Charles Pierce part 2: “Tiger Woods Tells These Jokes and then it Becomes a Thing.”

Charles Pierce episode 2 edited transcript

Todd Jones (09:07):

When Bird first came out of Indiana State and joined the Celtics, he was thought of somebody who didn't like to talk to the media, quiet.

Todd Jones (09:14):

Did you see a change in him through his career in terms of how he dealt with the media on a day to day scrums?

Charles Pierce (09:21):

Oh yeah. He showed up in town, and he was practically agoraphobic. I mean, he had his house out in Brookline, and he would go to practice and go to his house, go to the game, and go to his house. Get on the bus, go to the airport, fly to the game, fly back, get on the bus, get on the car, go to his house.

Charles Pierce (09:39):

The only time you got to see him outside the basketball court was he would mow his lawn on Saturday, and people would come and park in his neighborhood in Brookline and watch Larry mow his lawn. It was a great spec, and he was fine with it.

Charles Pierce (09:57):

He wouldn't talk to anybody, but he would wave. And people would take his picture and be out there in his little Toro lawnmower mowing his lawn. And I always found that was pretty charming.

Charles Pierce (10:10):

But as he grew and grew and grew and grew, and became more open and began to understand, began to be comfortable and understand his place in the world, he opened up in a lot of ways and revealed himself to be the interesting human being that he is.

Charles Pierce (10:34):

I'll never forget that they played a game right at the end of his career, the night that Magic Johnson had announced he had been diagnosed with HIV and he was visibly shaken.

Charles Pierce (10:52):

He says now, it's the only time he ever stepped on a basketball court and didn't want to play. He's quite open about that.

Charles Pierce (11:00):

And after the game, he talked about the impact that it had on him and if you ever see a video of it, he is legitimately shellshocked.

Charles Pierce (11:12):

And he talked about his father's suicide, which was absolutely persona non grata or not persona, subject non grata, I guess, for almost his entire career.

Charles Pierce (11:29):

I mean, Sports Illustrated in a profile while he was at Indiana State, mentioned that his father had committed suicide. And he didn't speak to Sports Illustrated for 10 years. It wasn't until Jack McCallum brokered a piece somehow, but that was the most tender part of his psyche.

Charles Pierce (11:51):

I mean, his father had literally committed suicide while on the phone with his mother. His father apparently was a Korean war vet who would come home with PTSD before they knew what PTSD was and never quite got over it. And called his mother and shot himself while he was on the phone with her.

Charles Pierce (12:12):

Which is by the way, why he and Pete Maravich got ... Pete Maravich brief period with the Celtics. He and Bird became very close because Pete Maravich's mother had done the same thing. And Larry said he still wouldn't say the word suicide, but he said, "I haven't felt like this since the day my dad passed away."

Charles Pierce (12:36):

And I was floored because he volunteered it. Nobody asked him can you compare this to the day your father died? He just volunteered it in front of everybody.

Charles Pierce (12:45):

And then everybody, a lot of the people who didn't know the story were running around asking Jackie MacMullan or me, or Bob Ryan, what the deal was.

Charles Pierce (12:55):

And for him to open up on that, that was a measure of how he had grown as a caring, sensitive, intelligent human being over the course of his public life. And I found that particular moment incredibly moving.

Todd Jones (13:15):

Well, he obviously, grew as a person, and you witnessed that. You also, witnessed the growth of pro basketball itself because of him and Magic and Jordan comes in after them.

Todd Jones (13:28):

As a writer, a journalist in that era, access was different. You talked about that when you talked about the Big East.

Todd Jones (13:35):

What was it like covering the NBA in those days?

Charles Pierce (13:37):

I was very lucky in a sense in that every spring, my job at The Herald, before I started writing columns, was to write sidebars from the visitor's locker room.

Charles Pierce (13:47):

So, not only did I get to know the Celtics because we were traveling with them, really, but I got to know the Hawks of that era and the Dominique Wilkins Hawks, obviously the Lakers of that era, the Bucks of that era with Sidney Moncrief, the Rockets when Elie and Ralph Sampson were there, and the Pistons right in the late '80s with one of my favorite human beings of all time, Vinnie Johnson.

Todd Jones (14:23):

Oh, wait a minute. Why do you say that? I'm curious.

Charles Pierce (14:24):

Oh, I love Vinnie. Vinnie was the most basic human being I ever met. First of all, I loved the way he played. You get off the bench firing and you put the ball in the air and you don't stop till you come out of the game. And second of all, I loved-

Todd Jones (14:40):

The microwave.

Charles Pierce (14:41):

... his like physique. The giant chest and stuff. And he always looked to me ... Shelby Strother was the first one to make this comparison. He always said Vinnie looked like he should be like an African diplomat.

Charles Pierce (14:55):

He should have had whatever those things that fly with or whatever representing Liberia at the UN. But I used to love to talk to Vinnie.

Charles Pierce (15:05):

And of course, this was also the Pistons, not only of Isaiah Thomas, but of John Salley, and of the incredibly reclusive Dennis Rodman when he was a youngster. So, I mean, I got to know the other teams pretty well.

Charles Pierce (15:19):

John Salley used to still, I haven't seen him in a long time, but he would give me grief for my Hawaiian shirts every time. "Hey, nice shirt, pal." And we'd talk.

Charles Pierce (15:30):

Salley had grown up with his mother as a Jehovah's Witness, and he had been brought door to door by her. That's where he learned how to be as glib and funny as he was.

Charles Pierce (15:39):

But Vinnie would tell stories about growing up in Brooklyn, and he used to ride his bike to the various playgrounds to play pickup games when he was growing up.

Charles Pierce (15:56):

And he didn't want his bike to get stolen. So, he used to put his bike under his arm and crawl up the cyclone fence and padlock it to the top of the fence, and then climb back down and play all afternoon. And then climb back up and unlock his bike and then bring it back down and ride it home.

Charles Pierce (16:12):

Vinnie bought a red, I want to say it's a Ferrari, I'm probably wrong, but he bought a red sports car, and he liked it so much he bought an identical one. And he was open and honest and funny and real. And I used to look forward to Piston series because I could get to talk to Vinnie.

Todd Jones (16:40):

In general, Charlie, in those days at The Herald and then at The National Sports Daily, and the NBA at that point, in general, how did the players, coaches get along with writers? Was there as much, like you said, the fellowship, you're not a homer, but there was like you're all part of something.

Charles Pierce (17:01):

Yeah, we all knew each other. I mean, the Celtics, Lakers days, we all knew we'd see each other in April. And the traveling caravan of National NBA writers, and then those of us from Boston, and LA, and Detroit, and Atlanta, and Milwaukee to an extent in Philadelphia, a little bit at the beginning of the '80s.

Charles Pierce (17:23):

We all knew we have this rolling convention every spring. I'd obviously, be at home for the Bostons, then we'd all move to the Airport Marriott in Los Angeles or some Marriott out in the suburbs in Detroit or the Omni in Atlanta.

Charles Pierce (17:49):

And it just became a regularly scheduled thing. And we all bonded together. And then the NBA people obviously bonded together. And we would have these two little tribes that got along splendidly, by and large, that would gather every spring or for the All-Star game, obviously, but then every spring for seven games or five games or whatever.

Charles Pierce (18:23):

And it was something you came to rely on. It was like going to spring training. I mean, except you were going to a championship series.

Charles Pierce (18:32):

And I mean, at the hospitality suite at the NBA finals, everybody showed up. I mean, I remember drinking a beer with Stephen Stills and I didn't even recognize him until like five minutes into the conversation.

Charles Pierce (18:50):

I remember that-

Todd Jones (18:52):

Really?

Charles Pierce (18:52):

... David Sterne came to the hospitality suite in LA one time. No, honest to God. And he sat down and Jan Hubbard from Dallas and Fran Lineberry from Houston organized, they ordered a bunch of those little one Marriott pizzas that you could get.

Charles Pierce (19:09):

And they put a jar on the bar, the hospitality suite, and inaugurated the first annual hit the commissioner with a pizza for a buck contest for NBA charities.

Charles Pierce (19:21):

And we started winging those pizzas into the wall over David Sterne's head. And finally, David Sterne looked around and said, "I'm getting the hell out of here." And left.

Charles Pierce (19:34):

I mean, and that's just the way things were.

Todd Jones (19:39):

I always felt at times, like I was in a circus. I was traveling around with these people from different cities. We'd be at these events, and it was like we were part of this rollicking circus.

Charles Pierce (19:49):

Oh, absolutely. I mean, that was what I missed the most when I got out of daily sports writing, was not being part of this band of gypsy misfits, who wandered from event to event and had the same concerns and had the same joys and the same sorrows.

Charles Pierce (20:13):

And I remember I went to The National and before I went, the late Alan Greenberg, who was then writing a column in Hartford, always offered the job I eventually took to write for the main event, the long form piece in the middle of the paper everyday.

Charles Pierce (20:42):

He was offered that job and he turned it down specifically because he didn't want to leave the traveling circus. And that's the only reason I wound up at The National, is because I took the job he turned down. Somebody had, and I think it was Alex Wolfe, boosted me to Rob Fleder who was doing the hiring for that section.

Charles Pierce (21:09):

And at that point, I wanted to get out of The Herald because I wanted to break nationally, and it just wasn't happening.

Todd Jones (21:19):

We've had a couple writers talking about The National, the Sports Daily that beloved in the tribe lasted a couple years, Frank Deford's creation. When you think of The National in your time there, what comes to your mind first?

Charles Pierce (21:33):

Well, I mean, I knew Johnette from the Pistons games. I mean, we got to be really good friends, seeing each other every spring in the playoffs. She was part of the annual circus around the NBA playoffs. So, I knew Johnette. I had met Peter Richmond before, and of course I knew Ian Thomson because he was across town.

Charles Pierce (21:57):

And I know I'm repeating what Johnette told you because I listened to the podcast with her. It was the best job I ever had, and I spent the entire time I had it, knowing that it was no possible way it could last. Because the business plan, it was written by marmosets.

Charles Pierce (22:24):

I mean, I remember Mike Lupica left in the spring of 1991. We folded in June. I think he left in March or April. And he was writing the Dot, dot, dot column. The old Jimmy Cannon three-dot bullet column.

Charles Pierce (22:43):

And I had done a couple of those for the Harold and Frank called me up and he said, "We want you to take over this spot."

Charles Pierce (22:52):

And I said to Frank, I said, "Okay, I'm willing to do it, but I'm going to need more money." And he said, "Well, how much more money do you need?" And I can't even remember. I quoted him a figure that if you heard it, you would think I was on mushrooms.

Charles Pierce (23:12):

And Frank said, "Alright, I'll get right on it." And I swear to God, if I had asked for a Mercedes (2) AZL pulled by snow white unicorns, one would've been in my driveway the next morning.

Charles Pierce (23:29):

And I got off the phone and I turned to my wife, and I said, "I got good news. We're making X amount more money this year." And I said, "I got bad news. There's no way this thing survives the next year."

Todd Jones (23:44):

Well, I actually have a few copies of The National in my attic above me as we speak. And I was early in my career at that point and didn't have the fortune to join that circus. But it has a sweet spot in my own memory, just as a reader and as somebody I aspired to be like, the writers there.

Todd Jones (24:08):

It didn't last. It didn't last.

Charles Pierce (24:12):

It couldn't possibly last.

Todd Jones (24:13):

But it was good moment.

Charles Pierce (24:13):

Emilio Azcarraga, the Mexican billionaire who was behind it, the Mexican Rupert Murdoch, he was into it for a draw of 150 million over 10 years. We went through it in eight months.

Todd Jones (24:29):

He should have taken a look at some of those expense accounts.

Charles Pierce (24:32):

Well, it wasn't just the expense accounts. It was the bizarre stuff they spent it on. I think Johnette talked about the guy's wife who was involved in one of the sweetheart deals they sold.

Charles Pierce (24:45):

They put us together with some sort of piggyback Mabel telephone system where you had to enter what appeared to be a nuclear launch code to make any kind of phone call.

Charles Pierce (25:02):

And at one point, (and this was another thing that was set up by some friend of a friend) the entire system collapsed all at once. Nobody could make a phone call. I mean, everybody tried to use the card and it was just dead. It was like somebody had absconded with the money, and I'm not entirely sure that isn't what happened.

Charles Pierce (25:26):

I was in a hotel in Denver, and I called Rob Fleder, my editor, and I said, "Look, until I get an actual Bel telephone credit card to make business calls with, I am not leaving this hotel. And I'm eating nothing but room service three days a week."

Charles Pierce (25:48):

I mean, it was that kind of stuff all the time. The legendary story that one day out of the blue, the Mexican accountant showed up, and just absolutely beheaded the business and executive staff outside of Frank.

Charles Pierce (26:14):

And supposedly, they had to pry open the desk of one of the financial guys, and in his bottom drawer were unpaid invoices totaling over a million bucks. Honest to God, he was doing the same thing that we all did with our phone bills in like college. If I don't see it, I don't have to pay it. Bang.

Todd Jones (26:39):

That's right. That's right.

Charles Pierce (26:41):

And then this was right around the time I took over that column. So, it was right around the time, March or April, and they were going to close it then. But they bought themselves three or four months and then realized that the money pit was just never going to close, and they folded.

Charles Pierce (26:59):

But again, for the year and a half it took us to spend $150 million of Emilio's money, it was just-

Todd Jones (27:11):

We're just the guys to do it.

Charles Pierce (27:13):

Right. This is a completely doomed and futile gesture on our part, and we're just the guys to do it. And Johnette says it all the time. She says, "Find another billionaire, we're all on board again."

Todd Jones (27:26):

Oh, yeah. Right, right. That's right. Sign up the circus again and let's roll.

Charles Pierce (27:30):

The serious problem, of course, with it was its attempt … I mean, not the serious problem, but one of the serious problems was this attempt to be both local and national. It should have just been a national newspaper, because unlike ...

Charles Pierce (27:47):

The comparison they all made was because Italy and France had national sports newspapers. Yeah, but Italy and France didn't have local newspapers with sports sections. So, they would've been better off just making it a national paper and not trying to parachute somebody into Chicago to be a sports columnist, or Denver, or something.

Charles Pierce (28:13):

And I think that was a fundamental, I think it was make a mistake made of grand ambition, but a mistake.

Charles Pierce (28:21):

Anyway, I'll tell you what, it was a lot of fun. And I met David Granger, who I worked with through the next 30 years both at GQ and at Esquire.

Charles Pierce (28:35):

And I mean, I got out of it what I meant to get out of it, which was to break nationally and have a career beyond going to Bruins games every Wednesday night.

Todd Jones (28:49):

Well, let's go from there because you did break nationally and you end up writing for everybody, ESPN's Grantland, New York Times Magazine, Sports Illustrated, Los Angeles Times Magazine, on and on and on. And you wrote books.

Todd Jones (29:02):

And one of the books that you wrote was Moving the Chains: Tom Brady and the Pursuit of Everything. And I'm just really curious about this book. I enjoyed it when it came out. It came out when Brady was still pretty young. He was like 28, kind of in the prime.

Charles Pierce (29:18):

Yeah. I caught him at the moment immediately before he became Tom Brady brand name.

Todd Jones (29:28):

That's what I'm really curious about. So, at that time, as a writer, what was Brady like? How did you get inside with him? And then of course, later when you become a brand, you're not doing that. What was it like to deal with Brady at that time?

Charles Pierce (29:48):

Well, he was an interesting guy, and he remains an interesting guy to me. Although there's certain elements of the empire that I find just a little bit weird, but-

Todd Jones (30:08):

Mystifying.

Charles Pierce (30:11):

He spent six months trying to decide whether he was going to cooperate with the project, and then told me he wasn't going to.

Charles Pierce (30:22):

However, he let everybody else in his life up to that point, talk to me. His parents, his coaches, his athletic counselor at Michigan, Lloyd Carr, everybody in his life. He could have stopped the whole thing and didn't do it.

Charles Pierce (30:48):

And I think he did that because he was curious as to how this was going to all play out. And I found that approach very, very fascinating. I had 125-minute sit down with him, and that was only because Sports Illustrated had named him Sportsman of the Year, the year I was following him around.

Todd Jones (31:10):

Yeah. And you wrote the cover piece for that. Yeah, 2005.

Charles Pierce (31:12):

So, I did the book, and it came out and I obviously, I made sure he got a copy. And sometime about four or five months after it came out, I heard this loud kind of thump as the mail came through the door.

Charles Pierce (31:37):

And I got a four-page handwritten letter from him thanking me for the book and talking about how it did bring up some painful memories. And it brought up some stuff he tried very hard to forget about his time at Michigan and so forth. But he was grateful for me to do it. And the rest is history.

Charles Pierce (32:03):

So, I think watching him gingerly approach the status that he eventually achieved was a good time in his life for an extended examination of who he was, because all of the temptations were suddenly there. And by and large-

Todd Jones (32:29):

Why do you think he thanked you?

Charles Pierce (32:32):

I think he thanked me because he sincerely enjoyed the project. And I think, by and large, he probably liked the way he came off in the book, but I think he really respected the work. And God knows, I respect anybody who still writes longhand.

Charles Pierce (32:59):

I mean, and obviously since then, we haven't exactly — we've, I don't say grown apart because that sounds like he was my prom date, but we just haven't had any reason to connect.

Todd Jones (33:19):

Well, I think he respected the work because he respected the work. And what I mean by that is he did the work that he has to do to do his job, to be great, so he sees somebody else doing the work and whatever, if you're a writer and you're doing the work, he sees that. You think that's true?

Charles Pierce (33:36):

I'd like to think that was true. That's a very nice thought. I hadn't really dwelled on that, but it's entirely possible. He does think that way. He's very much aware of everything he had to do to get where he was.

Charles Pierce (33:58):

And I had this long conversation with his quarterback coach, Tom, who had developed him from high school, and he talked about how Brady had just been an absolute beast on the drills over and over and over again.

Charles Pierce (34:25):

He put the dots on the ground to work on his footwork. And throwing next to a brick wall so he wouldn't throw sidearm, because if he threw sidearms, he'd scrape his knuckles. So, he'd throw overhand. That's how he developed his motion.

Charles Pierce (34:44):

In fact, in a parking lot of a Denny's in California, Tom gave me a brief lesson on how to throw a football. He said he taught me the reverse C. You got to have the reverse C and you got to throw it from behind your ear.

Charles Pierce (35:03):

And damn if I didn't wing one at him, I was very impressed by this guy's ability to teach people, to teach schmoes how to be quarterbacks.

Todd Jones (35:12):

Well, I think he’d teach them right how to throw a football.

Charles Pierce (35:13):

That's exactly right. That's the way I think.

Todd Jones (35:15):

When you think about Brady and the success he had, what drove him? Because most athletes, or most people in general, if you get to a certain level of success, you get satisfied. We all like to be soft and comfortable. He didn't seem to ever find that spot, why?

Charles Pierce (35:39):

I honestly think the experience at Michigan marked him forever, where he kept getting put off. He had the incredibly dumb experiment where he'd play the first quarter and Drew Henson would play the second quarter. And whoever Lloyd Carr thought had done better, would play the rest of the game, which was just bizarre. It just shouldn't have happened.

Charles Pierce (36:06):

But then again, they would never have recruited Drew Henson without that deal.

Charles Pierce (36:10):

But Brady knew how much better than Henson he was. Everybody on the team knew that. There was no question that Brady was the unanimous choice in that locker room if they had taken a vote.

Charles Pierce (36:24):

And I don't think he ever lost that particular chip on his shoulder. And I think he used it quite obviously, and quite admirably to become what he became.

Todd Jones (36:41):

At the risk of generalizing, from your experiences with athletes, the greatest and the coaches, do you think that chip on the shoulder is common?

Charles Pierce (36:51):

Oh, common. Absolutely. I mean, I've got one. I mean, I spent all those years at the Herald realizing that I was essentially, or feeling anyway, that I wasn't at a place where my talent was being fully recognized and fully engaged and involved.

Charles Pierce (37:11):

And I had a chip on my shoulder when I got to The National, there's no question. I felt I had something to prove. I complained all the time when I couldn't go up the ladder, when I kept getting turned down at Sports Illustrated because Mark Mulvoy didn't like me, and what I'd written in the Harold. And I get turned down for other newspaper jobs because I had a reputation as being difficult.

Charles Pierce (37:40):

Which by the way, I'm not. I mean, I'm a pretty good guy to edit it. I mean, I don't fight for every comma. And in a way, that comes from The Herald where I gradually adopted the philosophy of this doesn't have to be the best thing I ever wrote. It just has to be the best thing I wrote in the 25 minutes I had to write. And then you put it out-

Todd Jones (38:13):

Yeah. You make peace with that, right.

Charles Pierce (38:14):

… and you suck it up and you go get them tomorrow. And that's been very helpful. But yeah, I mean, I understand it because I had the chip on my shoulder too, and it drove me.

Todd Jones (38:31):

So, you saw it in some of the athletes and coaches that you wrote about, you could relate. And maybe relating personally helped you then contextualize what they were going through or dealing with or what drove you.

Charles Pierce (38:45):

Well, yeah, I mean, I don't look upon people having the chip as a pejorative. I think obviously, if you treat the rest of humanity with disrespect, then it's not a good thing to have the chip. But in terms of driving you professionally, I never thought of that as a drawback to assessing any athlete or any coach.

Todd Jones (39:17):

Alright. You mentioned coach, is it Belichick or is it Brady?

Charles Pierce (39:24):

I think gun to my head, I'd say it was Brady. But it was Belichick who saw him. It was Belichick who rolled the dice benching a multimillion dollar allegedly franchise quarterback for a six-round pick from Michigan, whom nobody had ever heard of.

Charles Pierce (39:54):

So, it was Belichick who put the defenses together that allowed them to win that first Super Bowl. It was Belichick who put the teams together for him. And he hasn't done a very good job of putting a team together for Mac Jones.

Charles Pierce (40:10):

I think by and large it was Brady. But it was Belichick who was the architect. And I think the difference at this point in the long view of history is so infinitesimal that it's almost not worth talking about.

Todd Jones (40:33):

Yeah, it's chicken and egg. It's the combination.

Charles Pierce (40:36):

I mean, it was a very happy horses for courses kind of collision of an ideal coach, finding his ideal quarterback. A defensive coach, by and large, finding his ideal quarterback.

Todd Jones (40:53):

How did you deal with the Belichick Press conferences?

Charles Pierce (40:57):

I didn't. I sat there and listened to the game. If the guy's going to say nothing, you have nothing to report. It's an easy job.

Charles Pierce (41:05):

But I'll tell you, when I was doing the Brady book, I put in for an interview, a sit down with Belichick, and he said, "I won't do it till after the season." And who knew that?

Charles Pierce (41:21):

Luckily, that was the year they lost to Denver in the first round of the playoffs. So, the season you go through the Super Bowl, and I wasn't getting one of my crucial interviews at February with an April book deadline.

Charles Pierce (41:34):

But he gave me four hours in his office to talk about Brady. Didn't Dodge one question. Disagreed with me on a lot of them on my perceptions and my interpretations of what happened. But never no commented me.

Charles Pierce (41:55):

Talked football, and boy, can that guy talked football. Oh my God, if you're lucky enough to get him started on both the history of the game and the minutiae of the game, you will get a PhD before you stand up.

Todd Jones (42:16):

Well, that's so funny to hear. Like you can't shut Belichick up.

Charles Pierce (42:19):

Well, once a year, he takes the beat writers and whoever other media people are there into the film room and he does a seminar breaking down film about what he wants to teach you about football.

Todd Jones (42:38):

Well, Paul Brown used to do that.

Charles Pierce (42:39):

Yeah, and I think that Bill Belichick does it because he knows Paul Brown does it because he is probably one of the five NFL coaches who knows who Paul Brown is.

Todd Jones (42:48):

Yeah, it's sad. The modern father of pro football.

Charles Pierce (42:54):

Yeah. But still, I mean, the guy in LA or the guy in Philadelphia knows who Paul Brown is.

Todd Jones (43:02):

By the way, the Browns fired both Paul Brown and Bill Belichick. Think about that.

Charles Pierce (43:05):

Well, I mean, Belichick had to live through that, and if he ever gets started on, and he's very funny about the last year in Cleveland in the last home game where they were ripping the seats out of Municipal Stadium and throwing them on the field.

Todd Jones (43:24):

Sitting there and Belichick-

Charles Pierce (43:25):

Apparently, the level of hatred for Art Modell in that last season when everybody knew he was moving the team to Baltimore, apparently that was just unprecedented in NFL. At least Belichick thinks so.

Todd Jones (43:38):

But again, the idea of Belichick going on and on and being effusive with writers is almost comical to think about because we've all been around him in press conference settings when he is basically like trying to talk to a pillar of salt.

Todd Jones (43:52):

So, when he's engaging though, that has to be quite a memory for you as a journalist.

Charles Pierce (43:59):

Well, I just remember that the one day that he did the film breakdown, the year I was following the team. He brought us in, and he ran a bunch of films from his days as defensive coordinator for the Giants and films of games they had played against the 49ers, which was that was the clash of the Titans back in the day.

Charles Pierce (44:23):

And he ran one play, and he kept running it over and over again. It was 49ers had the ball on about the Giants, I don't know, 15, 20 yard line.

Charles Pierce (44:35):

And he kept running it, and he kept saying, "Look, here's so and so. And he is top pointing the Giants defense because he's doing exactly right. And this guy over here is doing exactly the way we coached him. And look at this, this is exactly the way we did it."

Charles Pierce (44:51):

And then he ran the film to the end. And Jerry Rice makes this a spectacular catch at the flag in the end zone for a touchdown. And Belichick shuts off the tape and shuts off the film and says, "You know, sometimes you do everything right and the son of a just makes a play."

Todd Jones (45:08):

Yeah, exactly.

Charles Pierce (45:10):

And I thought to myself, "I mean, you talk about a guy who has his job and the right perspective." Because I'm sure after that, Parcells was all over him for letting Rice get open or something. And he kept saying to us, "Look, he's doing exactly what we said. That's the way you guard Jerry Rice."

Charles Pierce (45:31):

And Rice turns around and jumps nine feet in the air and catches the ball behind his head and comes down with it and keeps his feet in balance.

Todd Jones (45:40):

Well, that's the thing that's always amazing. When I used to think about like you're watching, say the NBA and it's the 12th guy on the bench. He's still among a couple hundred guys that are the best at what they're doing right now on the planet.

Todd Jones (45:55):

So, you forget that these are all the special ones, but among those, there's the one of the one.

Charles Pierce (46:01):

Yeah, I mean, I remember Charlie Weis, again, while I was doing the Brady book, I went out to Notre Dame, he was at Notre Dame at the time and talked to him at length about his experiences with Brady. And he said something to me that I'll never forget.

Charles Pierce (46:19):

He said, "On Planet Earth, on any given day, there are about 12 people who can adequately play quarterback at the NFL level." And he said, "There are three quarterbacks on every one of the 30 NFL teams. That means that there are 70 guys drawing a paycheck who can't play quarterback in the NFL."

Todd Jones (46:47):

Well, I think some people thought Charlie was drawing a paycheck too at Notre Dame.

Charles Pierce (46:52):

Well, this was before all that happened.

Charles Pierce (46:56):

But yeah, I mean, if you've ever played in a pickup game with anybody who played any kind, any level of high level college or even pro ball, of any sport, it's the level of talent is almost unimaginable.

Charles Pierce (47:22):

I mean, I had a friend of mine get in a pickup game someplace in East Boston with Gerald Henderson, the old Celtic guard. And Henderson was kind of going half speed or whatever.

Charles Pierce (47:38):

And somebody said something to him about not D-ing up or something. And Henderson just went bananas for the next 15 minutes, stole the ball from everybody, dunked every shot, and then walked out.

Charles Pierce (47:54):

And this was a guy who was the best, a journeyman player in the NBA. Won a ring with the Celtics because in '84, he was made a big steal against the Lakers that saved the game in the garden in the playoffs. But otherwise, was not somebody you'd ever think about as an NBA player.

Charles Pierce (48:15):

And he was on another planet compared to the guys in this gym, most of whom had played in high school or some of whom had played in college and stuff. And it's astonishing.

Todd Jones (48:29):

Again, among the journeymen, there is the person who is above all of them.

Todd Jones (48:39):

And I want to wrap this up. You've been so kind with your time, but I want to talk about the one of the one, and that's Tiger Woods.

Todd Jones (48:49):

And obviously, you might be as well known for any sports article is the profile you did about Tiger and GQ in 1997. Tiger Woods, the Man. Amen. We've talked a lot about access and being able to talk to people.

Todd Jones (49:08):

As a journalist, I've always been curious about how that story came together. It's the infamous story where Tiger's telling a bunch of jokes, and this is right after his father Earl Woods was basically acting like John the Baptist, talking about him in the SI Sportsman of the Year story written by the incredible Gary Smith.

Todd Jones (49:31):

But you end up doing this story about Tiger when he was so young, and it really blew everybody's minds about this young brand made human.

Todd Jones (49:43):

How did that come about, Charlie, when you look back on it as a writer?

Charles Pierce (49:47):

We'll go back into the negotiations at GQ. And later at Esquire, we had a wonderful woman named Lisa Hintelmann. And her job, she used to work for Pat Kingsley, a very big Hollywood press agent. And Lisa's job was to wrangle celebrities for our covers. And she had to do the negotiating. It's a shame, she was at GQ-

Todd Jones (50:18):

So, she was at GQ for this particular article? Okay.

Charles Pierce (50:21):

But this was at GQ. And her job was to get people for the cover.

Charles Pierce (50:26):

And Lisa was one of my best friends, she swears to this day that negotiating with Tiger's people was the worst negotiating experience she ever had.

Todd Jones (50:39):

And he was with IMG at-

Charles Pierce (50:40):

The hardest, toughest, biggest pain in the negotiations she ever had. They were planning on one big magazine splash in anticipation of the Masters in '97, which is 51.

Charles Pierce (50:58):

And it came down to us and the Atlantic, and I can't remember who was going to write the story for the Atlantic. But they decided, and I don't know whether Tiger was involved in this decision or not, that we were going to do it.

Charles Pierce (51:15):

So, Lisa goes and starts to negotiate the photo shoot and the amount of time I would have with him. And basically, what you do with anybody, you're going to put on the cover of a glossy national magazine.

Charles Pierce (51:32):

And she negotiated me a specific two-and-a-half-hour block, which would include the photo shoot. And I didn't know anything, what do I know? I said, "Sure, fine." And it would include the ride from his house to and from the photo shoot. That was my interview time. And then it would include anything that happened at the photo shoot.

Todd Jones (52:01):

Yeah, I think it was at his mother's house and then you went to Long Beach or something.

Charles Pierce (52:04):

Yeah, he just won at LaCosta that weekend. I had gone out to watch him win that tournament and follow him around and stuff.

Charles Pierce (52:15):

And so, yeah, I was staying at the Airport Marriott in LA because Los Angeles gives me the willies and I've never been comfortable in Los Angeles. I'm kind of like Woody Allen and Annie Hall. I want to like drive bumper cars.

Charles Pierce (52:31):

But had a limo pick me up. And I chatted up Vincent, the limo driver all the way down. We picked him up and then the photo shoot was in downtown LA in a warehouse across the street from an auto detailing store.

Charles Pierce (52:50):

And so, we went in, and I did my interview with him coming back up and I was basically biographical and how does it feel to be Tiger Woods blah, blah blah.

Charles Pierce (53:04):

And so, I'm sitting in the photo shoot, which was part of my time, which Lisa had left a court of blood on the floor negotiating. And so, he starts telling the jokes.

Charles Pierce (53:15):

And I'm pretty amazed because I know that when I was 23 or 24, my idea of small talk with a group of adults I'd never met was not to tell dirty jokes, but here, horses for courses. And I sat-

Todd Jones (53:33):

Yeah, he's 21 years at the time.

Charles Pierce (53:35):

Well, when I was 21, I wasn't telling dirty jokes to grownups I didn't know.

Charles Pierce (53:38):

Anyway, so, I'm sitting down thinking this is fairly remarkable, so I'm writing them down. And he looks up at me at one point and says, "Hey, don't write any of this down." And I look back at him and I said, "Too late."

Charles Pierce (53:53):

And I don't know if he thought I was kidding or not, but I wasn't kidding. This was part of my time. Anything that happens in my two and a half hour harshly negotiated block is mine to use.

Charles Pierce (54:11):

So, the photo shoot gets done and we get back in the car and we're going to go back to Long Beach or wherever, and he starts talking to Vincent and talking about whether or not he thinks that women follow black athletes around because they think black athletes have big penises.

Charles Pierce (54:31):

And I'm sitting there with my notebook out writing it down, Vincent's trying to stay on the road and not drive into a tree being asked these questions.

Charles Pierce (54:41):

And then so, we finish up, we say goodbye. He goes back in the house, Vincent takes me back to the Marriott. I sit in the Marriott bar and drink a couple of beers and start putting my notes together. And then I go back to Massachusetts and go down to my writing office in the basement and write the story.

Charles Pierce (55:04):

I mean, this was like almost like automatic writing. I wrote the Tiger Woods story in two and a half hours when I stopped for-

Todd Jones (55:14):

Really?

Charles Pierce (55:14):

Yeah, it was easy. It just flowed. And nothing like that has ever happened with me again. I don't know.

Todd Jones (55:22):

Why was it easy?

Charles Pierce (55:23):

I tend, when I write, to think in blocks of paragraphs anyway, I don't think of sentence by sentence. I see blocks of paragraphs. And that's just the way my mind works.

Charles Pierce (55:36):

And this went off like clockwork and I sent it in, and it ran virtually untouched. And then all hell broke loose. He wins the Masters, first of all, so all hell runs loose. But I mean, that was-

Todd Jones (55:56):

Yeah, because it came out in the March edition.

Charles Pierce (55:59):

No, the April edition. It came out in March, but it was the April edition.

Todd Jones (56:02):

April edition of GQ. So, yeah, the month he wins the Masters, your article comes out.

Charles Pierce (56:09):

And nothing happens for a while. It comes out and then he wins the Masters. So, that just obliterates everything. And I figure, "Oh man, I'm home free. Nothing's going to happen. It's not going to become a thing."

Charles Pierce (56:26):

And then Fuzzy Zoeller runs his mouth and then gets disciplined. And then the story becomes how come Fuzzy gets disciplined and Tiger tells these jokes and isn't, and then it becomes a thing.

Charles Pierce (56:43):

Then I'm getting deluged with interview requests and bad emails and rudimentary emails at the time, but then it happens.

Todd Jones (56:59):

So, what was that like for you personally as a journalist when all of a sudden, you're in the eye of the storm?

Charles Pierce (57:04):

It's an awkward place for people in our business to be, but in some ways, it's kind of helpful to have that kind of comeuppance. You get a little taste of what you can do to somebody else's life if you do this badly, and I don't think I did this badly. But you get to know what it's like to be on the other side of the hoard.

Charles Pierce (57:32):

And I remember Earl went on Charlie Rose and accused me of wiretapping the limo driver. And Charlie Rose picked up a copy of the magazine and showed it to Earl and said, "I haven't read this, and I never will." And he throws the magazine down on the table in a huff.

Charles Pierce (57:56):

And the late Art Cooper, God bless him, the editor of GQ sent him a box of copies of the magazine saying if he wanted to make sure that if Charlie ever wanted to read it, he would have a copy handy, wherever he was.

Todd Jones (58:13):

Well, Earl is one thing. What about Tiger? What was his response to you from that article?

Charles Pierce (58:18):

Tiger and I have never spoken since the story came out. I know he wasn't happy with it. I mean, he said some things. I think he basically went along with the whole ...

Charles Pierce (58:30):

I know IMG felt betrayed that they had somehow, I was obligated to go along with the program or something. And screw IMG, I don't care if they are the Popes agent. They're basically lamprey and Tiger was the shark. I didn't give a damn.

Charles Pierce (58:53):

But I can't remember if he ... he didn't speak out on it very much. And we just never ... I didn't cover a lot of golf, so I wasn't around. I did cover him at the PGA up in Rochester in 2013, and I know he didn't play well, and I know he saw me because I was in the crowd around him after his round, but nothing happened.

Charles Pierce (59:20):

And when everything went bad on that memorable Thanksgiving, I got a whole bunch of phone calls asking me to be on various TV shows to talk about my career as the Tiger Whisperer. And I begged off.

Charles Pierce (59:40):

I mean, it had become a very messy family saga, and I certainly didn't want to be the go-to guy on Tiger Woods's sex life. That wasn't the point of my story before. And I couldn't deal with it.

Todd Jones (01:00:00):

Charlie, how do you look back on that GQ article 26 years later?

Charles Pierce (01:00:06):

I think it was a good piece of work. I think it fulfilled most of what interested me about where he was as a person. And in a way, it was a template for the Brady book because he was on the brink of what would come afterwards, just as Brady was when I wrote the book.

Charles Pierce (01:00:31):

I mean, it was more imminent in Tiger's case because he'd already won a whole bunch of tournaments and he would go on the month the magazine came out, to win the Masters.

Charles Pierce (01:00:41):

But I mean, I think it gave the reader an insight that the reader might not have had and that it did so in an entertaining fashion. And that's really all you can ask, at least for me, from a magazine profile.

Todd Jones (01:01:01):

Right. Well, you've done that throughout your career in so many pieces in sports, and obviously now, in politics, and I know I have my own Charlie Pierce clip file. I still have a paper clip file.

Todd Jones (01:01:13):

My wife thinks I need like to take all these papers down in a basement and just get rid of them. It's like a fire hazard. I have a file cabinet like J. Edgar Hoover.

Charles Pierce (01:01:23):

I don't have a lot. That's interesting. My wife, who's also a journalist, has clip files. I don't have them. I mean, outside of the fact that it appeared in an anthology of my stuff, I don't know that I have a copy of the Tiger Woods piece from the magazine.

Todd Jones (01:01:40):

Oh, I'll go downstairs and get it. If you want one, I'll mail it to you.

Charles Pierce (01:01:42):

That's okay. Thanks. I'm sure I do, but I don't know where it is.

Todd Jones (01:01:50):

Well, this has been a real thrill for me. I've long been an admirer of your-.

Charles Pierce (01:01:55):

I'll tell you what, Todd, I love this project. I mean, I think you're really doing God's work with it because there's so many people that I was just happy to hear from them again.

Todd Jones (01:02:07):

Well, thank you. And what I'm trying to do is history. Capture what was it like to do that job at that time? And it's been a lot of fun. The conversations that we used to have in that circus, now we're letting other people sit with that.

Charles Pierce (01:02:20):

And I admire, by the way, your backdrop of credentials. I've always longed to do that. I haven't done it. I have all my credentials, but they're all in a box.

Todd Jones (01:02:30):

Well, we've got people sitting with us. I do want to point out one time at a Final Four in the media room, I think we were in Indie, I was sitting next to my good buddy Jerry Tipton-

Charles Pierce (01:02:41):

Oh, I love the Tip. I love the Tip.

Todd Jones (01:02:41):

… in election 10. Yeah, now, here's why, because you put your bag down and I always sit with Jerry. We go back to my college days in the '80s.

Todd Jones (01:02:51):

And anyway, you sit across from me, and this is where you sit now for four days. And you and I don't know each other but you know Tipton and I know Tipton. So, the three of us were chitchatting.

Todd Jones (01:03:03):

And all I remember for four days was whenever I would type, you're sitting across from me and I'm thinking, "What in the hell does it matter what I say or write because Charlie Pierce is sitting across from me, writing." And it just was a little bit intimidating for me as a writer.

Charles Pierce (01:03:17):

We all tell the tribe our stories, each story’s in a different way, in our own way. And we all do the work. And the work is worth it. And that's all you can do. There will be other stories for other people. I mean, I'm getting caught up now.

Charles Pierce (01:03:38):

I mean, I haven't had an editor since I went full-time on the internet in 2011. I haven't had an editor who's 30 years old yet. I mean, it's preposterous, but it's true.

Charles Pierce (01:03:51):

In any event, I love this because as I said, people are learning what wonderful people, Reusse, and Johnette, and Arch, and Joan Ryan and everybody.

Charles Pierce (01:04:08):

I mean, Joan Ryan, my God, she wrote probably the most important sports book of her time, all of which has come true in horrible ways and hardly anyone remembers it. Little Girls in Pretty Boxes predicted all of what happened with Larry Nassar decades ago.

Charles Pierce (01:04:28):

And Johnette's just Johnette, she's a tough kid from Pittsburgh.

Charles Pierce (01:04:36):

But in any event, I love this idea. After we agreed to do this, I spent like an afternoon just listening to all of them. I don't know if I listened to part two of [crosstalk 01:04:48].

Todd Jones (01:04:47):

That means a lot to me. And I appreciate it, Charlie. I'm going to let you get back to documenting the daily fighting and the politics for Esquire.

Charles Pierce (01:05:01):

Yeah, who knows? I mean, something crazy may have happened in Congress. Oh, no.

Todd Jones (01:05:06):

Imagine that.