The Press Box - The Philadelphia Inquirer's Mike Sielski on the Year of the Eagles, Writing Columns, and Sweating Out Deadlines

Episode Date: January 20, 2023

Bryan is joined by the Philadelphia Inquirer's Mike Sielski to talk about covering the Eagles and what it’s like to write in Philadelphia. They start by discussing the unique nature of Philadelphia sports fans. Then they talk about Mike’s career and how he approaches writing columns and writing on tight deadlines. Later, they discuss his book, ‘The Rise’, about the origin story of Kobe Bryant. Host: Bryan Curtis Guest: Mike Sielski Associate Producer: Carlos Chiriboga Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up everybody? It's Austin Rivers from the Minnesota Timberwolves. It's a new year and I have a new podcast here at the Ringer, Offguard, hosted by me and my guy, Pasha Higigi. Austin and I go way back and talk so much hoop already that we figure it was time to fire up the mics and let you in on all of these conversations. Every week, Pasha and I will hit on the biggest stories happening in the league.

And get Austin's perspective of someone currently hooping in the NBA. Tap into OffGuard every Friday on the Ringer NBA show feed on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. Hello, Media. consumers, welcome to the press box. Ryan Curtis of the Ringer here, along with producer Carlos Churaboga, who's sitting in for Erica.

Let me ask you a list or something. Do you have any Philadelphia sports fans in your life? I do right here at the Ringer. And they, by which I mean Chris Ryan, have that special gleam in their eye because the Eagles went 14 and 3 this season. They're the number one seed in the NFC, and they've got a home game

versus the Giants this weekend. Here to explain Philly sports fandom and how to cover it is Mike Sealski, columnist at the Philadelphia Inquirer and author of Rise, Kobe Bryant and the pursuit of immortality, which just came out in paperback this week. Mike, welcome to the press box. Brian, it's an honor to be on. I love listening to the show. It's a treat to be with you.

Thank you so much. All right, let's start here. What happens in Philadelphia when the Eagles have a good season? Oh, dear. a combination of ecstasy and agita, I would say. That's the best way to put it. This season has been particularly, I think, challenging in that regard because people thought the Eagles were going to be good.

They didn't think the Eagles were going to be this good, 14 and 3 good. Jalen Hertz could have been the MVP, might yet be the MVP good. And this is a position, so to speak, that Philadelphia Sports, fans struggle with. They don't like to be the favorites. They like to be the underdog. That rocky thing is real. And so when the Eagles end of the playoffs is the number one seed, home field advantage with Hertz back in the lineup, with Lane Johnson coming back in the lineup, with everything kind of lining up, it seems for them, that's an uncomfortable position for a Philadelphia sports fan to be in because we're always looking to the sky for the anvil.

It's going to fall in our heads. See, that's what, you know, when we talk about typical Philadelphia sports fans, of course, we always get distracted by Santa Claus and snowballs and old stories like that. But to me, if there's something, there's a quality about them, it is what you say. You like being the underdog. There's an air of pessimism, but there's also an embrace of the pessimism. Like, this fits. This is where we want to be mentally. Yeah, you're right.

And it's combined a little bit with kind of a pie in the sky feeling that if everything goes, right. This can work out. You know, you've seen that at times throughout the town sports history, maybe with, say, the Sixers and the process, or some of the big moves that the Eagles and Phillies have made over the years. But generally speaking, there's kind of a sweet spot that a team has to find. For the Phillies this past season, found it. They were good enough to make a run to the World Series, but they were also, you know, the final team to get in the National League playoffs. So if they went around or lost to the Braves in the divisional series of the Padres and the National League Championship Series, well, okay, we weren't expecting it anyway. But since they went all the way to the World Series, it developed this momentum and this enthusiasm that just was intoxicating to be a part of for a month.

And that's exactly the kind of situation, I guess, should say, that Philadelphia fans love where they don't have a whole lot to lose. How is a great Eagles season different from a great Phillies or great 76ers season? Well, the Eagles are just kind of at the gutteral core of being a Philadelphia sports fan for the most part. They are the most popular team in the region by a mile. The Phillies are second, and it's a little bit different. The fan bases are just a little bit different. I think some of it is the nature of the two sports, baseball, and football. Some of it is the nature of the region that, like I see,

said the NFL kind of taps into something intrinsic to the Philadelphia market. It really draws people in. You know, the Phillies tend to draw an older fan base, obviously because of baseball, not to speak too broad a brush, but, you know, there are probably more women who are Phillies fans and there are Eagles fans, not that there aren't a lot of female Eagles fans because there are. Just the tenor is a little bit different. The Eagles are the discussion topic year-round here, no matter.

or what. I can still remember a buddy of mine, Brian Costello, who covers the Jets for the New York Post, came down here one year to cover a Jets Eagles preseason game. And it was late August, and the Phillies were in the middle of a playoff chase. They wouldn't make the playoffs, but they were at least in contention. And he said to me, you know, I drove all the way down here on 95, thinking I would be listening to the sports talk stations and they'd be talking about the Phillies and Bryce Harper. And all I got was who the backup middle linebacker was going to be. And that's Philadelphia in a nutshell. I like guttural core.

Yeah. That's a good phrase. Now, when you talk about the mindset of the typical Philly sports fan, does that change the way you write a column? I'm mindful of it. It doesn't necessarily mean that I kowtow to it or condescend to it anyway. But I am, I do keep it in mind. In fact, literally about 45 minutes before I got home with you

but finished writing a column about the divisional round games in the NFC this weekend. Eagles Giants, Cowboys 49ers, and how on paper that's a throwback to the mid-delayed 80s into the early 90s when at least three out of those four teams dominated pro football. And that column was full of references to Buddy Ryan and I talked to Keith Fires. And those sorts of episodes and errors in the past are always at top of. mind for me. I grew up in the region. I went to college at LaSalle University and the city. I know the history. I'd like to think I know how people here think. And Philadelphia sports fans have long memories. So anytime you can go back and make a reference to Cache Ruiz or

last Sunday with the Phillies, there's going to be a segment of the fan base that goes, yep, I remember that and I hate you for bringing that up, Mike. But that's kind of how it is. You know, that's changing a little bit. We're not quite as fatalistic as we used to be, but it's still hangs pretty heavy around. You've been a columnist at the Inquirer since 2013. When did you first say, I want to be a newspaper sports columnist? In college. I had grown up reading the Inquirer every day.

My favorite sports writer there was a guy named Bill Lyon, who had the job that I had now for, he had it for the better part of four decades. And when I went to LaSalle, I knew I wanted to do something in sports media, but I didn't know what, did I want to try to do play by play, did I want to do play? did I want to do TV or radio, whatever. And I started writing for the student paper and really enjoyed it. And I found that I really liked the feeling I got when I finished something that I had written. It's the old, I guess it's Dorothy Parker Live.

I hate writing. I love having written. And at one point I wrote Bill a letter asking him for some advice as to how to break into the business. I kind of wanted to be him. And I enclosed a self-addressed stamp envelope with the letter. And he never wrote me back. instead he called look my name up in directory assistance back when you did such a thing and called me up and said why don't you shadow me to a philly's dodgers game on a

friday night and from there was the formation of a kind of mentor-mentee relationship that lasted about a quarter century and uh when i saw him and the way he did the job i knew that's that's what i wanted and what was it about the way he acted in the locker room or in the press box uh number one first and foremost it was the way he wrote he was very lyrical um in the way that he wrote. It was very accessible to a lot of different people. If you were a hardcore, Philly sports fan, you could read him and appreciate it. If you were a casual sports fan, you could read him and appreciate it. But I also saw the respect that he commanded from the other writers and people in the media and also the people who covered him. You know, there's an anecdote, I think I'm

telling this right, where he wrote a column in the mid-1990s and Eagles player had gotten in trouble. And the player's agent went to the player after the column appeared and said, look, if Bill Lyons going after you, you need to make amends. You need to come out and apologize because, you know, public sentiment is going to, A, public sentiment is going to be against you and, B, his moral compass is such that you were in the wrong. So go apologize publicly and let's move on with this. And I saw that and thought that's, you know, I admired that too and thought that was worth anyway. Can you imagine that now? No. Not at all. Sealski's pissed at you. This isn't going to go well in Philly. You better go make amends. If anything, it's the exact opposite.

I love how you sent a self-addressed stamped envelope in your note to him, like you were mailing a football card to Keith Byers at the vet or something like that. That is fantastic. I did that to about 10 columnists and writers around the country at the time, Brian, and Bill was one of only like two or three who got back to me. Dave Anderson from the New York Times did as well. And a year after, yeah, and a year after the fact, Tom Boswell, the Washington Post, sent me a handwritten note. But other than that, I didn't hear from anybody. So, such as life, I guess. I think what's really hard for people to understand who grew up after you and I did, I'll put it gently like that, is that when we were kids, there were only a tiny handful of people

in a city who had the right to give their opinion about sports a couple of times a week. You know, Philly had two big papers and then later sports radio, so there were probably a few more. We're talking about a very, very tiny number of people pre-Twitter, pre-internet, pre-blogs, pre-everything. Yeah, you're 100% right. So given the way the world's changed now, what do you see the role of the sports columnist like yourself being today? I view it as trying to be a little more, I don't know if even handed is the word, but I want to be thoughtful, I want to be smarter, I want to try to frame things in a way that gets people

thinking without yelling and screaming and ranting and raving. I think there's, maybe I spend too much time on Twitter and on social media, but I just feel like there's so much of that now, that if you try to keep up with it or try to write in that way, people are more likely to tune you out. I also go, I try to go into every column saying to myself, and this is a pet peeve of mine. I see an opinion writing nowadays is people seem to be writing more and more to kind of validate their own self-righteousness or to get people who already agree with them to go, yeah, that's right. I would much rather have somebody read a column of mine and say, you know what, I hadn't looked at it that way. Or I don't agree with them, but, well, he framed

that in a really smart way that got me thinking. And then if the time comes to really hammer someone, then it has even more punch. And so I look at it that way. I also look at it as You know, a little bit of institutional knowledge and history can go a long way. I know who to call up in certain situations to get an insight or a quote or something like that. I know how to frame certain things the way that Philadelphia sports fans or followers might be collectively thinking if you can know such a thing. And so in those regards, I try to, I try to do the job a little bit differently than maybe, you know, a Bill Lyon or Stan Hockman in Philadelphia did years ago. There's like three different roles you're outlining there. There's historian of Philadelphia sports.

There's guy who's bringing a little more nuance, a few more layers than Twitter opinion. And then there's throw the fastball when I need to throw the fastball. Yeah, I think you've got to be all those things nowadays. I really do. You know, there are a lot of one-trick ponies in the business. And I don't just mean among columnists. I mean among media of all kinds. And it gets tiresome.

It just does. I know that the trend in the business is, towards specialization and branding and all of that. But I'm very happy doing what I get to do. It's the job I always wanted. And the inquire is very gracious and allowing me to do it the way I want to do it. So as long as they're willing to keep having me do that, I'm going to keep doing. And as you say, that's partly as a reaction to the time in which you're writing this column.

Those 90s columnists were often right on the edge of opinion, right? Because there were so few opinions, they were the ones pushing us, pushing us, you know, every day in the paper. And you're saying you can get pushed like crazy on Twitter. So my job is often to do something a little different, come at it a little bit of a different way. Yeah. And look, everybody always had an opinion. And now there are infinite number of ways for them to express it.

They can post on Twitter or Facebook. They can call a sports radio show. They can have their own website. They can do whatever they're going to do. And so I want to try to be more than just another voice in amongst the screaming. And in any way that I can try to do that, I like to try to do it. I'm a proponent of using the access that I have in the best way that I possibly can. And that doesn't mean, you know, I get a sit down with an athlete and ask him or her, you know, how awesome is it to be you, you know, and throw them softball questions. If I'm in the locker room and there are opportunities to. to use my eyes and ears to, you know, help me write the column and let those senses do the work for me, then I'm going to take advantage of them. Not everybody gets to be in the locker.

Not everybody gets to talk to Jason Kelsey or J.L.L.N. Hertz or A.J. Brown after an Eagles game. And so I should take advantage of you. You're in the locker room after every Eagles game? Yes. That's on purpose. Absolutely. You have to be. You have to be there. You know, it's easy to sit back. And sometimes, look, sometimes you can't be there because you're filing at the end of the game instantaneously.

You know, tomorrow night when the Eagles play the Giants, starting at 815 promises to be one of those situations. You've got to file with the gun and that's part of the job. And everybody does it. But you ought to be curious enough and humble enough, I think, to say to yourself, you know, I don't know everything just from watching the game or reading the box score or looking at the advantage. stats. To me, there is something to be said for going into that locker room, asking some good questions, and finding some things out that you might not have known before. You never know when you're going to be surprised. All right. So let's talk about deadline writing, because this is an

increasingly dying art, right? We've got to get it into the paper because there will be a physical paper that needs to be printed. Your deadline will be tomorrow night when the game ends. That is when you will send your column up. I'm pretty sure. Yeah, there's a possibility. I have to look at the schedule. There's a possibility that I'll have all night to write it and we'll post it on website the following morning. I have to see one of the other columnists at the paper, Marcus Hayes might be writing for the gun. But that's a common thing. Yes, you got to file it. When you're filing for the gun, you're obviously not writing the column there in the last 10 minutes before the gun. So how do you get stuff down on your computer to have something ready when you

need to send it? So I'll go over everything that I gathered during the course of the week and anything that I might have missed. So I'm going over my own notes that I got and I'm going over transcripts, press conferences, Nick Siriani or Jalen Hertz or Jonathan Gannon and the defensive coordinator, looking for anything that I think might be relevant. And then I watched the first half of the game. And if I'm lucky, it's one team 28, the other team zero. And, you know, there's a running joke in the Philly press box that somebody always looks around if there's a lopsided score and says, is it okay to start writing? And if it is, then I might start writing there. You know, maybe Jalen Hertz is thrown three touchdowns. Maybe he's thrown three interceptions. Either way, I'm going to write

jail and Hurts column. And then I'll take half time and get going. Are there quotes or insights that I've gathered that I can use in this column? One of the things that I, I don't know if it's a crutch or just the way I do it, is that if I gather something that I think is really interesting or insightful, quote, a stat, I put it down in the Google Doc that I'm using to write the column so that, you know, instead of having a blank screen and knowing I have to write 850 words, well now I've got 150 words down that I'm probably going to use and now I only have to write 700 and it doesn't feel so imposing and then I'll continue to go through and kind of watch the game with one eye

in the second half and continue writing with my you know keeping an eye on my laptop and hopefully things don't change too drastically in the final five to ten minutes and you hit the send button at the gun it's funny isn't it because if we think of what would be a great game, it's Jalen Hurts spinning away from K. Von Tibido and throwing the winning touchdown the last 30 seconds. But that's the hardest column to write when you're on a deadline like that.

Yeah, you know, the most recent, I don't know if it's most recent, but one of the best examples of this I can give, Brian, is Super Bowl 52 when the Eagles played the Patriots in Minneapolis. So I had done a gigantic kind of feature piece

on Alshan Jeffrey earlier that year. And I had tons of leftover materials. So when Alshan caught a touchdown pass early in that game and made a couple other big catches and had already guaranteed that the Eagles were going to beat the Patriots, I was going to write Alshon Jeffrey as my column. And that was great right up until the minute the Patriots took the lead with eight minutes to go after the Eagles had led the entire week. And so I'm dying a thousand deaths as the Eagles are marching down the field and going forward on fourth and two. And Zach Ertz catches a touchdown pass in the end zone. but is it a touchdown? You know, because did he break the plane and lose the ball?

And now the Patriots get the ball back. And I don't care whether the Eagles win or lose. I just want my column to hold up because if they lose this game, nobody's going to want to read about Alshan Jeffrey and it's guarantee. And I'm going to have to rewrite the whole thing. But fortunately, Brandon Graham sacked Tom Brady and forced to fumble and the rest is history and my Alshan column. What's your favorite kind of column to write?

I like that. I like those situations. When you're on deadline, I'm the kind of writer who, if you give me 20 minutes to write 800 words, I can get it done in 19 minutes and 50 seconds every time. If you give me three weeks to write 3,000 words, I will take two weeks, six days, and 23 hours to do it. But I'll get it done on deadline. So I like writing game columns where there's something big, there's something meaningful happening, and you only have so much time to do it. There's a certain simplicity, isn't it?

Because you don't have to overthink it. You can't afford to overthink it. And it's like a football game, right? When the gun goes off, you're done. You know, it's off to the next one. That's exactly right. I did a column a couple of weeks ago. There was a Philadelphia Big Five double header at the cholesterol.

And the column I wrote was, hey, the Big Five looks like it's dying because there's nobody here to watch Temple play LaSalle and Penn to play St. Joe's. And this institution that's been part of the city's basketball landscape for years and years isn't in good shape. And I had that column pretty much finished midway through the second half of the first game of that double header. Just because I knew the subject so well, I was able to talk to a couple people at halftime. I got a couple of quotes from Mary McKee, the Temple Coach, after that first game of the double header. And bang, I had 840 words. And I was really happy with it, right?

Like there's this sliding scale of, you know, if I had three weeks to write that column, I wouldn't have been as pleased with it. But because I only had roughly 45 minutes to do it, I was really happy with how it turned out. What's your least favorite kind of column to write? That's a great question. You know, any more, and I'm probably really, I'm probably revealing some kind of cowardice when I say this.

But oftentimes nowadays, things that touch on really hot, hot, in social issues with respect to sports. I find myself less interested in writing about those. Just because I don't want to deal with the blowback. You know, I've been dealing with it for so long. I used to love writing those columns. And even in the, you know, in the early days of Twitter, you would get pushed back if you, you know,

we're writing about Colin Kaepernick or something along those lines. And now I feel like the measure of outrage and sensitivity to columns on those issues, make them more challenging and to write, number one, and number two, because you don't want to deal with the headache. You know, it's just, it's different from, hey, I disagree with you or, you know,

I think you're really, really wrong. Now it's, I disagree with you, and you're a bad person for thinking this way. And you don't want, I'm just less likely to deal with stuff like that. I wish, I mean, I guess I wish my skin were tougher in that regard, But to me, it's just not worth the head. Those are the columns readers get most pissed off at you for writing, columns that include social issues?

Generally, yeah. And to kind of double back on what we were talking about before, I don't feel like I'm all that strident in the opinions that I offer in these situations. You know, I would write about Colin Kaepernick saying, you know, I don't particularly love that he's taking a knee here, but he's well within his rights to do it. and I don't like the way Donald Trump is reacting to this and using Cabernick's protest as a cudgel in the culture war. And you would get it from both sides. And it was like, geez, I must be a, you know, I thought it was a decent human being, but apparently I'm not. And people from both sides of this issue or all sides of this issue think I'm a jerk. So after a while, it just got to be like, you know, do I really want to put myself through this?

And as I said, maybe I should have thicker skin to that. When I was younger, and I imagine when you were younger, you'd read a college. for years and years, maybe decades, and you'd start to grumble. You know what? He's written that same column like 19 times. How does he keep writing the same thing? So now that you're in the seat, how do you not repeat yourself 19 times and keep writing the same kind of column?

I mean, it comes down to the reporting you do, Brian. I really think it does because it's easy to get caught up in what you're describing. if you're just sitting back and offering the same take or a similar take over and over again. And if I feel myself doing that, then I try to really drill down on working the locker room a little bit more, on trying to look at things in a different way of maybe coming at something from a different format, you know, do a top 25 list or something along those lines. anytime I feel that kind of coming on, I try to kind of break out of it.

It's like that scene in the movie Garden State where Natalie Portman, you know, says she's going to, you know, she says or does something completely original to kind of break out of a funk that she's in. And I think I try to do the same thing. I was listening to an interview you did with Mike Misunelli recently. And you talked about how you of all people,

And again, you're just somebody who was throwing the fastball with, you know, selectively, let's say. You now stand out in the media's landscape we live in today as being a bit more skeptical or maybe less reflexively enthusiastic as a better way to put it. How did the world change that you became that guy? I think the media landscape changed to a great degree, as I think everybody would acknowledge, that there are so many more outlets now that. are geared just for fans. And, you know, these, whether you're talking about websites, whether you're talking about TV stations, whatever, they want to capture and retain that audience. And more and more, they feel that, I think, our brand is, we are for Eagles fans or we are for flyers or Sixers or Phillies fans, and we are writing from that perspective. And my feeling kind of as an old

school kind of traditional journalism guy is, you know, I'm not supposed to root. I'm really not. You know, I grew up being a huge fan of these teams, but they're not always right. And there's a way to write about them, you know, where you're criticizing them not just because they lost a game or the coach made a bad decision or they made a trade that seems really dumb, you know, from the, that you're criticizing them from the fan perspective. there's a way you can do it kind of from more of an analytical or detached perspective. I'll give you one quick example. Back in 2016, when the Eagles traded up twice to try to draft Carson Wentz,

I wrote a column based, and in the aftermath of that, as that was going on, Sam Bradford, who was their quarterback at the time, said, I want to be traded. it became kind of hard for the course in Philadelphia for people to say media members, talk show hosts, fans to say, who does Sam Bradford think he is? You know, he should compete for his job. If the Eagles draft Carson Wentz, then Sam Bradford should just compete for his job. And he's a wimp for asking to be traded. Why wouldn't he just want to compete? And my take on it was, well, because Sam Bradford can read the writing on the wall. Like he knows what the Eagles are doing here. He knows. He knows. he doesn't have much of a chance. Whether he's a good quarterback or a bad quarterback is irrelevant here. He thinks he's good. He wants the chance to play. And so he wants to go play somewhere else and nobody should begrudge him because this kind of thing happens in pro sports all the time. That was not something that an Eagles fan, I'm not sure how many of them considered. I'm not sure

how many of them wanted to hear it, but I thought it was worth saying. And I think it's the kind of thing you can only say if you are a little bit detached from go Eagles all the time. It's harder to stick out that ground. Is it not? Because the ones that are trying to, you know, have this bond with fans, I'm a fan like you, even when I'm criticizing the team, they're, they're forging this identity, whereas you're trying to come at it from a different place.

Yeah. And the other thing, too, Brian, is that given the media landscape now, the benefit of the doubt or the presumption of good faith is kind of gone too. And some of that is based on the economic models of so many, news and sports and journalism outlets, if I write something that's really critical or is off the beaten paths, so to speak, people presume I'm doing it so that I can get clicks and, oh, you're just writing clickbait. They can't wrap their minds around the idea that, no, I actually believe this. And it's grounded in reality. I've talked to people about it. And this is my perspective.

And I'm not writing it to try to get anybody's attention. I don't do that. I don't take a position just for the sake of taking a position, I write what I think. And I tend to be more gray in a world of black and white. It's just kind of the way I'm wired. I see that on my University of Texas message boards all the time, clickbait means thing I don't like. Yeah.

Yep, that's exactly right. That's exactly right. And I don't want to go the other way all that often either. I don't want to just pander to readers or fans or anything. A couple more before I let you go. You have started doing weekends on WIP, Philadelphia's legendary sports radio station. What has that experience been like? It's been great.

I co-host a show with Glenn Mack now, who's been at the station 30 years. We're on from 10 to 1 every Saturday. It's kind of the, if you can call it this, the NPR equivalent of Philly Sports Talk. We're trying to be a little more thoughtful. We're trying to look at things and a little more. rational way than the average talk show host does. We don't take a lot of calls. We feel like people want to listen to us, me and Glenn, talk about sports.

I'm succeeding, replacing a gentleman named Ray Dittinger, who is an absolute legend in the Philadelphia market, a guy who covered the Eagles for a long time, was on a television postgame show after every Eagles game for years and years on Comcast Sportsnet and NBC Sports Philadelphia. and had been and is coming back to be a personality on WIP as well. So those have been, you know, I'm under no illusions that my size nine feet are going to fit into raise Joe Ellen v. size sneakers. But I'm just doing my best and trying to be myself. Does the audience on WIP like NPR style sports radio?

That audience does. That audience is a little bit different from the one that the station tends to draw from Monday through Friday during your five time or in the morning and things of that nature. They have a pretty loyal core of listeners. A fair number of them are baby boomers. A fair number of them are Generation Xers like you and me. And so that affords Glenn and me some freedom to talk about sports or movies or pop culture in a way that some other shows can. I think my first cultural experience with Philadelphia as a kid, other than maybe Rocky, was Philadelphia.

Sports Radio host calling into Dallas stations in the early 90s when there was a big Buddy Ryan Eagles versus Jimmy Johnson Cowboys Games. This is Angelo Cotaldi, Tony Bruno, that generation of Philadelphia Sports Talk host. And I just remember being like, who are these guys? This was before the internet, before Twitter, before you had any idea what was going on in another city. It was like, whoa, Philadelphia must be this absolutely crazy place to. It can be. It absolutely can be. It's something that those of us who have been in the market for a while talk about a lot. Like, why is it this way? You know, is there some kind of civic inferiority complex here because the city is stuck between New York, which is the financial and cultural capital of the world and D.C., which is the political capital. We're just fighting for our piece of that. And sports is the thing that unites everybody.

And, you know, Philadelphia is similar to Boston in that regard, and it's very parochial. There's a real blue collar element and all those things. But I'll tell you what, if there's a more fun place to cover sports in America, I'm not sure it's out there. Quick anecdote, Brian, I worked at the Wall Street Journal for three years as a sports reporter, and I know how that sounds. So in 2012, I was covering the New York Jets. And I got an email from a reader who wanted to know whether Rex Ryan was related to Paul Ryan. who at the time was running for vice president of the United States. Fast forward a year, within my first week of being hired at the inquires,

one of their sports columnists, I wrote a column about the flyers that was critical of them. And I got an email from a reader who, in so many words, was wondering if someone would defecate on my chest. And I knew I was home again. I knew I was home. These are my people. These are, yep, this is it. I'm back. Not that guy writing to me about Paul Ryan.

Nope. Before we go, I mention your book Rise now out in paperbag. When you were reporting this, you had a great moment of journalistic discovery, which I think anybody who's reported a story or certainly a book dreams of. Can you tell us what that moment was? Sure. So the book is centered entirely around Kobe Bryant's origin story. I kind of wanted to do Bat Named Begins for the Black Mamba,

tell the story of how he became this incredible, you know, icon and complex figure and books not a hagiography or anything like that. And in the course of my reporting, one of my sources and a, you know, friend and confidant of Kobe's, it's a guy named Jeremy Treatment, who had been kind of Kobe's PR agent, so to speak, when Kobe was a senior in high school at Lower Meridian and really starting to blow up. And the two of them had tried to work together on Kobe's memoir at the time. It was going to talk about and deal with Kobe's transition from high school to the NBA. And Jeremy had all these, we thought he had all these micro-cassette tapes,

interviews with Kobe that he had done back in 1996 and 1997, but he couldn't find them. He didn't know where they were. And so during the course of my reporting, I'm talking to people and working on the book, and it gets to be December of 2020, and my manuscript deadline is coming up in February. And on December 22nd, 2020, I get a phone call from Jeremy. He's cleaning out his garage at his townhouse because he's moving from Philadelphia to Boca Raton, Florida. And he says, Mike, I found the tapes. So the next morning I drove over to the townhouse and he had to be a giant's diploc bag full of 20 micro-cissette tapes of interviews with Kobe Bryant that nobody had ever heard before. Kobe talking about his relationship with his mom and dad, the first time he met

Michael Jordan, taking Brandy to the senior prom, what he really thought of his first coach with the Lakers, Del Harris, spoiler alert, not much. So it was just this. wealth of material that it just fell into my lap. And I'm so grateful to Jeremy for allowing me access to it. And, you know, I took that and leave that into the narrative of the book. Did anything you heard on those tapes change, which you had already written? No, but it augmented and intensified it. It allowed me to add intimacy to the narrative and the story because now, not that I would speculate what Kobe was thinking in any moment, but I had 17, 18-year-old Kobe Bryant on tape saying exactly what he was.

thinking as he was going through the chase to win the state championship as a player or his senior prom or as I said the first time he met MJ. So I didn't have to speculate. I had it all right there on tape. All right. He is Mike Sealski. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Carlos Churiboga, David Shoemaker and Arabeck Monday with more

lukewarm takes about the media. See you then.