60 Minutes - 8/22/2021: Race in the Ranks, Geldingadalir, Kindred in the Bleachers

Episode Date: August 23, 2021

On this week's "60 Minutes." David Martin reports on the new efforts being put forth to address inequality in the military, this time under the watch of the country’s first Black secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin. Renowned sportswriter Dave Kindred has covered the biggest moments and brightest stars in sports for more than half a century, but now he tells Jon Wertheim he has found his most fulfilling work: writing about girls high school hoops in central Illinois. And a new volcano has erupted into existence in Iceland. Bill Whitaker reports on the mesmerizing scenes. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Go behind the scenes of one of TV's most watched true crime series with the 48 Hours Postmortem Podcast, where correspondents and producers take you inside each case. Every Monday, listen to a new episode of 48 Hours and then join me, 48 Hours correspondent Anne-Marie Green, every Tuesday for a new episode of Postmortem. Follow and listen to 48 Hours on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. It doesn't change as you climb the ladder. There are always going to be people, because of what you look like, that will question your qualifications. Lloyd Austin climbed every rung in the Army, starting at West Point and rising all the way to four-star general, many times breaking barriers as the first African-American ever to hold the job. I would go someplace with my staff, and we were wearing civilian clothes. Somebody would come out to meet the general, and I wasn't the guy that they walked up to.

We watched as a huge stream of lava slithered down a new path into the valley. When we went to take a closer look, we couldn't believe our ears. It sounded like broken glass. It was a molten lava fall. We're about 10 feet away. I'm not sure I can get much closer. Yeah, I'm not sure I can get much closer than this. It's about 10 feet away. Burns your face. Dave Kindred is among the best ever to write about sport in America, and he's covered them all.

Ali, Tiger, Martina, and Michael. Then, after 50 years, he decided to repair to the bleachers, and how's this for a headline, cover girls' high school hoops. You know, I loved seeing them play, and why should they be ignored in high school athletics? And plus, they don't pout. They don't bitch. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm John Wertheim. I'm Scott Pelley. Those stories tonight on 60 Minutes. Go behind the scenes of one of TV's most watched true crime series with the 48 Hours Postmortem Podcast, where correspondents and producers take you inside each case.

Every Monday, listen to a new episode of 48 Hours and then join me, 48 Hours correspondent Anne-Marie Green, every Tuesday for a new episode of Postmortem. Follow and listen to 48 Hours on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. Tonight, David Martin on Assignment for 60 Minutes. More than 70 years after the armed services were integrated, it is still a fact of life in the U.S. military that African Americans are more likely to be disciplined and less likely to be promoted than whites. As we first reported earlier this year, even the most successful black officers

routinely feel the sting of racial bias, while large segments of the rank and file believe the system is stacked against them. The military has made attempts to deal with inequality before, but this time it's happening under the eye of Lloyd Austin, this country's first African-American Secretary of Defense, a former soldier who experienced discrimination firsthand. It doesn't change as you climb the ladder. You still get the doubts. There are always going to be people, because of what you look like, that will question your qualifications.

What are your priorities, Mr. Secretary? Lloyd Austin climbed every rung in the Army, starting at West Point and rising all the way to four-star general, many times breaking barriers as the first African American ever to hold the job. There's probably not a job that I had since I was a lieutenant colonel where some people didn't question whether or not I was qualified to take that job. It's the world I live in, and I'm sure that the other officers that you talk to would probably say the same thing. There's not a day in my life, David, when I didn't wake up and think about the fact that I was a black man. A number of the African Americans that we have talked to for this story have said when they are the only one in the room,

they feel as if they're not being listened to. Did you have that experience? Absolutely had that experience. And I found ways to operate, to adapt. In 1995, as the 82nd Airborne's first African-American operations officer, then-Lieutenant Colonel Austin adapted by having someone else give his briefings, someone he felt white officers were more likely to listen to. Was that a white officer? It was. Did you feel that was a conscious bias, people not ready to listen to you?

It absolutely was a conscious bias. Bias didn't end, even when he was a four-star general. I would go someplace with my staff, and we were wearing civilian clothes. Somebody would come out to meet the general, and I wasn't the guy that they walked up to. People have a perception that African AmericansAmericans can't be in key positions just because you're African-American. They just assume that it's always going to be somebody else. General C.Q. Brown rose from fighter pilot to become the first African-American in history to head the Air Force, which makes him a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The last time there was an African American in this room was nearly 30 years ago, when Colin Powell was chairman of the Joint Chiefs. The target today is actually a weapons cache. We met then-Lieutenant General Brown nearly six years ago at his operations center in the Persian Gulf, where he was commanding the air war against ISIS.

There he goes. It was all about destroying the enemy, but there was something else going on we didn't see. There's a world that I live in as an African American, and there's a world that I also live in as a minority inside of the United States Air Force. Those two worlds collided one day last year when a Minneapolis police officer pressed

his knee into George Floyd's neck. And the fact just the how long he was in the position he was in. Yeah. And how nonchalant the cop looked and that that actually I mean that that bothered me tremendously. Brown felt compelled to send out this message to his airmen. Here's what I'm thinking about. I'm thinking about how full I am with emotion, not just for George Floyd, but the many African Americans that have suffered the same fate as George Floyd. With that, a lifetime of frustration came boiling out. I'm thinking about the pressure I felt to perform error-free, especially for supervisors I perceived had expected less from me as an African American. I think about having to represent by working twice as hard to prove their expectations and perceptions of African Americans were invalid. It was really what I

wanted to get off my chest. I had no intention for it to go as big as it did, but I'm glad it did because I think it helped generate the conversation that many of us are having today about race relations in the United States. That's what I'm thinking about. So far, the video has been viewed over four million times. With Black Lives Matter protests breaking out across the country, the Air Force Inspector General conducted a survey on racial disparity, which produced eye-opening responses. Two out of every five African Americans do not trust their chain of command to address racism, bias, and unequal opportunities. Three out of every five believe they do not receive the same benefit of the doubt

as their white peers if they get in trouble. There were 123,000 responses in just two weeks. Really an outpouring of emotion from our airmen that I've not seen in the time I've been wearing this uniform. For Senior Master Sergeant Sapphira Morgan, the survey was long overdue. I think people were so just elated to finally have an opportunity to speak. When you hold in things for so long without being able to express yourself and then you're given an avenue to speak, people ate it up. The Air Force is now conducting another survey to include Hispanics and other minorities.

But the hard data from the first survey is now a matter of record. Young black enlisted members are almost twice as likely as white enlisted members to be involuntarily discharged based on misconduct. Black airmen of all ranks are 57 percent more likely to face courts-martial. As a senior sergeant, Morgan had been seeing numbers like that for years. I felt sick the first time I saw how many Black airmen had Article 15s or discharges in comparison to white airmen across the Air Force. And the thing that I think hurt the most was that no one wanted to have the conversation. Thanks for joining us again. Last summer, that conversation began at Randolph Air

Force Base in Texas with a program called Real Talk, hosted by Lieutenant General Brad Webb. Obviously, the Air Force has fundamentally had a wake-up call. In which black airmen, like Chief Master Sergeant Michael Holland, got a chance to speak truth to Air Force power. This is brave for us to address these things. He said to General Webb, this is brave. What did you mean? It takes courage to talk about racism, you know, in America, period.

But really, in the Air Force, where it's white male dominated. There's these unwritten rules. He told Webb black airmen have to abide by unwritten rules which don't apply to their white counterparts. What are some of the unwritten rules? Like change your posture when you walk into the room. Change your posture. Yeah, so I'm 5'11", 220 pounds. A black big guy is scary and threatening. So you strip those things away from you to make people feel comfortable with you. What are some of the other things you have to strip? Voice, right? Voice. You don't want to be loud. Any other unwritten rules?

Yeah, you got to be better. For Lieutenant General Webb, the sessions were a revelation. Did you hear things that surprised you? Oh, yeah. I mean, any number of things. For example? The African-American community inside the Air Force is dealing with an extra load that the white Caucasian community does not deal with. Am I being intimidating by the way I talk? Am I being intimidating by the way I sit? There's a mental checklist that has to occur here

that I was never oriented to ever in my Air Force career. Lots of great comments out there on social media. Episodes of Real Talk, including the one with Sergeant Sapphira Morgan, were streamed live on Facebook. And it was up there for all to see. What was the reaction? Negative and positive. I've had countless people say, I never knew.

But I've also had some Black people say, why are we exposing some of the things that we deal with to people who may not care? Everybody's not for this. It's hard to accept, but that's the truth. The people who are not for this, what do they say? Nothing. And that's what makes it difficult.

You know, you don't know what their biases are, right? Have you ever encountered a real racist in the Air Force? Absolutely, yeah. Had a supervisor, you know, who told me I would never succeed under him. The best thing I could do is survive while he was there and stay away from him, you know? What'd you do?

Stayed away from him. This racial disparity. The Facebook sessions were not Webb's first time in the hot seat. He was the busiest man in the White House Situation Room on the night of the Bin Laden raid. After 37 years in the Air Force, he's now in charge of education and training. Before George Floyd and the events of last summer, how had the Air Force dealt with race. We had training sessions, you know, that was principally PowerPoint slide-oriented, and it was very formalized.

Did it have any impact on you? Marginal. I mean, I have to be honest. Mercify for right and freedom. African Americans represent 17% of all the active duty troops in the military, but only 8% of all the active duty troops in the military, but only 8% of the officers. And in key jobs, like Air Force pilots, it's worse.

The top general, C.Q. Brown, knows that firsthand from his flying days in the 1990s. What was the percentage of black pilots back then? 2%. What is it today? It is still 2%. What does that say? What was the percentage of black pilots back then? Two percent. What is it today? It is still two percent. What does that say? We haven't made much progress.

Retired Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs during the Bush and Obama administrations, set out to change the nearly all-white complexion of the senior ranks. Was it racial bias? I don't think it was conscious bias, but I think it was an institutional bias, if you will. So what is the institutional bias? I have a phrase I use called ducks pick ducks. And when you have white guys picking, they pick other white guys.

That, to me, is the the bias and that's what the leadership has to break up to make sure that we're not in that kind of a situation. Mullen met then Lieutenant General Lloyd Austin in Iraq and in 2009 brought him to Washington as the first African-American director of the Chairman's powerful Joint Staff. He said know, I really want to diversify my staff. And he knew that talent was out there, but he knew that if he didn't lead the organization to identify that talent and bring that talent on board,

it wouldn't happen. There's that picture of you standing with the African-American generals and admirals on your staff. I mean, General Austin came into my office and said, I want you to come down to the joint staff room for a minute. And I walked into that room and they were all standing there and the photographer was ready to go. And I said, I asked them, I said, what's this all about? And one of them said, it's about history. Turns out it was only a moment in history.

Eleven years later, these are the people who fill the top positions on the Joint Staff. Have you looked at the website of the Joint Staff lately? I have. Top 25. No African Americans. I suspect that'll change in the near term. It's been, what, more than 70 years since the armed forces were integrated. Why do you think it's taken this long?

I think things have moved slowly in America, David. I think the military, in a lot of ways, has led the way for diversity. But you know as well as I do that if you look at our senior leadership right now, it's not representative of what's in the ranks. What in your job can you personally do to make a change? I'm the guy that makes the recommendation to the president on who our senior flag officers ought to be going forward. Right now, I'm digging into the history of incredible infrastructure projects of the 1930s, including the Hoover Dam, the Empire State Building, the Golden Gate Bridge, and more. The promise is in the title, History That Doesn't Suck. Available on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Last March, when we first reported on this story, an unprecedented swarm of more than 30,000 earthquakes shook a corner of southwest Iceland and rattled houses in the capital Reykjavik 20 miles away. Some tremors lasted only a few seconds. Others punched in at 5.4 on the Richter scale. Icelanders are used to earthquakes. The whole island is a volcanic hotspot. But this shook even the most stoic among them. Then, on March 19th, volcanologists reported the world's newest volcano had burst open,

unleashing a spectacular fountain of lava from a tear in the Earth's crust. It's called, I'm only going to say this once, Geldingadaler. So far, the lava hasn't stopped gushing, and neither could we after seeing it from as close as we dared. This is what 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit looks like. Incandescent chunks of molten rock, some as big as cars, explode 200 feet in the air, hurled upwards by some of the most elemental forces on the planet. At every new cascade of lava,

the Earth rumbles like thunder from an alien world. We watched as lava poured out of the crater, changing Iceland's map forever. It's incredible. You can feel the heat. It's over 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. And at 500 feet, we can still feel this. And if you go too close, you can burn the skin.

We had come to see Earth's newest real estate with Thor Thordarson, one of Iceland's top volcanologists. Even he seemed a little starstruck at nature's fireworks. Thor Thordarson, I've been looking at activity like this for almost four decades, and I still get mesmerized when I see it. Get mesmerized? Yes. I just sit there and I can watch it day in, day out. There are not many eruptions in the world

where you can get this close. In March, it burst into the open in a lonely valley that was once an ancient Viking burial ground.

Getting there felt like we'd stepped back in time. Prehistoric rocks littered the fields as our giant 4x4s raced along a dirt track, climbing the barren hills. It's a good show, isn't it? Oh my God, it's spectacular. At the top, Thor Darson grabbed his gas mask in case the volcano belched out dangerous sulfur dioxide gas. Oxygen.

We followed, carrying emergency oxygen. It wasn't long before we were on hands and knees, searching for volcanic glass. In here we have what we call tephra. We have thrown out the vent. These little hair-like pieces here? Yes, you see them in here you see it and the name pele is here after the goddess of pele here yes the volcano god is in hawaii from chunks the size of a car to little pieces that look like a strand of hair

all of that coming out of that volcano? Yes, absolutely. The lava flows have been spectacular from the start, but the fountaining today was just out of the top drawer, just 10 out of 10. If there's one person who's on close terms with the volcano goddess Pele, it's Bruce Houghton, Hawaii's state volcanologist. He and Thor Darson have chased lava all over the world. So when Iceland blew, Houghton wasn't going to let it pass. You go as quickly as you can. Many eruptions are over within a day or so.

Thor had an inkling from way back that this was going to be a long one. So you got up and flew in from Hawaii? I waited, I waited. I can't believe him, but I waited until I was certain that it had a long life ahead of it. I think it is a beginning of a new eruption period. A new eruption period. Yes, and I think we're going to see many more eruptions in the peninsula over the next, let's say, 200 to 400 years. That prospect has scientists scrambling to get here,

the slow, steady lava flow fueling speculation of a new seismic era. Most eruptions, like the one in 2010 that shut down European air travel, pack an explosive punch. This one is a dream. It means scientists can collect a treasure trove of data and home in on the holy grail of volcanology, how to predict an eruption. The worst thing you can do, ironically, in a volcanic eruption

is to tell the population, there's going to be an eruption sometime in the next three years, and then walk away and leave them with that. But it's trying to get to the point where you can offer a few days to a few weeks warning. And that's something, so far, we don't do that very well. Is this helping you hit that sweet spot? We hope it will, but at the moment, we're just gathering the raw material. It's not like the Moses, bring the tablets off the mountain, you know. It's something that takes a long time to address all of the different lines of evidence.

Eventually, where we want to take the science of volcanology is to be able to predict, but also in forecast eruptions. It took meteorology over 200 years to come up with a decent weather forecast. So we've only been at this for 100 years. Not us. Maybe collectively it's getting gross. For the record. One of the next generation of scientists trying to unlock the Earth's secrets is Texas train's geochemist, Ed Marshall.

So this is all still being pushed out. Yes, exactly. A self-described lab rat, he couldn't believe his luck to be working at the University of Iceland when the eruption happened. Now he dresses for the office in a heat protective suit. Digging past the cooled rock at the edge of the lava field, Marshall scoops up the smoldering lava

and douses it in water. The flash cooling turns the lava instantly to glass. So when we take hot lava and we flash cool it into a glass, we preserve all of the chemistry that is locked away in the liquid lava. It's still warm. Now what will you learn from this? So from these samples, we can study their compositions and learn where the lava came from and what's happened to it on the way to the surface. And how far down are we talking?

In this case, about nine miles. That's the deepest in thousands of years. This eruption is really a conduit to the Earth's mantle that we haven't been able to touch in Iceland in historic time. As we talked, the 30-foot lava wall continued to crack and crumble, pushing slowly towards us. You first came out here when this first started to erupt. That's right. What did this valley look like then?

Well, this valley that we're in now had no lava in it at all. And what we're seeing is lava slowly coming out of the vent and just filling up the area around it like a bathtub. How soon would that wall make it here? It depends. It could be here by the end of the day, potentially. 20 to 30 feet in about a day. Yeah, yeah, that's right. That's incredible. It's not just scientists who've been transfixed by the eruption. This is a country that names its children after volcanoes, so no surprise that more than 200,000 have made the pilgrimage to see it. And who could pass up a ready-made barbecue?

There are lava dogs, lava s'mores, lava selfies. At dusk, the crowds grew thicker. So one night, we decided to join them. Look at that. Don't see that every day. No, you don't. Wow. We had asked Kristin Jónsdóttir, head of Iceland's earthquake monitoring, to come along.

She told us most eruptions in Iceland start with a big bang. Not this one. Instead, the Earth unzipped itself in almost a straight line. Lava boiled up, spreading to two vents, then nine. Last May, vent number five was the only one still active on this southwest peninsula. John's daughter told us that wasn't the only surprise. We have not seen an eruption on the peninsula for 800 years. 800 years?

Yes, so this is something that I was not expecting to happen in my lifetime. How long can this keep up? We don't know. That's the honest answer. We are not seeing any signs of a decrease, so we don't know. Just when we thought we had seen it all, the volcano had another idea. We watched as a huge stream of lava slithered down a new path into the valley. When we went to take a closer look, we couldn't believe our ears. It sounded like broken glass. It was a molten lava fall. We're about 10 feet away. I'm not sure I can get much closer. Yeah, I'm not sure I can get much closer than this.

It's about 10 feet away. Burns your face. But it was hard to turn away. You can see also over there, like you can see the glow inside. With more active volcanoes than almost anywhere else on Earth, seismologist Kristin Jonsdottir told us it's not hard to be moved by Iceland's volcanic arsenal. And to see what she meant, we traveled inland. We are now flying along the western volcanic zone. So each one of those craters, there has been

a volcanic eruption out of one of those craters? Yeah, exactly. We flew along a deep trench that stretched for miles. Jan's daughter told us Iceland straddles the border of two tectonic plates. The friction between the plates creates earthquakes and an opening for lava to escape. So this is a fissure. So you can see there's a whole lot of opening happening here. Now would this be a place where during a quake the lava would come from these fissures? Might do. Might do. We flew past mountains of ash 10,000 years old, more remnants of past eruptions. We were heading to Katla, one of the island's most violent volcanoes. Its center covered with a vast glacier twice the size of Manhattan.

If this were to blow, is this one of the most explosive volcanoes on the island? Yes, it is. Would this stop air traffic all over Europe like the last one did? It might do. When's the last time it erupted? It erupted last time in 1918, but before that it had eruptions quite regularly every 50 years. So it's long overdue.

It's long overdue. So is it smart for us to be here right now? Jan's daughter assured us that Katla was showing no signs of waking up just then. Six seismic monitors record Katla's every hiccup, part of an extensive network that includes GPS sensors and satellite images. I'm mostly interested in what is happening underneath the ground, the stuff that we don't see. How do we put together that image of what's happening on the ground?

And how do we forecast or predict what's going to happen next? And so what's going on right now, that's helping you get closer to that goal? Absolutely. So with every eruption, we learn something about the structure of the volcanoes. And not only in Iceland, but this has also an impact worldwide. In the land of fire and ice, the volcano bug bites hard. This latest eruption is the perfect recruitment tool for a new generation of volcanologists. Chasing lava, one scientist told us, it shakes you to your core. When does fast grocery delivery through Instacart matter most?

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It's one of the guiding principles of journalism. The reporter should never become the story. Every now and then, though, you find a reporter's story too good not to tell. In 2018, Dave Kindred received the Penn ESPN Lifetime Achievement Award for Literary Sports Writing. It was intended as a final bit of punctuation on a gilded career. Little did the presenters know, Kindred was still churning out column after column, sweating deadlines, interviewing athletes after exhilarating wins and deflating losses. Kindred, though, wasn't setting up shop, as he had for 50 years, at Super Bowls, World Series Games, Olympics, and title fights. No, he was scribbling away three rows up the bleachers

inside high school gyms of central Illinois. And, as we first reported in March, it would make for some of the most fulfilling work of Kindred's career. For more than a half century, Dave Kindred abided a simple sports writing rule, be a reporter first and a writer second. On the sidelines or the back nine, he wanted to be there, find the story, and then paint a picture using words. Let's do the sports writer equivalent of back of the baseball card. Give me the numbers here. How many World Series have you been to? I became a columnist in 69, so went to almost all the World Series after that. How many Super Bowl have you been to? 40-something. What about the Masters? I've been to 52 Masters. First in 1967 and missed 1986 when nothing happened except Jack Nicklaus won. And that's the Red Smith Award. Unlike the athletes and teams

they cover, sports writers aren't ranked. There's no scoreboard or leaderboard. And this is Dan Jenkins' medal. Oh, that's great. Won that too. Still, even in this subjective line of work, there are perennial all-stars and Hall of Famers. Say, Sports Illustrated's Frank DeFord and Red Smith of the New York Times, whose Sunday column would arrive by train near Dave Kindred's childhood home of Atlanta, Illinois, a speck alongside Route 66. Kindred would race to the station, get a copy of the newspaper, and read every word. I studied them.

You know, one of the things I've learned about writing is find out what you like, then figure out why you like it, and then do that. So why'd you like it? I liked the rhythm of his words. Red didn't use kind of sports writer hackney words. He used words that had a music to them. You're here in the middle of Illinois, and you're reading these dispatches about sports, but from all over the world. Yeah. Took me out of that second floor bedroom, put me in the press box at Wimbledon. Kindred wrote what he saw and became one of the most influential sports columnists and authors of a generation. Named sports icons from the last half century, and rest assured, Dave Kindred's covered them. To him, though, one athlete was the greatest.

In 1966, Kindred was a cub reporter at the Louisville Courier-Journal, ordered by his boss to go find the outgoing ascending local fighter. You meet Muhammad Ali for the very first time. That seems like a pretty big pivot point in your career. How did you think of it at the time? At the time, I just thought of it, this is a good story. You know, this is fun. Guy's a heavyweight champion of the world. It marked the first of more than 300 interviews with Ali, who christened Dave Kindred Louisville,

forever Ali's hometown reporter. Kindred followed Ali's entire career, an entomologist, as it were, writing about the butterfly and the bee, sometimes in the strangest of places. I was trying to do a column on his entourage. Meanwhile, his suite, as always, was full of people. He waves at me, Louisville, come in here. So I go in there and I'm standing next to the bed. He raises up the corner of the sheets and says, get in. Well, I don't know what you do if the heavyweight champion of the world tells you get in, but I did. And one of us had on clothes. He saved that anecdote

for a 2006 dual biography he wrote about Muhammad Ali and Howard Cosell. Dave Kindred moved on from Louisville to the Washington Post, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and the Sporting News. Kindred became one of those Hall of Famers. His writings are preserved in the library of his alma mater, Illinois Wesleyan University, where we unearthed this gem. After the death of the NBA player Pete Maravich, you wrote, an inelegant collection of bones, the skinny six-foot-five Maravich flailed his way down court. Elbows and knees, sharp angles rearranging themselves. An Ichabod crane on the fast break and you dared not blink. That's pretty good.

Kindred wrote that line 33 years ago. Where'd you come up with that? No idea other than, you know, that's what he looked like. You want the reader to see the moment the way you see it. He would have kept at it, but for the sad and steady decline of both print media and the role of the general columnist. In 2010, Dave Kindred and his wife Cheryl, high school sweethearts in the 50s, figured it was time to return home to the flat abs of America, central Illinois.

They'd sit by the pond outside their log cabin, read and watch sunsets. And when the cold whipped in winter, they, like a lot of folks downstate, would repair to the warmth of a local high school gym for entertainment. In their case, it was in Morton, Illinois, next town over from Peoria, to watch the Lady Potters. Went to a basketball game, and like the old war horse, I couldn't sit there and not write about what I saw. Kindred and his wife sat in the bleachers alongside parents, grandparents, and high schoolers, and his professional instincts kicked in. He offered to cover the Lady Potters for the team's website and post his accounts on Facebook

as well. Search the post! Thank you very much! Let's go! But first, he wanted the blessing of the team's coach. Muhammad Ali and Olympics and Masters Golf and Super Bowls and Bobby Knight, and here I am, a small-town girls basketball coach. It's about patience, take care of the ball.

Bob Becker has been head coach of the Lady Potters since 1999. After some apprehension, who wants to get second-guessed by a hard-boiled journalist, he bought in. You know, after that initial shock and then getting to know who he really was, I mean, after a little bit of research, we've got the Michael Jordan of sports writing falls in our lap.

The scribe who once described an NBA player as Ichabod Crane on a fast break now called his new subjects the Golden State Warriors with ponytails. Scribe, who once described an NBA player as Ichabod Crane on a fast break, now called his new subjects the Golden State Warriors with ponytails. And there was something about girls' basketball that particularly enthralled Kindred. I think I owed a little bit to Title IX. The women athletes, you know, I loved seeing them play. And why should they be ignored in high school athletics? The men's game is vertical.

The girls' game is horizontal. They have to master the fundamentals. So it's much more fun to watch them. And plus, they don't pout. They don't bitch. For now, COVID has shrunk the season and the crowds in the Potterdome. But Kindred's there, his gaze fixed on the action, listening in on huddles. But you've got to fight and scrap and hustle.

After the buzzer, he's outside the locker room for a quote. So they had a bounce point? Yes. Tell me about it. Which one? Albeit self-imposed, there is a deadline. So after driving home, he ends the day, as ever, in front of a keyboard. People stay up after the game waiting for that article to come out. They won't go to

bed until they get to read it. So he's got deadlines to meet. He's not getting paid anything, but eventually it turned into a box of Milk Duds. You heard right. Kindred's negotiated compensation. Thank you, Rocky. I said, look, I'm a professional sports writer. I should be getting something for doing all this stuff for you. And he measured my talent and experience and good looks and said, how about a box of Milk Duds every game? And I said, deal. You drive a hard bargain, Kindred. Then in 2015, well, you might say the Milk Duds would turn into lifesavers. Apart from the sugar rush, what do you get out of this? Well, the first five years, it was just the fun. Then things started happening as they do late in life.

I had a grandson who died. My mother died three months later. The next year, my wife had a catastrophic stroke that left her an invalid who cannot communicate. You know, so even in the hospital, one of the players' mothers, I was debating whether I should leave my wife in the hospital unconscious and go to a Lady Potters game. And the mother said, you got to go. You got to go. And she was right. I went and what started as fun became life affirming. It's just what I am. It's what I do. You're someone who is precise with his words, and you said, this team saved me. This team did save me. This team became a community, became my friends. My life had

turned dark. They were light. And I knew that light was always going to be there, you know, two or three times a week. In return, Dave Kindred would chronicle the Lady Potters' four recent state championships. First flex, let's see. State champs and Lady Potter alums Josie Becker, Jacey Warham, and Courtney Jones. When you guys were here playing, did you appreciate how cool a story this was? At the time, I didn't think like anything of it. Now looking back at it, it's actually really amazing that we've had this legendary writer come and capture all this special time that we've had in high school. What was it like getting interviewed by him? I was so nervous. I literally didn't really know he was that famous of a writer.

And by the time I finally got interviewed, I was so excited. I was like, this is my chance. I've finally done good enough. I get to talk about myself. Do you remember what you said? Oh, no. I think I blacked out, to be honest. That's okay, since Kindred keeps all his notes, including quotes, and turns it into a commemorative book he publishes most seasons.

I've written more than 300 games, probably more than 500,000 words. I've written more about that girls basketball team than I've written about anything, including Ali. Dave Kindred going home and covering high school hoops is something akin to his former Washington Post colleagues, Woodward and Bernstein, uncovering corruption of small town zoning boards. The Morton players appreciate the expert journalism, as well as his awareness of the stubborn inequality between male and female athletes, as witnessed at this year's NCAA basketball tournament. Katie Krupa, Caitlin Cowley, Raquel Frakes, and Maggie Hobson are current Potters. Where are your banners?

Where's the big hanging banner that you get when you win a state title? If the boys had won a state title? Oh, it would be everywhere. The town would literally celebrate for weeks. Do you guys all read his write-ups? Oh yeah. Oh yeah, definitely. You know, I get a lot of texts

from my grandparents and relatives, and it's always, I read Dave's article, heard you had a good game, or heard it was a physical game, or whatever. I think it's just, it's so special that someone that is so good at what he does wants to be here and write about us. He's just kind of always there with us. He grows with us, especially this season.

Why do you think he's doing this? I think it's just his passion. Like, basketball is our passion. Man, I agree with Rock. I think it's his passion, you know. I think he wants to be doing it for as long as he possibly can, too. Come on, KO. She's right. Dave Kindred, now 80, knows that pitchers lose their fastball.

Basketball players lose a step. Boxers, not least Ali, lose their crispness. The life cycle of the writer is more generous. Kindred recently finished a book that celebrated the life and mourned the death of his grandson, Jared. When Tiger Woods was injured in a car accident in February, Golf Digest leaned on Kindred for a column. Then there are his dispatches about the Lady Potters. I want to read you something we found that you wrote from the first game of this year was moving to us. We've lost so much that was so long familiar. Then the Potters gave us a gift. They played a game. Then you wrote the joy that high school athletes feel

when every trip down the court is a trip toward possibility. Joy in these days so long without joy. Yeah, that's why I do it. That's why I do it. Sports writing right there. Writer's right. I'm Scott Pelley. We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes. Go behind the scenes of one of TV's most watched true crime series with the 48 Hours Postmortem Podcast,

where correspondents and producers take you inside each case. Every Monday, listen to a new episode of 48 Hours, and then join me, 48 Hours correspondent Anne-Marie Green, every Tuesday for a new episode of Postmortem. Follow and listen to 48 Hours on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts.