Bob Ryan’s farewell as regular columnist in Boston Globe; Still will contribute with Sunday column

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Bob Ryan writes his farewell as a regular columnist to the Boston Globe. However, he makes it clear he hasn’t written his last column.

He writes:

When I hit the “send” button on my gold medal basketball game column, I will cease to be a full-time employee of the only newspaper I have ever worked for after graduating from college. But let’s not call it “retirement.” I choose to call it “Transition to Phase Two.”

Joe Sullivan, who among his other distinctions is the only sports editor I have worked for who loves and knows more about college basketball than I do, has graciously asked me to remain as a Sunday contributor for 30-40 times a year.

Ryan pays tribute to his Globe colleagues:

And Bud Collins . . . what can I say, other than no man could have been more helpful and encouraging to a young colleague than Bud Collins. And let me tell you something else. No one has ever written better columns for this paper than Bud Collins, and I’m talking baseball, basketball, boxing, football, among others, not just tennis.

That’s saying a lot, because what matters most to me as I wind down my association with this great newspaper is that I firmly believe I have been a member of a true All-Star team in sports journalism for the entire 44 years. We tend to judge sports figures by the number of championship rings they have been fortunate enough to accumulate. I want to be judged by the people I’ve worked with. Lists are dangerous, because someone obvious invariably is left off. So I won’t risk that. Just appreciate that I have been in a killer lineup for 44 years.

But one person does deserve special note. There are some great women in our business, but I don’t know of anyone who has matched Jackie MacMullan’s feat of going toe-to-toe with the boys in terms of attaining top-level credibility while not sacrificing a shred of femininity. She is the ultimate role model for any young woman.

And he concludes:

My goal is to gain personal life flexibility and to eliminate obligation. I still have the Globe part-time gig and I still have a bit more TV shelf life, how much I really don’t know. I want to do what I want to do and not do what I don’t want to do. And my wife of 43 years, the former Elaine Murray, is the perfect companion with whom to do or not do whatever it is we’re going to do or not do.

See me in a year or so. I’ll let you know how it’s working out.

Job well done, Bob. Here’s wishing flexibility works out well.

*******

The Globe also has a terrific package of Ryan’s top columns through the years.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sunday books: Q/A with Marty Appel on his ultimate book about Yankees

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You could fill a library with all the books written about the Yankees and their players. And leave room for one more: I’m working on a book on the myth and reality of the Babe Ruth “Called Shot” homer.

Indeed, the stories are endless. Marty Appel ties them all together in his new book, Pinstripe Empire: The New York Yankees from before the Babe to after the Boss.

It is a 620-page epic with everything in there. Lots of good stories and baseball history.

Here’s my Q/A with Appel:

How far back do you go with the Yankees?

As a fan, back to the 1955 World Series. As an employee, the 1968 season, Mantle’s last, when I was hired to answer his fan mail.

How long did you work on this project and what was involved in doing the research?

In a sense, I worked on it since 1955, simply by remembering things. I fell in love with baseball and the memories kept adding on. As a writing project though, it was about 2 1/2 years. Knowing how to research and where to look for things I wanted was critical in making it a relatively short period of time, considering it covered 110 years.

The Yankees have such a storied tradition. What stories stand out for you? What are your favorite stories? Perhaps the stories that haven’t received as much attention through the years?

I think the opportunity to get fans better acquainted with Jacob Ruppert, who co-owned and then owned the team from 1915-1939, emerged as a powerful story. He was a great sportsman, he bought Babe Ruth, he built Yankee Stadium, he created the dynasty. He epitomized wealth in the 20th century, but he had to deal with anti-German feelings in the country following World War 1, then with prohibition, which effectively wiped out his brewery, and then with the Great Depression which kept the baseball industry stagnant for a decade. And he prevailed.

Who were your favorite characters? Known and perhaps unknown?

It’s hard to ignore Babe Ruth with this question, for he was so much more than the big lug America came to love. After the president and perhaps Charlie Chaplin, he was the best known American, and baseball had never had such a personality before, someone to capture the attention of so many.

Why have the Yankees been able to maintain their success over the years?

Ruppert set in place a practice of putting profits back into the team. It was something that George Steinbrenner did as well. That was the key, along with the legacy that was built so that players, when able to move on their own, wanted to wear the same uniform as Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, Mantle and now Jeter.

Doesn’t it get boring having a team that wins every year? Speaking from a guy who lives in Chicago.

Nope! But honestly, if you were born in the late ’50s, or the mid 70s, you had to be almost 20 years old to cash in with your first world championship. That’s a long wait for what others consider a birthright.

 

Saturday flashback II: Bob Ryan on Sports Reporters with Cosell in 1990

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As I wrote yesterday, Bob Ryan is hanging them up as a sports columnist for the Boston Globe after the Olympics.

I found an old clip of Ryan on The Sports Reporters from 1990. Also appearing on the show was Howard Cosell and Bill Conlin. And it was hosted by the great Dick Schaap.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t embed the video, but here’s the link. Well worth a click.

The show opens with a terrific discussion on people who had impact on their careers and in the media in general. Ryan recalls how he was greatly influenced by Jim Murray.

Conlin talks about Dick Young, the legendary New York sportswriter who had an infamous feud with Cosell.

Cosell, who was very bitter at that point in his life, goes off on Red Smith. He also calls Schaap “Dickie.”

Good stuff.

 

 

 

Updated Saturday flashback: The complete story of Dick and Jeremy Schaap encounters with Bobby Fischer

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Updated: Jeremy just sent me the 13-minute version of his story on Bobby Fishcher. It details the relationship his father had the brilliant, but troubled chess legend. Schaap won an Emmy for the piece.

Earlier this week, I did an interview with Jeremy Schaap. Not surprisingly, two of his most memorable encounters were discussed: His 2000 interview with Bob Knight shortly after he was fired from Indiana; and an epic run-in with Bobby Fischer during a 2005 press conference in Iceland. Schaap eventually walked out on Fischer, but not before basically saying he was nuts, which he was (exchange comes at 2:30 mark of video).

“People ask me about Fischer and Knight all the time,” Schaap said. “At least once a week, I hear about Knight. Probably every other week, I hear about Fischer.”

Schaap was lauded for not letting Knight control his interview. It included this unforgettable exchange:

Schaap: Bob, we came here to do an interview. I’m asking you questions.

Knight: Well, then let me finish the answer. Is that OK, Jeremy, is that fair enough? Have I interrupted your questions yet?

Schaap: Yes.

Knight: No, I haven’t. You’ve interrupted my answers with your questions and then I’ve tried to get back. So let me finish.

Schaap: Please continue.

Knight: You’ve got a long way to go to be as good as your dad. You better keep that in mind.

Schaap: I appreciate that. What’s next? What do you do this year?

Now that Knight works at ESPN, I asked Schaap if he’s ever run into the former coach.

“I’ve run into him a couple of times, but he has not acknowledged that I’m there,” Schaap said. “Now it’s possible, he didn’t notice. I tend to think he is choosing to look the other way.”

 

The beat: Pac 12 Networks set to make debut: Yahoo tops NBCOlympics.com; Nationals announcer finally gets to call winner

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Jeffrey Martin of USA Today reports that Pac 12 Commissioner Larry Scott has a big vision for this new enterprise.

Martin writes:

Some projections have the Pac-12 Networks, along with a 12-year, $3 billion deal with Fox and ESPN, providing roughly $30 million a school annually after a recent period in which some Pac-12 schools received slightly more than a quarter of that and their athletics programs became heavily dependent on university general funds.

“My mandate was, how do you take this storied conference with all of this success but is undervalued, under-leveraged from an exposure standpoint, as well as a revenue standpoint, and help kind of turn it around, build an enterprise that stays true to the values of the conference?” Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott says. “How do we blow this thing out?”

Answering his own question, Scott said during the conference’s recent football media day event in Los Angeles, “The idea is Pac-12 content, anywhere, anytime, by any device.”

Jim Carlisle of the Ventura County Star notes how big it will be for the conference to finally have a spot for its games.

It hasn’t always been easy to find the Pac-12 on TV, but that won’t be the  case anymore. Regionalization of football games is a thing of the past. Not only  will the Pac-12 Network show 35 games, but a new $3 billion, 12-year contract  with ESPN and Fox will have those networks showing 44 more games nationally.

UCLA’s first football game on the Pac-12 Network will be Sept. 15 against  visiting Houston and USC’s will be Sept. 22 at home against California.

Every men’s basketball game will also air either on Fox, ESPN or the Pac-12  Networks and there will be much more coverage of women’s basketball and other  men’s and women’s sports that have ignored by television.

Stevenson said 350 events will be shown on all seven networks. In addition,  50 more events per school will be shown regionally.

“Last year, I think across the conference there were might have been five or  six football games that weren’t televised, but probably 70 basketball games  weren’t even on television last year,” Stevenson said. “Thirteen of USC’s  basketball games weren’t on television.”

 

*******

Yahoo has had more than 2 billion page views during the Olympics, according to Eric Fisher of Street and Smith’s Sports Business Daily. Fisher writes:

Three days after NBCOlympics.com said it has surpassed 1.1 billion online page views for the London Olympics to date, Yahoo said Thursday that it has surpassed 2 billion page views for its Olympic coverage through Monday across computer, mobile and tablet platforms. The Yahoo total, the result of internal metrics, is more than its total coverage of the Vancouver and Beijing Olympics combined.
Yahoo also said it has reached more than 80 million unique visitors globally for its coverage from London.

*******

Big Lead has an interview with Washington Nationals play-by-play man Charlie Stowes. After years of calling games for losing teams, he finally has a winner.

Stowes said:

Unfortunately, lots of practice with this one with some bad clubs in the NBA, an expansion baseball team in Tampa Bay, an expansion-like team moved from Montreal to Washington.  But you always approach a game fresh and in your mind, feel like the game you are broadcasting is the “Game of the Day.”  When a team isn’t playing well, trying to entertain with your partner on air can be important to keep an audience.  If you can get people to listen when your broadcasting a bad club and like you,  they’ll love you when they win.

 

 

 

My first job: Bob Ryan covers Celtics for Boston Globe at 23: Intern class of ’68 included Gammons

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Bob Ryan is hanging it up as a regular columnist for the Boston Globe after the Olympics. It’s been a great run. Ryan has been a distinctive voice in the Northeast for more than three decades.

I remember a long night at Runyon’s in New York with Ryan, Malcolm Moran of the New York Times and Jackie MacMullan of the Boston Globe. Moran had a train to catch to get back home, but thanks to Ryan, the conversation was so lively, Moran kept saying, “I’ll catch the next one.” Not sure if he ever made it home.

In honor of Ryan’s last columns for the Globe, it seems fitting to look back at how it all started. I had a chance to talk to him a few years back for a project about sportswriters.

It turns out Ryan didn’t have to wait long to get the plum assignment that eventually defined his career.

Here’s Ryan:

*********

My real beginning is that I always was interested in the idea of the newspaper being the validation of a sporting event.

I grew up in Trenton, N.J. It was a very good sports town. It was a big high school basketball town. My father was involved in sports. He was a promoter and publicity man-type. He was an assistant AD at Villanova. My whole orientation was sports.

I liked to read too. If we went to a high school basketball game, I didn’t think it was validated until I read about it the next day. It’s just the way my mind worked. From (a young age) I was interested in newspapers.

I started as a summer intern at the Boston Globe on June 10, 1968. There was this other guy named Peter Gammons. That’s when we met.

As an intern, I did sidebar stories at the ballpark, feature stories on off beat stuff. Boston had a soccer team in the North American Soccer League. Dick Walsh was the new commissioner. He had been a longtime baseball executive. He comes to Boston on a publicity tour and is available for an interview. Who do they send? The lowest man on the totem pole. Me. He laughed about it. He said, “This is what I’ve become.”

(Eventually), they brought me back as an office boy with a verbal promise that I would get the next opening. I got married in May, ’69. I was making the princely sum of $72.50 per week. My wife was teaching school.

By October, the sports editor came up to me and said, ‘You probably thought I forgot all about you.’ The guy who had been covering the Celtics left. That created an opening.

The next night on a Friday, I was covering the home opener for the Celtics against the Cincinnati Royals and their new head coach, Bob Cousy. It was the first year of the post-Russell era. Tom Heinsohn was a rookie coach, and I was the rookie beat man.

Despite all their titles, the Celtics still were on the backburner in Boston compared to Bruins. I did mostly home games. We didn’t travel much.

I was 23. I was exactly the same age as the rookies and not that much younger than the key guys. They took me under their wing. It was a tremendous thrill.

There was a whole different set of circumstances when it came to access. We had almost unlimited access. You could come in and go to practice. You could hang out and sit in the locker room and shoot the breeze for an hour. You’d hang out after practice. You might even go have lunch with them.

I knew how to write, I thought, but I needed to learn the NBA. Nobody taught me a thing about how to cover a team. You have to figure that out yourself.

Heinsohn thought it was to his benefit to fill my head with what he wanted me to know, and it was my benefit to listen. I spent many hours hanging out with him. I got a crash course in learning the NBA.

I know during the first year all kinds of stuff went on. Until this day I have no idea what happened. Later on, I would know automatically, but back then I didn’t have a clue.

I became the beat man in 69-70. It was the first of seven years on the beat. I wound up doing it three different times.

Tommy Boswell once told me when you’re talking about spreading your wings, never be shy about having an expertise in something.

I got two titles out of that run and three in the Bird years. I’ve done many things, but people always identify me with the Celtics. I’m proud of that.

 

 

 

 

Update: NYT public editor calls Jones’ piece “harsh”

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Arthur S. Brisbane felt compelled to weigh in on Jere Longman’s controversial piece on LoLo Jones.

He writes:

In this particular case, I think the writer was particularly harsh, even unnecessarily so.

I queried the sports editor about it, and his response was that “One person’s harsh is another person’s tough minded,” and that the writer, “while acknowledging Jones’s accomplishment and qualities of perseverance and candor, thinks this female athlete fell short.”

I believe writers like Jere Longman, who does have a long and worthy track record at The Times, should have some room to express their hard-earned perspective. But this piece struck me as quite harsh and left me, along with others, wondering why the tone was so strong.

If I was Longman, I’d be pretty ticked off. Wonder if Mr. Brisbane will weigh in on whether Times Op-Ed columns are too harsh?

 

Gallup poll: Americans want live and tape delay for Olympics

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Are you listening NBC?

From a USA Today/Gallup poll:

Americans who say they are watching the Olympics “a lot” are most likely to want the most popular events televised both live during the day as they happen and on tape delay in the evening. Seven in 10 (71%) of these Americans want the most popular events televised live and on tape delay, as do a majority (57%) of those who are watching a little of the games and 43% of those who aren’t watching at all.

So would the 43% who aren’t watching at all tune in if the events aired live?

Wonder what NBC’s polls say?

 

 

Longman wasn’t alone: Chi Tribune’s Hersh also questioned hype surrounding Jones

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A reader pointed out that my old colleague, Philip Hersh, also raised the excessive hype issue about LoLo Jones on May 24, long before London.

Hersh wrote:

I have to hand it to Lolo Jones, her marketing agent, Brandon Swibel, and the edgy promotional gurus at Red Bull.
I can’t think of another athlete with such a slim competitive resume becoming such a pre-Olympic star and attracting such an impressive portfolio of sponsors, including Red Bull, BP, Proctor & Gamble, Asics and Oakley.

And more:

Jones is the subject of an ESPN documentary.  She was on the cover of February’s Outside magazine – which called her “Comeback Athlete of the Year” –  in a rather unusual swimsuit.  Featured in an HBO “Real Sports” segment that aired Tuesday in which Jones followed up on a Twitter revelation (to her 64,000 followers, 1,000 added since earlier this morning) of her virginity by saying that achieving her goal to be chaste until marriage is harder than graduating from college or training for the Olympics.  (Jones has been tweeting relentlessly for a couple years about what she characterizes as a luckless love life.)
Wednesday morning, there was a blog on MTV’s web site – linked from Lolo’s personal site – titled, “Breaking Babe: Olympian and Virgin Lolo Jones.”  A rewrite of the HBO 29-year-old virgin story on People.com had drawn 95 pages (95!) of comments in four hours.  And the new issue of Rolling Stone splashes her picture across two pages.
“I’m always amazed that people are so willing to give up their personal life to strangers,” Mary Carrillo, who did the Jones story for HBO, told me Wednesday morning.
And what is the most noteworthy moment of Jones’ athletic career in outdoor track?
A seventh in the 100-meter high hurdles final at the 2008 Olympics.

And Hersh had a classic finish:

“But imagine what happens if Lolo has a great race in London,” Carrillo said.
I figure Virgin Airlines will become another of her sponsors.
And we all know what Madonna song will be used as background music.