The Press Box - The Sports Comeback and Covering Portland. Plus, Diane K. Shah on Column Writing

Episode Date: July 27, 2020

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker assess the professional sports comeback given recent news of players and coaches testing positive for COVID-19 (2:30). They then turn their attention to Portland, where Trump has sent federal troops to enforce “law and order.” They discuss the warlike way Trump is treating the situation and how it’s affecting his campaign. (22:35) Then sportswriter Diane K. Shah joins to talk about her new memoir, which discusses what it was like to write a sports column in the '80s (28:10). Plus: the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week, and David Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline of the Week. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Ringer podcast network. It's Liz Kelly. This week, we launched a new show on the network called The Ringer Fantasy Football Show. Coming from the guys who brought you the Dannasy Football Podcast, Danny Hyfitz, Danny Kelly, and Craig Horlebeck will guide you through the fantasy football season, providing analysis on big picture conversations like weekly matchups, trades, and daily fantasy. The show will run every Monday and Wednesday throughout the rest of the summer, and we'll be helping you through the regular season as well. So follow and listen to the first episode of the Ringer Fantasy Football Podcast. out now for free on Spotify. David. It's been a while since I opened the show by saying,

David, now what are we going to talk about? I missed that. Can we talk about the Dave Portnoy, El Presidente of Barstow, got to interview the Presidente, President Donald Trump at the White House? See, this is why I didn't want to open the show like this anymore. Leading me into these booby traps.

Dave Portnoy, interviewing Donald Trump. That didn't really happen, did it? According to his Twitter, it certainly looked like he sat down. I hope he asked him about the scale of Trump's chair. It looked like he was on some sort of like very short-legged ottoman with a back attached to it. It was just a weird look. But, but, you know, listen, El Prez, congrats to you. It's weird that we're living in a world where Dave Portnoy is, I guess, the Bill Simmons of this election cycle. But here we are. We stopped doing these openings to the podcast because the world seems so screwed up.

And now you've just brought me a news item that proves the world is still screwed up. Guess what? This is the press box, a part of the ringer podcast network. Hello, media consumers. Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker with a lot of great stuff for you today. We'll talk about the coverage of and the staging of the federal faceoff with protesters in Portland. You furnish the Fox News B-roll and I'll furnish the war. We'll talk to legendary sports writer Diane Kay Shaw, who is author of a new memoir.

What was it like to write a sports column in Los Angeles in the 80s and which golden age Hollywood star was reading her? All that plus David guesses a strain pun headline and the overworked Twitter joke of the week. But David, let's begin with the sports comeback because we had a weekend of baseball, the WNBA, some soccer. And then we find out Monday morning that 14 players and coaches from the Miami Marlins tested positive for COVID-19.

The Marlins game against the Orioles Monday night has been canceled. The Marlins played Sunday in Philadelphia. Apparently, after deciding to via group text, tonight's game there

between the Phillies and Yankees has also been canceled, partly so the Yankees won't have to walk into that visitor's locker room. So that was fun. Wait, the group text, was the group text the players only meeting

that I read about in various tweets? Yeah. All right. That's a little bit better than the one that I was imagining where they like all congregated in like an airless locker room to discuss whether or not they should be worried about their COVID-19. But that's okay. This was a DefCon 1 sports story

because it might result in sports shutting down again. I turned on the sports cable networks this morning, David, to see some furrowed, brow coverage around, 6.30 a.m. Pacific when I woke up. ESPN was certainly covering it like a huge story. Mike Greenberg's brow was appropriately furrowed. Then I go over to FS1 and they're doing a segment on Dak Prescott and the Dallas Cowboys. Okay. I went over to MLB Network, which you think would be the clearinghouse for this kind of news. And they're just plowing through highlights from Sunday's

games, including Marlins highlights, by the way, with no standing note on the screen. that baseball is hanging by a thread. And I think this is all part of this weird whiplash we've gotten as a sports media, right? We were going through this restart. It seemed very fraught. There were lots of articles about how fraught it was. Then sports comes back this weekend.

Everybody kind of, kind of lets, you know, takes a deep breath, right? Ah, okay. This can be kind of simple. We can just, we can do this. Sports are back. Let's get the NBA preview going. NFL training camp.

fantasy, here we go. And then record scratch. Whoops. It's a still fraud. Yeah. It's a really, it's a really, it's hard. It's, it sounds weird. Like there's everything I, I would say about the situation. It seems like I'm using the wrong words or like I'm misdescribing my own feeling. It's a bizarre situation. I guess it shouldn't be bizarre, but somehow I convince myself, because of everything you know about the world, somehow I convinced myself that with everything that was on the line, they would figure out a better way. I mean, there would be some means of preventing this, right? I mean, it's the baseball's protocols did not seem terribly strict,

certainly not compared to the NBA, where everybody's almost literally trapped inside a plastic bubble. And MLB's plan seemed to be just kind of like sit farther apart. But I don't know. I don't know. I mean, as terrifying as the coronavirus has been, there's a part of, I think, everybody in the world that feels like it's their edging kind of closer to just,

like, you know, wear a mask and don't be an idiot and you're going to be fine as the world slowly reopens. Baseball is sort of putting the light of that, which is I did not expect, I guess I just did not expect any of these sporting ventures to seem more dire than the world at large. And maybe they aren't, but that's certainly the way it feels at this moment. Yeah, and media-wise, we also reopen the sports writers are rooting against the restart argument. Kyle Brand of the NFL network tweets there's a segment of the NFL media that seems to be almost rooting for COVID to affect the season they want it they see the marlins news and say yep lots of luck football these are people who make their livings off football I don't get it we talked about this a couple

of weeks ago but I think it's worth repeating sports writers are not rooting for COVID certain sports writers are homers they are not homers for the coronavirus like that doesn't exist there is not a person And if you looked at sports Twitter over the weekend, you know what you saw? People excited that sports were back, right? At this moment, you could almost feel like it was, you know, this normalcy that we've all been grasping for for the last several months. Nobody wants this. Now, I am totally happy to say that maybe some people are saying, I told you so in a pretty unpleasant way after what happened, that this was, that they were telling you it's going to be fraught for months. and that's fine.

But guess what? If the opposite were true, if the restart were going perfectly smoothly, people from the outkick the coverage wing of sports riderdom would be saying, I told you so, you were making too big a deal of this, and it would be the same thing from the other side. That's totally true. One thing occurred to me, and this is a slight tangent, is that of all the times that we've had conversation on this show

about the way that social media has changed or improved coverage. There's no, I don't think there's ever been any moment like this where Twitter is like absolutely necessary to the reportage of everything that's going on in MLB. I mean, literally even some of the blind tweets, you know, even some of the vague stuff that I was making fun of last week has been useful because all this stuff is happening so quickly. And certainly the stakes are incredibly high, both in the human, perspective in terms of the viability of the sport. But you're right. It's no one's rooting for

this to not work. Everyone just seemed everyone's, I guess I should say, the flip side of that is that we're being inundated with Twitter hot takes or Twitter, you know, lukewarm takes that we feel obligated to take on to respond to because Twitter's so necessary right now, but some of these opinions are just wrong. Yeah, and I'm perfectly fine with putting away. I told so when it's a deadly virus at stake. That's fine. But the opposite of that is something that happened during Thursday night's MLB opener, Washington Nationals and New York Yankees on ESPN.

ESPN, David, has the commissioner of baseball Rob Manfred on for an interview. He's talking to Matt Vasgurgeon and Alex Rodriguez, who are the announcers of the game. Listen to the question Arod asked the commission. Commissioner Manfred, I want to ask you about the leadership of having to direct efforts to put together all this protocol between the players and the clubs, just a tremendous job. Now, just hold it right there. That is not a, that is not a question. By the way, I want to ask you a question. You, sir, have done a fantastic job. Yeah. Not a question. Let's, let's roll Manfred's answer. Then you can juxtapose that with the situation as we see it here

Monday morning. Well, thank you. You know, it's a real team effort, you know, putting the protocols together. My staff did a phenomenal job, but really hats off to the players. They've taken this really seriously. They've adhered to the protocols. And as a result, you know, we've had a relatively low number of positive tests. And it put us in a position to actually play this season that we're hoping to play. Several people pointed out that A-Rod is trying to buy the Mets right now. Oh, yeah.

Which means he sort of has to be nice to Rob Manfred or nicer than even normal. So maybe he wasn't the guy to do the interview. The big thing for me was ESPN's reporter, Buster Only, was actually at the stadium. So when you have a high stakes interview like that, when you know, again, this is night one of Major League Baseball, of this incredibly fragile enterprise, maybe you want the reporter to do the interview rather than the color analyst who is trying to buy a team doing the interview. Yeah, and also just to take Arod's non-questioned at face value, you know, what's the old saying about like the person who looks like they're working the hardest is probably not the one working the hardest or whatever? I mean, it's just like the reason why it seems like such a feat that Rob Manfred was able to corral all of these teams and players and everything else into some semblance of a regular season is because it was just a cluster fuck. Like all of the reportage about it was just like how wheels off the entire process has been. And listen, I'm not an alarmist about the playoff, about the expansion of the playoffs and everything else.

I do think they were almost certainly on the goal line to mixed sports metaphors with that discussion probably a month before it was announced before it became official. But you're still announcing major changes to your playoff format the day the day that the games began, right? I mean, this whole, from just a management perspective, this is a mess. He did not do a particularly good job. And he's in a terrible situation. I don't think it's a knock to say he didn't do a good job, you know, or a lot of heads of state who are not doing a good job right now. But come on, come on, Aaron.

And it's not just baseball, by the way. I was watching ESPN this morning and Jalen Rose was on Get Up and they're talking about the Marlins news. And he's talking about how Adam Silver is the best commissioner and the bubble in the NBA is obviously the best idea. And I'm like, we haven't played one NBA game yet. We haven't played a single game. And, you know, again, just so everybody knows,

I want the NBA season to happen. I want it to happen for my sake, for the sake of fellow sports writers, for the ringer's sake for everybody's sake. This would be awesome to have an NBA season. And there's a good sense here that maybe the bubble's going to work. You know, maybe that is going to be a, enough to drag us through a couple of months.

But you know what? We let's all, I was going to say high five. Let's all bump elbows after game seven of the NBA finals, right? If we get to that point, great. Let's celebrate. But as we just saw with game one of baseball, no celebrating until we get through this thing because nobody knows what's going to happen with the coronavirus. Yeah, I think that's right.

It's a coin of phrase. I just don't think that there's any. I mean, to look at the reporters and say, look, they just don't want, I mean, they want baseball to fail. They want sports to fail or whatever. It's crazy. It's like all these people around us who were like, you know, going to restaurants who were like violating all goodwill. I mean, all common sense. And if you don't want to go, they're like, well, you just want to.

It's like you're going to let the terrorists win. You're going to let the disease win, you know? It's like, no. Going about our lives as normal. I mean, a little bit of worry is totally rational right now. that's or a lot of it a few notes on how the game sounded this weekend our boss bill simmons talked about this on the beginning of his last pod oh yeah there's there's no crowd and bill pointed out and i completely agree that on thursday it felt like a lot of announcers were almost over talking

because there was so much silence it's that it's like when you're sitting there with a friend and your friend doesn't say anything back to you so you just start talking again oh yeah it's almost like they were thrown by the lack of ambient noise i had to i was watching the texas rangers on the MLB app and I actually had to flip over to the radio feed because the radio guy, Eric Nadell seemed completely at ease with the broadcast, but the TV guys were still feeling their way through a little bit. I don't know if you also saw this, David, but there was a little bit of under excitement too. I saw at least like one home run and one double that was like in a home park, by the way, where the announcer didn't have the crowd to surf off. So I just felt like they

didn't have that cue and it was kind of like, and there's a long shot to right field. It's a double. Everybody's still feeling their way through. I'm sure everybody knows this, but I learned this from listening to the Michael K show this week, that the camera situation is completely different too. They're using shared cameras or whatever. So the announcers are totally off their game because the home announcers don't get to, or the team's regular announcers,

they don't get the benefit of like the lingering shots of the pitching coach that their production crew would normally have so they can. tell a long story about something. They have to deal with the camera feed that's not, I think, 95% like universal. And there's just, I'm sure, a lot of little ticks like that, where they're totally off their game, at least as the season gets started. Yeah, and all these guys are still remote, right? The Fox crew, not only remote from the stadium,

but Joe Buck and John Smoltz remote from each other. Yeah. They are both in TV studios and actually in separate TV studios. Same thing with the ESPN guys, remote from the stadiums. stadium. So they're trying to do this all completely in a different way than they normally would, which is weird. Another big issue, David, was the fake crowd. On Thursday, I'm watching that ESPN opener. It sounded like an old Nintendo game we played when we were kids where a single would drop into the outfield and everybody would cheer. And then it was like, say, but just push the off switch.

And the noise would just stop. You know, it wouldn't, it wouldn't sort of come down in the way the crowd comes down. Just cut off. Yeah. And Bill mentioned that too. And it was almost like, oh, wow, is baseball going to work on TV without fans? Then I watched Fox on Saturday. They were showing the Dodgers Giants. And it sounded fantastic.

It sounded like a completely different sport. And I was like, oh, wow, I'm just sitting here on a couch. Again, just watching sports passively, right? Not even, not even, especially locked in on the game. This just feels like real sports in a way it didn't on Thursday night. Well, I think watching passively has something to do with that, right? Right? I mean, it's like there's sports can really feel like sports if you're just like, you know, if there's like a VHS tape of a game from 1990 playing in another room and you're just absent

mindedly listening to it. But you're right. I mean, that's what a lot of a lot of what matters about sports and a lot of what our great announcers bring to the table and everything else is that there's a sort of familiarity, right? There's like a sameness and not in a bad way. And I think that if you can sort of tap into it, if they can if they can figure out the pitch, they can figure out the harmony, if they can figure out, you know, whatever else you want to say, call it, then it's not only effective. It's necessary. It's part of the way that we watch sports. You've brought this up before when we've talked about Troy Aikman, how that just sounds like football. There's something rhythmically and tonally that sounds like football. And I think that's what all

the networks are trying to get to right now. They need sounds like baseball. And however, however it's going to get us there. And I wish, I watch sports like Danny Kelly and Dan Devine and all of our other pals of the ringer where they're like picking this stuff out and look at that offensive. I just don't watch it that way. I'm too stupid, right? So I'm just sitting, most of the time, I'm just on the couch and I'm letting it wash over me. And I think the networks are trying to get to a point where somebody like me can have the game on and really not constantly be thinking about the idea that there are no fans in the stands. And we'll see how that shakes out.

Speaking of fans, there were cardboard. fans in Los Angeles and Arlington, Texas and a few other places. And then on Saturday, Fox rolled out the virtual fans. I'm watching and Donovan Solano, the Giants, hits a double to left. And my wife says, well, it looks like there were fans in the outfield. And I rewound and Fox on that shot had just filled the outfield stands of Dodgers Stadium with virtual fans. And later they started playing with it.

They'd show a shot of the completely empty stadium. and that they'd just push a button and the entire stadium would fill up with an opening day crowd that had like just the right smattering of Giants fans in Brown amidst the sea of Dodger Blue. That was weird.

And when you'd see them up close, you'd realize that these fans were acting way more excited than any fan you've ever seen at a baseball game that wasn't like game seven of the... No, you're like, that's when you're like, bring back the cardboard fans.

The cardboard fans are much more lifelike than these computer generated fans. A lot of overworked Twitter jokes, too, about how the Dodger cardboard fans arrived earlier than the actual Dodger fans do for a evening baseball game and weren't spending as much time on their phones. I am just generally, a couple of people were saying me text over the weekend. I am pro experimentation, right? If we're going to have this season and if is probably the operative word at this moment, I am all for being a little weird. seeing what works because very little of it is probably, again, with any luck going to carry over into 2021, but why not, right? Why not try things this year? And you can always get rid of something if it just seems really strange. I completely agree. Um, you know, and, and I was just talking about

the playoffs, but I think this is a great opportunity to just like, yeah, what the hell? Let's try a new playoff format and hopefully it'll work and hopefully we'll have something exciting to do in future years. The same thing with the way the game is called. I mean, I'm sure the ringer is not the only place of business where, you know, over the past few months, the people in charge have been sort of pleasantly surprised and whatever that work can continue from a distance. You know, I'm sure the announcers, you know, highly paid big name announcers will continue to travel the games because why not? but it'll be interesting to see how much is thrown into question if it does succeed, right? I mean, anything that's a success is sort of an upheaval of the status quo.

Also funny with remote announcing is that Buster Only from ESPN and Kenny Rosenthal from Fox were the two who were actually at the game on site. And when we usually think of field reporters or sideline reporters, they're at the bottom of the power rankings of your announcers. Turns out they're the only indispensable person. when you're doing remote announcement. You have to have someone there just in case something weird happened. Who can actually be sitting there seeing it with their own eyes. All right, David, time for the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrated gag. It was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time.

Send your nominees to at the press box pod where they are always gratefully received. Just as we were recording last Thursday show, Dr. Anthony Fauci threw out the first pitch of the Major League Baseball season. and he did not throw it anywhere near home plate. Lots of great jokes off that. He made sure the baseball did not get within six feet of the catcher. Also this one, Fauci continuing to get his message out, he doesn't want anyone to catch anything.

Thanks to Dan McDowell, Joe Knight, J.M. Jenkins, and Brian Cername. David First, Donald Trump moved part of the GOP convention to Jacksonville, Florida, so that he could have the in-person coronation he clearly craves. Now he has canceled the Jacksonville portion of the convention. It was an overworked Twitter joke to write the Republican National Convention only on Quibi,

thanks to Isaac Chips. Get a good quibby joke in here once in a while. And finally, David, a picture from the White House over the weekend. Donald Trump, the aforementioned, playing golf with former NFL quarterback Brett Farve. So we hadn't seen Brett Farve in a lot. while. Turns out he is part of the Donald Trump golf weekend. It was an overword Twitter joke to write. Brett Favre has another dick pick. Thanks to a whole bunch of people for that one. If you recalled something, none of us would like to recall. Congrats. You made the overwork Twitter joke

of the week. All right. Time for the notebook dump. And I want to talk to you about Portland, David, because I feel this is one of the amazing through the looking glass media stories of our time. And that's quite a list. Donald Trump casting around for an issue to use against Joe Biden as he trails by a significant margin in his reelection campaign.

He has settled on law and order. America's cities are going to hell. There's just one problem. They really aren't. The protests after George Floyd's death, which Trump impugned were mostly peaceful and supported by a broad majority of Americans. So this is

plan B. And I'm not smart enough to talk about or even pronounce the name of Jean Beaujriard, but what Trump is doing in Portland by sending in federal agents in combat fatigues is succeeding if in not coming up with actual chaos, then enough chaos B-roll that can play on Fox News that he hopes will convince people that the issue he's running on is not imagine. Was that a complete word salad or did that make sense? That made sense to me. It's a terrifying situation, as you described it. I mean, as it exists.

And it's, wow, just to hear it said out loud like that, it's sort of jarring. That is what's going on. That is what's going on. And the B-roll, I mean, I think that it seems so minor, but you really learn the power. I mean, in the Trump era, we've learned the power of B-roll, right? When you have a media structure that will kind of push the party line or push your agenda over reality, then all you really need is, you know, something that looks like a tank rolling into a semi-recognizable, you know, cityscape. And you got yourself a story.

We've learned its power, but we've also learned its limitations. Right. I remember the immigrant caravan in 2018, which was Trump's Twitter feed all the time, which was Fox News all the time. Republicans lost, right? but this is certainly what's going to happen. I guess just a couple of things I was struck by. One is the way that Trump is using war terms to describe this. Last Wednesday, he said he would surge hundreds more federal agents into cities led by progressive mayors like Chicago and Albuquerque.

And then I don't expect to see Albuquerque on that list. And then from the other side, you have back when in mid-July, when these agents started descending on Portland in combat fatigues, arresting more than 60 protesters for federal crimes and tear gassing hundreds more, including the mayor of Portland. You have people like Nancy Pelosi calling them stormtroopers. Oregon's attorney general, Ellen Rosenblum, said the agent's presence was absolutely

beyond their authority, but on Friday, Oregon lost its bid for a restraining order against four federal agencies. Yeah. Geez. I feel like the caravan is a really, I mean, is the right point of comparison here. but first of all you did have voices like

Shep Smith on Fox News saying this caravan doesn't exist and I'm not sure if there's anybody doing that anymore and there was also the feeling that I mean and who knows it's kind of wild that four years of Trump has not really affected my understanding of the man at all but I kind of felt like Trump believed the caravan and so when it was like utterly proven to be false he was a little bit jarred by that

as like maybe some of his true believers were This feels like just really craven. This feels like a very deliberate attempt to lie to the American people. And by the way, let's not forget that Trump and Mitch McConnell at the beginning of, when coronavirus was hitting New York and California harder than anybody else, were talking shit about these blue state mayors and blue state governors and saying it was their fault and not anybody else's and refusing to balance the scales of the, of the recovery funds towards the states that at that point actually needed it. They were very happy for this to be a, for the death of hundreds of thousands of people

to be a state's rights issue. And now that there's a fake crime wave going on, now is the time for the federal government to act on a state level. Yeah, and there's all kinds of cognitive distance there too, right? Because if Trump is arguing that cities will be overrun by Antifa, unless he's reelected,

a lot of people said, but wait, aren't you the president now? Now, right? So, so it's like, if you elect Joe Biden, we're going to have war in America, you know, this kind of stuff here, you know, insert photo of somebody, you know, getting sprayed with tear gas is going to happen in America cities. But you're the president right now and you're, you're arguing that it's happening now. So it's just such a weird argument to make.

And, you know, I've seen when people do that this is 1968 all over again, right? This is Nixon's campaign in 68. People say, no, no, Nixon was not. the incumbent. He could use the, you know, quote unquote cities falling apart because he wasn't in office. It's a much harder trick when you're the incumbent. Well, I mean, it's a much more, it's a much more galling decision when you're the incumbent. I mean, the dissonance is real.

You're absolutely right about that. But, I mean, I mean, Trump's aware of the dissonance, or I don't know if you would use that word, but he's certainly aware that this is a wild. decision to be making to propagate this law and try to use it to be reelected. But, I mean, what do you say? What are you going to say? David, the name Diane K. Shaw is familiar to people who've read the best American sports writing of the century or just good sports writing.

Here she is talking about her career. Diane K. Shaw writes in her new book that she was a sports writer, period. This is a polite understatement. Diane K. Shaw is a great sports writer, period. She was a columnist at the Los Angeles Herald Examiner in the 80s. a profile writer at Inside Sports and GQ, and now the author of a new memoir, a farewell to arms, legs, and jockstraps.

Grantland Rice wishes he thought of that title. Diane, how are you? I'm doing great. I was very happy this weekend to find some baseball on TV. Only now, who knows what's going to happen with baseball. Yeah, so as we talk Monday morning, the ESPN headlines say 14 Miami Marlins players and coaches of tested positive for COVID-19.

Two games canceled so far. When you see a story like that, do you think, boy, this would be something interesting to cover it in a newspaper? I think you're right. I think you're right. And I'm going to go right now and start writing that. It's funny because we'll talk about your approach to sports writing a second, but I find you can divide the people in our business roughly between peacetime sports writers

and wartime sports writers. those those who want to write about the guy being out for the season and then the ones who jump on a story like this, where were you in that divide? I think I wanted to be where the action was always. And so if we didn't, you know, when I was doing this stuff, we didn't have pandemics. So we would have little things compared to this. But no, I like to be where the action was. Absolutely. Yes.

You write in a farewell to arms, legs, and jockstrap, so you grew up in Chicago, post-college period of struggling to find a job. Yes. And then your first big one is it a weekly called the National Observer. What was the National Observer and what was cool about working there? It was a Dow Jones publication. You know, they published the Wall Street Journal. So that made it very prestigious.

It was a weekly newspaper. It was like Time or Newsweek, but it was a newspaper. And what was so great about it was we had some fantastic writers. It was a very well-regarded publication. And I got off on a good foot, and they liked my work, and pretty soon they were letting me do whatever I wanted. So from time to time, I would do a baseball story or football. And they gave me complete freedom to do what I wanted or to travel where I wanted. What more could you ask? And they paid me. They actually paid me too.

Well, there you go, which is always important in journalism. National Observer, you go to Newsweek, and then you get one of the most coveted jobs in sports writing, sports columnist at the Los Angeles Herald Examiner. How did that come about? Well, it was a little weird, I think. I was writing for Newsweek magazine in New York. and between Christmas and New Year's of, I guess, 1980, I went out to Los Angeles to do several stories. And a friend of mine, David Israel, who was a great columnist for the Chicago Tribune, was there. And he said that he was going to tell me a secret. And the secret was that Jim Bellows, the editor of the Herald Examiner, had offered him a job. And he was going to leave his job in Chicago.

And I said, oh, Jim Bellows, he had such a reputation as such a great editor. And I said, someday, I'd really like to meet him. So a few days later, David said, you know, Jim's having a cocktail party. Why don't you come with me? Okay. So I get there. Jim answers the door, greets me, sits me down on the sofa, brings me a drink, and sits down. The first words he said to me was.

So what are you going to do with the rest of your life? And I said, well, I'm going to leave Newsweek at some point. I'm going to write mystery novels and magazine articles. And he said, no, I don't think so. And I said, no, that's what I'm going to do. And he said, no, I really don't think so. And I said, well, you know, I've already published a mystery novel. And I have written for magazines.

I was getting very defensive at this point. I said, so I think I can do it. And he said, nah. I said, okay, well, what do you think I should do? And he said, you should come to the Herald Examiner and be my sports columnist. What? I didn't even read sports columns back then, Brian. And I'd never worked for a daily paper.

I knew nothing about Los Angeles. But I ended up taking that job. And they said I was the first woman sports columnist. for a daily paper in the country. And I thought it would be great. But the main reason I went was Bellow's promise to help me, teach me. And he was known for discovering great talent, shaping great talent. And I thought, oh, this will be like a master class with this brilliant editor.

So I finally turned in my first column. By the way, baseball was not very nice to me. They decided to go on strike as soon as I arrived for about 50s. seven days. But anyway, I wrote my first column about Tommy Lasorda, and I wrote it at home on a typewriter. They had just introduced computers to the newsroom. I had no idea how to use a computer. So I typed up my column, and I brought it in the day it was due, and I brought it to Bellows, and he said, okay, thank you. Go back in the sports department. And I'm so nervous, Brian. I'm thinking, what if I have to rewrite it? I can't use the computer. The clock's ticking away.

But finally, about an hour later, he comes in. He kind of surreptitiously hands me the three pages. They were folded in quarters, and he walks away. So I open it up and I look at the three pages. There's one mark. It was for two transposed letters. That was my first lesson from the great Jim Bellows. What a mentorship. Transposed to words. People who didn't grow up in the newspaper era don't realize, I think, that back then, there were only like four or five people in a city, even a city of the size of Los Angeles, that regularly got paid to express their opinions about sports, like, period.

What kind of, given that job, what kind of columnist did you want to be? That's an interesting question. I didn't want to be a bad one. I felt pressure. in that because women didn't have this kind of job normally, a lot of people were watching me. Although the Los Angeles Times was a much better newspaper, our sports section was considered better and very widely read.

I just didn't want to screw up mainly. And I wanted to kind of take an interesting look at some of the people, the athletes, by the way. And back then, we could actually spend time with athletes. We could actually spend hours with athletes. And that's why I'm so glad I was working at that time because today, I don't know, do you get 20 seconds, 15 seconds? You don't get much. Yeah, and it's on a Zoom call, yeah. At least you get to see the faith. Yeah. So other than that, I can't explain what I had in mind. I'm not sure I had anything in mind. But it was interesting

and that everybody kind of knows who you are when you're a sports columnist, even the police. And in that period, could you get on a plane and go wherever you wanted to write a story, pretty much? Yes. Yes. I went to the Super Bowl, it's the World Series, the NCAA, the NBA championship. And back in the 80s, L.A. always had a team going to the finals. So we had two basketball teams, two hockey teams, two baseball teams, two football teams. And we had UCLA and USC. So there was a lot to write about. And I traveled with the Raiders a lot.

They were fun and they were good at that time. So yeah, wherever I wanted to go, I could go. A very funny story in the book about interviewing Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who was, of course, the center for the Showtime Lakers. What was your strategy for getting Kareem? always a little bit of a tricky interview to open up. Well, I found out by accident what the secret was. The first time I interviewed him, again, it was the summer I arrived.

There was a baseball strike. But there was something about, Kareem was upset with the owner, Jerry Buss, something to do with Magic Johnson. Nobody was quite sure what was going on. So I called Kareem's agent. And I said, hey, I'd like to do a column with Kareem. Okay. So I think we met in the age of. office, if I recall.

And Kareem showed up on time. And we were sitting at this round table. And Kareem sat down and then spun his chair around. So I was literally talking to the back of his head. He was looking out the window. I was looking at his head. And I had been given all these instructions. Don't go more than 30 minutes.

When he starts to fidget, you'll know that he's getting ready to leave. and talk to him about horse racing or talk to him about his Oriental rugs. Anyway, so I wrote the column. Kareem occasionally turned around, but for the most part, I talked to his neck. And the column I wrote was not really nice. The season starts in October, and the Lakers are good, and Kareem is amazing. He's having one of his best years. They're getting ready for the playoffs.

and I needed, I felt, to talk to him again, but I didn't think he would after what I'd written. To my surprise, he agreed, and I was told, I was asked if I could do the interview the next day. He had a dental appointment and could we do it on the phone? I thought, oh, great, here's this guy who won't even look at you when you talk to him, and now I'm supposed to talk to him on the phone. He called me, and he didn't shut.

he talked and he talked and he talked and he talked and he talked and after that whenever i needed him i would arrange to do a phone call and how many times do reporters say excuse me i have to go now i mean never but with kareem enough was enough um and i'll say one more thing because he was eccentric i would call him eccentric so we're on the road for a playoff game and um i called him from my hotel room. We were in the same hotel, did an interview, ended it by saying, Kareem, I have to go now. And then I went out to the elevator to go downstairs. And there, Kareem came out. His room, obviously, was on the same floor. We stood side by side, waiting for the elevator. He didn't acknowledge me. He didn't say hello. He didn't say a word as we rode down to the lobby.

That is amazing. Another one of my favorite stories is you're sitting at your desk at the Harold Examiner one day doing the drudgery of expense work. And you've just written a column about the Angels, Reggie Jackson, and you get a call from a fan. Will you tell us about that? Yes. Yes, I had written a column about Reggie. He had just come to the Angels.

And I had gone to spring training in Arizona. And I had gone out to dinner with another sports writer. Reggie was in the restaurant. He asked us to join him. We did. And all these people kept coming up. I've never seen this. Such rudeness.

They pushed his plates aside. They sat on the table. They smoked in his face. They wanted six autographs. They wanted him to buy raffle tickets. It went on and on. I couldn't resist. So I wrote a column.

And the day it ran, I'm in the office early, which I'm usually not, doing my expense account, which makes me grumpy. And the phone rings. And I thought, well, I'm not usually here at this time. It's probably not anybody I want to talk to. and I said, hello, this is Diane Shaw, yeah. And I'm thinking, you know, where's in my receipt from lunch and, you know, well, this is Carrie Grant.

And I just want to tell you how much I enjoyed it. And I thought it was a friend of mine playing a joke, but it turned out it was Carrie Grant. And it just out of nowhere, we became friendly. He would call me at home from time to time to compliment me on something I'd written. maybe I would call him. I would immediately be put through. And eventually I wrote a cover story for GQ, which GQ was thrilled to get.

And anyway, I got to know him in a very nice way. He was a lovely person. And I have to say many people have said this. In real life, he was just like he was in the movies, quick with one-liners, very funny. It's amazing. And I remember Keith Olberman, who was doing a sports cast in LA in the 80s, telling me one time that one of his viewers was Joseph Cotton of Citizen Kane and the third man. I just loved that a perk of working in sports in L.A. in the 80s was that Golden Age movie stars were just in your audience. Yes. Yes.

You find yourself as a columnist sucked into this debate. I don't know if it's probably being nice to call it a debate, but this issue at the time of whether women should be allowed to go into the long. locker room and interview players after the game. For people who do not remember this strange period of American journalism, what were the arguments against women going into a locker room? I don't think there were arguments. I think it was just, no, we're not letting you in. They're letting women in and there's naked men walking around, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We got in. I got in. And I was surprised Brian to learn that a lot of male sports writers are not comfortable in locker rooms either. It's kind of a weird place to be.

But I think it's still uncomfortable. They haven't figured out how to do this. Because if they bring an athlete out, then the whole press corps, here's what he says. There's no chance to get something that nobody else has. And I was lucky enough back then to be able to go into a locker room and there'd be actual athletes in it. Now they are not. They disappear immediately. But it was just, oh, you know, they didn't really give you an argument. They just said no. No. And in LA, the Rams uttered, Georgia Frontieri, ban women from the locker room. Your newspaper filed suit on your behalf. And you wrote,

the last thing I wanted was a lawsuit. I did not want the publicity and I did not need the help. I would figure out how to get into the locker room myself. Why did you think that way? I had been solving my own problems. I considered myself, I'm a sports writer, sports columnist. Most of my competitors are men. They don't have these problems. If I have them, I'm going to get rid of the problem.

I don't want to dump it on my editor because he's not going to appreciate me if I keep bringing him problems. And I had found, to my surprise, that if you'd just sit down and talk to the person, which I did on a number of occasions, they would say, okay, Georgia was the only owner in Los Angeles that wouldn't let me in. I got in everywhere else, but she didn't think, she didn't think it was necessary for a woman to go into the locker room. So the Harold Examiner, without consulting me, filed suit against the Rams. It went to court, and the judge said, okay, either everyone gets in the locker room or no one goes in the locker room.

And the Rams said, okay, no one. So the next day, Sunday was a game in Anaheim. And I got there and I have a feeling that a lot of the sports writers were not happy to see me. But in the end, oh, so what they did was they brought us down to the bowels of Anaheim Stadium and there was this concrete room folding chairs. They had a microphone. They were going to bring out a few athletes. In the back of the room, they had two long tables, white tablecloth filled with bottles of liquor and wine and beer and two bartenders. And as we walked in, the sports writers were outraged. What the hell does she think this is? A party? We're working. We're on

deadline. And so all the anger towards me went back to her where it belonged in the first place. She kept us out the whole rest of the season. And then in the off season, somebody apparently talked some sense into her. And the following September, I was allowed to go in. I was going to ask you about that. Because when we talk about this issue, we often talk about executives at the league level or at the team level. We talk about the players in the locker room. how supportive did you find the mostly male sports writers that you worked with and competed against to be for your right to go into the locker room? Well, I think when the Harold Examiner filed the lawsuit and, of course, did a story, there were a lot of the local men, sports people, who stuck up for me. I'm sure. I was sure at the time that athletes and sports writers probably talked behind my back.

I didn't care. All I wanted was access and please answer my questions and I'm gone. I have to say that nobody was really mean to my face. I was always amazed at how helpful sports writers or actually journalists are to each other who come in late. You miss something. They'll tell you what. So I thought I could go up to somebody in Pittsburgh and ask, hey, you know, I'm going to be doing something on the Steelers. Can you tell me blah, blah, blah. And they would cooperate. If there were people that didn't want me around, didn't like me, I never knew it. They never made it plain to me. You had a side career this whole time writing profiles for John Walsh, who was the OB-1

Kenobi of Longform over inside sports, GQ, where you write about Denzel Washington, Sean Connery, the aforementioned Kerry Grant. As a writer, what was interesting for you about doing profiles? It was getting to know somebody, but the people that you mentioned, And in fact, most of the people I ever wrote about were very successful people. And I was always fascinated as to how they became successful. And there were a number of people, like say Fernando Valenzuela. Many years after he retired, I went to his hometown in Mexico.

And I saw where he had played ball. And it was sand with rocks. And I don't even know if they had shoes. They used milk cartons for gloves. there are a lot of athletes who came from poverty or bad circumstances. What was it that got them where they are today? And it could be other people. I always wanted to know what did you do?

How hard did you work? What were your goals? What were your obstacles? That's what fascinated me about doing most of these interviews. And this in the book, these turn out to be some of your most contentious pieces in a way. Denzel is annoyed by his profile. apparently Larry Berg tells someone he's going to spit in your face if he ever sees you again.

You had dared to write about his father's suicide and his first marriage, which he thought were off limits, apparently. What was it about those pieces, do you think? Was it, was it that they had given you so much time and they expected a certain thing? Or what, what annoyed those subjects? Well, I think, you know, it's like, it's like looking at your picture. Somebody took your picture. It's your birthday. They took your picture. What a great picture, Brian. And you look at it and you go, oh my God, it never looked so bad. Do I really look like this? And I think that comes into play a little bit when you read about yourself.

Why did she say this? Why didn't she talk about that? With Denzel, I was amused because his agent told me that his wife thought I really nailed it. I got him perfectly. And Denzel would never speak to me again. So, and Larry Bird, I could understand because I did write about some sensitive things in his life. And he was a kid, you know, he had just gotten out of college. And I kind of went to town on him, I have to say.

So, and Howie Long, Howie Long hated the story I wrote about it. So I always thought maybe I did a good job. You know, it's not a puff piece, right? No, no. I think that's sometimes that's a sign that you've succeeded. When they look at that picture and admire parts of it and then squint at the other parts. you leave your job at the Harold Examiner in 1987, is that correct? Yes.

Why'd you leave? Well, one of the bad parts of my personality, I guess you could say, I tend to get bored easily, and I'm not happy about that. And I've been doing this for only six years, but I felt like, okay, you know, the first Super Bowl you go to is the most exciting thing you've ever done. And the second Super Bowl, that's pretty exciting. By the fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth Super Bowl, it's like, oh. So I just wanted new stories, new adventures.

And that's what made me leave. I have to say probably about twice a year ever since, something will happen, that I'll say, oh, if I could only have my column today, I would, there's something I'm to write about today. But I felt, you know, and Jim Murray, the. one of the best columnist he was at the LA Times. I don't even want to call us competitors

because we weren't in the same league. But after I left the Herald, he and I had lunch and he said, or I said to him, Jim, you've been doing this for 40 years and you bring a fresh perspective. I don't know how you do that.

And he said, well, I don't know how you do what you do because if you write, he said, you and me, we both occasionally write something that's not great. I only have to wait two days to write another one. When you're writing these pieces for GQ or ESPN, you have to write months. And so I would hate to have to wait that long to redeem myself. Anyway, I don't know. I was very, I'm not happy that I left, but I felt like it was the right thing to do at the time. So I did. Diane K. Shaw's new book is

a farewell to arms, legs, and jockstrapes available wherever you can safely order or procure a book. Diane, thanks so much for doing this. Thank you. All right, time for David Shoemaker, guess is a strain pun headline. Monday's headline about the arrest of Jeffrey Epstein, Associate Jislaid Maxwell, was Fed's drop a madam bomb. Today's headline is from our very good pal, Derek Robertson, and our other very good pal, Daniel Malloy. it's from The Economist. It's a piece about South Africa banning alcohol sales.

South Africa has banned alcohol sales. Now, pretty self-explanatory. We're looking to pun off the title of a beloved novel that I believe, David, you and I were assigned to read in high school. What was the economists strained pun? I know it. I got it. You gave me too much. Is it dry the beloved country? Yes, sir.

Yes, sir. Dry the beloved country. That's so good. Oh, I love that. I couldn't remember whether you and I actually completed this reading assignment. This is not like Bobo's in Paradise. I'm actually embarrassed if I did not read Cry the Beloved Country. But anyway, dry the beloved country.

He is David Schuemaker, Abright Curtis. Research by Chris Hall made a production magic by Erica Servantes. David, the last couple episodes, we asked people to share the press box. A bunch of you did it, which we were really, really genuinely appreciative of. I did not expect the editors of the Guardian newspaper in the UK to follow suit. But they did. This appeared over the weekend about us. This series from The Ringer is an excellent resource for anyone interested in media intrigue.

Although it is U.S. focused, and it's true, that is to our detriment, U.S. focused. There is plenty to enjoy as hosts you, what's his name and what's his name, discuss everything from Donald Trump's increasingly fraught relationship with Fox News to what the pandemic is doing to newsrooms. What a compliment for our little media podcast. See, I thought it said that it's to us focused, meaning we were like navel-gazy, which is also

true. Would have also been a fair criticism. Look forward to Thursday's show where we'll have a segment, The Guardian is the best newspaper in English or any language on planet Earth. Plus more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.