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Episode 339: Jeff Pearlman
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Jeff Pearlman is the New York Times bestselling author of The Last Folk Hero: The Life and Myth of Bo Jackson (Mariner Books).
Show notes: brendanomeara.com
Support: Patreon.com/cnfpod
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Transcript
Introduction and Sponsorship
00:00:00
Speaker
AC and efforts, a lot of you know that I like to crack open a beer from time to time on this podcast. Sometimes it contains alcohol, other times it's a near beer. I've been selected as a brand ambassador for athletic brewing, a brewery that makes my favorite non-alcoholic beer. Shout out to Free Wave, my favorite hazy IPA by them. And if you use the promo code BRENDANO20 at checkout, you get 20% off your first order.
00:00:26
Speaker
head to athleticbrewing.com and order yourself some of the best non-alcoholic beer I think you'll ever drink. I mean it. Also, I don't get any money. I get points towards flair and beer, but no money. Okay? Full of transparency. Go check it out. Like I have a friend who I love, but who refers to what we do as a craft. And I recoil every time I hear that. Like I'm not, Hemingway was a craftsman. I am not, you know, I'm a brick light.
00:00:59
Speaker
Hey there, CNFers, CNF Pod. The creative non-fiction podcast, a show where I speak to badass people about the art of telling true stories. I'm Brendan Romero, how's it going?
Guest Introduction: Jeff Perlman
00:01:12
Speaker
Today's guest is million-time best-selling author, Jeff Perlman. His newest book, his tenth with a T, is The Last Folk Hero, The Life and Myth of Bo Jackson. It's published by Mariner. Jeff also is the author of Showtime.
00:01:29
Speaker
the bad guys won, boys will be boys, and sweetness. Walter Payton, for those in the know, he's the host of the Great Writing Podcast, two writers slinging yang.
00:01:43
Speaker
We're a couple of boats floating in the tide, trying to rise all these boats, if you know what I mean. He's big time, CNFers. Show notes to this episode and a billion others at BrendanMera.com. Hey, there you'll also sign up to my up to 11 rage against the algorithm newsletter. This is where it's at, CNFers. I'm not one to hang out on social media. I hate it.
00:02:04
Speaker
But I am one to put a lot of effort into my kick-ass newsletter that entertains, gives you value, and sticks it to the algorithm right up its keister. And you know that I do occasionally have a CNF and a happy hour for those who want to come spend 40 minutes because ain't nobody springing for that big zoom account.
00:02:23
Speaker
If this is your thing by all means sign up been doing it for a lot of years First of the month no spam as far as I can tell can't beat it I once had the Bo Jackson baseball card where he was wearing the shoulder pads then he had a bat across his shoulders and the back of the card just said bow in Giant letters, I think it was blue and green, but I could be making that up. I
00:02:48
Speaker
I watched that cartoon with Bo Jackson, Wayne Gretzky, and Michael Jordan back in the day. It was called Pro Stars. Here's the description. Three of the most famous sports stars of the day, basketball star Michael Jordan, hockey star Wayne Gretzky, and baseball star Bo Jackson, no mention of football there, team up to respond to emergencies around the world.
00:03:12
Speaker
Wow! The actor Dave Fanoy was the voice of Bo Jackson. That's right, the athletes didn't even voice themselves. One season, 1991, 13 episodes. Anyway, Jeff is a very polished interviewee, far more polished than I am as an interviewer, mind you. He's a former Sports Illustrated senior writer. He's one of the good guys.
00:03:40
Speaker
If you ask me, some people come and they don't play ball. Some headliners come on the show and mail it in. Jeff mailed nothing in. Is that even how you would do that? Anyway, he came to play ball.
00:04:09
Speaker
I came across a quote, one of my favorite Instagram accounts to follow is this, it's niche or something. And it's usually just great literary quotes or from sort of rogue artists. And one today was from Jack Kerouac and it just says, it's very simple. It just says, scribbled secret notebooks and wild typewritten pages for your own joy.
The Writing Process and Overcoming Challenges
00:04:34
Speaker
And I wanted to just run that by you because it seems like when you're writing, a lot of times you're having, I can tell you're having a good time. So I just wanted to see what's going on in your brain when you hear that. I mean, I was actually thinking the opposite. I mean, there's a lot I love about it all, but it's also torture. It really is. I always think like when I wrote Three Rings Circus about the Shaqobi Lakers,
00:05:02
Speaker
I never thought of it this way but I think about Kobe a lot and Kobe played for the Lakers and he was this guy who was a famous superstar and he crossed promotions and blah blah blah but like he also was the guy in the gym shooting a thousand jumpers with the lights dimmed and nobody else around and
00:05:24
Speaker
A lot of that is writing. Like a lot of that really is writing. It's torture. It's you thinking everything sucks. Every mistake burning at your soul. Like I literally today, book came out today, someone DM me and he said, oh man, congrats. I'm loving the book. I spotted one error.
00:05:40
Speaker
And as soon as I see that, my heart just sinks, right? And it was I misspelled a name instead of D-E-A-N. I had a D-E-A-N. It's supposed to be D-E-E-N. And it's D-E-E-N. And it's one error, right? It's one tiny error. 99 out of 100 readers would never have any idea that I made that error. And I will remember that. Not joking, 10 years from now, I'll remember that. I'll remember that error because that stuff tortures me more than the high I get out of things.
00:06:10
Speaker
Yeah, it's great, but it's torturous at the same time, truly. That kind of goes back to your bullpen days where at SI when people would write a story and oftentimes you wouldn't know how you messed up until a writer would write a physical letter in with something of that nature and you'd be like, ah, God damn it. That sucks. Yeah, yeah, it happens.
00:06:34
Speaker
It's just hard. It's all really hard. I love writing books. I love that I get to do this. The one thing I never thought about when I started is that it would allow me to be a very present father and attend every event and be there for everything. But you do beat the crap out of yourself. I don't know why I'm in this mood to talk this way, but you do. You beat your crap out of yourself and I'm exhausted physically and mentally. It's a great job, but when people give romantic quotes about writing,
00:07:03
Speaker
I'm always like, yeah, I guess, but it's hard. It's hard. I see why writers drank a lot in the day. Oh, no kidding. But it is, as great a thing as it is that we get to do, it is hard and you always have those
00:07:21
Speaker
Dark Knights of the Soul, the ugly middles of drafts where you're a little too far away from the shore to swim back and turn around and you're too far away from the lighthouse to feel any good about what you're doing. And it's like you do have to wrestle with those thoughts. And so it's very natural. How do you wrestle with those thoughts when you're just like, oh man, this is shit. Everything I put down is garbage, but I somehow need to persevere.
00:07:46
Speaker
I just, I don't really have an option. You know, it's like when people say, how do you write the writer's block, right? To me, the answer is what choice do I have? I have to write the writer's block because this is what I do for a living and I can't not get the book done. So the same with everything. Like there are points when I'm writing a book and I'm like, I can't do this anymore. My wife will be like, but you don't really have a choice. Like you have to do it. So take your little break, do your little pity party, go listen to some Tupac.
00:08:13
Speaker
And then start writing again and just do it and you do it. And the thing is you a lot of times you'll put crap down on the page like it is not good, but it's on the page and that's a start. Just getting stuff on the page. You can always go back later and clean it up. It's the best you can do.
00:08:27
Speaker
Yeah, I read a quote from Lee Child today on Lit Hub. He was asked about writer's block. And he doesn't believe in it. And he's just like, do nurses get nurses block? Do truck drivers? Of course, there are days when you would rather do nothing, but you have to get on. A truck driver climbs in the cab, checks the mirrors, checks the dials, turns on the engine preheater, clips the seat belt, starts the motor, and then muscle memory clicks in and the day starts. Same for writers. I turn on the computer, reread yesterday's stuff, and off I go.
00:08:56
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know. I guess so. I get what he's saying. I always hate when people are like established writers are like, oh, there's no such thing as writer's block or blah, blah, blah. Like, yeah, it's real. People go through it and they suffer through it. I don't actually have problems with writer's block. Not really. I have problems with
00:09:15
Speaker
just being tired, you know? And like, I'm tired. But I don't really like the dismissal of writer's block. Like it does suck. We all have moments where you're staring at a blank screen and nothing's coming to you and you just think it sucks and you don't have anything there. It's real, you know? And the best thing I always find when I struggle writing, no matter the cause, truly is I get up, I take a walk, I take a shower, I put on some Tupac or some Hall and Oates or some whatever, and I just sort of have a drink and
00:09:43
Speaker
Just try to get back at it. You know, it's hard.
00:09:47
Speaker
Oh, you know, when I feel stuck or something, and maybe in the same way that a musician might feel stuck, they might be like, you know, I'm going to go pull down this record. I'm going to listen to some tracks. I'm going to kind of fill the tank in that way. I think, you know, if you look at your bookshelf, too, and you view it kind of like an album collection, you'd be like, you know, there's this one Gary Smith story or a story from Bill Nack, or you name N-E-S-I-L-M, or just, you know, it appears like Howard Bryant. And you're like, let me just put a few of those sentences, inject them into my brain.
00:10:16
Speaker
and that might give me some of that kind of inspiration. I know that kind of helps me to kind of pull a track down and put a book on the CD player and see what happens.
00:10:27
Speaker
Well, it can also have the negative impact of you read Howard Bryant and you think I can't write like this. So it has that too. But I, yeah, I actually, I think sometimes like, if I'm really struggling, I'll pull out an old Sports Illustrated or pull out a Howard Bryant book or Jonathan I book or whatever. And I almost copy their first few sentences. Like I'll, I'll fill in my names and my information and it'll just get me going. And I'll usually change it later. It's nothing like not like plagiarizing anything they do, but like,
00:10:55
Speaker
Maybe there's a Rick in Howard's Ricky Henderson book, maybe he starts a sentence with like, you know, in the fall of blah, blah, blah, the air was crisp and Ricky Henderson was blank. And maybe I'll be like, oh, yeah, that's not a bad tone in the summer of blah, blah, blah, Bo Jackson felt. And you sort of just work it out in your head. That's not a bad way to go about it, actually.
00:11:14
Speaker
No, no, and I was struggling with trying to come up with, for a book proposal, I'm doing about just having a more sort of, you know, just painting a scene of this one particular area, and I was going through a lot of my John McPhee books, and I stumbled on the opening to the Pine Barrens, and just the way he went about sort of almost itemizing what it looks like, and I'm like, oh, cool, I'm gonna just copy that, but I'm gonna input all the more
00:11:41
Speaker
tactile geographic points of interest that i'm working with and it really it it was modeling it wasn't plagiarizing a lot like what you were saying yeah also no way no thought is truly original i mean everything's been no repeated but yeah and also like
00:11:57
Speaker
I always tell I teach adjunct journalism in a school in Southern California, Chapman University. And I'll say like, really writing is a lot like talking. And kind of like you saying about, you know, McPhee and Lifts, you can just be like, if you're describing something, maybe you would just say the applesauce was brown. It, you know, it had little specks of apples in it.
00:12:19
Speaker
The cap was green, the bottle was see-through, the label was white with small writing in Times font. Like, that's perfectly fine writing. Sometimes you just do it that way.
00:12:29
Speaker
And I think as a sports writer, sometimes what gets lost is actually talking about reading and the importance of the great books that have come before, what we are trying to do. And what books are very formative for you in the sports canon and maybe outside of the sports canon that informs the work you do?
00:12:52
Speaker
I would say in many ways the most important book for me was The Autobiography of Malcolm X. I read that when I was in high school and I grew up in a very sort of small rural AKA white conservative MAGA neck of upstate New York and obviously there was no MAGA when I was in high school.
00:13:10
Speaker
I read the autobiography of Malcolm X and it just opened my eyes to a lot of things. And I think that book really helped me think about sort of diversity, diversity of culture, diversity of religion, diversity of thought, which is actually more important than one might think when you're covering sports, which is a very diverse landscape. The other thing that just had a huge, huge impact on me, and this is going to make me sound not that literary, but just being honest,
00:13:32
Speaker
is reading Sports Illustrated and reading Sport Magazine when I was a kid and learning to study them, not just read them for entertainment, but the way transitions were written, the way a lead would start off, the way you'd introduce new characters, like just word choice. I remember I was reading a story years and years ago
00:13:54
Speaker
And the writer used the phrase, where of he speaks. And he knows where of he speaks. And I've used that a million times since then. I don't even know why. I just loved where of he speaks. So just paying attention to little things. And also when I was a kid, there used to be these books, the complete handbook of pro football, pro basketball, and major league baseball.
00:14:14
Speaker
And they would come out, they were like yearbooks, but with really great sharp writing. And I run to Walden books and buy these books and just absorb them, just absolutely absorb them. And they really inform my writing, I gotta say. So I'm not overly intelligent. I'm not like super well read. I can't, I'm not going to lie to you and say, I've read all the classics, but, um, I do try to pay attention to the word choices and what devices people use.
00:14:40
Speaker
You know, when I was in several conversations I've had with Glenn Stout, he would say, like, you know, you know, Brendan, if you're ever stuck, you know, just pull down a best American sports writing and just shotgun leads. And he's just like, just get those into your into your system and like, look at the like you're saying, look at the word choice.
00:15:00
Speaker
How are they framing this? How are we getting into a scene? How are we hooking a reader and so forth? And it's things that I don't think I talked about enough that that is part of the game tape of being a writer going to the film and seeing how it's done so you can you can contend with it and contest with it and learn from it really. A million percent. A million percent. I am
00:15:23
Speaker
Again, I have all these Sports Illustrated under my office futon to my wife's great dismay and a ton of space and they're all in the yellow, but I am out pulling out if I'm struggling just to read through it and you'll read an old Rick Riley piece or an old Bill Nack piece. And it just really gets your juices going and kind of reminds you, Oh, this is how you write. And maybe I can't be as good as Bill Nack or Rick Riley, but I can find inspiration from them.
00:15:48
Speaker
And what I love about your podcast and how you speak about writing is that it really is a lot about community. And I've also heard you talk about how you used to be very competitive. And I think this this gnaws at a lot of writers, especially young writers, and that eventually you try to eschew that as you mature. But what's your relationship to how you transition from being competitive to being someone who is more in tune with building community around this instead of being adversarial?
00:16:17
Speaker
Well, I think at some point I learned that someone else's success is not an indicator of anything I've done. Today, just an example, Jamel Hill's memoir comes out. It's the same day my Bo Jackson book comes out. There would have been a point in my life where internally maybe I would have rooted for Jamel not to do well because why is her book selling and my book isn't selling? I'm using Jamel as an example because we have books out there that could be anyone.
00:16:47
Speaker
I want Jamel to sell a million copies. And if Jamel sells more copies than me, that's great. Great for Jamel. It's a 0% reflection on me. It's a reflection on her and her success and her quality work. Every now and then, one of those old feelings will creep up in me. You see someone do well and you think, blah, blah, blah. And then you're like, wait, what are you doing?
Community and Writing Philosophy
00:17:05
Speaker
Why would you root against someone? Also, if books sell well, that's good for the industry.
00:17:11
Speaker
I don't care if it's your mouse book or Snooki writing, you know, Jersey shorts too. Like people buying books and reading is good for us. So somewhere along the way, honestly, I just stopped being an asshole. Like I was an asshole at the Nassau Tennessee in my early job. I was an unambiguous asshole. It was all about me.
00:17:27
Speaker
It was all about my career. It was all about my rise. It was all about my writing. I was better than everyone else. I didn't need an editor. I didn't need any help. I turned down offers of mentorship from writers who I should have never understood. And the thing that I really look back at with shame is I didn't understand what it meant to be a good writer. Like there'd be guys who covered Tennessee State football or local high school sports.
00:17:55
Speaker
And I thought, well, I'm better than that guy. I'm better than that guy. Not realizing they embedded themselves in the schools. They had the phone number for the coaches. They knew everything about the team. They studied, studied, studied. They had contacts out the wazoo. I didn't have any of that. I just could turn a quick phrase every now and then. And over time, I've really learned to appreciate what it means. I think what it means to be a journalist.
00:18:17
Speaker
Yeah, you yeah, you write what you talk about that on on your sort of Oh, what's that? The the podcast about you being in the bullpen and how like one of your diary entries was talking about like when you were getting elevated out of the bullpen to more of a Reporter writer and you're like you didn't want to surrender your style or something. You're like, what the fuck? I don't even have a style yet
00:18:47
Speaker
That's the thing. I'm not. I've just learned over time, like number one. You know, whatever you have a book come out and people make a big deal of you for a few days and it's exciting. It is exciting. And you go on TV like I was on the Today show yesterday. That's a perfect example. I was on the Today show yesterday.
00:19:02
Speaker
And for my parents, it's huge. And for everyone, it's huge. And for me, it's exciting. But I'm well aware that I'm no more worthy of being on The Today Show than the guy sweeping the street in front of The Today Show. That job is no less or more valuable than my job. It just isn't factually. And in fact, that guy is probably busting his ass to feed his family and deserves far more credit than I do.
00:19:24
Speaker
me having my parents paid for my college education and having a pretty easy life. So I just over time am far less impressed by this job and definitely what I do than I used to be. Now, a few months ago when I was speaking with David Marinus about his Jim Thorpe biography and doing research on him, his big thing on writing biography, he calls it like the four legs of the table, which I'm sure you're probably familiar with.
00:19:52
Speaker
But it's like, you know, go there if you can go there. Interview everybody, basically. Get the documents and try to get beyond the mythology. And I wonder, and over the course of your now 10 books and several biographies, you know, what have you found to be true about doing biography and doing it well? I mean, I can't argue with anything he said.
00:20:16
Speaker
Calling everyone is by far the most important because, I mean, he wrote about Tim Thorpe, everyone's dead, which makes it a little more complicated. I'm writing about a guy, Bo Jackson, 90% of people are alive. And I think the key is getting new stories. I always say, this dates back to my Brett Favre biography. There was some free agent running back in camp from, we'll just say Bucknell.
00:20:39
Speaker
with Brett Favre in Green Bay for three weeks. And that guy is going to remember absolutely every single thing about his encounters with Brett Favre, the time he picked up a napkin for him or the time he gave him french fries. And Brett Favre is going to remember that guy the day after he leaves. I think those people are really important. Those stories are really telling and what people experienced in small capsules of time are really telling. And when people become famous, people remember, people have very profound pronounced and embedded memories of them.
00:21:07
Speaker
So I think that's really, really important because that's where you get the fresh material. And, um, I also do agree with David. Like you, you, uh, you want to go to the scene as much as you can. You want to be able to describe the scene. You want to be able to, this sounds corny, but like smell it and feel it and taste it and understand what it was like to enter a stadium that he entered or understand what it was like to live where he lived or she lived. So, um, the more tangible a subject becomes, the better off you are.
00:21:37
Speaker
Yeah, and I think in terms of going there too, be it the scene of an accident or let's just say a football stadium at a particular time of year, I think it's all the more important too, if you can, to get there at the time of day that a certain thing happened, ideally in that season, because like you said, to get the smell of it, it's gonna smell different depending on what month it is.
00:22:02
Speaker
You know, there could be a whiff of, you know, whatever manure coming off a field in one particular season versus another. And that just layers on detail that just makes everything about it so much more evocative. The thing is like, all right, so Dave Maraniss is one of the best ever, you know, and he just throws everything he has into a book. And I try to do that, too. I'm not as good as him, but I try to throw everything I have into a book. Jonathan, I really good friend of mine, Ali biographer.
00:22:29
Speaker
throws everything in, Howard Bryant throws everything in, John Wortham, like the people who make it in this profession throw everything they have into a book, everything they have into a book where you definitely, I can't speak for those guys, but I know I personally start losing my mind where all I want to do is talk about focus.
00:22:48
Speaker
read about this person. And if I feel like, I almost feel like start feeling like if I miss an hour or I miss a day, I get panic that what did I miss out? What did I, am I being lazy? All that stuff. So you really have to absorb it all. Just absorb it all. And it's a weird trippy experience. It really is.
00:23:09
Speaker
What have you found helpful about tracking down those marginalized in terms of just not popular sources? Like you said, that anecdote about running back from Bucknell. That's a hard person to find, especially if they're not on social media or something. That can be, like I said, very hard to find. The detective work to do that is taxing. So what has been helpful for you to find those people?
00:23:37
Speaker
Oh man, well, there's a, if you go to whitepages.com, they have an executive membership, right? And it's a really good search tool because it gives you cell numbers. When I started doing it, all you needed was a home number. Now home numbers are obsolete. So the whitepages.com executive membership, cell numbers. Classmeets.com is this amazing database of yearbooks. So you can put in Auburn or someone's so high school and oftentimes find yearbooks. That's very helpful.
00:24:05
Speaker
Facebook, obviously invaluable as far as tracking people down, knowing where they are. I would disagree with you. I mean, I don't think you were making this argument, but finding like the fifth string quarterback from Auburn in 1984 who went on to have a construction business is actually finding him as far easier than finding like some guy who played seven years in the NFL. Because a guy who has a construction business is so happy to be talking to you.
00:24:30
Speaker
And he hasn't been spoken to about this subject maybe in 30 years. So you track down the guy Barry Smith from Blah Blah Plumbing.
00:24:39
Speaker
Oh, you want to talk to me? I mean, if you have time, I got a Bose story. Did anyone ever tell you about the licorice? And you're like, no, then you're on your way. So those guys are just usually, they fill in a lot of moments. Like those little stories, those little tiny stories. Oh, I remember the time Bo did this. I remember the time Bo did that, this and that. Those things are so important, invaluable. David will tell you the same thing, I bet.
00:25:01
Speaker
And, you know, Robert Caro is famous for taking, you know, jeez, you know, five, 10, 12 years to... That guy's docs overrated. I'm just kidding. What's crazy is that he, you know, the research he does is titanic, as it is for you, but he takes a long, long time. It always has going all the way back to Robert Moses.
00:25:24
Speaker
And I believe you had something like 700 interviews for this Bo Jackson book. And you researched and reported it and wrote it in, I don't know, two years? So how were you able to just kind of put biography in a pressure cooker and get something that is this sort of dense with flavor in such a short amount of time? Honestly, I think it'd be a better question to ask him how he takes seven years because, honestly, God,
00:25:53
Speaker
I've never done crack, but I would start. I could not spend that long. I couldn't do it. I couldn't do it just mentally. I don't know how I'd possibly do that. I don't know how he affords to do it unless he's getting these multi-million gazillion dollar payouts.
00:26:09
Speaker
For me, I love the intensity. I actually like the intensity of being like, all right, I have seven interviews today. OK, I have five interviews today. All right, today I'm just digging through clips. I'm going to drink coffee and dig through clips all day today. I like it. I don't want to spit it out. I don't want to take forever. I don't want to stretch my legs. I like the intensity of it all. So for me, it's like Bo Jackson. All right, I'm starting with McAdory High School. I'm going to go through that yearbook.
00:26:36
Speaker
track down as many people as I can. I'm just going to call, call, call, call, call, call. I'm going to get that done. And hopefully by within a month I've taken care of high school and I've interviewed everyone from high school. And now we're going to move to Auburn. I'm going to do baseball first and then we're going to do football. Then I'll do track. I'm just going to call, call, call, call, call. And if I have two years to write a book, a year and a half is just research and calling people and interviewing people.
00:26:58
Speaker
That's incredible. I don't think it's incredible. I just want to say, I really mean this. I really mean this is not me being humble or bash or anything. Anyone can do this. I'm not saying some people are worse riders than me, some people are better riders than me. Anyone can hustle and bust your ass. That's a whole key to my career. That's all I like. From the day I got to Sports Illustrated, I knew there were better riders than me, but I always thought I can outwork you.
00:27:22
Speaker
That's it. That's it. Just bust your ass and all right. I'm going to call a million people. That's what I'm going to do. So when people say that's incredible, I'm like, honestly, God, it's not incredible. I don't know how to work documents as well as some of my colleagues. I don't know how to go into a library basement and know precisely where to go. That to me is much more incredible. I just call people and just dog it.
00:27:43
Speaker
Yeah, it goes back to that where you shared on your days in the bullpen how you found that directory of sports information directors. And you were just like, all right, alphabet A to Z, let's call them up. And what interesting thing do you have tucked away under the rug that you'd like to share? And yeah, that doggedness, I think, it's a skill unto itself that probably a lot of people dismiss. But it's maybe the most valuable skill you can bring to the table.
00:28:12
Speaker
Yeah, I learned that from my dad. My dad, Stan Perlman, he's kind of my hero.
00:28:17
Speaker
He ran an executive search firm. He was basically a headhunter. And he was just always coming up with ways to find clients. He wrote a book. He self-published it. He did all these brochures. He wound up having a weekly or monthly business column in the local Gannett newspaper. He started doing newsletters. He would always have creative approaches. And he wasn't afraid and he didn't mind sitting at his desk and just doing something on repeat. Write a letter, repeat, write a letter, repeat, write a letter, repeat. It almost becomes a trance.
00:28:47
Speaker
And I haven't really thought about that until recently, but my dad really taught me that the value of doggedness and just doing it and doing it and doing it. And it's not drudgery if you're passionate about it. I honestly don't think I'm not Kobe Bryant. I'm not making that comparison. I don't think he thought of the thousand jumpsuits as drudgery. I think he thought of it as a means to an end. And with calling people and with tracking down articles, it's kind of a means to an end. I don't really mind it.
00:29:12
Speaker
Would you say you feel most alive and engaged when you're making those calls and interviewing? I mean, in the book world, yes. I mean, I would say the most alive is the day your book comes, like your finished product shows up. And that moment you actually hold the book is as it actually lives up to what you would think it truly does. But yeah, getting a great interview. I mean, with both, I'll tell you something with Bo Jackson was
00:29:39
Speaker
When I found out that Dick Shapp donated all his notes from Bo Knows Bo to the Auburn Library and they were sending them to me and this package arrives in the mail and it's just hours and hours and hours of recordings of him interviewing Bo Jackson, things that haven't been listened to in 30 years, all the transcripts typed out, different articles, notes from Dick Shapp to the publisher. That's electrifying for me, like absolutely electrifying.
00:30:05
Speaker
Was that moment when you discovered that those were donated to Auburn, was that a moment that really cracked the code of this book? In a lot of ways, I think, yeah, actually, yes, because Bo Jackson didn't talk. So yeah, when that happened, you're like, well, like people ask when you promote a book, is that good? Is it helpful? They doesn't talk. No, never helpful. You want as much info as possible. So getting those, it felt like I was interviewing 28 year old Bo, which is invaluable.
00:30:32
Speaker
And I always like going to – sometimes I do it before I read the book, but I love going to the acknowledgements in that section and kind of getting a sense of the team behind it, but also sometimes you get a really cool anecdote about the composition or the generation of the book.
00:30:51
Speaker
And it was great when you got that phone call from Bo and he was saying, you know, he said, you know, everybody wants to do a Bo book, but nobody realizes how hard that would be. And I wonder if maybe you can put into words how difficult it was to do this Bo book. It's hard, but it's not like it's hard because it's Bo Jackson. It's hard because if you write a full book on somebody, it's hard.
00:31:14
Speaker
I mean, it's hard, it's a grind. And also he's a grumpy, you know, like contrarian a little bit. And he's not flowery and he's not out there telling everyone all his business. And so Walter Payton was very hard, but Walter Payton was kind of an open book in many ways. And Bo Jackson has never been an open book. And Bo Jackson, literally the baseball team and football team, the Royals and Raiders did not have his phone number.
00:31:41
Speaker
Like he was guarded, guarded. And when you write about someone like that. Also, the other thing is like we had a really nice conversation and I thought, oh, this is great. This is great.
00:31:52
Speaker
But I know it's different when a guy when you're Bo Jackson and maybe like your high school math teacher calls you up and says, hey, this guy called me or like your high school girlfriend calls you and says, hey, this guy, it's different than just hearing someone wants to write a book on you. And I think it's a little unnerving for people. And I'm sure it was for him, too. So like there were people I called and I know they checked with Bo and I never heard from them again. So I can probably assume I did not assume at the time I just kept moving straight ahead. And maybe Bo told him, no, I don't know.
00:32:22
Speaker
Yeah, that's when I was talking to Howard Bryan about the Ricky Henderson book, which I know you did as well. He had Ricky for a little while and then eventually got stonewalled, and then Ricky was stonewalling everybody else, which throws a wrinkle into your operations.
00:32:40
Speaker
He had a great way of phrasing, you know, of lobbying like a major, major person. He was like, listen, Ricky, like a lot of people who are your fans, you know, they're maybe in their mid to late forties, their fifties, they remember you, but sooner or later, you know, people are going to forget who you are. And this is why we need to like write about, you know, biographies need to write about you because people will forget your greatness.
00:33:04
Speaker
And I wonder if that's something that, you know, that really resonates with you because, you know, a lot of these guys, you know, for us, you and me, yeah, we remember Bo, but and if, you know, maybe another generation, people will be like, I know I remember he was this freak athlete, but I don't know anything about him. A hundred
Public Figures and Biography Writing
00:33:22
Speaker
percent. And I talked with Howard about that. You're right. I love the way he said it like we've talked about that. He's really eloquent and measured with his words when Howard speaks. There's this real meaning to it.
00:33:33
Speaker
And I do agree. And it's almost like the thing is, OK, if Freaky Henderson is like, I don't want you writing a book and Bo Jackson is like, I don't want you writing a book.
00:33:43
Speaker
Should you not write the book? And Howard's sort of take on it, which I agree with is they don't just own that history. Like that history belongs to us too, as sports fans, as kids who grew up idolizing these guys, as kids who bought the posters, the sneakers, et cetera. Like that's our history too. Bo Jackson's history as an athlete is my history as a sports fan. You know, he doesn't own it. Ricky Anderson doesn't own his history. They are public figures.
00:34:11
Speaker
And yeah, I hate the idea that kids don't know who Bo Jackson is. And the reality Bo Jackson wouldn't like to hear this is most kids don't know who Bo Jackson is. And the reality is most kids don't know who Ricky Henderson is. And I do think as I would never be like the arrogant guy who calls himself a sports historian. But these are books that are technically sports history books. And I think there is a responsibility to
00:34:35
Speaker
Remember the past in sports in all areas and I love how you open the book with you know, the Chicago White Sox plane, you know engines catching fire and they have to make an emergency landing and It just gets to the point of you know those decisions we make as writers of how to how to get into a story and How did you arrive at that decision to start start there with with that anecdote sort of bifurcated with two recollections? What was the decision behind that?
00:35:05
Speaker
I guess there are two things. Number one, I do like the idea of opening a book with a little bit of a bang, like punching the reader across the face and saying, you should read this. My Dallas Cowboy book started with Michael Irvin stabbing a teammate in the neck with a pair of scissors. The bad guys one opens with a
00:35:25
Speaker
actually a flight them returning from Houston and destroying a plane you know you want to kind of grab the reader a little bit this also spoke to something though because they're flying back from Anaheim after playing the angels and a bunch of guys told me about this plane that caught fire and it was documented it did catch fire the White Sox America West flight
00:35:45
Speaker
And everyone's telling the story about Bo Jackson coming out of the cockpit. He was sitting with the pilots and telling everyone, everyone's going to be OK. Just get in your seats. You'll be OK. And there was this really heroic portrait of Bo Jackson. But then I heard an alternative memory, which is, no, he didn't come out of the cockpit. He ran up to the cockpit to save the plane.
00:36:02
Speaker
In the mythological world of Bo Jackson, I argue maybe they're both true. Maybe he tried saving the plane in the cockpit and by leaving the cockpit. Maybe he climbed on the wing and started taping it up. Maybe, you know, whatever. He flew next to the plane. Like, he just sets a myth that these multiple stories both have sort of a weird bit of verification to them.
00:36:24
Speaker
I love the moment you were Carlton Fisk, who's just like, go get them, Bo. Go get them. I know. Very funny. It's very, I mean, yeah, it's very in character of Carlton Fisk. Yeah. And I love digging into structure, too. And I think for a lot of your books, you know, you're big on, you're big on like just forward chronology. I know like one of your more recent magazine pieces, you ran the tape backwards, a la Memento.
00:36:51
Speaker
And but you know, given that you like a forward chronology, you know, for this book, was there any question of how you would go about structuring this book or was it pretty mapped out for you? I mean, I never structure. I don't even structure. I've never written an outline. I don't sit there and think it's going to go this way. But.
00:37:11
Speaker
a life biography does come with a certain chronology, which is life. And it also branches off, like all of the books branch off, where you could be in Chicago and all of a sudden, but here's a story that took him to Chicago. Or I wrote extensively about a college teammate of his named Greg Pratt, a fullback who died in a conditioning drill. And that chapter, which is really moving to me, sort of sidesteps into Greg Pratt's history and then Greg Pratt's funeral and the
00:37:39
Speaker
team getting off the bus in Georgia and everyone crying and sobbing. So it twists and turns, but you always know there's a point you're heading toward, which is modern times.
00:37:49
Speaker
Yeah, I have Greg Pratt in my notes, and that was an incredible chapter and incredibly touching and a great sort of micro profile of him in that moment. Well, there's two things I want to talk about about that, but I'll talk about this one thing first, is when there are stories of this nature that are a spur or a tributary off your central figure.
00:38:13
Speaker
You could go into any myriad deep dives on ancillary characters, but eventually you do have to pull it back to your main guy. What is the, use a math term, maybe the calculus you use to be like, all right, this person does deserve some time in the sun, but eventually you have to kind of reel that back in and get back to Beau. I don't have any. I really don't have it. I just do it.
00:38:39
Speaker
I just do. I mean, if it goes too long, you cut some paragraphs and you kind of, maybe an editor comes along and says, I think you went too wide here. But I don't know. I just kind of like a leaf in the wind sometimes a little bit. You just write it and you kind of roll with it and hope it works out okay. The one thing I will say, and I consider the Greg Pratt story my best example of this. The name Greg Pratt does not appear in Bo Jackson's autobiography, right? Bo Knows Bo. He literally had a teammate die who he was close with in conditioning drills the same day Bo was running.
00:39:08
Speaker
Beau went to the hospital, was devastated by his death, went to the funeral, pulled out a Kodak disposable camera, took a picture of Greg Pratt lying in his casket, open casket at the funeral, was absolutely devastated by this whole thing. It's not even a mention in Beau Jackson's autobiography. And there's nothing wrong with that. Like Beau, you write an autobiography. You have every right to write about what you want to write about and every right to leave stuff out if you feel comfortable.
00:39:32
Speaker
I think that's why biographies are important because that's a key, key moment in his life. He chose to leave it out for some reason, but in a storytelling sense, it can't be left out because it sort of changed who he was and made this major imprint on who he was. So I think that's why biographies, that's why I'm with the Howard Bryant team. I think biographies matter. And I think I am allowed to tell this story and Bo Jackson may say, well, you didn't get it right. And that's fair, but I'm allowed to tell this story.
00:40:03
Speaker
Yeah, and that was the other point I wanted you to underscore with Greg Pratt, was that yes. And if we allow those central people to control unilaterally – these public figures – to control unilaterally that narrative,
00:40:20
Speaker
what they leave out while not technically lying is not paying, it's almost a lie by omission and we don't get the full picture. And so your three-dimensional reporting, it brings out this young man who died, which is, I don't know, it's a very telling and very formative moment in the life of Bo Jackson that he wasn't his forthright, but I think it fills in the holes and rounds out his character all the more in the totality of The Last Folk Hero.
00:40:51
Speaker
Yeah, I 100% agree and again, like I don't he doesn't he's under no obligation to tell that story You know, like I right I'm not mad at him for not telling it. I don't I don't even think it's wrong not to tell it but I think You know, there's another like this in the job. I'm not talking Bo Jackson. I just would say at all I have nothing but respect for Bo Jackson, but I also think like in his autobiography I
00:41:13
Speaker
He writes about his early baseball struggles at Auburn and he wrote about going 0 for 21 with 21 strikeouts in his first 21 at bats, which is amazing. And it's one of the great streaks of futility I've ever read about for a guy who became a star to go 0 for 21 with 21 strikeouts.
00:41:29
Speaker
And I interviewed different people from that era who were like, yeah, it's crazy. Over 21, over 21. And it would be even crazier if it were true. But it's not true. In his first game, he went two for five in his first game against Southern Illinois. His first hit, and he had his first hit in his first step back. It's actually funny. His first step hit in college was a grounder at a shortstop that he beat out. His first hit in the majors was a grounder at a second that he beat out. And I certainly have no reason at all to think Bo Jackson was lying to exaggerate.
00:41:58
Speaker
I just think memory is funny. And if you don't fact check yourself, like the other day, Beau is on Rich Eisen's show. Again, he was great, and he's awesome, and he's cool. But he told a story about Rich asked what his biggest moment as a major leader was. I think that was a question. And he said, he gave a date, something, something, 1990, when we were playing the Brewers in Kansas City, and I intentionally got myself thrown out of the game because I wanted to be at my daughter's, the birth of my daughter. And I thought, well, that's an interesting story.
00:42:29
Speaker
And then you look it up. Well, the Burroughs weren't playing the Brewers that day and Bo Jackson wasn't even active.
Bo Jackson's Life and Legacy
00:42:35
Speaker
So I just think, again, I'm not dogging Bo Jackson like at all. He is not lying. He's just misremembering. And it happens all of us with time. But I do think biography is important. And we have there are ways biographies truly contribute in very honest, important ways to storytelling.
00:42:52
Speaker
Yeah like I remember seeing Bo play at Fenway Park and see I don't remember if, well I do remember him doing this, he was just, he had fallen on the ground or something, he was just on his back and he snapped himself like up somehow, like he just like bent his and just flipped up, he was somehow on his feet.
00:43:14
Speaker
And I don't know if I saw that on TV or if I saw that actually at Fenway. Right. But it is like it gets to your point of like kind of misremembering it. Maybe I got to say like, all right, dad, do you remember this? Did this happen in person? And so you kind of round it out. But it's easy to see how you can the past can get a little bit muddy.
00:43:34
Speaker
memory is very tricky and it's the flaw of these books too like I'm well aware it's a flaw of these books like you remember the best you can people remember the best they can they tell you their stories you verify as much as possible but there's also some you're also going a little bit on faith that they remember it and you're also going a little bit with
00:43:52
Speaker
This may not be exact. When someone tells me a quote, when someone tells me a conversation they had with Bo Jackson, I might, you know, oh, and then Bo came into my office and I said to him, Bo, you need to play harder. And Bo said, all right, man, I'll play harder. Like I use the conversation, but with the awareness that there's no possible way it's precise. It can't be. It's just very unlikely that some members verbatim. I can't tell you what I talked to my wife about 10 minutes ago, not verbatim. So there are little leaps of people making biography and that's OK. It just comes to the turf, I think.
00:44:22
Speaker
Given that he's such a reticent figure even by the standards of the day, there were some unsavory details of his upbringing that I don't judge him for. I like those details that round out a figure and make him more human.
00:44:40
Speaker
So when you're doing that kind of reporting and you're looking to dig into the past, not to smear anyone's reputation, but to just get them into their whole totality, you know, what becomes the challenge for you as you're interviewing someone like is, you know, fiancé Allison at Auburn or other people who maybe he bullied growing up to, you know, to round them out while also not, you know, totally trying to, you know, have a character assassination. I think the thing that's interesting is
00:45:13
Speaker
I think it comes with the understanding, at least when I was reporting it, certainly when I was writing it, that we're all a bunch of assholes in college. We are. We just are.
00:45:27
Speaker
My college girlfriend cheated on me and at the time I was devastated, right? Like devastated, destroyed, blah, blah, blah. And then later I was like, oh yeah, we were in college. Like that's, that's age appropriate. You know, like that's okay. It happened in college. So I think like his weird actions in college, like he had this fiance, then he had another fiance. He took this one, one place. He took this one somewhere. I'm not saying it's like idyllic behavior, but like,
00:45:50
Speaker
It's college like it happened in college. He's been by all accounts a very good and devoted husband and father since. It's the same thing like he got money. These are guys were all getting money from boosters in college like all of them. They were getting paid their hands. He's coming out the field. It's not an indictment of his character. As I say in the book, the guy grew up dirt poor in Bessemer, Alabama, right? Living in a three room house.
00:46:13
Speaker
If he took money from a booster, if you want to criticize someone, go after the booster because I can't criticize Bo Jackson for doing it. So I just think it's a context of it all. It doesn't feel scandalous through the prism. I think I present it, I guess.
00:46:27
Speaker
Yeah, well, for sure, especially for someone who wore his sister's shoes and more socks to school. Like, geez, I mean, why wouldn't you? It would be almost silly not to. Well, you know, I covered Major League Baseball and I used to be a steroid hardliner. If you use steroids, you should be gone. If you use steroids, say blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:46:48
Speaker
And now I think about it more. I'm not pro using steroids, but like you're a guy from the Dominican, okay? You're one of three kids or whatever. Your dad makes pennies a day. You live in poverty. And here's this way you can take care of your family for life. And you just have to use this steroid drug. And it sucks that you have to use it, but it'll make your family wealthy for life. And your dad is literally working making crap money.
00:47:12
Speaker
I get it. I actually get it. So I get your poor, a booster comes along. It's against NCAA rules. Why do I give a shit about NCAA rules? My mom needs to eat. I get it. And what was fun about reading this book for me anyway, it was like some of the incidents like some of his athletic exploits, I didn't fully remember and I would read your description, then I would have my phone out at the same time and I would go to YouTube and I would watch it.
00:47:39
Speaker
And it just made for like a really good experience. Usually I like to divorce, you know, like a book from the phone or a book from digital. But in this case, it seemed to be so complimentary. You know, that was a really fun aspect of reading this book. Oh, man, my favorite. You know, in many ways, my favorite Bo Jackson play his first major league at bat.
00:47:57
Speaker
Which I keep saying, I said it's a good memory football. It's a rock opera. It's like an opera. And he's facing this 321 game winner just holding on for dear life. Steve Carleton. He has no idea who Steve Carleton is. Steve Carleton looks like a lumpy old man. Bo Jackson looks like a human muscle. It's in Kansas City. And just like the back and forth. Bo Jackson at one point taking a bat. We all tried this at home. I swear to God, take a bat.
00:48:23
Speaker
Extend it out front with your two hands on the head and on the knob. And he just brought it back twice to his butt without bending his arms and brought it back and brought it back. He hits this foul ball that looks like it's a homer. It goes a million miles. He gets a standing ovation. And then he beats out a grounder to second for his first major to hit. It's just preposterous. And then you watch it and you're like, oh, it actually is preposterous. Like it actually lives up to everything I just wrote because it's crazy.
00:48:54
Speaker
3.6 seconds like that is so uncannily fast down the line, especially from the right batter's box I You know four seconds three nine is Getting down the line like that is no joke speed and the fact that he got at his size could run that fast on a ball That was hit on astroturf very firmly to second base and he still beat it by a step or two It's just it's an uncanny feat of very understated athleticism, but if you're in the know you're like, holy shit
00:49:23
Speaker
That is incredible. I always do this. I just go on the run off of stuff he did that blows my mind. I'm just saying right now, his first major league hit, he runs a 3-6. It's the second fastest recorded time for righty from home to first in major league history, and it's his first hit. In high school, he wins back-to-back state decathlon championships both time without doing the last event, the 1500, which he didn't want to do, so he deliberately got as far ahead as possible.
00:49:49
Speaker
The second time he won the state decathlon championship was on a sprained ankle. The day after winning the decathlon championship on a sprained ankle, he pitched his only game of the year for McAdory High School in a state playoff game, struck out 13 in a win. By the way, in his baseball career just at McAdory, his senior year he had 20 home runs, which is a national record. He did it in only 25 games because he missed seven to do track events. And in his lifetime at McAdory, he stole 90 out of 91 bases.
00:50:16
Speaker
Like and that's like a sliver of a sliver of a sliver of the Bojax in an athletic story. It just blows my mind that we didn't get to see him longer just based on the devastating injury that he suffered while playing the bangles the oh shoot something necrosis what his hip. Yeah. Yeah.
00:50:39
Speaker
Yeah. And it's just a, you know, for anyone who does, like I knew he heard his hip bad, but I didn't realize it was basically like losing your blood supply to a joint, which effectively starts as a decomposition. So I don't know. Maybe you can speak to the gravity of that injury and, you know, how it derailed maybe the greatest athlete we've ever seen. Yeah, I would say no, maybe I would say greatest athlete we've ever seen. Um, and maybe it's just cause I wrote the book, but that's how I feel. And, um,
00:51:05
Speaker
He has the injury in a game against the Cincinnati Bengals, a playoff game. One of my favorite things is the next week, the Raiders go to Buffalo to play in the AFC Championship game. It's freezing in Buffalo and it's...
00:51:22
Speaker
Cole and Bo Jackson's on the sideline. And the final score of that game is 51 to 3. Bills, they destroy the Raiders. And I had one teammate, I don't remember who was with the Raiders, say, it's a different game as Bo is in there. And I'm like, buddy, you lost 51 to 3. Bo Jackson's not scoring you 48 points. I don't care how great he was. You're not going to win that game.
00:51:48
Speaker
But, you know, he he hurts the leg and he's like hanging around the rater's locker room. Like they didn't think to immediately take him to a hospital. And when he goes the next day and he has a scan, a doctor goes, do you see a boat? They're looking at this x-ray and he says, do you see this whole black area here? And he goes, that is all blood.
00:52:07
Speaker
And Bo Jackson felt like he was going to pass out. It was an insanely debilitating injury. He wound up ultimately getting a fake hip and playing on a fake hip. He could never play in the NFL again. It killed a great career. But I will say one argument I will make is if Bo Jackson winds up Eric Dickerson in football and let's say he winds up
00:52:25
Speaker
Gary Sheffield and baseball. He's not nearly as interesting. The whole mystique is what's interesting and the intrigue and what he could have been. That's the whole story. I think if he had just played those two sports, he'd be a fascinating figure, but I don't think he'd be an icon. I think he's an icon in a way for the brevity of it all.
00:52:42
Speaker
Absolutely. Well, it's like, you know, we were talking about Marinus earlier and getting beyond the mythology. But with Bo, it's like he it is the mythology that makes makes him so fascinating. And so maybe it's like you almost don't want to get through the mythology because that would that would ruin how we remember Bo Jackson. Yeah. And also like, again, I tell the story about him hitting a ball so high that he was a third by the time it popped up. Right.
00:53:13
Speaker
if we had TikTok back then or cell phones or whatever, maybe it was just, maybe the wind took it and the ball went over the fence and then came back and he was running a third, but the umpire gave him as a ground road double and the umpire gave him third accidentally. Like, we don't know that. Like that's kind of the beauty of it all. You know, like we don't see it. So we tell stories and we tell tall tales and did Babe Ruth really have a pointed shot? Did Earl Marigot really grab a quarter off the top of the backboard?
00:53:41
Speaker
We don't know. And it's kind of fun that way. You know, I, Tom Flores, the coach of the Raiders, tell a story about Bo running a 4-1-9 then a 4-1-7 on grass in pads. Now I had people verify that, but can I guarantee you with a hundred percent certainty that he ran a 4-1-7 on grass and pads after running a 4-1-9 seconds earlier? No. Do I think it happened? Yeah, but that's part of the mystique.
00:54:07
Speaker
And I just got a couple more things for you, Jeff, and I'll let you get on with the rest of your media onslaught. This one's just more of like a writing advice type question, and I was in that same interview with, well, the same quote from Lee Child. They were interviewing Lee and his son Andrew, who kind of co-write their books.
00:54:25
Speaker
they were asked about their relationship about some of the best writing advice they've received and you know Lee said something but Andrew said something that was more or less you know basically the best advice you can follow is just your own experience in doing it and you know and then following too much advice is actually debilitating such as my interpretation of it and as someone who teaches and someone who no doubt
00:54:50
Speaker
or people solicit advice from you just based on your success. What is your relationship to offering it and maybe even receiving it yourself? I'm fine with it. I don't know. I honestly, I'm not, I'm almost the worst writer for this podcast in many ways because I'm not a
00:55:12
Speaker
I'm not one of those writers who's analyzing everything about writing. I have a friend who I love but who refers to what we do as a craft and I recoil every time I hear that. Hemingway was a craftsman. I'm a bricklayer. I'm not like, oh, the blah, blah, blah of writing and the key blah, blah, blah. I know it's hard.
00:55:34
Speaker
I know it drains me. I know it beats the shit out of me. And I know I'm so preposterously fortunate that I get to do this for a living. Like, it's a joke. My life is a joke. So, I don't even have a great answer because I'm not that guy.
00:55:47
Speaker
Very nice. And as Jeff, as I always like to bring these conversations down for a landing, I love asking guests, like you just for a recommendation of some kind for the listeners out there and like it can be anything from a brand of socks you're into or brand of coffee or a fanny pack. So it's like whatever is exciting you these days, see if you have a recommendation for the listeners. I'm going to give you a recommendation because I have this right in front of me. This is a thing to do. Okay. Is that all right? Nice. Oh, I love it.
00:56:13
Speaker
Yeah. I have since 1996 kept diaries. I've kept very vigorous diaries. Now sometimes I take a month off and I get back to it, but I've kept diaries, diaries, diaries, diaries. And I just started my 25th diary. And when I'm like on the toilet or bored or brushing my teeth or whatever, I'll pull out an old diary and I'll read about the birth of my son. I read about 9-11. I read about some day in July of 2012 when I mowed the law and I cut my foot.
00:56:39
Speaker
And I just find that we forget 99% of the things we do in life and diaries allow us not to. And I cannot recommend strongly enough, like times a million to keep a diary. It's a life-changing experience. And it also gives you something, hopefully, if they can read my handwriting to pass down to your kids and grandkids and maybe even great grandkids after you're gone. So I'm used on the diary front.
00:57:04
Speaker
That's awesome. Yeah, I've kept one since 97. Wow, really? Yeah. We're the two. Yeah. Because usually you don't find them out. I'm not being, I hope this isn't a sexist. You don't find that many men who are diary keepers compared to women. I mean, many more women in diaries than men. That might be cultural in some way, but good for you, man. It's a way to go. Yeah. It started because my buddy did the luge of all things and he would go to Europe. He was actually pretty good. So he would go to Europe with the junior national team. And I started, I called it the O'Mara Chronicles.
00:57:33
Speaker
And I was just keeping notes of what was happening during the day while he was away, and I mailed it to him. And he read it, and he got a kick out of it, and he sent it back. And then I just kept going at that point, because I was like, oh, this is kind of cool to keep a log of what's been happening. And that's just evolved over the years. And unfortunately, what happened one time when my wife and I moved out to Oregon, we had to ship a bunch of stuff from the East Coast.
00:57:59
Speaker
And FedEx spilled a bunch of shit on one of the boxes with all my journals, and they lost one of them. So I lost from 2008 to 2009 that journal in there. Fortunately, that was the only one. So I have every other one, but yeah, FedEx.
00:58:19
Speaker
They sullied many and lost one, which was a pretty sad day. I'll tell you one thing I do. That sucks, by the way. That totally sucks. I'd be furious and probably never use FedEx again. But I'm in New York City now, right? I swear to God, I'm not. Is it true? I'll walk around the city and I see a sticker on a pole that has some sort of something about it. I'll peel the sticker off the pole, just like a telephone pole.
00:58:45
Speaker
and put in my diary later and you have like these time period pieces. Maybe it's an ad, maybe it's an internet thing, maybe it's a candidate running for office. I like adding those to my diary so there's some texture and stuff to look at besides just my writing.
00:58:57
Speaker
That's awesome. I'll tape in receipts from a cool bakery I went to. All that stuff is just a reporter's documentation of what's going on. As Marinus says, get the documents. These are little documents of your life. My wife didn't like that I took the band-aids after I got COVID shot and taped them in the diary. That crosses the line. I shave my head every now and then, I'll take some gray hair, tape it in the diary. Just weird stuff.
00:59:25
Speaker
That's awesome. Well, very nice. Well, Jeff, man, what a great book. I had so much fun reading it and reliving Beau's life and it was just amazing to talk to you about it and how you go about the work. So thanks so much for the time and thanks for the book. It was amazing. My pleasure, man. Thank you so much for having me on.
00:59:44
Speaker
Hey, thanks CnF'ers. Thanks to the great Jeff Perlman. He's at Jeff Perlman on Twitter and at Jeff underscore Perlman on Instagram. Name of the book again is The Last Folk Hero, The Life and Myth of Bo Jackson and is published by Mariner.
01:00:00
Speaker
Hope you had a chance to check out that Remembering Matt Tell Us episode from last week. You don't necessarily have to listen to the re-upped interview portion, but the audio obituary, which is about 20 minutes long, features Ben Montgomery, Kim Cross, Michael Graff, Mike Sager, and Glenn Stout. They speak of Matt and of the legacy he left behind. Big loss for the CNF and community, but
01:00:25
Speaker
Did our little part here to try to remember Matt and what he stood for. All right, so I'm still in New Jersey. Going to be here for another full week and then another full week of driving to get back to what we consider our true home in Oregon. I've been recording on my little minor league microphone here, but it does okay. We'll call it a AAA microphone, just waiting to get called up. It's decent.
01:00:53
Speaker
I bet if I didn't even draw attention to it you wouldn't even know. Dealing with the moms and the dementia and the selling of her house to pay for her care yada yada yada. But while I was visiting her she had to be transported to the hospital because her kidneys were failing.
01:01:10
Speaker
Not like, holy shit, get her there in 10 minutes or she's gonna die, but it was just like, yeah, she needs the care that an emergency room and then a weekend stay at a nice hospital can provide. She needed fluids, some meds, but they didn't get the memo that she needs Xanax to be level and semi-normal and certainly not on edge.
01:01:33
Speaker
So, naturally, she slapped a nurse, pinched a nurse in the face, and was refusing her meds. Awesome. She thought that my sister was trying to poison her with meds, because eventually she wasn't doing anything with nurses, and nurses were like, maybe my sister, maybe you can do it.
01:01:58
Speaker
And then my mom was saying, I'm going to go down to the pharmacy and I'm going to talk to the pharmacist about this. You can't just take anything that they give you. You can't just trust all these doctors. And for one, I haven't even seen a doctor to which we're like, you've seen a doctor several times. These nurses are here all the time. She's like, I haven't seen any nurse. And like she was just here and you just have to be calm and patient and you can't reason. You just have to.
01:02:26
Speaker
You just have to kind of bear the brunt of it.
01:02:30
Speaker
This went on for something like an hour on one day and then another day it was all together, another whole other thing. But in this one particular day, eventually I came out of the bullpen and I told her that, frankly, kidneys clean your blood and if your blood doesn't get clean, you will die. And eventually she did take her Xanax and then some other meds that were helping with her kidneys.
01:02:57
Speaker
I think that was it then oh yes as we're both my both being my sister and I were just sitting in the room you know forever watching the Hallmark Channel and then my mom looks me in the eye points her finger at me and starts to creepily whistle silent night he's going like
01:03:27
Speaker
I looked over at my sister wide eyed like, what the fuck is going on? But then she kept whistling the entire song before laying down like without blinking.
01:03:40
Speaker
fundamentally ruin that song for me and if I by extension have ruined that song for you I'm very very sorry I will never hear it again without picturing my mother performing it like she was a possessed demon a little while after that she mouthed to me so she lied down my sister wasn't paying attention she was in the corner and then my mom looks at me and mouths she didn't say it out loud
01:04:05
Speaker
But I quote, nevertheless, she pointed over to my sister and she goes, she's a fucking bitch. I said, oh no, mom, that's not true. You don't mean that. She eventually fell asleep and was singing Silent Night in her dreams. We soon left. I told my sister what my mom mouthed and she was just like, come on.
01:04:29
Speaker
and our separate cars on our separate trips to separate living quarters, we both had ourselves what we like to consider a good cry. All this shit is real tough to witness, man. So that's why we put these little parting shots at the end of the show, because who would keep listening if they were at the beginning? Anyway, stay wild, seeing efforts, and if you can't do, interview. See ya!
01:05:09
Speaker
you