A Word on Words; 2827; Scott Simon

building in the region don johnson you know once again welcome to word on words i guess is scott simon and you probably have seniors face on television he was with nbc you have heard in one oreo with npr's weekend edition welcomes thank you actually heard talk about home away all the way i'm in chicago chicago of time and talent this is i mean you are you are somebody who absolutely and oranges the town has to do and it's a love affair that is a passionate love for saying the sad fact is i really haven't lived there in years and my mother lives there sort of actor frequently or perhaps not as frequently as one should see their mother but yeah i buy my love that city at its important part of me to it to find so much water it really does i think look this isn't a thoroughly original observation first time i read it was as a kid reading norman mailer's of

miami the siege of chicago which was when i was becoming a look at where some of the historical interest in and really the world and risk that there wasn't in my city and i'm norman wrote then that chicago was the great american city i mean i think it's also a city of the world but he said that new york was city of the world los angeles was something else to be one of the underpinnings of the jakarta was the great american city and i think it's true it's so nice to have this much on chicago and not least in those long which really world i can do it right and survived that only are we seeing your painted women of the street lamps or in a farm boys that used to be my fear and i had no idea when i first members diploma grammar school would have paid a woman was a recall they would be luring the farm boys i subsequently all along let's begin with your mother as well i guess

i will ask again like to put this in the context that that it was guns and go on i'd like to live in on the read this book not because the chicago but the coast in the human emotional strange plant and play all the way always route and much of it focuses on your family your mother and your father the comedian is stepfather lincoln scholar at the bad fortune of bombing in the law or i should never settle for less jack brickhouse your uncle of greatness on a famous name in sports the lexicon of sports broadcasters when the spaghetti you know oh your mother and your father strange of strained

relationship in a strange city there yeah he was he was as was in the service of the nails yes it was on somebody else's a lot oh oliver to describe you it was a comedian and it's interesting that people who are just i think over the years will assume that anytime i pass off a quasi funny remark that somehow reflected my father and maybe to a degree i am but not my father was a professional but he didn't give it away and around the apartment to her hotel room in which we live he was often set in and do work to reading the point of depression it was my mother who was the funny i am an effervescent one which i think was part of a mutual attraction that they they share obviously and i mean i'm glad you mention my mother because i think it was a so they were good books it was new book about modern sports illustrated was my book about sports images of a book about fabulous characters performing well under pressure so i think not only about michael jordan ernie banks and i think of the section i haven't

syria border in this age and i think of my mother my mother who was an entertainer koreen as we used to call my dishes shape her adorable she used to just to dance in the chorus line singing the chorus line just walk around the nightclub and take pictures of the middle aged men in their young nieces again it is love you know sell cigarettes and cigars and in a time when women did this less frequently she she pulled herself out of a tailspin of america was getting destroyed by alcoholism and then made her own way in the world with a young rambunctious boy in that the most remarkable thing about that achievement is that she did actually without bitterness and maintaining that only for love for my father but for that matter my love for my father and you know it's so easy for parents to try and curb away and in their sons or daughters after a marriage goes bad but my mother never did that doesn't this day oh well it's inevitable that is we only have a half hour that will bump into following his stepfather again and they began and they began but i i would like to focus

also only on sports aspect of work there because you don't realize until i didn't realize until i picked up that book and went through what a phenomenal sports town chicago and has been and years and you begin with billy pierce and always route of michael jordan and you know you you just don't think of it as a continuum to you interview read somebody whose life has been a sports continuum even far removed from chicago used her lighting the cubs and white sox and worse in a less passionate way to other words relating to the sheer all us is that ideas riders do it i can do about that and then the bear is and then finally the boat's i think for a lot a lot of chicagoans in and fans of chicago sports for that matter get one of the

things that i think engagement world as for so many years is that you you couldn't rely on victory to be your source of enjoyment it's not like the new york sports fan or los angeles sports fan of where we kind of the world series or a super bowl or an nba championship to keep it going for certainly all of my life time there was none of that until you got to the nineteen eighty five eighty six super bowl bears year and that in that it was a rapturous moment that they really should have won more than that super bowl or at least played more than that once israel the n in some ways the reign of the bulls really that the way that michael jordan bulls presided over basketball for really a period of eight years i think a lot of the southerners reward for over years of suffering church and ten and also i look that leave the links that sports fans make between their own lives and events in the real world and sports are lily but they're also utterly irresistible i mean i i i cannot think of love of my father and my mother getting divorced without thinking about rocky

colavito who was in nigeria where getting treated from cleveland indians i am afraid i can't think of the cubs will in the pennant nineteen sixty nine to the mets without thinking of the landing on the new moon in the social from intern in grant park the year before and for that matter my own father's death and there's a paragraph in the book their songs the whole europe just by reciting a litany of bullying including your father's your father's death it's it's that sort of it's that sort of power is that song reminiscence that that takes is impressed and still makes it possible because of how chicago has moved sense that here particularly in sports than any other ways you were in any other way they're i get you mention that but the team that year with a

nine game lead that have been when i had to leave but then an end the end of in the personality and you do it in the i think fairly that time they really are the first saudi who in my mind emerges is not ernie banks and not a bottle of that there were not a bowl above nine mile long it's real failure and i thought about leo and the cubs it's always from a ben leo and another team only eastern seaboard a west coast there and those years were the cubs only the phone was such hope became listed on there and prompted a political and had it all right there that we're there and lilith fair and there's this there's an enemy you do with them a report in which he blamed everybody yeah but himself yeah you

know and it's interesting because it irritated more than it should in fact it was at the local public television and television station in chicago and this was years after the fact and he'd written written bum have caused to be published under his name the book his memoir called of course nice guys finish last hosted hosted by by very good goes by the way atlantans as one of the better ones when i think about the best one of the trade as a matter of fact and i am an actor like leah darrow sure he was at we often forget he was like well i'm not usually the manager for the brooklyn dodgers sure of that before he actually got suspended for a year before jackie robinson came up that he was initially that the manager of the dodgers when jackie robinson was signed and in uganda what was he was that there was a revolt among some of the players there were circulating a petition the black land here exactly and and he convened a meeting they were at spring training and in vero beach florida which of course was segregated in those days and convened a meeting in the kitchen as i recall of the hoteliers were in his dressing gown and smoke in this area and he just said

well i don't care if the skies red black or gray he's gonna help was win the pennant with a lot of money going and we haven't won i can't say a word i think i mentioned that he sort of made a case for immigration using language that eleanor roosevelt would not not as is that the same point and he was very it was that he was a good man and so many and so many major issues and you can see why good people to play for ah i don't think he was entirely to blame for the collapse of the cubs in nineteen sixty nine it did there's and there's a at one particular point by the way takes up smoking after having been on the internet and your school juana was a clubhouse manager said this is when the slide and we look over to me said you know you know those will kill you and leo district of uncivil that's the general idea that's exactly right he could be jimmy you know self effacing that famous incident when they were playing the mets really the series that began the slide in a black cap somebody in the work and let go on the field walk over by the club above the club dugout which is considered a very bad sign the blackout actually history of erosion and leo said to reporters after the game when he can't win recap their that

our i mean i i liked him but that a few years after the fact when i interviewed a local public television station he wasn't doing but i think a great manager does which is except even more than his responsibility for a collapse i mean that the great coaches and managers even when it's not entirely responsibility of all take the bullet for their players and i much would've preferred he stayed and he said we'll forgive jenkins at a healthier and billy williams had a hell of a year and ernie banks great as he was it wasn't his best year that he was in there trying it was a pleasure to have on the team it was my fault blame me that would have the noble instead he was blaming all the other player arrow on the lawyers ever applied for a man i just really i really i really got short tempered sitting there i didn't say what i wanted to say which are revealed in the book but i have done my bottle of backing up on them and prevented a great team and i don't say that he ran them in the ground but i do say it leaves teams often missed my uncle jack used to point this out that he had a habit of running writing it really heartening beginning of the year and it would run out of gas towards the end and if you take a look at his managerial career he did that a number of times with the brooklyn dodgers with the

new york giants and then ultimately with the cubs and and i think part of that is due to get people over that last hump they i mean it's a hundred different things but i know it helps to be plain again you believe in for someone that you believe in i mean i think that's what joe torre and others with this edition of the yankees were well i think that what phil jackson did with the bulls now the los angeles lakers and and leo was always coming up about ninety five percent of missing that last five percent which i think can really define a great manager real courage and he winds up by being remembered as a great character but not in and of himself a great manager just tell our audience a ukulele i'm talking to scott simon about his book home away scot as you all know is npr's weekend edition host and it's great to have in here and i don't have that great things are frustrating thing frustrating to the great players on the new album ruler france and out

when i picked up the book there early on you say i'm a finance and i mean the thought it's of a fan's notes on a great play the different actually hadn't use that title alone like what just get back to them to chicago and it's the roadshow i think was all a guy who was made for chicago yeah sure turned out the way you maybe came too late they believe truth but but you know then there are two other personalities debut at far more than two books and as we mentioned mike ditka and another leader and phil jackson <unk> mentioned the masters in them all two totally different personalities also i think made for chicago near the top a little bit about each one i have a lot of people think my kid is actually from chicago but he however he's from our group of pennsylvania which is right outside pittsburgh so culturally it's

not a great distance from chicago and day and he always said always be a bear no matter where wind up in life always be buried by the way the subsequent is not the norm in st louis and chicago and running a restaurant and he always will be a bear he embodied a lot of the qualities in which the city like to see itself that staunch miss the fierceness the the idea of if i might say this in a public television station k cason takes to take mainly a letter oh that was very much i think a philosophy he espoused that being said bump as we saw i think during walter peyton jones there was a tender a gentle yes even a tenor and a gentle side to mike ditka you you could see when he got in his orbit why talented people would be drawn to play with them that you had a difficult player alike jim mcmahon and one of the things that drew them to each other is that man could be flight he could be responsible of course draining rules and curfews were absolutely irrelevant to him but mike ditka recognize that under that jim mcmahon was a

bear that he was a kind of quarterback who would run into opposing packers his uniform would get as dirty as any of the guys walking form online he liked that so the rest of the difference is they had culturally socially even politically that didn't mean as much to him as the fact that he thought he had a good heart a staunch ironclad heart and that i think would like to get there you know that there'd been expressed i think that at some point obviously he couldn't coach the team any longer cause they just they had lost so many players of the great players the way championships can can bust uppity and he clearly just couldn't be the coach there anymore in talking about a run and a talk about the mayors the story of chicago would not be complete without gale sayers rifles retail run song the lyrics are not exactly the same as we saw them here in kenya but i mean brian was a more refined an hour and nowlan and more

outrageously fund raising on this fun loving on the movie made him here but social story and you know people read their den will remember and will come again close to tears when leo and phil of course phil jackson now has now has gondola and some would say we've made for la's to maintain night made it made for a new there is one moment in the book and maybe it's been written about before and know in sports reporting in chicago bar where it is that moment michael is now gone they are just they are in a playoff game with my lyrics it than when with one point eight seconds left field iran to play that would get the ball to political coverage which he thought was a very smart caucus he anticipated the mix would be expecting sky to

get the ball and chili cook coach had won almost many championships of michael jordan one of the earlier states and he was he was he is still a great long range shooter and and actually deadly reliable crunch performer bum scottie pippen wanted to be the man michael jordan was considered in the polls he didn't like it he sat down he refused to play and i feel sad are you in are you out make a long story short of course he sat down on the bench are the key symptoms only one informed the play unfold coke which made the shotgun and they went and done almost any other coach i can think of would have quite an i think defensively oh it would've gone in that locker room labeled as his finger scottie pippen and said you son of a bitch you never play another second for me and i'm gonna call every coach in this league blank television yes exactly and i think that might well it happened but phil jackson's not any other coach i can think he did it as it as it as every great

general needs to know when to do nothing phil jackson essentially did nothing he changed his contact lenses he waited for the people in the clubhouse to talk to scottie pippen which was much more persuasive than though courtright who was then the team centers and then damaged thirty we we we almost lost her chance to win the world championship without michael he almost would force because of their selfishness and and within five minutes getting pippen was blubbering is in tears and it was much more effectively done that way because i feel like slip people find their own solutions he finds that they learn something on their own big cuts deeper it's much more affective and an angular he takes at least for that with me he took little credit for that he's in what i do i kept just about the best player in basketball on my pain they said i shouldn't get me blue ribbons for that oh and i think the argument can be made that study pippen greater clarity as the offensive players he is was an even greater defensive player it is still greater probably than michael jordan so i think he understood that he was just about the most valuable player in the league that year but michael himself gone now

i'm still keeping tabs on the paint their calls to launch sos and confetti silicon tally survive this year again it's the chicago story like a month ago beale says relationship bombing of a bind because as politically incorrect is anybody could possibly be cut like the ernie banks stories that you tell me takes it on his job it destroyed the book is chock full bundt human interest anecdote that do with sports and politics i loved the story with the footnotes about emily's doing some the third going to your stepfather but my stepfather ralph was a lincoln scholar and which is actually how he got involved later and in prison richard nixon's papers as he had originally been appraised gov stevenson done in so little gas and then end of richard nixon charlie stevenson governor of illinois was of course is the governor of illinois has to be

the real aficionado of abraham lincoln the but stevenson ridiculous and it badly the third with a company to run for statewide office and i went to my stepfather my stepfather had worked together stevenson when he ran for governor in nineteen forty eight and then when he ran for president nineteen fifty two so when kennedy said you know you leave the third said to ralph in a wealthy would you know my bad my bad press to jews or any advice you'd like to give me about running for office rotterdam our manager says sadly don't change your name very sound advice to the footnotes chris stephenson likes to tell the story on themselves but he he changes the author of a line from my stepfather to the late mayor daley probably better known at them and somebody who is not as well known and was convicted on a federal crime of yourself i i have told my advice was so wise to wiseman probably independently offered you know you tell the story of chicago in your relationship with

chicago you know you're home carla them in your way most the time and you're away in far flung places covering the news covering breaking news covering wars but also well art is in so far is this land is going for an end to one of the things that happens in chicago that that do that bring sadness to a book that is mostly joyful has to do with death and then he followed that fuel and the years that followed that few judd gregg of death just four days after must follow their own and so i'm and i'm still where you are really were ted where are you now are much your heart still beats

their way to charities were my center of gravity it's an and i guess always will be a force that goes into it is today bunn and things it is somehow more real to me there and i'm not sure it can success which way that i know i can't logically defended by harold ramos the film director ryan years ago he was in second city and he's been directing lot of empty move from hollywood back to chicago a number of years ago a married woman from southern california told me that when he walks around the streets with his his wife now he will say things like the butcher shop isn't just more real here there is an apartment and a really sensitive is a god the senate is a joke that i know exactly what you mean and somehow it does seem that way we could be kidding ourselves i know but in any event it seemed that way to me a little bit still in a funk if i were to have to pick one story and that i thought the really so

from summed up in entertainment that's in the book in crimea of our lady to the army the first time what would billy pierce i thought i was billy pierce i know lots of youngsters have been a lot of youngsters who really don't know billy pierce us labor leaders was a great letter and a picture of the chicago white sox he was he was fated to be perhaps the best left hander in the american league when the white sox were we when the yankees are winning all those benson and people really just cared mostly about twenty fourteen and maybe bob feller mike or see about money that it was a great left handed pitcher known for being stylish classy and nervy and a bump when i was a youngster i will i couldn't have really thought i was billy pierce but i pretended that i was billy pierce with my mother and my mother said to me scotty time to get to bed i would act as if she was speaking to a stranger

and i would go to bed until she said uncle billy time to get a big relief and i really thought that it was billy pierce and you know it's amazing the media adults i got to ratify that court and i think that's what the lens of morality with a relative to it after a while everybody else is going to believe your ship in the cumberland years i guess it's an american story that way it is and there is that there is the same with the neighbors which uncle jack and your father wrote a bit irritated me billy pierce and then the villagers and all i could do was cry i was so overwhelmed and there it was surrounded by the three men who are most important in the world to me as far as that goes my my father my uncle jack and then billy pierce and all i could do was cry probably what my pants too but i don't remember that but all i could describe you know this is this is a book for me was so so much laundry there are moments of great faith of it is it really him spoke to make me laugh and both the country and the unexpected i had no

idea that it was obviously you have found it i get way as you know as i don't have to tell you writing is real work audience of the research and and and talking to some people talking to gale sayers on the phone going off to see a lovable gambles games that was fun you do it again and what i can do another book about the bulls and december that you wanted to do another book and begun already is a matter really there well something i wanna do all i still have the or relative youth and energy to do it while a probe into deep well what is a will invite you now blind and saying come back and talk to win with no thank you i'd love to do that when i'm talking to you scott simon about his new book all the way thank you for joining us thank you scott garrett thank all of you and johnson and offer word on words no

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