The Inner Zen of a Sports Writer
It's not everyday that you get an opportunity to meet a sportswriter, but today I did. I was invited to this writers conference down in Westchester Community College for the day, where I took a seminar on sports writing, hosted by Jeff Pearlman. Pearlman used to write for Sports Illustrated and now writes for espn.com. His claim to fame came in 1999 when he wrote an article on John Rocker for SI. The article sparked controversy because it revealed Rocker to be a racist, homophobic, crazed man.
Pearlman had a bunch of great stories about his experiences as a journalist. In order to write the article, he basically had to follow Rocker around and get as much out of him as he could. At one point, when Pearlman was in Rocker's car, Rocker was on the phone with his girlfriend, hung up, and then dialed the number of his other girlfriend. He also spit into a tollbooth when the guard wouldn't go up, and he called the Disney mascots "faggots." Suffice to say, Rocker is not your typical person.
Pearlman wrote two books that are pretty well-known: The Bad Guys Won and Love Me and Hate Me: Barry Bonds and the Making of an Antihero. At the end of the seminar, Pearlman offered a deal: if you answer a trivia question correctly, you get a free book. His first question: What is Barry Bonds' middle name? Too many people knew it was LaMarr, so he asked a second question: Name three players on the 1983 Yankees. I raised my hand and almost choked, but I finally came up with three players: Righetti, Winfield , and Murcer. I totally blanked out on Mattingly and Guidry, but I still won a copy of the Bonds book.
I gave him the link to the blog, so hopefully he'll check us out. In the meantime, the Yankees only have two weeks until Opening Day, so we're preparing a bunch of cool things to celebrate the start of the new season. Stay tuned.
