A Front-Row Seat with the Sportswriters Who Sat There
Sit down with host Todd Jones and other sportswriters who knew the greatest athletes and coaches, and experienced first-hand some of the biggest sports moments in the past 50 years. They’ll share stories behind the stories -- some they’ve only told to each other.
Charles Pierce part 1: “They Rolled the Champagne out of the Red Sox’s Locker Room.”

Charles Pierce takes time away from his job as lead political writer for Esquire to reflect on his nearly 50 years of experiences as a sportswriter. In this part 1 of a 2-part episode, Pierce recalls covering Bill Buckner’s error, Ben Johnson’s drug scandal at the Seoul Olympics, and the rollicking days of Big East basketball in the 1980s. He also provides insight into Larry Bird as a person and basketball icon. Oh, and we discuss bars, too. Sportswriters understand.
Part 2 of my conversation with Pierce will be published on Nov. 8 and include more stories about Bird and discussion about Tiger Woods, Tom Brady, Bill Belichick, the NBA of the 1980s and early ’90s, the National Sports Daily, and other tales.
Pierce has been the lead political writer for Esquire since September 2011. He worked nine years for the Boston Globe as a reporter, sports columnist and staff writer for that paper’s Sunday magazine starting in 2002. He had previously been a sports columnist for the Boston Herald. Pierce left the Globe in 2011 to join Esquire fulltime after having been a contributing writer for that magazine since 1997. He was a feature writer and columnist for The National Sports Daily in 1990 and ’91. His articles on sports and politics have also appeared in GQ, Sports Illustrated, the New York Times Magazine, the Los Angeles Times Magazine, The Nation, The Atlantic American Prospect, Slate, the Chicago Tribune, ESPN’s Grantland, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, and the Media Matters blog Altercation. Pierce has made appearances on ESPN’s “Around the Horn” and often co-hosted NESN’s “Globe 10.0” with Bob Ryan. Pierce was a longtime regular panelist on the NPR quiz show “Wait Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me!” and has made appearances on the NPR program “Only A Game.” The Massachusetts native began his journalism career in 1976 at his hometown Worcester Magazine before moving to Boston two years later to write for the alternative publication, The Phoenix.
In 2018, the United States Basketball Writers Association inducted Pierce into its Hall of Fame. He won a National Headliners Aware in 2004 for his Boston Globe Magazine piece, “Deconstructing Ted.” He has been named a finalist for the Associated Press Sports Editors’ award for best column writing on several occasions. Many of his stories have been featured in the annual compilation, “Best American Sportswriting.” Pierce was a 1996 National Magazine Award finalist for his piece on Alzheimer’s disease, “In the Country of My Disease.” He was awarded third place in the Pro Basketball Writers Association’s Dan S. Blumenthal Memorial Writing Contest.
Pierce is the author of four books:
· “Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue In The Land Of The Free”
· “Moving the Chains: Tom Brady and the Pursuit of Everything”
· “Sports Guy: In Search of Corkball, Warroad Hockey, Hooters Golf, Tiger Woods, and the Big, Big Game”
· “Hard to Forget: An Alzheimer’s Story”
Pierce earned a degree in journalism from Marquette University in 1975. His alma mater honored him with a “2021 Alumni National Award – Byline Award,” to which Pierce responded: “I’d like to think that my getting this award might encourage students who don’t feel like they fit in and show them that this profession still values ferocious eccentricity.”
Here’s a link to Pierce’s political blog for Esquire: https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/
You can follow him on X at: @CharlesPPierce
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Charles Pierce episode 1 edited transcript (from 2 tapings)
Todd Jones (00:02):
Charlie, thanks for walking into this den of iniquity known as Press Box Access.
Charles Pierce (00:07):
Well, I'm looking around at the iniquity and it's all obviously very high tone high-end iniquity. So, I'm feeling very comfortable here.
Todd Jones (00:16):
Well, it's too bad we couldn't go to the Fours up in Boston. We could have had Johnny the bartender set us up.
Charles Pierce (00:20):
Well, you couldn't go to the Fours even if you were here. The Fours was a COVID casualty. Almost every one of my favorite writers ... postgame bistros is gone. The original Runyon in New York, the Lions Head in New York, obviously the Fours down the street — although I'm more of a Sullivan's Tap guy myself, that got the old-line bar about a half a block towards the garden from the Fours.
Charles Pierce (00:53):
And I remember once the Beanpot, the annual college hockey tournament with the Four Boston schools lost its liquor license because it had served an underage drinker, I don't know, I guess the year before. And it lost its liquor license for one night of the tournament.
Charles Pierce (01:14):
So, I get off the subway and I'm walking into the garden, and I look over and there's a line around the corner to get into Sullivan's. And so, I got to see what's up this, so I walk in there, I go into Sully's, and I asked the old bartender there, when the last time they had a line to get into Sullivan's was, and he said, "VJ Day."
Todd Jones (01:37):
Well, it's funny that sports writers to start off talking about bars, you'd get the schedule for whatever team you were covering, and you would look at the cities and they're like, "Oh, Indianapolis, slippery new to win."
Charles Pierce (01:49):
Oh, absolutely. One of the great impromptu moments at the Noodle, whoever was playing there that night somebody in the audience, some inebriate was yelling for them to play Hendricks, "Play Hendricks, play Hendricks."
Charles Pierce (02:08):
So, finally the guitar player (and luckily I can do prop humor) says, "Okay, fine, we're going to do the only Hendricks song we know, but we need your help." And I'm sitting there going, "What, Hendricks didn't do a sing-along. What are we going to do? Sing along to, Are You Experienced." But the guy says, "No, no, I want everyone to pick up their beer bottles."
Charles Pierce (02:31):
And so, we all picked up our beer bottles. I don't have a beer bottle, I have a Gatorade bottle here. But he says, "This is what I want you to do." And so, it was jammed, I think a final Four, as I recall, it might have been one of the Olympic trials or something they had over there. Anyway, so he said, "Pick out your bottles and do this."
Charles Pierce (02:55):
And of course, everybody went on their beer bottles and the guitar player went ... That's all we know, I'm sorry.
Todd Jones (03:06):
Well, I'm sure anyone who goes to Hendricks appreciated it.
Charles Pierce (03:07):
Noodle and I are all friends.
Todd Jones (05:08):
Well, Charlie, I've been a student of your writing all these years, and I appreciate your time joining us. I know you're very busy on the front lines of our insane political world with your Esquire blog and your articles.
Todd Jones (05:18):
But obviously, we're going to talk about your career in sports writing, because those who know you as a political writer, you've actually spent bulk of your career doing a lot of sports in different magazines - Boston Herald, Boston Globe, the old Boston Phoenix back there, the alternative paper back in the seventies.
Todd Jones (05:38):
So, I was just curious real quick, when you think about all these years in sports writing, how has that informed your work in the blood sport of politics?
Charles Pierce (05:49):
Well, I mean, I think, if you do sports writing correctly, and certainly a lot of the people you've already had on this particular podcast have done it correctly, you really did get to cover almost everything that was important in society as a whole.
Charles Pierce (06:11):
You had to deal with race. You had to deal with the influence of mass media in its many forms from the invasion of television into everything, to the invasion of the internet into everything. You had to deal with poverty. You had to deal with the kind of descent from political activism into eighties and nineties, greed is good. And now, back into activism again.
Charles Pierce (06:47):
So, if you cover sports and you keep your eyes open and you pick the right stories, you're doing all of that anyway, you've got an invaluable window into everything else that's going on in society.
Charles Pierce (07:00):
And I can talk to a congressman from inner city in Cleveland because I went to the Huff to cover basketball years ago, or I went to Bed-Stuy or Roxbury in Boston to write about athletes. So, as I said, if you do it right, and I like to think I did, and as I said, a lot of people you've had on the show here have done - then you're essentially covering America, which is what political writing should all be about anyway.
Todd Jones (07:43):
I always took the tack that I was a sports writer, but I'm really writing about people, and people as they try to exist in this contrived environment of sports and the changes and the culture.
Charles Pierce (07:53):
Yeah, I mean, you're dealing with people who are living quite unnatural lives, and they're doing it in the full view of the public. And I always say one of the reasons I enjoyed writing sports was to watch sports. You don't get to see live demonstrations of human excellence in that many areas these days. And not only that, it's one of the only genres of entertainment that we have, that's a true mystery.
Charles Pierce (08:29):
I mean, there are thousands of productions of Hamlet all over the world every year. There's actually a number, somebody counted once, I can't remember what it is. And it's Hamlet in modern dress, Hamlet in drag, Hamlet in traditional costumes. But the fact is, in all those performances of Hamlet, Hamlet always dies at the end.
Charles Pierce (08:54):
Sports is entertainment, where generally, you don't know the outcome. And to me, that's wonderfully entertaining. And you know-
Todd Jones (09:07):
How many times did you sit there and you go, "Oh my God, I can't believe that." And then you got to write it.
Charles Pierce (09:11):
Well, that's just it.
Todd Jones (09:26):
Alright, well, let's talk about this night. It's 1986, Game 6, it's the Buckner game. Everybody knows the Buckner game. By the way, I have friends who tell me that Mookie beats out the hit, that he beats out the roller, even if Buckner fields at-
Charles Pierce (09:43):
Well, god knows, I don't even want to know how many times I watched the replay in my life, but I don't think Stanley gets the first base. I think whoever told you that is probably right. The real problem in that game was that they left ... Calvin Schiraldi was out there in a state of catatonic shock, and they left him in there for about three batters too long. But throwing incredibly straight and incredibly slow fastballs.
Todd Jones (10:15):
Slow balls.
Charles Pierce (10:16):
Yeah, I mean, it was a miserable night, first of all. It was October and it was raw.
Todd Jones (10:26):
Were you in the auxiliary press box?
Charles Pierce (10:28):
I was in the aux box in what apparently was ordinarily a luxury box down the third base line.
Todd Jones (10:38):
There wasn't much luxury at Chase Stadium, I know that.
Charles Pierce (10:41):
Well, Fenway, you're in the Right Field Bleachers, you're not even indoors.
Todd Jones (10:49):
I sat in Fenway out there for a World series, and I had the fans around me chant "Media sucks, media sucks," throughout the game as I was trying to write-
Charles Pierce (10:57):
Yeah, the Right Field Bleachers in Fenway were a lot nicer when it was just gambling.
Todd Jones (11:01):
Alright, well, let's get back to Shay. The Red Sox were on the verge of ending this curse, and there's a slow rower to build — you already have things written.
Charles Pierce (11:09):
It goes long before that, there's a prologue to the story. In the American League Championship series in Game 5, the Red Sox are losing to the Angels. And a friend of mine, he's leaving the business whenever the baseball season ends.
Charles Pierce (11:44):
And so, the Red Sox are down a couple of runs, and they're running out of chances, and the Angels are going to win the series. And my friend starts unloading his overloaded briefcase that he probably hasn't cleaned out since 1981. And he's throwing away notebooks and media guides and essentially-
Todd Jones (12:11):
Harry up pens.
Charles Pierce (12:12):
He's throwing stuff up in the air. He's already written his lead about how the Red Sox lost the series to the Angels. And then Dave Henderson comes up, they get to one strike away just as they eventually would in the series, the Angels do.
Charles Pierce (12:29):
And then Dave Henderson hits the ball in the center field, and the Red Sox eventually lose the game. And my friend starts digging around in the trash can to get all his stuff back, alright. So, I've already seen what can happen if you get too cocky with two outs and one strike away.
Charles Pierce (12:48):
So, I'm up in my aux box, and I've written at least the top of my Red Sox beat the curse sidebar. And the other side-
Todd Jones (13:01):
This is for the Boston Herald?
Charles Pierce (13:03):
Right, this is for the Boston Herald, exactly. And before I started writing columns there. And so, I had done that. And my other sidebar was going to be Dave Henderson, because if you recall, he hit a home run in extra innings that put the Red Sox ahead. And then Marty Barrett got an RBI, and they were up by two going into the fateful Buckner inning.
Charles Pierce (13:25):
And so, I was going to write about Dave Henderson in this extraordinarily … I had a reasonably good relationship with him. And he's had this incredible postseason where they're going to be putting a statue to him, up in outside of Fenway because he won the Angel series for them. And now, he's won the World Series for them.
Charles Pierce (13:48):
So, I got everything planned out, I've written a huge chunk of Dave Henderson bio. I've got my beat the curse lead in probably five paragraphs. It's all done, and then it all happens. And I wind up going down to the bowels of the stadium as you do in big events like that just so you get in the locker room, you won't get tied up in the elevator for an hour and a half or whatever.
Charles Pierce (14:19):
And so, I'm in the hallway outside the Mets or the Red Sox clubhouse and stuff starts happening outside, and you start hearing cheering, and I can't remember who it was had a transistor radio and they had it onto the broadcast of the game.
Todd Jones (14:42):
Wait a minute. Transistor radio in 1986, I love it.
Charles Pierce (14:47):
Yeah. I don't know if he expecting we were going to have a power outage or something, and we're all going to need a crystal set or something, but he had it. I can't remember who it was, and we were listening to it. And then all of a sudden, this battalion of riot police comes tromping down at double quick down the passageway towards the field. And now, we're figuring, "Hey, what the hell's going on out there?"
Charles Pierce (15:17):
And that was the way I heard the Stanley wild pitch and the Mookie grounder. And as I was listening to the radio, some attendants came in and rolled the champagne out of the Red Sox locker room, and then collected all the World Championship t-shirts and put them in a bag and rolled them to the Red Sox.
Todd Jones (15:50):
So, you didn't actually see it, the ball go through Buckner’s-
Charles Pierce (15:51):
No, I didn't see. In fact, I didn't see the Stanley wild pitch that set up the eventual disaster for a week after the World Series was over. Because the next day was a rain out.
Charles Pierce (16:32):
The next day was supposed to be Game 7, it got rained out. So, we had an entire day to do nothing but think about Game 6. So, we all went to Runyon to think about it. And then just as a sidelight, my friend Mike Madden, the late Mike Madden who used to ride for the Boston Globe — Madden was a real horse player.
Charles Pierce (16:54):
And so, we were watching the races from, I think, aqueduct at that point. And Randy Galloway, that scam from Texas decided we should all start gambling on the races we were watching. And it took Madden and I half an hour to realize that they don't run on Sunday in New York. And that Galloway had been posting us on Saturday's races and had taken us for ... I don't even know how much money at that point. So, that-
Todd Jones (17:30):
Take us back to Shay.
Charles Pierce (17:33):
Yeah, that livened up the rainout day.
Todd Jones (17:51):
So, take us back to Shay. You're down there outside the clubhouse, the Red Sox below this game in horrific fashion, and now you have to go into the Boston Clubhouse. What was it like in there?
Charles Pierce (18:07):
Oh, well, it was in shock. Like I said, Calvin Schiraldi was catatonic. I mean, I approached the guy, I sat there with about five other people, and then eventually, about 40 other people around him. And he was staring at something 25 or 30 feet away that only he could see.
Charles Pierce (18:37):
And then I don't know who it was, went over and told Oil Can Boyd, whose turn it would be to pitch in the seventh game that Bruce Hurst was going to pitch in the seventh game, and Oil Can went into hysterics. I mean, sobbing and screaming and crying. And so, it was extraordinarily strange. And eventually, I wound up leaving the locker room and going to the interview room.
Todd Jones (19:11):
Did Buckner talk at his locker?
Charles Pierce (19:14):
Boy, eventually, yeah. I know they didn't bring him out to the interview room. They brought the managers and I think Marty Barrett came out. Because Marty Barrett or Bruce Hurst — probably Marty Barrett would've been the MVP of that series; hit 414 in the World Series and would've hit one of the insurance runs in what would've been the deciding game.
Charles Pierce (20:10):
At this point, I was robotic. And the only thing I had in my mind was that I had to get upstairs and somehow make sense out of this in 15 minutes. And so, once again, I went to the elevator, went upstairs, sat down, erased all of my previous work, and just turned off most of the circuitry in my brain. And just wrote, wrote, wrote, wrote, wrote, wrote, wrote, wrote, wrote. And then the lights went out in the stadium, and I didn't even notice.
Charles Pierce (20:45):
The Red Sox traveling secretary, somebody had hung around in Shay after the game, and thrown a bottle into the darkness and hit the Red Sox traveling secretary in the head. I didn't even know that. I didn't know that for another week.
Charles Pierce (21:01):
Because I was so focused on getting words into the little telegram and praying that the telegram would work. And to this day, I don't remember what I wrote. I really don't. I mean, I assume it was coherent and people seemed to enjoy it. But I've never been on complete automatic pilot like that before or since.
Charles Pierce (21:28):
I mean, it was appalling and wonderful, and an experience I've dined out on ever since then. But boy, at the moment, it was something I would never want to go through again. I mean, I didn't know if at this point, if I was writing in like Sanskrit, I had no idea. I was just putting words into the machine.
Todd Jones (21:49):
Well, if I was there, I just would've gone with it was a dark, stormy night and said, screw it, this is what you're getting.
Charles Pierce (21:58):
I toyed with the idea of using for my lead, and they were all hit by a train in the end. But I decided that my desk wouldn't understand it, which is a problem I had with the desk at the Herald very often.
Todd Jones (22:15):
Well, those are the kind of crazy moments that, like you said, in sports, you just don't know what's going to happen. And you have had those moments all over the world. Sports and politics can be crazy. It can also take you to places that you never thought you would go to at some point.
Todd Jones (22:31):
And in 1988, you were at the Summer Olympics in Seoul, Korea. And something else crazy happened there. First of all, I have heard, sources have told me that the writer across the hall from you in the media village was my longtime dear friend and mentor, Tom Archdeacon.
Charles Pierce (22:54):
Yeah, he was across the hall. Arch is a force of nature, as you know. I mean, he's a large hairy Sasquatch looking beast and a wonderful guy. And he and I and the late Shelby Strother, who is probably my best friend in the business, and God knows, died a couple of decades.
Todd Jones (23:21):
1991, fabulous writer.
Charles Pierce (23:26):
A couple of decades too soon. Anyway, we were hanging together through most of the Olympics. Anyway, we lived in what was then the Press Village, which were these apartments that they'd thrown up, I think in about 11 minutes. But they were planning on renting out as soon as the Olympics were over.
Charles Pierce (23:47):
So, one morning, we had these wonderful Korean housemates who would come up and clean the rooms and stuff when we were out working. And so, it was right towards the end of the games when you didn't have to get up real early anymore because there wasn't a lot going on except for track and field.
Charles Pierce (24:12):
And I was up and getting something for breakfast, and I heard this ungodly scream out in the hallway. And I went to there, I didn't know what it was. I went to the door, and I opened the door. And what happened was that the little Korean housemaid had been confronted at the door by Tom Archdeacon wearing only his boxer shorts.
Charles Pierce (24:38):
And I don't think she'd ever quite seen anything like Tom having been rousted out of bed wearing only his boxer shorts.
Todd Jones (24:48):
Alright, I can't wait to talk to Tom.
Charles Pierce (24:52):
But she was incredibly terrified.
Todd Jones (24:54):
Alright, well, let's get back to sports. At those games, the crazy thing that happened, obviously, is Ben Johnson. Ben Johnson defeats Carl Lewis in their showdown 100 meters. Ben, whose eyes looked 40 shades of yellow sets the world record, is the big story. And you think you're done. You think you're finished.
Charles Pierce (25:16):
Well, no. First of all, and you can ask anybody who was in the stadium. And I mean, Tony Kornheiser and I have discussed this. Regardless of what happened subsequently, it was one of the greatest moments I had covering sports.
Todd Jones (25:37):
Why do you say that?
Charles Pierce (25:39):
Everything about it was perfect. I mean, the time of day, the importance of the event, the way the light was falling I mean, everything was like ... If you were filming a sports movie, this is what you would've filmed. It was extraordinary. The stadium was just absolutely electric. And then they fired the gun, and Ben Johnson comes out of it like this bull. I mean, first of all, the guy looked like Emmett Smith.
Charles Pierce (26:13):
And as you said, his eyes were an inhuman color. And he blazes through, beats Carl Lewis, the world record falls. It was just a great thing. So, we all go crazy about this wonderful thing we just saw. And then I went out with Arch and Shelby to Itaewon, which is the bistro and shopping center that sprung up in Seoul mainly at the time when it opened to service the American military presence there, but is now an open air, back an aisle.
Charles Pierce (26:54):
So, we stay out until I don't even know when. And I get to bed, and I just fall into bed, boom. And I get a phone call after about ... I swear, I got 20 minutes of sleep, and I wake up and I've got John Henry and his hammer working behind my eyes, and it's my boss from Boston.
Charles Pierce (27:22):
And he says, "You got to get on the ..." and of course, the international dateline being what it is, I was on deadline at four o'clock in the morning. Because it was 11 o'clock at night back in Boston. So, he calls me and says, "You got to get down there, something's going on with Ben Johnson."
Charles Pierce (27:47):
So, I get up somehow, I throw on the clothes that I had taken off 20 minutes before, get on the media bus, which takes me down to the big media center. And I'm feeling awful. And I feel awful until I walk in and I see a table full of the Canadian guys.
Todd Jones (28:10):
Because Johnson's from Canada.
Charles Pierce (28:13):
Yeah, I instantly feel better because they obviously feel worse. They have many of the same problems I have. Plus, they have to cover their country's Black Sox scandal in the next 15 minutes. And half of them are running out to the airport and buying tickets to Toronto in the hopes to be on the same airplane as Ben Johnson, as he scoots out of town.
Charles Pierce (28:37):
And the Olympics people are trying to make sense out of everything. And there's a press conference where nobody knows anything except that he flunked the drug test, and they're trying not to tell you what he took.
Charles Pierce (28:52):
And the representatives from the Caribbean nations, The Bahamas, Barbados, Jamaica are all up there trying desperately to disprove the notion that all of their countries are basically open-air pharmacies for track and field athletes.
Charles Pierce (29:16):
And we all had about 15 minutes to put this whole thing together, and there were only two of us at the Olympics for the Herald. The Boston Globe had sent seven people, which is what they did usually at the Olympics, and there were only two of us.
Charles Pierce (29:33):
So, my colleague, the great Frank DeLapa, he went out to the airport, and I stayed around Media Central. And then I wrote, and I realized that given the time differential, I was done for that day, and the sun wasn't even up in Korea yet.
Todd Jones (29:55):
Nice.
Charles Pierce (29:57):
But to this day, I will forever treasure the 20 minutes to a half an hour before that race when everything was still this incredible atmosphere and zeitgeist in the stadium. I mean, it was extraordinary.
Todd Jones (30:24):
Well, to go from one extreme to the other within not even 24 hours and you throw in a trip to the bars with Shelby Strother and Tom Archdeacon, that's quite a day.
Charles Pierce (30:34):
Well, that was a rich full day. Yes, that was an adult portion. That was definitely an adult dose. I wound up buying a suit coat in Itaewon. I don't remember when, but I've only worn it twice because it's incredibly garish.
Charles Pierce (31:01):
The prospect of writing on these bizarre deadlines, it took some getting used to. You were on deadline back in Boston from about six in the morning, and then you couldn't file afternoon in Seoul except for the next day.
Todd Jones (31:24):
I remember being at the Sydney Olympics and I was at the Columbus dispatch, and you couldn't figure out what day it was. Like you said, you're writing a running, swimming story in the morning. It's like, "What is going on here? Because I don't even know if it's Tuesday or Wednesday or what the date is." And this is really before the internet had taken over everything.
Todd Jones (31:45):
So, the challenge was just to figure out what the hell time is it, and what angle am I trying to take here?
Charles Pierce (31:52):
Yeah. And by the way, running on a swimming race is not easy because there's nothing going on. And the only-
Todd Jones (31:59):
Well, I'll tell you this-
Charles Pierce (32:00):
And whatever else is going on, is going on underwater.
Todd Jones (32:03):
Hey, I once wrote a running hammer throw story at the U.S. Track and Field Championships in Sacramento. My local guy was throwing the hammer. Now, you write three versions of hammer throw on deadline, try that.
Charles Pierce (32:17):
Well, I mean, unless the guy loses control of the hammer and goes into the stands like an automobile tire or Indian kills about eight people, you really got to look. Because basically, it's a big guy grunting. And then this thing flying through the air and taking a world size divot out of the ground.
Todd Jones (32:39):
I think my second edition lead was EBIT.
Charles Pierce (32:48):
How did your local guy do? Did he win?
Todd Jones (32:51):
He did not, but he did fairly well. And I must say it was a life experience. I got to write running hammer throw, and that's what this is all about.
And you started doing it in the seventies, and you add up this mosaic of experiences and places and people, and it's such a rich tapestry, not just for a writer, but for a person. And yours started back at Marquette University in the 1970s.
Todd Jones (33:21):
And I think one of the things that I always tried to take this tact with writing was be curious, nothing's new. I mean, it's happened before if you have a sense of history. And I think George Reedy at Marquette University drummed that into your head too. He was the dean of the School of Journalism there.
Charles Pierce (33:43):
Yeah, he was the dean of the school, he's the reason I did not become the one lawyer that broke the camel's back because I was, let us say an obstreperous student. I realized very early on that I walked into the J School writing better than most of my professors did. And I humbled early on to the fact that that was not going to make some of them happy.
Charles Pierce (34:13):
But Reedy was the one who insisted that I … because at that point, right now, the Diederich School of Journalism at Marquette is just a wonder. I'm constantly stunned by the improvement they've made. At the time, when I went to the J School, it had lost its accreditation a year before I got there.
Todd Jones (34:34):
Oh, welcome.
Charles Pierce (34:34):
But Reedy insisted that I — and as such, to get enough credits to graduate, I had to fill up my schedule with other courses. So, Reedy was the one who insisted that I take a lot of history and that I take a lot of — I had to take 12 hours of theology, and I didn't want to sit there and listen to lectures about all these lugubrious Germans in theology.
Charles Pierce (35:09):
But I found a guy who taught scripture history. He taught four courses in scripture history, which would fill my requirements, and I took all of them. He did a course on the Dead Sea Scrolls. He did a course on Gnostics, and by the way, when Dan Brown and Da Vinci Code came along, I was prepared and ready, baby.
Charles Pierce (35:35):
I had studied all this stuff, I knew the gospel of Mary baby. And so, I filled it out that way. And he's the one who impressed upon me that the main thing about making a career in this silly business is to stay curious, to maintain your curiosity.
Charles Pierce (35:56):
And that while very little of what you'll be covering is unique in history, most of it is new, and it's new to your readers, it's new to you. And that stayed with me my whole career, and thank God for George, because I mean it was what sustained me through four years at J School.
Charles Pierce (36:19):
I would've transferred out of journalism, but there's absolutely no way I would ever have transferred out of Marquette. I was having too good a time.
Todd Jones (36:28):
Well, you were there at a great time to be a young sportswriter. Obviously, the Marquette basketball team, the program was being run by the colorful Al McGuire, the Bumblebees, uniforms, the characters.
Charles Pierce (36:41):
My next-door neighbor in the dormitory for two years was Maurice Lucas.
Todd Jones (36:47):
Is that right?
Charles Pierce (36:48):
A great human being, a great guy. And taught me-
Todd Jones (36:53):
Went on to be a very good NBA player, obviously on championship teams.
Charles Pierce (36:57):
Yeah, and he taught me just about everything I know about modern jazz. He had this great record collection and he'd play the Jazz Messengers or Weather Report, or Jako Pastorius. And I didn't know, I mean, I had grown up with my father on big band jazz and Dixieland Jazz, because that's what he listened to.
Charles Pierce (37:22):
And again, I rock and roll too when I developed my own taste. But the first guy, whoever played Miles Davis’s Bitche's Brew for me was Maurice Lucas.
Todd Jones (37:35):
Nice. Alright. Good for Mo.
Charles Pierce (37:40):
I mean, he was gigantic. I mean, he was the biggest human I'd ever seen at that point. But he was a terrific guy and a great neighbor. I mean, things were quiet. I think that the calming presence of certain Native American religious vegetable compounds were involved, but whatever, late at night, he'd put on some Coltrane or McCoy Tyner.
Charles Pierce (38:07):
And the walls were made out of paper mâché at that point. And I'd have Coltrane coming through the walls, putting me asleep at night. And as I said, I fell in love with the school. I fell in love with Milwaukee and the industrial Great Lakes Midwest in general.
Todd Jones (38:28):
Because you had grown up in New England and you grew up a college basketball fan, and that's kind of how you ended up at Marquette, right?
Charles Pierce (38:35):
Well, to this day, and I embarrass Curry Kirkpatrick by saying this; his story that appeared in January of 1971 which was my senior year in high school, called Krazy Kat, the Curious Warriors, which was about the 1970, 71 Marquette team, which was undefeated until they lost to Ohio State in the regionals.
Charles Pierce (39:00):
And in the game, Al McGuire said was the only time he'd ever been screwed without getting kissed. The only game Dean Meminger ever followed out of. Anyway, Curry wrote the story, basically, it was about the undefeated team, but it was about the whole wacky culture of Marquette basketball. And it's what flipped my decision to go to school there.
Charles Pierce (39:26):
Because I wanted to be part of that. I wanted to go to J School, and they had a J School, so that was cool. It was Catholic University, so my parents couldn't complain that much. My judgy uncle was new people there because they'd gone to school together, and I had this wonderful college basketball experience ahead of me, so that convinced me. The last deciding factor in my choice of college was Curry Kirkpatrick's story in Sports Illustrated.
Todd Jones (39:59):
That's great's. The impact of sports writing, think about it. The impact of a sports story.
Charles Pierce (40:07):
The impact of Andre Lagarde Sports Illustrated and with its incredible bench strength of talent with Dan Jenkins and Frank de Ford and Curry. And I text Molly and I'm going to miss somebody, Mark Kram. There are so many sports writers of my generation who went into the field because they wanted a piece of what Sports Illustrated was selling.
Charles Pierce (40:40):
And I think that era of Sports Illustrated changed the whole game. It proved you could write humorous and literate sports writing and make it sell. And I know at least 10 people whom most of the people who watch this podcast will recognize who said that they got started waiting for that Sports Illustrated to come in through the mail slot on Thursdays.
Todd Jones (41:16):
I was wondering-
Charles Pierce (41:16):
I mean, I always tell people that there was a time in my life where I couldn't think of anything better than being in Norman, Oklahoma with Dan Jenkins on a football afternoon.
Charles Pierce (41:27):
And then once as I grew up, I wound up in Norman, Oklahoma on a football afternoon, and I realized that the thing that made being Norman on a football afternoon great, was being there with Dan because he took you there from your suburban home in Massachusetts to all these people he met. But otherwise, Norman's just kind of a college cow town.
Todd Jones (41:51):
Well, that was the key, taking you there as the writer. College basketball is kind of a through line for you when you think about your career. I know you entered the U.S. Basketball Writers Association inducted you into the Hall of Fame in 2018, and you started with Al McGuire as a college student and covered so many final fours and characters. What was it about college basketball that kept you intrigued as a subject to be written about?
Charles Pierce (42:26):
Well, my father and I went to every home Holy Cross football and basketball game from the time I was about eight until I went away to college, so that's where the love really came in. At that time, Holy Cross was playing what passed for national schedule in both sports.
Charles Pierce (42:48):
I mean, I saw Larry Csonka and Floyd Little play for Syracuse. I saw Dave Robinson play for Penn State. They came to Worcester to play Holy Cross. I saw Jimmy Walker play for Providence because they came up to play Holy Cross in basketball.
Todd Jones (43:11):
So, you grew up with the sport?
Charles Pierce (43:12):
I did. And I liked the atmosphere of it was ... I mean, I just liked basketball. I always did. It was something that appealed to both my athletic sensibility. And the best line I think ever written about basketball was written by Jim Carroll, the poet and rockstar.
Charles Pierce (43:41):
And in his time, one of the best basketball players in New York as a high school student, he said, "In basketball, you can correct your mistakes immediately and beautifully and admit air." And I think that's basically what has kept me going back to it.
Todd Jones (44:02):
And as someone like myself who grew up in Kentucky, went to University of Kentucky, I can relate in that I grew up with it. And in the early part of my career, I was fortunate to be a beat writer for college basketball in the city of Cincinnati.
Todd Jones (44:13):
So, I know, looking back at my own career, one of the special things was always the final Four. I was fortunate to cover maybe a dozen of them, but that Saturday double header, the atmosphere, and the feeling, I don't know if that rang true for you too, but if so, what was it about college basketball and especially-
Charles Pierce (44:37):
I mean, that 25 minutes is … and of course, now given the demands of television, that's a terrible deadline too for anybody who's there covering it, because you almost never get to watch the second game, or at least a big portion of it. But yeah, that anticipatory hour … I always try to get to the Saturday double header as early as I can, because I just want to sit there and soak it in. And this is even when I'm not covering it per se.
Charles Pierce (45:14):
But the other thing that really energized my love for college basketball was that I was working at the Boston Herald and taking it on as a beat at the time, the Big East was really exploding. And I had just wonderful coaches and games and athletes to hang with when I started.
Todd Jones (45:44):
Give us an anecdote from those days as a writer who was watching this Big East explode into what it became, what comes to mind when you think about it from your perspective as a journalist?
Charles Pierce (45:56):
Well, what was interesting was that it exploded virtually from nothing. And it exploded full-blown from the mind of Dave Gavitt who saw everything that was going to happen in college basketball about a decade before everyone else did and two decades before it actually happened.
Charles Pierce (46:21):
And the great thing about the Big East was if you called at least prior to it becaming a giant sports enterprise that eventually imploded on itself and reconstituted itself as it is right now, was that you could call any of the coaches and they'd call you right back. You call Dave and he'd call you back in five minutes.
Charles Pierce (46:52):
I mean, there was a fellow feeling, and we weren't homers, but there was a fellow feeling among the people who covered the league, that we were all somehow being hauled along on this enterprise. And as I said, dealing with John Thompson and Lou Carnesecca and Rollie Massimino and Jim Boeheim …
Charles Pierce (47:22):
The four coaches in college basketball that I dealt with in Boston when I started at the Boston Herald were Gary Williams at BC, Jim Calhoun at Northeastern, Rick Pitino and then Mike Jarvis at Boston University. And poor Frank McLaughlin over at Harvard who just ... and we're talking about incredibly ambitious guys, everybody but Frank.
Charles Pierce (47:47):
And I would call each one of the other coaches and they would explain how crazy the other two coaches were. And then I'd call Frank, and he explained to me how crazy everybody was. So, it was a terrific time.
Charles Pierce (48:06):
I mean, Gary was just burning to get up … eventually did to Maryland and Calhoun was burning to get into the Big East because he had pushed Northeastern about as far as it could go. And eventually, did the Connecticut. And you talk about a career explosion, and Jarvis and obviously, Pitino, I don't have to tell you about him.
Charles Pierce (48:31):
And Mike Jarvis was pretty much the same way. So, it was incredibly fertile time to cover college basketball. And the games, some of them were just epic.
Charles Pierce (48:50):
I think of watching Pearl Washington at Syracuse, I was there the day he hit the mid court shot to beat Boston College, that famous video that ESPN has of the late Tom Mees throwing the elbow to keep the people off him. I was under the table after the ball went through, because people came over the table to rush to court.
Charles Pierce (49:15):
I agree Georgetown Syracuse game was a German opera. I mean, it was ... you talk about two teams that really don't like each other, that's a cliche. Those were two teams that really didn't like each other. And I mean, that really energized it, and it's never let go.
Todd Jones (00:00):
Well, let's stay with basketball, but let's go into the pro ranks. You're a Boston guy. Boston Herald, Boston Globe, grew up in New England. When you think of Boston and basketball, the first name that comes to mind is Bill Russell, obviously.
Todd Jones (00:13):
But in your era as a writer, it's Larry Bird. And you wrote one of the great pieces that I remember as a young writer reading, that's the '92 Esquire piece, The Brother From Another Planet, where it really was looking at Bird through the prism of race a little differently than everybody else was looking at the thing between Bird and Magic.
Todd Jones (00:39):
Tell us about your experiences with Larry Bird and what went into that.
Charles Pierce (01:55):
Larry Bird is one of the most fascinating human beings I've ever met in either of my particular journalistic enthusiasms. He's just an interesting human being.
Charles Pierce (02:14):
First of all, and I said this in a lot of different forums, he grew up in southern Indiana, poor and white. In southern Indiana, which was the birthplace number one of the modern Ku Klux Klan.
Charles Pierce (02:30):
And second of all, was a place so marked by white supremacist violence that civil rights pioneer, Jim Farmer wrote, in his book that it was worse than Mississippi, that he found it more dangerous than Mississippi.
Charles Pierce (02:48):
And Larry grew up as, by all indications, completely unmarked by that particular odious current of American culture. He doesn't see race, he never did. And as near as I can tell, he never saw it as a teenager. He certainly never saw it as an adult.
Charles Pierce (03:17):
You talked to Jalen Rose or Reggie Miller about having been coached by him. Jalen Rose says he saved his career. But Larry just, I mean, he didn't see it. It didn't bother him. He hated the whole white hope thing because it was so different. It seemed so far out of his can. It was a dynamic he didn't understand.
Todd Jones (03:46):
Charlie, I think that's why your 1992 Esquire piece, The Brother From Another Planet, left a mark on me because it made me see Bird in a different way. It was using the prism of race, but in a way that shone a light on that topic and Bird much differently than everybody else was kind of-
Charles Pierce (04:05):
Yeah. I mean, he understood the dynamic of people using him for their own nefarious psychological purposes. He understood that. He hated it, but he understood it. He had clearly studied it and thought about it.
Charles Pierce (04:25):
I mean, he thought about it deeply enough to reject it from the bottom of his soul. But he wasn't going to let it touch him, and it never did.
Charles Pierce (04:42):
The interesting thing about Larry was that there were always myths about him. And the outside of what we just talked about, the two presiding myths about Larry Bird were one, that he's not athletic. And that was based solely on running and jumping, which even track and field doesn't see as the summation of athleticism.
Charles Pierce (05:07):
And I've said to this day, that anybody who thinks Larry Bird wasn't athletic, never shook hands with him, because from the elbow to his fingertips, he was one of the greatest athletes I ever saw. The combination of hand-eye combination-
Todd Jones (05:19):
What do you mean by that?
Charles Pierce (05:20):
... and his hands were battered. I mean, he kept breaking his fingers playing softball and stuff. But from the elbow to the fingertips, he was stronger than anybody I ever saw. You can count on the fingers of one hand, the number of times people got a rebound away from him once he latched onto it.
Charles Pierce (05:42):
And the other thing is, the easiest way to end up with an empty wallet at the end of a long evening, is to think Larry Bird is dumb. Larry Bird is a very, very smart man.
Charles Pierce (05:56):
And I tell people all the time, syntax is not intelligence. Unread does not mean unlettered. I mean, excuse me, unlettered does not mean unread. This guy is an extraordinarily intelligent person. And somebody who has taken the lessons he's learned through his own life very much to heart, and has evolved as a human being as much as anybody I've ever seen.
Charles Pierce (06:35):
I am a complete admirer of the person that is Larry Bird. I mean, I think he has built the life he wanted to build in his own way, and he's done it in a way that wasn't destructive to many people.
Charles Pierce (06:54):
There was the whole thing about his daughter that he had when he was young that he had not brought into his life. And that's a real brown spot on the apple.
Charles Pierce (07:02):
But by and large, this is a very highly evolved and very intelligent human being to say nothing of a just another worldly basketball talent. That's beyond a pro.
Charles Pierce (07:14):
One of the great things I used to love was getting the Celtics games early and sitting down, and Larry would come out and shoot with Frank Attano. One of the assistant trainers would fetch the ball, and he would come out.
Charles Pierce (07:26):
First of all, he'd go up to the third level of the old Boston Garden and run laps around the balcony. And then he'd come down and he'd just shoot.
Charles Pierce (07:35):
And it was like watching a soundcheck from a great band. They tell the story about the Watkins Glen Festival, where the Grateful Dead came out and did a soundcheck that went on for like an hour and a half.
Charles Pierce (07:53):
And then the Allman Brothers insisted on doing a soundcheck that went an hour and a half, and then The Band came out and did a soundcheck that last than an hour and a half. And a day before the show, people had already seen a great concert.
Charles Pierce (08:04):
That was like watching Larry. Larry would come out and just he was very, very regimented, he had a very clear program of his pregame shooting, but it was like watching a master at work. I mean, it was like watching a great musician or a great artist.
Charles Pierce (08:22):
And that was one of the things as because I was in the profession, I was blessed enough to be able to see, because the garden wasn't open when he did it. I mean, nobody else was there except us.
Todd Jones (08:37):
So, who's in the building? How many people?
Charles Pierce (08:38):
The Celtic staff is in the building and eventually at some point, the other team shows up, so their staff comes in the building. But there's nobody in the stands really.
Charles Pierce (08:50):
And then he ducks into the locker room and goes through whatever he has to go through, and then he comes out and the building's full, and he starts the game.
Charles Pierce (08:58):
But it's those quiet little moments before the game that I really felt privileged to be around.
-END of the 1st episode-
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