com, csnphilly.com, nj.com. I click on Deadspin and The Big Lead each day, but that’s as far as my blog reading goes.

Honestly, I’d rather read a 6,000-word narrative or personality profile — something with depth and style and with a beginning, a middle, and an end — than a Twitter update about whether the Red Sox might include Clay Buchholtz in a trade for Roy Halladay, who might not be traded at all.

I still look forward to Sports Illustrated every week, especially if the issue includes a big back-of-the-mag piece by Gary Smith or S.L. Price. I read Yahoo! Sports and ESPN.com often, and there are several columnists whom I read regularly; they know who they are. I pester them with e-mails and phone calls and Facebook “likes.”

I avoid anything having to do with Brett Favre or soccer.

Q. Career influences?

A. There’s none bigger than Bill Lyon, the former sports columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer. He took me under his wing when I was in college and remains a friend and mentor to this day. Great writer, better human being.

Q. Next project?

A. I’m trying to come up with another book topic or subject. I’m open to suggestions.

Mike Sielski, from the Bucks County Courier Times, August 16, 2009:

PHILADELPHIA – For the last three days, Jeffrey Lurie and Andy Reid have been selling themselves as the second coming of Branch Rickey and the Brooklyn Dodgers, as the leaders of a sports franchise bent on effecting social change.

They have signed convicted puppy killer Michael Vick to a one-year contract, taking a chance on the man who, before his two-year jail sentence, was the NFL’s most dynamic athlete. And there was Reid once more Saturday at the NovaCare Complex, trying to answer a simple question: What criterion will he use to judge whether the signing was a success? Is it more important to rehabilitate Michael Vick the person, or Michael Vick the football player?

“I think,” Reid said, “it’s a combination of both.”

No, it isn’t. It can’t be. From their board room to their coaches’ room to their locker room, the Eagles are behaving and speaking as if the skills that Vick could supply were a secondary consideration, as if saving Vick’s soul were the franchise’s primary mission. It isn’t. Winning football games is. Winning Super Bowls is. Winning is.

It’s supposed to be, anyway, and there are only two conclusions to be drawn from the way the Eagles have handled Vick’s signing: Either they turned the NovaCare Complex into Boys Town and put one man’s shot at redemption above their pursuit of a Super Bowl, or they are too scared to admit that they decided to sustain some severe public-relations damage for the sake of trying to improve their football team.

?

First things first: Arguing the Eagles shouldn’t have signed Vick is to argue, by implication, that no NFL team should have signed him. Sorry, that doesn’t wash. Vick committed heinous crimes, and they suggest a darkness in his soul that might never be cleansed. But he served his time in jail. He paid his societal debt. He ought to be able to earn a living if someone is willing to allow him.

The Eagles are willing, and that’s fine, because they are just another professional football team (despite Lurie’s claims that the Eagles’ accent on “character” sets them apart), and in the warped world of pro sports, a franchise’s first responsibility is to do all it can within the rules of its league to win a championship. So Reid can stop playing the role of Sister Helen Prejean any time now. If he wanted to be altruistic, he could have helped Vick get a job anywhere – in coaching, in community service, in a pet shelter.

Instead, Reid cut a player from the Eagles’ roster – the player who lost his job, by the way, was defensive back Byron Parker – so that he could line up Vick in the “Wildcat” formation and hope that Vick’s legs and arm improve the Eagles’ efficiency in the red zone. This is nothing more than professional sports at its purest.

When Rickey signed Jackie Robinson to break baseball’s color barrier, a large part of his motivation was to win baseball games, so he found the toughest, most talented black athlete he could. Even in that historic decision, Rickey was guided by more than just virtue; he wanted to tap into a dormant talent pool so he could build a dynasty.

It goes without saying that Vick is no Jackie Robinson – no matter what idiotic comparisons Jesse Jackson might make. What Vick can be, though, is an offensive threat to help the Eagles – and their quarterback, in particular.

Understood at the most basic elements, here’s what happened Thursday: Donovan McNabb asked for a weapon, and the Eagles gave it to him. He wanted Vick here, and Vick is here. And no one has said anything more accurate about Vick’s arrival than what McNabb said Thursday night:

“I’m going to tell you right now: If he gets back to where he (was when he) played in Atlanta, and for him to even have five or eight plays and he gets out of the pocket and picks up 20, 30 yards, nobody even thinks about what happened two years ago. Everybody will be talking about what we can do in order for this team to win the Super Bowl.”

You bet they will. They got over Brett Myers’ alleged assault of his wife, and if Vick plays well, they’ll get over this, too.

Lurie appeared to be completely sincere on Friday when, Hamlet-like, he laid out his inner conflict over signing a player who spent six years torturing and killing dogs and then lying about it. But the only reason Lurie was so torn was his misguided belief that a sports franchise, beyond winning games and selling tickets, must be an agent of social progress, and his genuine hemming and hawing doesn’t change anything now.

For Michael Vick is here, and he’s here to help the Eagles win, and they should start admitting that more often. It would be unsettling. It would be unseemly. But at least it would be honest.

(SMG thanks Mike Sielski for his cooperation)

An Interview with Michael Silverman

“You have to have repeated exposure to these guys so they know your face. Or in the case of an executive, repeated exposure to your phone messages. You need good people skills and sometimes you have to talk to them when you’re not looking for anything – get to know them as people – shoot the shit.

“Uggie Urbina – he was a scary dude. You couldn’t go near him. Now that he’s in prison in Venezuela (for murder) I can say it. I barely interviewed him. If I did I’ve repressed the whole experience. I didn’t enjoy him at all. He was a grunter.”

“When AP picks up stories it will say “as first reported by the Boston Herald”. Papers take great pride in that – it’s the way you keep score. Editors and higher-ups care about it…. It all comes down to the work the beat reporters do.”

Michael Silverman: Interviewed on January 23, 2008

Position: Red Sox beat reporter, Boston Herald

Born: 1962, Kansas City, Mo.

Education: Columbia, 1989, MJ; Michigan, 1984, English

Career: Harvard University Gazette 1985-88; New York Post 89; Boston Herald 1989 –

Personal: Married, three children

Favorite restaurant (home): JP Seafood Café, Jamaica Plain, Boston, “fresh sushi close to home”

Favorite restaurant (road): Bryant’s Barbeque, Kansas City

Favorite hotel: Harbor Beach Marriott Resort, Ft. Lauderdale

Michael Silverman, excerpted from the Boston Herald, October 18, 2007:

CLEVELAND – Three years ago, a gang of idiots clawed out of a 3- 0 ALCS pit and went on to win the whole thing.

Tonight, Josh Beckett will lead the 2007 Red Sox – comprised mostly of gentlemen with a couple of whack-jobs thrown in – onto a brand new battlefield. Down 3-1 to the Indians, they will find out what they are made of, having to win three straight games to stay alive.

Q. Who are the whack jobs?

A. Manny is a whack job. Papelbon qualified after his Irish jig dance. Pedroia can be interesting but he’s not a whack job. Tavarez is certifiable.

Q. Did you worry an editor would ax it?

A. Sure I did. But I guess it wasn’t offensive enough. It’s colorful. Idiot is on the verge too.

Q. But ‘idiot’ was a label they gave themselves.

A. True. Whack job was in a gray area. I took some literary license.

Q. Covering the Red Sox, who were your best interviews?

A. Mo Vaughn and Pedro (Martinez) were the top two. David Cone, for one year, was great. Bret Saberhagen. Mike Lowell. Gabe Kapler. David Ortiz.

They understood why we were there. As long as you didn’t catch them when they were trying to get on the field or do something, they didn’t mind sharing whatever the issue of the day was, or sharing nothing at all but being able to talk about non-baseball things. They all had a sense of humor and realized that the relationship between media and players does not have to be tense and adversarial.

Are you going to ask me who was the worst?

Q. Who was the worst?

A. Uggie Urbina – he was a scary dude. You couldn’t go near him. Now that he’s in prison in Venezuela (for murder) I can say it. I barely interviewed him. If I did I’ve repressed the whole experience. I didn’t enjoy him at all. He was a grunter.

Carl Everett had his moments where you understood after talking to him awhile that you could never communicate on the same level. He wasn’t an evil man – just different from most baseball players.

Q. What about Schilling?

A. I like him for the fact that he’s articulate and intelligent and always has opinions and isn’t afraid of voicing them. On the surface he should be every reporter’s dream to cover on a day-to-day basis. I have about zero relationship with him, pretty neutral, for whatever reason I’m not sure. But he’s an interesting guy and the source of a lot of stories in his four seasons here.

Q. Do you read his blog?

A. Sure. I wish more players kept blogs. I love the blog. It’s the source of stories. We’d have more interesting stories if players were more open about these things and whatever is going on in their lives. With Schilling sometimes it’s more than we care to know and sometimes it’s really interesting. He puts himself out there. That’s not a bad thing.

Q. As an organization how easy or difficult are the Sox to cover?

A. They’re certainly more enjoyable since the new ownership group came in. It was really difficult at the end of the John Harrington-led days. The environment was just miserable – there was a lot of distrust for the media up and down the organization – it was difficult to get information from the team. The media was the last priority of that administration and the fan base was taken for granted as well. When the new owners came it was liberating, almost like night and day. You didn’t have to walk on egg shells around the players and coaches and front office people. It made a huge difference in getting excited about your day.

Q. How do you cultivate sources?

A. It’s quantity and quality. You have to have repeated exposure to these guys so they know your face. Or in the case of an executive, repeated exposure to your phone messages. You need good people skills and sometimes you have to talk to them when you’re not looking for anything – get to know them as people – shoot the shit.

If there’s a slow moment at spring training talk to them about what they do in Fort Meyers. Some of the time you’re looking for something to write, but you don’t want them to think ‘why is he coming up to me – he hasn’t all year?’ You’ve got to schmooze some and sometimes you’ll be told something off the record. You have a choice to use it, but if you burn that bridge you’re sunk. That player will never trust you again and he’ll tell others – it can be a real mess. You have to be clear about what’s on and off the record.

Q. What’s hard about the beat?

A. Be prepared to sacrifice your personal life to a great extent. You work nights and weekends and summers in addition to a ton of time at home. You have to accept that. It’s a 12-month-a-year job with maybe January being the lightest month.

Q. What are the competitive pressures?

A. They’re real in a market like Boston and I assume New York and a couple of other towns. I love it because it makes the job edgier and more fun. No one is perfect but you take pride when your paper gets a scoop and your competitor doesn’t, and when they do you try harder next time. It just makes it more fun, and the readers are rewarded when the outlets competing to be first produce real news that’s accurate and important.

Q. Scoops you’re proud of?

A. When the Herald reported that Theo Epstein had not accepted the job to come back after the ’05 season, and we were also the first to report that he had left the job. The competition reported he was coming back – sort of a ‘Dewey Defeats Truman’ – it was a good day for the Herald.

I had Damon coming to the Red Sox first, and some good one-on-ones with Pedro Martinez.

Q. How do you keep up with baseball news?

A. (groan)

I’ve been on the beat for 13 years. The first nine I spent a lot of time going to Spanish papers on the Internet. I’m not fluent, but sometimes the small Dominican papers would have scoops and I would follow up.

Then I went to individual sites, which seems so laborious and time-consuming now that we have feeders that update you instantaneously. There are some great fan sites like ‘Son of Sam Horn’. I go to ESPN, Fox, SI, CBS SportsLine. There are some great sites with contract numbers – Cot’s Baseball Contracts, mlb4u.com. For trade rumors there’s mlbtraderumors.com. Prosportsdaily.com contains news nuggets and a pretty complete list of trade rumors.

So it’s harder and harder to establish and maintain a scoop before everybody else has it – the lifespan of a scoop is shorter. The internal debate is whether to post it immediately or save it for the print edition. The print edition comes online at 12 or 1 a.m. at which point it’s hard for anybody to chase for the morning paper. But it’s rare that a scoop survives until morning. Your competitor can put it on their website as long as they credit it. We do that but first we verify it on our own.

Q. Is a scoop less valuable than it used to be?

A. When AP picks up stories they’ll say “as first reported by the Boston Herald”. Papers take great pride in that – it’s the way you keep score. Editors and higher-ups care about it. It gets repeated on the wires and local radio stations. Further out from where the scoop takes place they care less when it’s reported on ESPN or a national outlet that the Boston Herald is reporting this.

It all comes down to the work the beat reporters do. If some Boston columnist has an outlandish opinion it doesn’t really get picked up nationwide. But if we report that Tim Wakefield is going to be on the DL or has suffered an injury it will be reported nationally and credited to the Boston Herald.

Q. Are outlets honorable about crediting?

A. Some are – sometimes. Mostly, yes.

Q. Are beat reporters appreciated?

A. Depends how you define appreciation. Anyone in the business understands that the life of a beat reporter involves a lot of grunt work that just isn’t done by columnists. I think every columnist appreciates us – many were former beat reporters. Anyone who doesn’t is probably some sort of prima donna or windbag.

Q. Is there a skill to asking a good question?

A. Depends on the kind of story – feature or straight game. Try not to ask yes-no questions or you’ll get yes-no answers. Ask open-ended questions. And listen to the answers. Don’t go in with a preconceived list of questions and not be open to hearing something that is a better story than you thought you’d get. Be open to the unexpected.

Q. Which questions make you cringe?

A. I love it when someone calls Francona “coach”, as in “coach, can you explain this”. You know he’s just waiting to figure out first of all how to rip you to shreds or to bite his tongue that day. He has no patience for that. Sometimes people ask questions that you can’t go down the road with this manager. He won’t blast a player and he’ll always jump to their defense, so if someone asks a leading question to try to get him to rip a player and he has to dance around, I cringe. I know he’s not going to answer it and you wonder how he’ll turn it on the reporter.

I ask my share of stupid questions, too. Sometimes you ask someone how they feel after giving up five runs in the eighth inning, and they say, “how do you think I feel.” It’s never a good moment. We know the answer but sometimes we need the quote, even if the comments are rote and predictable.

Q. Does it annoy you if someone horns in on your interview?

A. It’s it pre-game in the clubhouse and I’m speaking to a player one-on-one in front of his locker and someone comes up and lingers over my shoulder I’m not shy about saying ‘I need a couple of minutes do you mind’. By the same token if I see a reporter one-on-one with a player I tell myself ‘forget it, I can’t go over there’. These days it’s harder and harder to get players to come to their lockers at all. After the game it’s a different story. Anybody involved in the story is fair game – we’re all on deadlines. You have to give people a little bit of time but eventually you have to ask a question of whoever made the important hit or important play.

Q. How did you vote on the new ‘bonus-clause’ rule of the Baseball Writers Association? (which disqualifies players for writers awards if their contract links cash incentives to an award)

A. I voted for it. Part of the catalyst was the incentive clause Schilling received from the Red Sox. I don’t blame Schilling for asking for it. It seemed to crystallize what the flaw is in our voting process. When I saw some of the ridiculous votes people made in the Cy Young vote this year it was easy to see a bad situation down the road where there could be an appearance of a conflict of interest. There actually could be a conflict between a reporter and a player he covers.

Q. Is it far-fetched to imagine a cash payment for a vote?

A. I can’t even imagine a player of that ilk existing and the same goes for baseball writers. But it was too easy for that to happen – the fact that I can’t imagine it means nothing – those types tend to find each other and make each other happy. I understand why the players’ union hates the new rule but I’m sure they can be creative and come up with some other incentive. I believe they’ve held an emergency summit since we voted for it. It’s now been tabled until the writers’ executive committee meets with the union. They want us to reconsider

Q. Why does the union care?

A. Incentive clauses were hooked to the writers’ awards. It was a way for agents to get more money for their clients. The teams can’t give incentive clauses – they’re illegal. It puts the player above the team. It drives players to achieve individual goals and puts pressure on the managers for playing time. Appearance clauses are allowed, but nothing directly pegged to wins or offense.

Q. Does the Herald allow you to vote on awards?

A. We’re allowed. One reason the writers association went down this road is more papers are not allowing their writers to vote. It feared this would become a sweeping trend and nobody would be left to vote on awards. The (NY) Times is the most prominent paper that doesn’t allow its writers to vote. One or two others have crept into it.

I don’t have any problem with it. Personally I haven’t voted for an award – it’s the way they pass out ballots in Boston.

Q. Does award voting affect relationships with players?

A. I hope not. It wouldn’t with me. I like to believe I could just vote for who deserves it and put aside all personal and professional relationships.

Michael Silverman, excerpted from the Boston Herald, November 1, 2005:

Once Theo Epstein finally decided that his dream job was anything but, the Red Sox were left wondering if this was all just a nightmare.

Epstein walked away from his general manager’s post yesterday, dealing a stunning blow to the heart and soul of an organization that had reached the ultimate pinnacle with a world title barely more than a year ago. That honeymoon period ended abruptly with Epstein’s decision to decline the club’s three-year contract extension offer worth $1.5 million a year.

Epstein’s decision seemingly came out of the blue, as many considered his return before the midnight deadline to be a done deal.

As it turned out, Epstein’s dismay with his job and his work environment overrode all other concerns.

The decision by Epstein was an agonizing one. The Brookline native weighed the job he always coveted against the intra- organizational politics, power struggles and lack of privacy issues that increasingly were becoming a burden to him.

The negotiations began late in the summer and intensified after the Red Sox were eliminated from the playoffs. At first, money and length of contract were central issues for Epstein, who had lobbied hard for an annual salary of more than $1 million a year. A private and almost shy person to begin with, Epstein had handled himself well in the spotlight but did not enjoy the sometimes oppressive media demands that came with the job and the intrusions in his personal life away from the ballpark.

Still, by Saturday evening, he had come close to agreeing to a deal, although he still had not officially accepted it. On Sunday, he began having serious misgivings about staying on. A key factor that ultimately soured Epstein on the job, according to sources close to the situation, was a column in Sunday’s Boston Globe which revealed too much inside information about the relationship between Epstein and his mentor, Larry Lucchino, and slanted the coverage in the team president’s favor. Epstein, according to these sources, had several reasons to believe Lucchino was a primary source behind the column and came to the realization that if this information was leaked hours before he was going to agree to a long-term deal, excessive bad faith existed between the two.

Epstein had not made up his mind about accepting the job before going to bed Sunday night despite a report in the Globe citing “multiple major league sources” that said the Red Sox and the GM had agreed to a contract extension. The Globe’s parent company, the New York Times, holds a 17 percent ownership stake in the Red Sox.

(SMG thanks Michael Silverman for his cooperation)

An Interview with Carol Slezak

“With regard to gender-related sports issues, I wish the so-called top columnists in the industry – and most of them are male — would have the courage, or interest, or whatever it takes, to weigh in. I wish other female columnists would too. At times I feel like a lone voice. While I hear from other writers privately – on occasion – saying ‘Way to go’, it seems to me that they don’t go public with their thoughts often enough.”

Carol Slezak: Interviewed on May 5, 2008

Position: Sports Columnist, Chicago Sun-Times

Born: Detroit

Education: University of Michigan, BA, economics; University of Richmond Law School, JD.

Career: Chicago Sun-Times 1996 –

Personal:

Favorite restaurant (home):

Favorite restaurant (road):

Favorite hotel:

Carol Slezak, from the Chicago Sun-Times, September 25, 2007:

I don’t know Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy or Daily Oklahoman columnist Jenni Carlson. But after watching Gundy’s rant on YouTube and reading the Carlson column that inspired his rage, I think they’ve combined to give us a couple things to think about.

No. 1: Should the media treat Division I college players like pros?

No. 2: Would Gundy have berated a male writer the way he berated Carlson?

In case you haven’t watched the video yet, Gundy went off after his team’s 49-45 victory over Texas Tech on Saturday. His anger stemmed from a Carlson column in which she suggested that OSU junior quarterback Bobby Reid had been demoted not because he lacked talent, but because he lacked heart and guts. Those weren’t Carlson’s exact words, but that was the gist of her piece.

”Three-fourths of this is inaccurate,” Gundy yelled, holding up Carlson’s column. ”It’s fiction. And this article embarrasses me to be involved in athletics.”

Gundy, 40, berated the media, asking ”Where are we at in society today?” That’s a point worth discussing. But few are talking about that now, because Gundy got personal, directing most of his long tirade at Carlson.

”This article had to have been written by a person that doesn’t have a child,” Gundy yelled at her. ”… If you have a child someday, you’ll understand how it feels but you obviously don’t have a child. I do. If your child goes down the street and somebody makes fun of him because he drops a pass in a pickup game or says he’s fat and he comes home crying to his mommy, you’ll understand.”

Like I said, I don’t know Gundy. But his reaction seemed motivated by something deeper than Carlson’s story. Watch the video yourself, and see what you think. I remember being called out during a press conference by a college basketball coach who was angry about something I had written. But that coach didn’t go berserk. He was sarcastic, he made his point, and he moved on. Gundy couldn’t do that.

I can’t imagine Gundy going off on a man the way he did on Carlson. I wonder how he even knew whether Carlson has kids. Was he asking people about her personal life? Did the topic come up during a previous press conference?

Carlson: Coach Gundy, why’d you decide to go for it on fourth-and-two?

Gundy: Are you childless?

I can’t imagine Gundy screaming during a press conference about a male writer’s lack of offspring. I can’t imagine him substituting ”daddy” for ”mommy” in his rant. I also wonder, as one of the few — or perhaps only — women in that room, if Carlson didn’t make for an easy target in Gundy’s mind. Watching the video, I sensed a subcurrent that gave me an uneasy feeling. As if what Gundy was really thinking was “How dare that bitch criticize one of my players. She shouldn’t be writing about football. She should be home making babies.”…

Make no mistake, Carlson was tough on Reid. For instance, to illustrate her belief that he’s a coddled player, she wrote about seeing Reid’s mom feed him chicken out of a boxed meal as he stood near the team’s chartered buses after a recent loss. She also inferred that he wouldn’t play through minor injuries, and indicated that he has an unusually acute case of game-day nerves. That’s a lot to pile on a college kid.

Or is it? I’ve read many harsher pieces about college athletes. Division I athletes may not technically be professionals, but they’re part of a pro-style product that the colleges themselves created. They are given free tuition and room and board. They’re typically subjected to less rigorous academic standards than their peers. Many are considered celebrities on campus and in their communities. (Certainly most quarterbacks are.) Isn’t it to be expected that intensified scrutiny will follow? Reid knew what he was getting into when he decided to play in the Big 12. He’s 21 years old, no longer a kid. And when a Big 12 quarterback loses his job, it’s news. Everyone is going to speculate as to the reasons why. Maybe Carlson hit too close to home?

Gundy has been roundly criticized by the press, in part because media members usually stand up for each other, and in part because he appeared unprofessional (and a bit demented) during his rant. When they’re not on the sidelines throwing clipboards, we expect college coaches to comport themselves in a distinguished manner. Many have objected to the fact that by choosing to go off on Carlson, Gundy was taking away from his team’s win. Gundy acknowledged that point during Monday’s weekly Big 12 coaches teleconference, but didn’t apologize for Saturday’s rant.

”I wish I would’ve said more,” he said.

And I wish he had said less, and said it differently.

Q. Reaction to your Gundy-Carlson column?

A. It was pretty typical of any hot button issue. About 70 percent of the people I heard from vehemently disagreed with me, and of course some of them expressed the sentiment that women don’t belong in sports – not in those words – use your imagination. But a healthy 30 percent or so of those who commented either agreed with me or said they appreciated reading an “opposing” viewpoint.

Q. If you had been the target of Mike Gundy’s rant, how would you have reacted? Have you experienced anything similar?

A. I think I would have been fighting back laughter while simultaneously wondering if I should be calling 9-1-1.

I’ve never experienced such a ferocious attack, but Gene Keady once called me out by name during a postgame interview after an NCAA tournament game, because he was mad about something I had written. He didn’t know me. After the interview I sought him out and introduced myself, and all was well.

Q. Bobby Reid and his mother told ESPN’s Tom Friend that they believe Gundy’s rant was a fake. Friend inferred that the information in Jenni Carlson’s column came from Gundy or the coaching staff. If that’s true, in hindsight, what are your reflections on the whole episode, and on what you wrote?

A. I am as certain as one can be that the episode was not fake. My opinion has not changed a bit.

Q. How does gender inform your writing voice and sensibility?

A. I don’t know…I am who I am and certainly my gender is part of the package. Yet I know women who think/feel differently than me on many issues, and men who think/feel similarly.

With regard to gender-related sports issues, I wish the so-called top columnists in the industry – and most of them are male — would have the courage, or interest, or whatever it takes, to weigh in. I wish other female columnists would too. At times I feel like a lone voice. While I hear from other writers privately – on occasion – saying ‘Way to go’, it seems to me that they don’t go public with their thoughts often enough.

Q. What would you have advised Danica Patrick about modeling for FHM or SI?

A. Don’t do it. It reflects poorly on her and women in general, in my opinion.

Q. Why a law degree?

A. I wanted to save the world…

Q. Does training in law help a sports columnist?

A. Not specifically. But, as anyone who endured law school and the bar exam can attest, it toughens you up, sharpens your analytical skills and, hopefully, gives you a broader and deeper perspective on life, including sports issues.

Q. Who and what do you read to keep up with sports?

A. The Chicago Sun-Times, of course. The New York Times. The Chicago Tribune. ESPN. And then anything that catches my eye.

Q. You recently wrote, “the Masters has long been a reminder that golf is an elitist sport.” Is there a strain of populism in your writing, and if so, where does it come from?

A. I think I’ll leave that for others to decide. But I’m not a big fan of elitism, in any form.

Q. Lastly, is there a feminist angle to the Cubs’ 100 years of futility?

A. That would be a good idea for a book: ‘If a Woman Owned the Cubs. Hmmm…….

Carol Slezak, excerpted from the Chicago Sun-Times, April 22, 2008:

It was great to see Danica Patrick finally posing next to a winner’s trophy, looking strong and confident in her racing suit. It sure beats seeing her modeling a barely there leather ensemble in FHM or a barely there bikini in Sports Illustrated.

Until Sunday, Patrick was a poseur. But thanks to her historic victory in the Japan Indy 300, she has become the real deal. Can she race and win? You bet she can.

Some even are comparing her win, the first by a woman in a major auto racing event, to Billie Jean King’s victory over Bobby Riggs in 1973. Let’s not get carried away. King always will be the queen of symbolic victories. She sparked a revolution. Her victory over Riggs made Patrick’s career possible.

Patrick’s win sent this message: Give a good female racer a decent car, and she can win. But we knew that already. Didn’t we?…

…I suppose she had to win a race to convince a handful of disbelieving rube racing fans that she belonged in the IRL. Maybe she even needed to convince herself she belonged. Maybe there were times when she thought about quitting racing and becoming a full-time pinup girl.

I’m glad she hung in there because it’s great to celebrate another female first. Besides, the last thing we need is another pinup girl.

(SMG thanks Carol Slezak for her cooperation)