The Press Box - Ep. 128: 'The Press Box' With Frank Deford

Episode Date: June 9, 2016

The Ringer's Bryan Curtis is joined by legendary Sports Illustrated writer Frank Deford to discuss the current sports scene, the coverage of Muhammad Ali's death, and his renowned NPR commentaries. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm Brian Curtis, editor at large the bringer, and this is the press box podcast. I'm joined today by a guy who wrote for Sports Illustrator for several decades, who founded the daily newspaper, the National, to which the words late and lamented are rightly attached, and who in April 1980 began recording weekly sports commentaries for NPR, the best of which are collected in his new book. I know that voice anywhere.

Frank DeFord. Tell me what's satisfying about writing. and recording a radio commentary versus writing a magazine feature for Sports Illustrated. Because you use the proper word, writing, I mean, that even though the ear instead of the eye

listening or more, I think I get a certain satisfaction out of it beyond that because I'm probably a little bit of a ham. When commentaries, I have certain things and chuckles for me, which I... What does your voice sound like on the air? What is it?

is my voice sound like? Yeah. You know, it's rather strange when people started saying, I never thought of my voice as anything. I think it's probably a combination of factors. I grew up in Baltimore, which is a terrible, very nasal. How you doing? That's the Baltimore accent.

My mother is Southern, so I probably picked up a little bit from her. and then I moved on to, I think, the... So it's a combination of all those factors, I guess. So people tell me that my son sounds like me, and he grew up completely in New York, so I don't know. All I know is... You mentioned in the book that when you introduced yourself to Hillary Clinton, she said, oh, I know you anywhere, Frank.

That voice wakes me up every Wednesday morning. That did sort of throw me all. off when the first lady assumed to be the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party. When she said she recognized my voice just by saying, hello, Mrs. Clinton, I think that that had filled the deal doing commentaries for NPR. I'm not curious. It's a broad audience. You know, in sports, you're limited, whether you're at Sports Illustrated or ESPN.

You're over here, and people who don't know or care about sports never have any contact with you. But NPR is like a newspaper. It's like a broad newspaper. And so I talk to a lot of people who tell me, and that's kind of neat being a subject to pluck that. So it's a pleasure. That's the best gift at all. You don't have to pick the winner of the Super Bowl. I think anybody would be overjoyed not to have to do that. I was reading a radio, one of your radio commentaries from 2013, and this is your lead, speaking of speaking to an NPR audience. This may sound far-fetched, but football reminds me of Venice. I'm not sure you could have written that on the sports page in quite the same way. Do you get to come in through side doors more doing NPR?

You've got a, you can come in a side door, but you haven't got time enough to, you know, to really wander around because it's a three-minute spot. And I'm sometimes in the beginning with you get three minutes, even though that's like a Dostoevsky novel in some respects

on the air to point right away. You can't you can't Dilley-Dally. And I found that a long time ago, you pretty much have to stick to one subject. You can't

throw in a lot of stuff that you'd love to do if it's not and that that I think was the whole so it makes you more of a radio makes you more of a vicious self-editor then it's it's a it's more disciplined because I was used to writing you know long six seven thousand word piece you could digress and you and you could drift off and bring in other issues and but it's also true in in writing long pieces you sometimes have to throw away good stuff because as good as it is, it doesn't relate to what you're talking of. And that's one of the hardest things, I think, for a young writer to learn that you just, it's not the kitchen

sink that you can throw in there. A longer piece is not just longer. You know, it's got to have a certain, and I think if there's anything that young writers, or take the longest to catch on to Yeah, they've heard they've been badgered with this terrible word long-form journalism, right? Whereas if the most important quality of a piece is whether it's long or not, rather than whether it's interesting or insightful. Long, share many, many things. And I never would have done how, frankly, we'd like you to have sort of thing on the radio. The appeal was that it was so different from what I was doing for Sports Illustrated.

And that was what attracted me to it, that it gave me an opportunity to do something. And yet within the same something of a ham, so I enjoyed hearing myself talk. When you compose these things, are you standing in your office reading them aloud, practicing how it would sound? Well, I always, you know, read them over to myself. I don't play them back, tape them back, or anything like that. More than anything else is the time. It's got to come in and exactly. So I'm more involved in the technical aspect of the time.

I mean, if it comes in at three minutes and eight seconds, I've got to cut eight seconds. And I've also found that when I get before the actual microphone and the studio, studio, I change. I don't sound exactly like I do when I'm sitting and talking to myself. I mean, sure, this is true with actors on stage. Do the same thing every night, even if the lines are the same. Baws longer. Bring it back. Did you, you recorded a radio commentary in 2001 where you were talking, it was right after Dale Earnhardt's death. And you said, although NASCAR may be too loud and tacky, too fast and garish for many of us. It is a perfectly honorable slice of American life and death.

Was part of what you were doing in NPR explaining things like NASCAR to an audience that maybe wasn't watching Daytona and everything every weekend? Well, I try not to get, far be it for me to try to explain NASCAR. I don't understand it myself. But I do try to explain the way that I look at it. I'll explain NACCAR to the guys who understand what carburetors are. I don't get into carburetors. I don't get into pick and rolls. The experts, it's just part of every culture in the world.

I mean, it's really sweaty and because it's serious. And I think that it fits right into that category. In 2003, you did a piece for NPR where you argued that the kind of hornedoggery and sexual violence that athletes engaged in and was tolerated 30 or 40 years ago. It wasn't just tolerated, but it was actually key to an athlete's appeal. You know, he was a ladies' man, a rake. What change do you think in the last couple of years and flipped that on its head where we are not so tolerant anymore? In terms of violence? In terms of the way we react to it.

I think first of all that all across our way we get our news and that digest thing, our minds right now, but hash talking that came into sports. We're from the athletes spoken now, and that much anymore. Have you always considered yourself a sports guy? I don't think you can be a sports. You like it. I are interested in it. I don't think you can write out to be a sports right.

I just wanted to be a right drifted into sports because simply the best job offer I got out of college was, Sports Illustrated. Write about the personalities and not just... Did you, you wrote in one of your books that you were, as a young man, as a young writer at SI, you worried a little bit about spending a whole life chronicling sports. There was more out there in the world. You ever think about that anymore? No, I mean, it's too late in the day.

I'm 77 years old, and I made my piece with that a long time ago. I also found that I could, if that's the word, overt myself anyhow by writing novels that I think I've written 10 novels. And I think it's good for me, too, as a sports writer, because I come back to sports, almost nothing to do with sport. What is you, and what is appealing about sports when you come back to it after a period away? What's exciting about it? After I've been away?

Yeah. Look, I have to be honest. And I think anybody who's been in the business that after you've seen a certain number of games, we cannot keep. I don't think you can keep up your, as much as you did when you first started. I mean, when I come back to sports,

I need a championship. I need something important. I couldn't, you know, get enthusiastic about watching the other guys who've become. cynics, why don't become that? And I don't think I am. That doesn't mean that you have to put... Back in the 70s, you told me this one time, the New York Times tried to hire you as a sports columnist, as an heir to Redsmith, or perhaps the heir to Redsmith, and you turned them down because you thought

long, you were better at long pieces than you were at columns. In a roundabout way, are these NPR commentaries your way of doing a sports column? Yeah, absolutely. And the best decision I made, was not going to it. I didn't let my van, those long pieces, abandoning it. But yes, it's our commentaries. I sit the same computer and everything else

short pieces I do a long piece. It's all a matter of right. There's one in the book on Kobe Bryant from 2004 and you start out by saying you're Kobe Bryant and wherever you go, people are staring at you. And that's you doing Jimmy Cannon isn't it? Kobe Bryant was like a lot

of, we sometimes more, though there may be 50,000 or 20,000 people surrounding you in the game that may be dogging you. And Bobby Bryant was prompt on the basketball to recognize it. 12 years later, an athlete was meant to adjust to an everyday life is a very difficult thing. That's out of time doing that. Muhammad Ali died Friday and we're still talking about it in four days later. What was it like to be, I think this was in 1962. So you were pretty fresh out of Princeton.

What was it like to be thrown into the back of a? car with Muhammad Ali when you were going up to Albany. Of course, boxing was a lot bigger than you. You're going to start with that. A. Muhammad Ali came along right now. He always said it's Rocky Marciano. On time, I rode with him on a train.

He went up to testify. Ban boxing integer, and they sent him up. And oddly enough, he just went up by himself. He's not a guy who can stand to be alone. I have to understand to question. He educated a man as he was. And, you know, he could be. Muhammad Ali sired more book deals than any athlete in history.

It would probably be more Muhammad Ali books than there will be written about most U.S. presidents. I think it's fair to say. Did you ever, were you ever tempted to jump in on that as so many of your sports writing contemporaries did? No. For the simple reason, just what you said, that so much has been written about him. And I don't think I've read hardly anything original in these last few days. You know, nothing has changed. Consequence there's said about his refusal.

It's been too now, and now it's just it again. So I don't know what the late Mark Cramm. And that buddy wants to re-recommend a ghost. About 20 years ago now, you published a collection of your magazine pieces called The World's Tallest Midget. And the title was referencing that a sports writer, even a great sports writer, was the world's tallest midget. Do you think the status of the sports writer has grown or diminished in the intervening years?

It's grown in most respects in right about it. In journalism, we're diminished in that there are not as many of us who are known nationally. You know, this has happened in not talking about how good they are, but I'm talking about how we've gone down. And the other thing that I think has affected sports in numbers, that it's kind of overwhelmed. I know how important. You're going to be a writer. Another way to look at it, too, is I think a death of a certain kind of generalist within sports writing,

those with a columnist back in the day and a few hot-flying magazine feature writers, right, like yourself, who could kind of go from one topic to the other and find out what's interesting. And I think today, if anything, you know, you get funneled into, you're an NBA. writer. So you better know ever, you're an insider, as they say. And that's changed too. And I think it's sort of, you know, you wonder if Frank DeFord were starting for fresh out of Princeton now, whether there'd even be room to be a generalist in the same way that you were. Yeah, I, I don't know if I would, I don't know what I would do now because it's transformational to come out at the other. I never had the expert fabulous at that.

I understand the game as well as the... Did you, before I let you go, you're speaking of basketball, you wrote about basketball early on in your career when I think it was very safe to say it was near the bottom of the totem pole of major sports within sports magazines and newspapers, at least in most cities in the United States. Are you surprised at how basketball writers

have a bigger status these days and basketball perhaps itself? And what do you think happened? Well, sure. I mean, it's covering it. going to be, by the same token, you know, how many boxing writers are there? It used to be that every at a championship fight, there are very important racing, riding for the basketball is so much better known today. Really, I got my chance at Sports Illustrated because basketball was consangers and individual personalities. More attention, a classic example,

for golf when Tiger Woods, more attention when it had mac and rolling. Connors and Belly Jean and him depending on the personalities. Whereas the team sports, a high school team. The new book is I know that voice anywhere, my favorite NPR commentaries. Frank, thanks for coming on. Brian, I enjoyed it very much. Thank you so very much.