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.
Jayson Stark: “The Baseball Breaks a Window Across the Street from Wrigley Field.”
Our show’s 75th episode has a special guest in Jayson Stark, one of the most well-respected, well-liked baseball writers for more than 40 years. His passion for the game and craft shines through as he discusses growing up as Stan Hochman’s pen pal, studying Peter Gammons early in his career, and mentoring other young reporters. Jayson has some wild tales – including a near punch by Dickie Noles, and Dallas Green’s special gift – from being a beat writer covering the early ’80s Philadelphia Phillies. Hear how Jayson developed his weekly baseball column, renowned since 1983 for humor, oddball stats and offbeat facts. He tells us about a World Series game that he considers the best in history. And there’s even a story connecting a Sammy Sosa homer and a certain Frenchman.
The Baseball Writers’ Association of America named Stark the 2019 winner of its Career Excellence Award, which he received at the Hall of Fame induction weekend in Cooperstown, New York. Jayson worked 21 years at his hometown Philadelphia Inquirer, first serving as the Phillies’ beat reporter (1979-82) and then becoming the paper’s national baseball writer and columnist in ’83. His Baseball Week in Review column proved so popular in syndication that it continued after he was hired by ESPN in 2000. For the next 17 years, Stark served as a senior baseball writer for ESPN.com and ESPN The Magazine while making regular appearances on the cable network’s TV shows “Baseball Tonight,” “SportsCenter” and “Outside the Lines,” as well as regular ESPN Radio guest spots on “Mike and Mike” and as co-host of a weekly radio show during the baseball season on ESPN Radio’s affiliate in Philadelphia. His TV work includes appearances on Major League Baseball Productions, NFL Films and Philadelphia’s Comcast SportsNet. He is also a former baseball analyst for the Sports Fan radio network and a commentator on the Phillies’ pregame radio show.
Despite his popularity and proficiency, Stark was laid off by ESPN in April 2017. He has been covering baseball at The Athletic and MLB Network since 2018. Jayson also served as a columnist for Baseball America for 16 years and has written for Sports Illustrated, Sport, Inside Sports, Sporting News, Men’s Fitness and Athlon. His first job in journalism was at the Providence Journal (1975-78).
Stark has won an Emmy for his work on "Baseball Tonight," has been inducted into the Philadelphia Sports Hall of Fame and is a two-time winner of the Pennsylvania Sportswriter of the Year award given by the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association. He was a finalist for that group’s National Sportswriter of the Year award in 2017. Stark was honored by Penn State’s Foster Conference for Distinguished Writers in 2010. He has won several awards from the Associated Press Sports Editors, and he was inducted into the Philadelphia Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in 2017. That year, Topps issued a Jayson Stark baseball card.
Jayson is the author of three books:
“Wild Pitches: Rumblings, Grumblings, and Reflections on the Game I Love” (2014)
“Worth The Wait: Tales of the 2008 Phillies” (2011)
“The Stark Truth: The Most Overrated and Underrated Players in Baseball History” (2007)
Stark earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Syracuse University in 1973. He was born in Philadelphia and grew up in the city’s Northeast section. His mother, June Herder Stark, wrote for the Philadelphia Record and worked alongside legendary sportswriter Red Smith. She later edited the Philadelphia edition of Where Magazine.
You can follow Stark on X: @jaysonst
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Jayson Stark edited transcript
Todd Jones (00:00):
Hey, Jayson, welcome to our tavern. We're really looking forward to hearing some stories from you, from your illustrious career.
Jayson Stark (00:07):
Todd, I'm so honored that you invited me here. It's great to be hanging out with you. Thank you.
Todd Jones (00:12):
Well, this show would not be complete without having Jayson Stark on it. One of my favorite baseball writers of all time.
Jayson Stark (00:18):
Thank you.
Todd Jones (00:19):
Well respected. Actually, I think you're the only guest we've had so far who has his own baseball card.
Jayson Stark (00:27):
It's true. I do. Topps, a few years back, asked me if I would be interested in being on one of their baseball cards. And I'm still not exactly sure why they thought that was a good idea, but I've since learned that some of my other baseball writing friends are also on these Topps cards.
Jayson Stark (00:48):
And I've come to accept that these things exist and that's cool. A lot of my friends and loved ones have a copy. But here's the most amazing thing, because I've never been able to understand why any ordinary human would want my card.
Jayson Stark (01:08):
And then I go to Cooperstown, Induction Weekend, every summer and run into people walking along the street, and they have a copy of my card. Some of them have 8, 10, 12 copies of this card that they want me to sign and why? I don't know. But I'm happy to sign when I run into them.
Jayson Stark (02:08):
I have many copies. Yeah. If you'd like one, just let me know. Operators are standing by.
Todd Jones (02:12):
Well, please send one in the mail. I think I might put it in the spokes of my bike, but no, no. I kid, I kid, I kid. Wait, one thing about baseball cards, I have a friend who had a Mickey Mantle card from the 50s, in excellent condition, except for the fact that his brother erased the eyeballs out of it with a pencil.
Jayson Stark (02:33):
Wow. The key clause there was, other than that.
Todd Jones (02:40):
Other than that. Well, we're going to treat you with a little more respect than that, Jayson. Hey, man, 40 years plus of covering baseball. 21 at the Philly Inquirer, 17 at ESPN, now at Athletic. The Baseball Hall of Fame honored you in 2019.
Todd Jones (02:57):
You have seen a little bit of everything and really on all platforms, not just writing on TV, radio, you name it. Jayson, you've been around the game. You've seen the good, the bad, and the ugly of baseball, right?
Jayson Stark (03:11):
I've seen a lot of stuff. If you hang around long enough, you see a lot of stuff. I actually think baseball's in a really good place now, Todd. I think I wrote about this a week or so ago in The Athletic, but the new rules have really put baseball in a much better track, I think moving forward because the game has rhythm now that it hasn't had in decades.
Jayson Stark (03:40):
And it's amazing to me that there are some people out there that still complain about it. I had somebody tweet at me the other day, "Just, what I want to do is go to a Bruce Springsteen concert and have them announce I'm going to play 25 minutes shorter tonight. But see that's not an accurate analogy, because what's vanished from baseball is 24 minutes of dead time of nothing-
Todd Jones (04:08):
Yeah, guys standing around, right?
Jayson Stark (04:09):
There's a lot of standing around. A lot of mound visits, a lot of adjusting of the batting gloves 300 times a night that we don't get to see anymore. I guess people miss it. I know the beer vendors miss it. But the game is a much more entertaining product with this, with shift limits and with incentives to run more. It just a better sport.
Todd Jones (04:34):
Yeah. I agree with you. I was skeptical at the start being a traditionalist, but I came around and thought, you know what? The game is better. It's more entertaining. Like you said, there's a rhythm to it.
Jayson Stark (04:44):
And the other sports for years have been tweaking their rules to create a more entertaining sport. And I wasn't aware that the rules of baseball were handed down to Moses on a stone tablet. But apparently, they were, because people were very offended that baseball would want to change anything about their perfect sport.
Jayson Stark (05:05):
But the games were dragging. And now, you have all of the same stuff, the same action that you used to have. And actually more, because there's more base running, there's more first to thirds, there's more like ground balls were actually hits.
Todd Jones (05:22):
Yeah. Everything's more compressed. It's sped up.
Jayson Stark (05:24):
Yeah. It's a rhythm that was really important. And it was starting to recede into the background. And I'm so glad that they did what they did. Very significant.
Todd Jones (05:38):
Well, if Jayson Stark likes the new rules, I say we all should like the new rules because Lord knows you've seen enough baseball to know what is good and what is bad. You're well-known Jayson for digging up odd obscure nuggets of information. I am going to start this with a little nugget that I have found.
Jayson Stark (05:56):
Okay.
Todd Jones (05:58):
Okay, right.
Jayson Stark (05:58):
Yeah.
Jayson Stark (05:59):
Is it true that Philly's reliever Dickie Noles once tried to punch you?
Jayson Stark (06:05):
That is true. Okay, so-
Jayson Stark (06:09):
Alright, well, we want to hear the story. This is the baseball story we need to hear.
Jayson Stark (06:13):
This is a good story and I'm going to tell it not from the perspective of how I felt at the time, 1980 something or other covering the Phillies, but the epilogue version. Now, Dickie Noles was a relief pitcher with the Phillies back in the 1980s. And I was having some problems with some of the players on that team. He was one of them.
Jayson Stark (07:27):
So, one night he pitches, a bunch of us are standing around his locker asking questions. And when I ask a question, he ignores it, doesn't answer it, pretends he didn't hear it. So, now a minute later, I ask, I can't remember if it was the same question or another question. And once again, he ignores me, acts like I'm not there.
Jayson Stark (07:53):
And so, I said to him, what's your problem? Now, all of a sudden, I exist, he looks at me right in the eye, and he goes, "What's your bleeping problem?" I said, "I don't have a problem. I’d just like to know why you're not answering my questions." And he says, "I'm not answering your questions because I haven't been talking to you all year."
Jayson Stark (08:15):
I said, "That's not true. You talked to me last week." He said, "Nope, I haven't talked to you all bleeping year." And I looked at him and I said, "You're nuts." And bam, he came at me through a punch. I leaned out of the way. And now all hell breaks loose. There's other players around, and they grab him and it's quite a scene here in the Phillies clubhouse.
Jayson Stark (08:42):
And order was restored. Dickie Noles got traded, life went on. And it was just a strange little episode for somebody like me who I get along with people. But when you cover a baseball team, you write stuff, you ask stuff, you say stuff, and some people take it the wrong way.
Jayson Stark (09:03):
And Dickie was going through some stuff of his own at that period of his life. And so, okay, so that's the story from that moment in time. So, I tell this story on MLB Network, the next spring training my travels take me through Clearwater, Florida. Okay. And-
Todd Jones (09:22):
And this is like 2018.
Jayson Stark (09:23):
This is 2019 now spring training.
Todd Jones (09:26):
Okay. 2019.
Jayson Stark (09:27):
And Dickie Noles now works for the Phillies, and he helps people who are going through stuff, who have alcohol issues, who have substance issues, who have mental health issues. That's what he does. He helps people. But that was not him at that time.
Jayson Stark (09:44):
So, he sees me, and he comes walking across the field and he says, "Hey, I need to ask you something." I said, "Yeah." He said, "Did I once throw a punch at you?" And I said, "Dickie, I hate to tell you, but yes you did." And so, I tell him this story very briefly and he goes, "Wow."
Jayson Stark (10:07):
He said, "I don't remember any of that, but if I did that, I am so sorry. I was a different person then than I am now. I was very troubled then, much different than I am now. And you're a great guy. You're a great writer. And if I did that to you, I am so sorry."
Jayson Stark (10:29):
And so, that's the perspective with which I now view that moment in my life. But I didn't view it that way for a long time.
Todd Jones (10:39):
It took a while. By the way, did you get a punch in at all?
Jayson Stark (10:44):
I had no interest in throwing a punch. It's not what I should be doing. It's not what he should have been doing either.
Todd Jones (10:49):
But as writers, we always say, we get the last word.
Jayson Stark (10:52):
Make peace, man. That's what I try to do.
Todd Jones (10:55):
That's right. Well, that image of you and Dickie Noles nearly coming to blows in the clubhouse is really something that a lot of fans don't see or hear about much. And it probably isn't what you thought baseball writing was going to be when you were a kid growing up in Philly.
Jayson Stark (11:13):
No.
Todd Jones (11:13):
Because really at age 9 or 10, you were already thinking, I want to be a sports writer, right?
Jayson Stark (11:18):
That's exactly right. I'm doing a thing that I've always wanted to do since I was old enough to dream about doing anything. And I recognize that doesn't happen to many people in life. And I mentioned this in my Hall of Fame speech, but on my wall of my office, right over there, okay, I'm pointing, there's a photo of my sister and me walking home from school.
Jayson Stark (11:46):
She was nine, I was 10, pretty sure. And underneath it, there is a little composition that she wrote, she was in fourth grade at the time for school. And it essentially says, if you ever want to know anything about baseball, you should ask my brother. Okay. I was 10. And I didn't know then that I was going to wind up doing this in my lifetime, but I did have a love of baseball. And even then, my mother was a writer, June Stark.
Todd Jones (12:28):
That's right. Yes. June Stark was a journalist at the Philadelphia Record.
Jayson Stark (12:33):
Right. She was a wonderful writer. She worked at the Philadelphia Record until they went out of business. She knew Red Smith, he worked there for a while and then she embarked on life as a freelance writer. And so, she and my dad had a lot of writer friends, and somehow, she and those people infused this love of writing in me.
Jayson Stark (12:57):
My mother read two newspapers cover to cover every day of her life. And if she ever saw a story, especially in the sports section that she thought was great, she would make sure that I read it. And so, somehow, I had this dream when I was a really little kid, that covering baseball would be such a cool thing to do.
Jayson Stark (13:21):
And Todd, this is a true story. I would go to games as a kid with my binoculars, not to train them on the field, but to look at the press box and try to figure out what the heck everybody was doing up there. I mean, I was just really intrigued by that whole scene. And so, it's what I wanted to do, and somehow this happened to me in my actual life. It's crazy, man.
Todd Jones (13:51):
Amazing. Right?
Jayson Stark (13:52):
Yeah.
Todd Jones (13:52):
Well, you used to write letters to the Philadelphia Daily News, right? To Stan Hochman?
Jayson Stark (13:56):
Well, Stan Hochman, I wrote letters to a few of the great sports writers that I read growing up in Philadelphia. But Stan Hochman was the guy who actually answered me. I was a teenager and as I said, I was very interested in sports writing, baseball writing especially. And I would ask him questions about the business, and he would write back.
Jayson Stark (14:17):
And it's left's such in an impression on me. So, when I have students, kids who want to grow up and do this thing that I got to do, I always try to answer back and help. And actually, had an exchange with a guy last week, same sort of thing. But my greatest protege story ever is, I'm sure you know who Tyler Kepner is.
Todd Jones (14:47):
Oh, yes.
Jayson Stark (14:48):
He writes for The Athletic now, he was the lead baseball writer for many years at the New York Times. Just such a talented guy and such a great person and good friend of mine now. But he was 13, 14-years-old. And he wrote to me, and he said, "Hey, my brother and I put out this magazine called the KP Baseball Monthly, and I would love to send you a couple copies."
Jayson Stark (15:15):
And so, I wrote back and said, "Yeah, sure. Do that." So, I read this KP Baseball Monthly, and I said, "Oh my God, this kid at 14-years-old, he could cover baseball right now for any publication in America." So, I wrote back and told him that, and told him what the life of a baseball writer was like. But really tried to encourage him that this was something he was good at, and he should pursue this. And the rest is history.
Todd Jones (15:50):
Yeah. He became one of the really, really great baseball writers of Azera and still doing great work at The Athletic.
Jayson Stark (15:56):
Athletic. He's great. But here's another epilogue moment. Again, that same winner that I was honored by the baseball writers, and knew I was going to be in the writer's wing of the Hall of Fame. One of the things that comes with that is I got invited to the New York Baseball Writer's dinner. It's an incredible event every January, sat on the dais, got to speak, and I was introduced by Tyler Kepner. And learned that night that his mother saved that letter, I wrote to-
Todd Jones (16:36):
Oh, that's great.
Jayson Stark (16:37):
And he quoted from it. And it's just a surreal moment in my life. I hope everybody has something like that happen to them, where somebody that we helped along the way, not only is thankful for it and remembers it, but saved the first thing that that person wrote to you and can remind you of it, wow.
Todd Jones (17:10):
That's fantastic. What a great story. Thanks for sharing that. That's awesome. So, you were a young kid dreaming of being a baseball writer.
Todd Jones (17:25):
After you graduate from Syracuse and worked at the Providence Journal, the Philadelphia Inquirer calls you and wants you to now cover baseball as a beat, cover the Phillies in your hometown of Philadelphia. And that's what gets us back to Dickie Noles.
Todd Jones (17:41):
So, you start your career walking into, this is a great Phillies team, great team. They ended up winning the World Series a year later. But you're a young writer walking in as a beat reporter. What was that like starting your career out?
Jayson Stark (17:56):
Well, that was a tough group. It was extremely memorable to cover those Phillies teams. I walked in the middle of what some people still think was the greatest era ever of Phillies baseball. I mean, they built a team that went to the postseason six times in eight years. It could've won the World Series every one of those years. Did win it once, first time in the history of the franchise.
Jayson Stark (18:23):
But there were big names, big personalities, big stars. And the greatest pitcher in Philly's history was on that team. Steve Carlton.
Todd Jones (18:38):
Steve Carlton.
Jayson Stark (18:39):
And he didn't talk to me because he didn't talk to anybody. And I've learned this along the way, but the culture of any team is established by its best players and the way they act and the way they go about it. And because the best pitcher on the team, future Hall of Famer, one of the greatest pitchers in the history of baseball, certainly left-handed pitchers because he didn't talk to us. Because he didn't say hello to us, because he never had time for us, it empowered other people in the room to treat us that way. So, it was hard every day, every day.
Todd Jones (19:32):
Why didn't Carlton talk, by the way?
Jayson Stark (19:36):
This went back way, way, way before me. But I mean, the short version is he got into a dispute with Bill Conlin, another Hall of Fame baseball writer. Again, way before I arrived. He had gone from 27 and 10 for a terrible team in 1972 to losing 20 games in 1973.
Jayson Stark (20:02):
And I don't know all the specifics, but Bill Conlin wrote some stuff, reported some stuff, said some stuff about him, and he just shut off our whole profession. And, hey, when I run into him now, he wants to talk. It's amazing-
Todd Jones (20:18):
Yeah. Now he's got things to say.
Jayson Stark (20:21):
Yeah. But again, that was a very difficult team to cover. And I honestly believe that it started with him, even though there were great personalities and some great guys on that team, but the year they won the World Series, I mean, seriously, half the clubhouse wasn't talking to any of us.
Todd Jones (20:42):
Really, I mean, this is the team of Mike Schmidt and Greg Luzinski and Bake McBride, Larry Bowa. I mean, you got just real big, big-time players. And they don't want to deal with any of you guys.
Jayson Stark (20:55):
Yeah. Here's what I learned, and I tell this to my fellow writers all the time when they run into these moments, is, for the most part, it's not personal. It's not them and you, it represents what we do for a living. And the fact that we're always there every day for seven months, eight months.
Jayson Stark (21:20):
And I mean, if you can imagine being around the same people every single day for all those months, you're not married to them. You're not related to them; you didn't ask them to be there. And you have good days, but you also have some bad days. And when you have bad days, they tell the world all about it. You can understand how this could happen.
Jayson Stark (21:44):
That really is the general explanation for why this happens in our profession. I'm at a different stage of my career and I've built incredible relationships with so many people, including players who I covered back then that I had a lot of issues with. Because that's the way we should go about life.
Jayson Stark (22:07):
But stuff happens along the way and it's hard and it's hard to know how to handle it and keep moving forward. And I would hope if you read what I wrote about those teams, about those players, you would never know that I was going through what I was going through. I would hope that because that's the way it ought to be done in my world.
Todd Jones (22:28):
You talked about setting a tone and how Carlton never talked. Their manager, Dallas Green, now he would talk, and you're a young reporter, learning how to navigate a hostile clubhouse. What did you learn as a young reporter dealing with Dallas Green?
Jayson Stark (22:43):
Well, I covered a lot of amazing managers in my time. I don't think any of them was as thoughtful, as opinionated, as honest, as willing to express his thoughts about everything, including the players as Dallas Green. And he left an impression on me that stays with me even now. He's no longer with us, but we stayed in touch for many years. And one of the reasons is his greatest tirade was directed at me.
So, this was 1981. Dallas was doing this a long time. I've been doing this a really, really short time. I'm just a young guy covering baseball. But Dallas and I had a good relationship. And one of the things that I could do was diffuse the tension sometimes in the room by making them laugh, making them smile.
Jayson Stark (24:13):
And so, 1981, there was a strike. The players went on strike for two months.
Todd Jones (24:21):
Yeah. Split the season in half. Yeah.
Jayson Stark (24:23):
They split the season in half. And so, the Phillies had won the World Series the previous year. They were playing fantastic baseball when the strike hit. And then they came back, some guys were in shape, some guys weren't in very good shape.
Jayson Stark (24:37):
Baseball decided it was going to change the rules for just this one season only, so that if your team was in first place when the strike hit in June, you were already guaranteed you were going to the playoffs. And then they were going to play this second half for the other slot in the division series.
Jayson Stark (25:01):
So, you had a split season. And there was nothing Dallas was more aggravated about than the split season because his team had nothing to play for. Okay.
Todd Jones (25:14):
Yeah. They already had guaranteed a spot.
Jayson Stark (25:16):
They were guaranteed a spot, so he was just in a mood. And then the other part of this is they came back, it was clear that some guys hadn't been doing a whole lot because they were on strike. And at least he thought the pitchers at least had been throwing and were in decent shape. And the pitchers were ahead of hitters.
Jayson Stark (25:35):
So, now, the season resumes, the St. Louis Cardinals come into Philadelphia, and they beat the crap out of the Phillies three games in a row. I can't remember all the scores off the top of my head. There's like seven to one, one night, eight to two, one night, nine to three the third night.
Jayson Stark (25:53):
And in those days, the post-game manager sessions were not a TV show. You actually would go sit in the manager's office. So, we walk in, we take one look at Dallas, and it's written all over his face. He was in one of those moods.
Jayson Stark (26:17):
And so, nobody would ask a question. Nobody. And so, Todd, if you've been taking notes, you knew I was the guy who could diffuse the tension. That was my role. So, I said to him, do you think this means the pitchers aren't ahead of the hitters anymore?
Jayson Stark (26:35):
And he looked right at me, and he said, "Bleep you Jayson. Sick and bleeping tired of that bleep." And so, that began a four and a half minute rant, Todd, four and a half minutes. And he used that f-bomb word or some variation of it. If I remember it, it was something like 23 times during the course-
Todd Jones (27:04):
Not that you were counting.
Jayson Stark (27:05):
During the course of the round. Well, the audio tape exists, so you can go back and look at it, listen to it. And so, it included some really memorable just rant type stuff including this is one I've committed to memory. He said, "I want bleeping stopped, all the bleeping bull bleep about this bleeping split bleeping season because I can't do anything about that."
Jayson Stark (27:41):
And it was amazing. The whole thing was amazing. And so, once he started to get it out, it became clear to me, somebody had to ask a question because this is what he needed to do. Because at one point, he walked out of his office and into the clubhouse and looked around to make sure the players were listening.
Jayson Stark (28:02):
And now, he comes back, and he continues the rant, and he is kind of winking at me in the middle of this. So, I knew-
Todd Jones (28:13):
Performance art. He was putting on a good show for the team, huh?
Jayson Stark (28:17):
So, I realized what it was, but it became very famous at the time. And so, it became like our little thing that we shared. So, as the season goes on, you have these sessions with the manager every day before the game, after the game.
Jayson Stark (28:34):
And so, I noticed, we're now deep into September that every day he's trying to get me to ask another question like this. He's egging me on. So, I said to him at one point, "I don't know what you're up to, but I already have one audio tape that goes bleep you, Jayson. I don't need another one. So, I don't know what you're up to, but I you're not going to get me to do that."
Jayson Stark (29:03):
So, now a guy named Ralph Bernstein used to cover the Phillies and … for the Associated Press. And he falls into Dallas's trap, and he asks him something and Dallas goes, "Come on Ralph, that's worse than that bleeping question Jayson asked."
Jayson Stark (29:26):
And Ralph falls right into the trap. And he says, "What question was that?" And so, Dallas gets a big smile on his face. He holds up a finger, see what I'm doing? And he goes, one second. So, now he's rummaging through his desk and he reaches into the bottom drawer of his desk, and he grabs something and he fires it across his office at me. And I catch it, and I open it up and it's a T-shirt, and it says, bleep you Jayson on it. Except didn't say bleep.
Todd Jones (29:54):
Nice.
Jayson Stark (29:57):
What a great item. So, I still have this shirt. Don't-
Todd Jones (30:02):
Really, you still have the F you Jayson shirt?
Jayson Stark (30:04):
Do not tell my wife. But I still have the shirt. And when I would see him for the rest of his life, he would always laugh at me. He'd say, "Still got that shirt?"
Jayson Stark (30:15):
And so, eventually Dallas wrote a book, an autobiography and he asked me if I would be the co-author. And I was not permitted by ESPN at the time to do that, but I was permitted to write the forward. So, in the forward, I told the whole story of the rant.
Jayson Stark (30:41):
And he told me once the forward's better than the whole freaking book. But we really had a wonderful relationship. And because we shared the rant moment, that just made it richer.
Todd Jones (30:56):
I think that T-shirt should be sent to Cooperstown right now, Jayson.
Jayson Stark (31:00):
It'll never be displayed. I'll tell you that. You might need it fumigated a little bit too.
Todd Jones (31:07):
That's true. That's true. Well, you learned a lot of lessons as a young reporter on the beat, in a tough clubhouse, a talented team, but a lot of big personalities to deal with. And then you moved into national baseball writing, the Philadelphia Inquirer had you start covering the sport in 1983, and you created the Baseball Week in Review column.
Jayson Stark (31:43):
Yeah. Okay. So, the column actually existed for a year before I got off the Phillies beat and became the national baseball writer. And it was just basically a wrap up of the week in baseball. And so, I told my sports editor, I don't really want to do that. I got other ideas.
Jayson Stark (32:02):
And so, what you read now on the Athletic, my Weird and Wild column, which has a quite the cult following. That's really kind of what this column was back in the day. It started in the mid-80s. And I don't know exactly why my brain worked that way or why it still works this way, but I did grow up in Philadelphia reading the great sports writers in my town, and the greatest funniest, smartest, most opinionated sports writers in America.
Jayson Stark (32:44):
And they were hilarious. And the stuff they found to write about was so entertaining. And the stuff they were able to get people to say constantly made me laugh and made me wonder, I wonder what question they asked to get that quote?
Todd Jones (33:05):
Yeah, right.
Jayson Stark (33:05):
And so, I always aspired to make my columns funny and entertaining wherever possible, and to try to unearth little tidbits of info that people didn't know. And my mom always told me, you should write a book and call it, I never saw that before."
Todd Jones (33:30):
That would be great.
Jayson Stark (33:31):
I never wrote that book. But I've been writing it in a lot of columns I've written through the years. One of the big influences on me when I decided I wanted to write about baseball was Peter Gammons. I used to subscribe to the Boston Globe by mail, it'd come six days later, but just to read Peter's Sunday baseball column in the Boston Globe.
Jayson Stark (33:53):
And Peter's now one of my best friends on earth. But he really invented modern baseball writing. And one of the things that he did in every column was he had a little section right in the middle of the column of just funny stuff, stats that made you go, whoa.
Jayson Stark (34:12):
And eventually, when I started writing baseball in Philadelphia and Peter reached out to me because he thought I was really talented or so he claimed, we would brainstorm a lot of these things. But I'm always looking at baseball and asking that question, when's the last time that happened? I never saw that before. Because that's every day in baseball.
Jayson Stark (34:37):
So, between that and trying to make people laugh and try to get players to say funny stuff, that was what the Baseball Week in Review became. And it's led to all these years later, the Weird and Wild column in the Athletic. And it's just amazing that people continue to let me do this. I don't know why.
Todd Jones (34:58):
Well, I think what it does is it shows your endless curiosity. But I'm curious about this, you started doing this in the 80s, no internet, the world's so different, when you think about being a baseball writer in the 80s.
How in the heck did you find out this little information? I think Tim Kurkjian said you guys used to talk all the time on we like weekly chats.
Jayson Stark (35:29):
We did. I'd write that column on — well, it ran on Tuesdays for a while, then it ran on Sundays. But Tim and I would talk every Friday and just try to brainstorm because our brains worked very much the same way.
Jayson Stark (35:43):
And so, it's so much easier to research stuff now than there than it was then between baseball reference and Retro Sheet and FanGraphs and all the people who are tweeting all this cool stuff all the time, X-ing it, posting it, whatever it is now. But back then it was much harder. Tim and I both used to keep three different day by day books, just to make sure we paid attention every day. And-
Todd Jones (36:11):
What do you mean by a day by day book?
Jayson Stark (36:15):
I have a book that I still keep on how every team did every day, so I know who was the winning pitcher, who was the losing pitcher, who got the save, who had a homer, where they are in the standings, if they lost 10 in a row, if they won five in a row, whatever. Just so I'm paying attention.
Todd Jones (36:29):
You're like the monks who used to write the Bible longhand. What is this?
Jayson Stark (36:33):
I know. People think we're nuts, but it's a thing to make me pay attention to every team, every day. Just really easy to not notice what the Royals have done the last week. But if you have to write it down in a book, you notice, and Tim and I both used to keep a book that was what every starting pitcher for every team did every day.
Todd Jones (37:01):
Oh, come on.
Jayson Stark (37:03):
And that's not all.
Todd Jones (37:05):
That's mental.
Jayson Stark (37:06):
Yeah. But again, it makes you pay attention. When you're on live TV and somebody asks you about the Tigers rotation and you've been writing it down in a book every day, you know what's been going on, you know this guy's pitching well, that guy stinks. So, that was the reason for that.
Jayson Stark (37:23):
And then what we also did for a long time, him much longer time than me, he's way more famous in this, than me, is we kept a box score book. And so, we would paste all the box scores, cut them out of the newspaper every day, and paste them into a notebook every day. So that-
Todd Jones (37:44):
Yeah, Tim was on our show, and he talked about that. He had like years and years and years of these box scores.
Jayson Stark (37:50):
Years and years, right. And they should send them to the Hall of Fame. And at a certain point I said, wait a second, all of these box scores are online, what am I doing? And I stopped.
Jayson Stark (38:03):
But Tim was still driving all over town trying to find the late edition to the newspaper, so he could get every box score and paste it into his book. See, the thinking was, boy, Tony Gwynn seems like he's hot. And if you've been pasting the box scores into your notebook, you can go back and say, oh my God, Tony Gwynn is 20 for his last 38, whatever. Or this guy was two for his last 48 or whatever. So, we could look up a lot of stuff that now is so much easier to find.
Jayson Stark (38:33):
And the box score book was our secret. But the goofiest thing that we ever did was sometimes we'd have this idea for this guy is having a year that nobody could ever have had. I wonder how rare it is, now with baseball reference with stat head. You can-
Todd Jones (39:02):
Elias and everybody else.
Jayson Stark (39:04):
With Elias, the stats. Somebody will look it up for you, or you can look it up in a minute. Once upon a time it was harder. And so, Tim and I would do this thing where we would take a trip through the encyclopedia, the big thick baseball encyclopedia. Every year, every player's stats would be in there. And there was a version of it called the Neft & Cohen paperback edition.
Jayson Stark (39:30):
And rather than be organized by player was organized by team and by season. And so, we'd say, "Alright, how are we going to find this? Tell you what, I'll look up 1900 to 1950 and you can take 1951 to 1997, whatever."
Jayson Stark (39:49):
And so, he'd be sitting there watching games at night, thumbing through this book, going year by year by year by year, looking for anybody who did this thing. But sometimes Tim wasn't that interested. It was a Phillies kind of thing. So, I don't know if you remember this guy Von Hayes, who used to play for the Phillies, played for the Cleveland Indians back in the day and got traded to the Phillies for five players. It's his claim to fame.
Jayson Stark (40:13):
So, Von Hayes was a really good player, and then all of a sudden, he was going through this season, whatever year it was and he had no home runs, none. And we're in September, and I thought nobody could ever have hit whatever it was, 23 home runs one year, and then played every day the next year and hit none.
Jayson Stark (40:33):
And so, I thought, how am I going to find this? So, I called my friend Steve Hirdt, he was then running the Elias Sports Bureau pretty much and said, "Hey Steve, I have this idea for this note. I know it's really rare. Is that something you could look up for me?"
Jayson Stark (40:47):
And he said, "I have to tell you, that'd be a pretty involved program, so we'd have to charge you for it." And I said, "Well, just out of curiosity, how much would you charge me? Maybe I could get my editor to pay for it." And so, he asked his people, and he came back to me and I can't remember what the price was, but it'd be $2,000.
Jayson Stark (41:07):
I said, "I doubt they're going to pay that. But-
Todd Jones (41:09):
Yeah, I don't think so.
Jayson Stark (41:11):
I'll ask my sports editor, and he said, "You want me to pay the Elias Sports Bureau? $2,000 for what would essentially be four sentences in your column? I don't think that'd be a good use of $2,000." So, I went back to Steve, and I said, "They won't pay that, so I guess I'm going to have to figure out some way to look it up myself." And he said, "I'll tell you what, if you try to look it up, call me when you're done, and I'll at least tell you if you're right."
Todd Jones (41:39):
Okay. So, did you look it up?
Jayson Stark (41:43):
So, then this began a solo trip through the encyclopedia. And so, what I would have to do is I'd go through these teams, and I'd look for a player who had 500 bats and no homers. And then I'd have to look up by hand what did he do the year before? How many did he hit the year before?
Jayson Stark (41:59):
So, I'm trying to find somebody who hit 20 homers the year before and then hit none. So, I go 1900 to 1922 one night, then I'd go 1923 to 1948 the next night, then I go 1948. So, I kept doing this a little at a time because it's the only way to do it.
Jayson Stark (42:17):
So, now I get all the way through the entire encyclopedia, I can't find anybody, so I'm sure I missed somebody along the way. So, I called Steve up and I said, Steve, this is crazy, but I just went through the whole encyclopedia. I can't find anybody who did this.
Jayson Stark (42:31):
And he said, "Yeah, you're right." So, then that became the note. But that's how, before all the modern tools, this is how Tim Kurkjian and I used to look up this stuff. Does that sound fun?
Todd Jones (42:45):
That's tremendous. That's tremendous. The diligence, the curiosity, and the humor of all this. I mean, the fact that you were on a daily basis bringing that type of energy to the, what is ... the grind of a beat just blows my mind.
Jayson Stark (43:01):
Tim and I joke about this all the time, but just sometimes you have to know. You have to know. It's in your head. You have to know. And that still fuels both of us to this day, after all these years.
Jayson Stark (43:12):
And hey, I should tell you just to do the Weird and Wild column. It still takes tremendous discipline, every day, to know what happened in baseball the day before. And so, I wake up in the morning and I hit the stationary bike and I watch video of all the games from the night before and I have my iPad on the bike and I'm thumbing through the internet looking up stuff.
Jayson Stark (43:37):
And I keep a daily logbook of things that interest me, not just for that column, but for all kinds of stuff that I do. But that becomes part of my daily routine, is knowing what happened in baseball every day.
Todd Jones (43:52):
When you think about it, it's kind of similar to the great players' routine. They have things that they do to get themselves ready to go out there and do things that we've never seen before.
Jayson Stark (44:03):
Well, here's the thing, I've written about this and talked about it a lot is to be a great player, what separates the great players from everyone else is the ability to play with focus and energy every day. And it's a fascinating topic.
Jayson Stark (44:30):
I once wrote a big piece about it, talked to Derek Jeter, talked to Chase Utley, talked to a couple managers, talked to Johnny Damon, wrote this piece. And the general manager of the Oakland Homeless City Thunder, Sam Presti, called me out of the blue and he said, "I just want you to know, I know we've never met. I love that column, and I think it applies to every sport. And I have emailed it to, I forget how many hundreds of people. Because it's a lesson to all of us, how we should be going about the business of trying to be great."
Jayson Stark (45:06):
But I think we can apply it to all of our lives. If you really want to be good at something, it takes daily focus and energy and wanting to be great at it. And I'm not Derek Jeter, I'm not Jay, I'm not Johnny Damon. I'm not any of those people. I'm just doing what I do, trying to have fun and be good at it. But it does take some daily attention to detail, I think, to be good at anything in life.
Todd Jones (45:34):
Well, I think that's so true, and that's certainly why you helped along with Gammons and some of these other guys, basically create how to cover baseball on a daily basis, at least during the tenure of my 30-year career. And that's why you've been honored by the Hall of Fame. The baseball writers gave you the Spink Award for career achievement, and you were there at Cooperstown because of that type of daily energy, curiosity, diligence.
Jayson Stark (46:04):
Well, it's very kind of you to say that. Peter Gammons is in a different class than all of us. Peter invented everything, everything that any of us do now in modern baseball writing, Peter did it first and he did it best. And we're just riding his coattails.
Jayson Stark (46:28):
And honestly, if you haven't read vintage Peter Gammons from back in the day, Boston Globe, ESPN, Sports Illustrated, make it a point. It was just an amazing ability to take things from all over the field, all over the world, all over the modern culture, music, pop culture, and just fire it into baseball columns. It was a gift that Peter had, and we all saw what was possible because he saw what was possible.
Todd Jones (47:00):
That's great. That's a great tribute, and I think it's so true, so true. Jayson, one of the things that your column and your reporting and your writing and your analysis on TV and radio has always been known for is finding oddball characters. And I'm curious about the idea of who was the craziest, funniest, oddest character that you recall dealing with throughout your years of covering baseball.
Jayson Stark (47:28):
Yeah. I don't know if I could say just one, but I can tell you that even now when I walk into a clubhouse, I'll always ask who's the funniest guy in the room? Because that's an important thing to know, who's the funniest guy in the room?
Jayson Stark (47:42):
And I co-host the Starkville Podcast with Doug Glanville. And Doug Glanville, he wasn't crazy, but he's brilliant and hilarious. And he is the only player I ever talked to who used the phrase time space continuum to describe a rainy week. And so, I could go to Doug with any idea, and he could turn it into something brilliant.
Jayson Stark (48:14):
Jim Deshaies is the broadcast voice of the Cubs now but got to know him when he was a player. And he's just one of those hilarious people who could always make you laugh. And I got to know him through Larry Anderson, who's now one of the voices of the Phillies, but was a long-time relief pitcher and just a goofy, hilarious person, who could make you laugh on virtually any topic.
Jayson Stark (48:44):
When I was a really young writer, the Phillies had a guy named Don Carman, who I'm still in touch with. And Don Carman was so funny. He started his career by going, for 54 at the plate, which he refers to like his tribute to Johnny Vander Meer. And we could always laugh about his hitting exploits.
Jayson Stark (49:06):
But he decided one day he was going to come up with a list of all the greatest cliches that players say, and then he was going to print them up and he'd have a list. And after the game, he was going to check all the ones that applied to that game, and he would hand them out to us as we walked through the door.
Todd Jones (49:25):
Alright, with that said, what are the greatest cliches from your perspective as a writer?
Jayson Stark (49:30):
It's right at a bull dorm. We're playing these one at a time, you don't want to get too high, you don't want to get too ... you know how they go. He had like 50 of them. They were tremendous. Again, I'm trying to go way back here just to pay tribute to some of the guys who were-
Todd Jones (49:53):
I always liked Andy Van Slyke, he played for the Pirates.
Jayson Stark (49:56):
I was going to mention Andy, because Andy was another guy. He just always had a line, back in the 90s. So, Andy played for the Pirates, and Lenny Dykstra was the centerfielder for the Phillies. And Lenny would just slobber tobacco juice all over the grass or the turf in center field. And Andy would have to go out there the next half inning.
Jayson Stark (50:23):
And he told me one night, "This isn't right, that I have to spend all those hours standing there. It's a toxic waste dump."
Todd Jones (51:53):
Well, sometimes the characters aren't even directly involved with baseball. You once found somebody I wanted to ask you about, the Frenchman.
Jayson Stark (52:02):
Yeah.
Todd Jones (52:03):
Who lived on Waveland Avenue outside of Wrigley Field.
Jayson Stark (52:07):
Okay, here's the story here. Sammy Sosa hits a home run off Paul Wilson of the Mets, remember him. And the ball flies over the famous left field bleachers and clears the street in Waveland Avenue and goes through the window, up an apartment across the street, one of those buildings across the street from Wrigley Field.
Jayson Stark (52:32):
And there's this famous video of the ball breaking the window of this apartment. And so, what do you think somebody like me would say at that moment, I got-
Todd Jones (52:44):
Who lives there?
Jayson Stark (52:45):
Who lives in that place? I got to find the guy who lives in that apartment. So, it took me a while. I had some friends in Chicago who kind of helped, but eventually they get me the name and phone number of the person who lives in the apartment. And it's a guy from France named Phillipe-
Jayson Stark (53:10):
So, I call and I call and I call, and finally he answers. And I said, "Philippe, it's Jayson Stark. I wrote a humorous baseball column at the Philadelphia Inquirer, and I wanted to ask you about this home run." And so, he told me that he came home from work and there was this baseball lying in the middle of his floor with broken glass.
Jayson Stark (53:35):
So, he didn't understand how this could have happened. And I said, "Philippe, when you were thinking about moving into the apartment, you didn't notice that big field across the street." And he said, "Oh, I knew that there was a field across the street. I just never knew that the baseballs would ever leave the field."
Jayson Stark (54:01):
That was kind of his signature line. But he's another guy I stayed in touch with for quite a while and mentioned him in my Hall of fame speech. Just an incredibly amusing moment. And if I ever write my life in times that's going to be in there, promise you that.
Todd Jones (54:17):
Well, sometimes it's not amusing.
And we end up saying to ourselves, I don't believe I saw that.
Todd Jones (54:34):
You have seen a lot in baseball as a journalist, is there a moment that still sticks with you as being the one above all?
Jayson Stark (54:46):
I mean, that's tough. I've seen a lot of stuff. I remember once reading a book on the World Series and going through the forward and they were mentioning all these amazing moments of World Series history. And I said, whoa. I was there for that. I was there for that. I was there for that.
Jayson Stark (55:00):
So, I have a lot of choices from Kurt Gibson to the Cubs winning the World Series. I've seen a lot of fantastic stuff. The Red Sox busting the curse.
Jayson Stark (55:11):
But I tell people all the time, game six, 2011 World Series is the greatest baseball game ever played. And the reason Todd, is the team that won that game, the Cardinals trailed five different times, and they won. They were one strike away from losing in two different innings, and they won. And if they hadn't won the game, they lose the World Series.
Jayson Stark (55:47):
But instead, they found a way to win, thanks to David Freese. And we've looked up a lot of stuff on that game. The Cardinals have played thousands of games in the history of their franchise. How many do you think they won after trailing five different times? None. Never.
Jayson Stark (56:13):
So, but they pick that night, that game to do that thing. And when David Freese hits the home run that ends that game, I can't even begin to describe the goosebumps, but it would fit into a category that I use every once in a while when something like that happens.
Jayson Stark (56:39):
As the ball leaves the bat and it's flying through the night, your brain suddenly has the ability to stop time, I swear. Because there's that millisecond where you realize what you're watching and what's going to happen when that baseball comes back to earth.
Jayson Stark (57:03):
And it really feels like time freezes in that moment and the goosebumps just pour, the chill bumps envelop your whole body as you realize what you're watching. And that's the experience I had after that incredible night of baseball watching the David Freese home run fly. Just an amazing night, an amazing moment, an amazing sensation. And how lucky was I to be there?
Todd Jones (57:40):
Is there a story behind the story on that one that sticks out with you? What was the clubhouse like? What was it trying to write on deadline? What was it like to be a writer there?
Jayson Stark (57:52):
There was a sense of disbelief in that room. And my memories of that don't just encompass that night, but also encompass the next night when they win the World Series in game seven. And that next night, just talking to Lance Berkman and Albert Pujols and Mark McGwire, who was a coach in that team about what it was like to have won game six, go home, try to digest what happened, and then come back and win game seven.
Jayson Stark (58:33):
And David Freese told me, he finally got home, and he just laid in bed all night thinking about the game he just played. Because he also hit the ball that Nelson Cruz didn't catch for the triple towards the ninth inning.
Todd Jones (58:50):
That's right. Yeah.
Jayson Stark (58:50):
And couldn't get any of it out of his head. And I remember Mark McGwire talked to me about just walking around town in St. Louis the next day, pretty recognizable guy, Mark McGwire. And everybody wanting to stop him and talk to him about the experience of watching that game and what it was like to be in the dugout for that game.
Jayson Stark (59:13):
And Lance Berkman, very similar stories. Lance Berkman got the hit in the 10th inning when they were one strike away. And I remember him describing that baseball kind of, he didn't hit it hard, just kind of floating over the infield and him trying to digest that he just did that.
Jayson Stark (59:31):
We think baseball players they're kind of robotized and they do what they do and this is what they expect to do. But this was one of those moments in time when nobody could have possibly expected to do that. And that was not just us feeling it, it was them feeling it. They lived through a complete out of body experience.
Jayson Stark (59:54):
And so, I always like to ask players to describe that feeling when those things happen. And that's how you get those quotes, they want to talk about that. You don't just ask them what pitch they hit. I ask them what you just asked me, what's the backstory? What was it like?
Todd Jones (01:00:11):
Right. Because you're going to put the reader, the viewer, the listener in the same place that the person who did that. And that's what our jobs were all about.
Jayson Stark (01:00:23):
Yeah. And I can tell you another thing, and I've done since I got to ESPN, and I'm still doing at the Athletic, the newspaper business isn't what it used to be, but newspapers still print. So, newspaper writers still have deadlines, and that means they can't spend a lot of time in the clubhouse after those games.
Jayson Stark (01:00:45):
I have lots of time. I'm writing for websites and these things I write are going to reverberate through cyberspace. And so, I try to outlast everyone in the room. I try to make them throw me out because that's how you get to talk to people. It might not be just me and them, it might be two or three other people, but that's when you get the good stuff that nobody else has.
Jayson Stark (01:01:19):
And I was at the Steve Bartman game, I'm sorry if any Cubs fans are listening, but I'd seen the Marlins, I saw them win I think it was 14 games that September and October following them around. And they won one miracle game after another. They just thought no matter what happened, they were going to win the 2003 Marlins.
Jayson Stark (01:01:43):
And I got to know some of those guys really well. Mike Lowell and Jeff Conine and Andy Fox and it was a whole group in there. And they'd win these games and again, I'd make them throw me out of the clubhouse.
Jayson Stark (01:01:58):
And after the Bartman game, I was in there and it was really pretty much just me talking to that group. And so, there's nobody else there, just me and them. And Andy Fox was sitting in his locker, and he looked up and he said to Mike Lowell, "Mikey, what just happened, man?" because they won a game they couldn't win. There's no way they were going to win that game.
Jayson Stark (01:02:24):
And so, those are the moments that make it worth all the sleep deprivation of October for me.
Todd Jones (01:02:32):
Well, that's fantastic. I mean, it's like the inner child comes out. Baseball is all about how did you feel when you were a kid and you first started loving the game, and you had that and you wanted to be a writer. And you became that, and you became a broadcaster and honored at the Hall of Fame.
Todd Jones (01:02:50):
I think you've always maintained that childhood curiosity and enjoyment of the game, and it's come through in all of your reporting.
Jayson Stark (01:02:58):
I appreciate that.
Todd Jones (01:02:58):
And I don't want to throw you out of our tavern here, but the lights are on. They're making us pay the check. I will collect the bill here. But I really appreciate, this has been fantastic, Jayson. It's been a real treat just to talk baseball and what it was like to cover it all these years.
Jayson Stark (01:03:15):
Well, Todd I enjoyed the conversation immensely. Thanks for letting me tell all my crazy stories. And it's always fun to tell them to an audience that appreciates hearing them. I couldn't be more honored that you included me, and I really had a great time. Thank you.
-end-
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