An hour with Frank DeFord

you can hear and every wednesday on national public radio's morning edition of always felt it's no coincidence that some basketball powerhouses duke kentucky kansas and indiana get a few better players sports fans are jealous of sportswriters because it's a dream job where you get paid to watch and a great social quest in american sport right now is to have one prominent active gay male athlete step forward and identify himself i'm kate mcintyre and to de fund k pr presents sportswriter frank afford to forget the regular commentator on npr senior correspondent on hbo real sports with bryant gumbel and senior contributing writer at sports illustrated is the author of eighteen books his latest is over time my life as a sportswriter the ford was the winner of the two thousand thirteen william allen white foundation national citation at the university of kansas the first sports writer to receive that honor today fifty artisans with reported that they use of william allen white day

february eighth two thousand thirteen woodruff auditorium and so a lot of on the server julian learnt our wives one hundred and forty fifth birthday so gratified to see this extraordinary distinction but if i imagine that i'm as to why i was different and so almost every respect i think that the gemini be very dubious about much much later today first of all i am the first journalists ever to be so honored and then at the same time mr white wrote in his autobiography athletics did not interest me even remotely the average so much as bogus when self doubt is not evident mr white was a genuine small town in western i'm a big city slicker from the east he was a newspaperman i come mostly from magazines it was a devout republican stalwarts democrat illinois sure that i'm tall and

skinny and there is the one the terrible tragic image that we have that sadly we both lost our beloved daughters when they were were children and happily though those two of those simply wrote an awful lot of things a lot of stuff about a lot of stuff so there is that the connection and love isn't it a team that visits as your own almost like gabe instantly well known outside of kansas for his famous editorial what's the other witnesses in nineteen sixty seven it became instantly well known within the state of wyoming or applied for writing in a national magazine that became huge cheerleaders with the best living in the conch so now that they have to return to be

celebrated again in kansas a man could do no better than to be associated with a beautiful day for women and william allen widen school remained such an icon for journalists and i do appreciate it the first person to receive this is devoted most of my dream was to work for sports writing as a sport's writer i've always been cynical one somewhere wins an award like the most valuable player and then he makes a big modest deal until i could not have done this without the help of my teammates police place on a not so humble this week's episode of all swat with writers all right believe and sincere in saying it i feel that this art form he does recognize it probably played on sports journalism which i

believe sometimes has to offer are overlooked but i understand that as jimmy cannon was truly grades which are wonderful man of words in common ones where the toy shop of the profession and that's true what we cover for the most part is fun fun with adam games not serious enough and that's fair enough inevitably without getting a highfalutin about the sports is important cultural the fact it is found in every society throughout human history that must mean something yes the village and insects are also found in every culture i would rate sports quite so why is that yes to it it does it does matter sports writing elegy to be presumed to be somehow are different then shall we say we'll

write it it didn't occur to me into the very recently in my life they are all the titles and dangerous only sportswriter as written in one more kind of additional fully in my memoir of a future police the border two words movie two words editorial writer war correspondent in and sports editor two words of sportswriter is called join you just simply separated now writer and subject that may also be a certain amount of supply here because i will acknowledge that has a dirty little secret that sports writing really is the easiest writing in the whole dream is jesse it's full of drama contact

somebody wins somebody loses glamour entertainment era technology schumer heroes and heroes are invariably young and callow reading words put in her mouth which is the dream of every journalist oh no we are not without our faults we've come some time is that the farm show for the trees first despite the fact that it had that in the recent past things in america under the mine as most egregiously and range first no matter how hard we looked there were not as we promised the world any weapons of mass destruction and second despite how hard we put writers to work there were all sorts of performance enhancing drugs in baseball and all other sports

that's a shame we i think as a group convened to accepting sportswriters even most recently and being stunned to discover that men and boys and repair kids playing football what a shock progressive years as visible that was all potent offense to the doctors as well as a journalist which is that what we know and was so patently clear how to do reform and games we were conflicted one good example taylor branch magnificent reporter who won the pulitzer prize for writing about martin luther king didn't support strong enough to completely on the us and syria range of athletic association that this is not the forum for maybe get into my feelings about the ncaa and what under

girds have which amateurism which is a fraud and evil but the point is just impressive justin davis point is that since mr burgess revelations imaginations eleven in the party and the fall and this man when women robert came to play and instead go on about their business beautifully covering the games the games and never mind even mentioning the hypocritical cartel that that runs and so in that way and so in famously know nobody wants to hit nobody wants to read it was a way about football players were having their brains it's this is a size of a side won i'm the man so much about sports writing modern day what's right is the overwhelming dependence upon

statistics never better for worse sports does lend itself so well the story only love and war and fairytales meant for the digital age i suppose and there is even sport's embrace of all of those other sports and warren's words unbearable are fairytales sports and he had arranged me to say facey stories are overwhelming standby just passionless numbers that that intelligence overindulgence of numbers aside i do believe that we as calm as this aim was racing it we have come a distance around when i entered the profession which which i should say i have no real intention of remaining in it for a long time it's another example of how life does take sometimes by this was a scuffle at that when i came into the

profession with frozen was not look the part with the greatest of respect the role i had it is wrong to take even the best and most honest the sheriff morris chamber of commerce types of needed as you're still good reason in san diego that he even named a stadium for a beloved sports writer the rack writers dearly loved sports blue note that office that affection for some reason probably because long ago we thought that that would somehow make have something more important in this week wrote about it in your own language tended toward the florida and the world cocoa what one recall by the mediterranean much of walter scott and likewise we've always that i'm very sympathetic

homers and this is especially true with the big cities and the major league professional teams reporters who cover the teams were all too often more like er assistance at work for years we were of course all men part of that was really sure of sheer massage i think a lot of it was obligated by my curiosity about the fashion which is alone in the united states that we often interviews the people we were talking to when they were bought may now let me tell you it takes a while to get used to in my experience there were some conversations there are wonderful victory that when both parties are close and they're someone the conversations you've both parties or one of the embassies is just

something you have nothing in her experience but never mind we introduced modestly to our conversations and their water mile out for emails and a lot of grief when i supposed to get even with women into the prescott so altogether yes we're a much more progressive body of workers that we were when i stumbled into this profession so many years ago or course so much happened it will hold terrorism the past three years i was very surprised and been reading mr white's memoirs that he made a point of how much news that changed and his life the courts above all he was mistaken i have a feeling my words mr martin taylor and that is his

wine and try to pressure the late nineteenth century but not a hell of a lot happened around six for seven decades they just seem to be their newsprint that came up on the phone a bomb the torch by some labor boy who miraculously appeared out of the blue on a bicycle but it was ultimately beijing but even when i was in college i said have lived by myself or my college newspaper first real job of the business was a copy boy in the old bulldog or evening sun newspaper is elfin much my spare time when i was not answering cause a copy over and copy down what was to sit in or putting together poppy but once all the pages of court who ever remembers harvey pitt

i'm sure it's a copy boys had made those booklets that may get himself generations before and their wages seem to that the longest day i was absolutely a high have the dubious honor of being the editor of the world's great newspaper experience in this nation and a certain at this point but this is the only time in my life that i would be better as a young writer and still as alive full truth and nail or will generally subscribe to what general sherman say about the profession when a male is too lazy to work and too cowardly to steal it becomes a newspaper and then

one day i suddenly was a newspaper editor the head of america's first and only sports daily the national real estate emotion last hundred and fifty million dollars that's hard to do without boring you with the details we were terrific editorial product the winner is one of them the commerce sensory nobody had figured out ahead of time how much it cost to deliver newspapers to people's houses which is where they expected them will they woke up in the morning memorable is on bicycles about why their trade anymore and in nineteen ninety it was twenty years ago and what amazes me though is that people still don't know all i have the international even around back then you didn't write for the internet and what i always say is you know

women great for the internet but the internet were not being paid for office because of course the problem is that the internet dominates newspapers but i just can't say yes sir it's the same as people always asking how the internet has changed sports as if somehow were different from the rest of those dna surely the most important that's in communications is part invention i don't think that sports' been affected in a unique batch of it is that because they keep score of it because it's so simple because his transparent on the advantages for better than most topics we can be more easily distort forty years ago today a story and then the wars look at the world is being surveyed by what you call them pseudo of apps and set up just abortion said there

are only two things that will be left that were really real crime in sports this was before oj simpson and then less on far as divorce was particularly press but really the changes the pianos were also have affected us in sports pretty much like everybody else the beauty all the respect in the magazine write on them to the ed sullivan show for those of you may remember it wasn't always displaced we sold newspapers william allen white what we always used to say that old joke what's often live in and roll over and the rover is that is that is the key part all sorts of different things with phone interface

and if you weren't interested in certain subjects in at least at the first glance that age before you might decide to turn into another to say you weren't interested when ed sullivan brought out the opera diva you would least listen to her until senior when sixty one child maybe you'll learn to appreciate opera oh in the board this has always been the same beauty of open space to bits and pieces of everything william allen white even obama supporters that was another famous writer another pulitzer prize winner who graduated from this university and i'm like mr white was known for expressing the chancellor the mood of love of the midwest that was we

managed to apply to write a manual about it was torture versus that mr white was comfortable with everything in his life but in mr dinges most famous work for which he won the fiction of it and when the play begins in a small kansas town like mr waits in korea with that newspaper boy on the bicycle deliveries in the morning that begins to kansas today the midwest at the all american day vision judy america with a newspaper itself and almost too much so carter sisters there on stage one shots of the beautiful bottle with leaders you know that and the other sister playing the bright inquisitive

hand the boy shut the paper on the porch and the plain sister nelly the trees and she sits down the porcelain chair and starts to go through the pages black life unravel and that's a little clip starts picking issue show live talk show what military might have stumbled on that's a very unusual it would have been nearly one of the artists did they are suspect she would have a vibe that out there on the swing i'm going to go i'm going to get it at the bar website and how her much admired learned more about art too much of the rest of the world what would testify today even sports there is also a hard

process that dominates so selective i think that ironically the broadband in many respects aware of his race would rent and in the process of political wrangling has been devalued pictures everyplace words to such an extent that he really made use of that we're now more than ever as we communicate by e mail it's a marbled that we employ so modern schon lange which i worry that we're creating a large college educated people yes but for those who might be involved option militarized which is to say that they learn to read at the table really choose not too extreme texting is not right now the best writing this adoption and sports

writing sometimes can be downright was texting is the literary equivalent of the air as i felt those of us in journalism lovable a quote a quote unquote again and again thomas jefferson's famous remark word left for me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspaper that a government i should not hesitate to prefer the latter all already for it thank you so much is mr jefferson but in fact we don't often mentions that the thought was followed by a lot of the survivors and included but it means that every man should receive these papers and be capable of creating jobs in this audience event education first written words whitmore was five we are now more allegedly educated than ever before

in high school educations a century ago that figure was only six percent twenty five percent have a baccalaureate degree stay in america but if we chose soft leather say what what what does all this education so the end of the day yes sports writing glenn to where there's lots of people love sports and want to know more more about and i worry about the future of were trying for that matter or about this for the future of before trees will be fine however i do worry as i believe way and why we worry about that inquisitive young girl sitting on the porch when somewhere in a small town in kansas and that doesn't come by a new mortgage on the porch so for all the information that's how overwhelming emotion in some

respects we dont know i think that what used to be just thrown to his front porch information is so much more conveniently but ironically we have to work harder to educate ourselves a challenge a challenge is journalist of the future is going to be just like how to inform people had of making people more curious again other stuff not as yogi berra and then the words of sportswriter speak to be without a citation though i'm young and had an aha the missoula are tooling down the road going to invent a new jersey a few years ago and soon began to get worried

ross yale he said they were making such a good time at that point that is my scripture i going to stop now that in a few minutes that we have left i would welcome having some question fuel but as a very much engaged for listening to sportswriter frank before on kansas public radio thank you for coming to corporations with by mail one are professional tennis players randomly tested first performance enhancing substances and secondly in collegiate and professional basketball for the baskets be raised to twelve feet it was suggested that two years of the answer is that dying seven people would still people everybody loves it done and i'll do it as the owners are

easily i'm curious in your assessment of the whole situation from a journalist pointed you with an anti tail and whether journalists were doing their job i think everybody was just so easily taken in by this is the story about a notre dame to you have to make believe girlfriend or something just so fantastic you don't you know you just i would have doubted it becomes for eighteen months as beautiful girl was in touch with him and he never made any effort to see her and that was extraordinary to me is the man at the center beautiful woman saying i love you i do or you and you wouldn't go here and so maybe if i'd done a story i would have been on their way but a simple thing was so crazy that that that nobody stopped and said

this can't be and since it's your question a little bit something as large is that i suppose gets by irish faithful all i can say it's a battle a thing is a puzzlement you've been listening to sportswriter frank before who is the winner of the two thousand thirteen william allen white foundation national citation you can hear de ford every wednesday on npr's morning edition he's also senior correspondent on hbo's real sports with bryant gumbel and senior contributing writer at sports illustrated i'm kate mcintyre today's kbr prisons was recorded at k use william allen white day at the university of kansas february eighth two thousand thirteen as part of william allen white day at the university of kansas to ford sat down with a number of local and regional

sports writers including k pr as owner greg echlin since you are receiving that william allen white award what have you learned about william allen white families heard about him and always piqued my interest that this man on this tiny little town in the middle of the mid america had become not only a force in journalism the book and presenter and a celebrity a national celebrity and i made enough about him now he died when i was very young so i have no overlap with him really he seems a versatile than a first class journalist title to think he could have achieved it without that he got the one lucky break when he wrote the one editorial and so often like a senior at his record of over seven other wife would never have been filed but clearly he was he was bright and he was engaging

that he was able to have people listen to him can trip to to have important people listened to him and that's a tremendous facility first he was listening to them and they were listening to him and that i think is one of the just a ball rolling and picking up speed and he became sort of a one of a kind he is the small town editor for america as a time when there were small town newspapers paul harvey too much to my mind is an example of the latter day when on what people like that he's representative of the world that states that snowball and that was very important that if you were around today would you have liked to them at all absolutely run faster because among other things he was what he seemed to be very comfortable with in himself lived a very happy

life except for the ad for the terrible death of his of his daughter when she was a young woman but he was politically khalifa conflicted that was clear that he was a staunch republican and yet as time moved on he seemed to have war he warned of i am self with wisdom with roosevelt's of what we could believe he was he was like silk say it is it's nice to know that he wasn't absolutely perfectly shaped and for that he did have these these conflicts and contradictions so i would've liked it went very much and do you share that tragic event because you both have lost daughters at an early age which you have shared your private feelings with him i would've he he won't come because i guess his second most famous piece after that and what's the matter with kansas editorial alyssa tribute to his daughter he wrote a very again being a newspaperman he wrote a very

quick shortly after she died he wrote just beautiful tribute to her ah i wrote a book the three four years after my daughter died but it i think it's true that those of us who have more children and the body more than you no interview that happens to you you do share of this terrible thing and i think that gives you a certain high enough of bond because people say i just don't know how you how you can do it i just don't think i could i could have managed well you know when you are here you couldn't manage it you really know that when you're talking to somebody else who has managed and it does give you some kind of the privilege in the business he was arrogant what were you curious about about him that you would have asked him attention because she he was in the newspaper business i want a war you know the mechanics of it then i mean i remember being a copy boy when i was a kid on the baltimore sun in the late

nineteen fifties that was sort of my introduction to a newspaper's real newspaper under a lot of history in the strongholds yet i would like to have known what it was like you'd be a one man ban putting out that newspaper in gathering it and setting the type and just simply isn't not simple so how what about being a newspaper managed to turn of the century an independent woman the years living a leading up tu tu tu the first four that would have interested me more than wanting to know about an internal kansas politics or even national politics was white in a sense did you get that feeling when you're the editor of the national illicit inventing things on the fly because she we did have a whole new gizmos all the new science all the new technology this was before the internet but we had everything else and an

and i was working as a magazine that i was where i was learning how to be a newspaper man is a strange thing and they hire the fall and i'd be in the newspaper read it there but i got was braided one way that i hired a great dispute or maybe my radio man and i was fine but the other that but the process of putting out a newspaper with the pressures of of of putting out a new show on on on television footage is fascinating it's not easy and now i'm moving parts and that's what you've got to have to figure out if the national were to have been distributed better couldn't have survived know because she and i would come along until like a real newspaper the mayor who it would have survived for a few more years and been very profitable but then it's hard not to

assume that the same thing would happen to it as pickup usa today and a face like a flimsy like a throwaway i remember when usa today had fire should churches and each one is larger than the paper today phenomenal they've done the best they could but i can't believe that we would have done any better than that and then they get but yes we would have been successful there would have been a window there and which i think would've been tremendously successful and we were successful creative pointed to everybody like the product that critics were wrong but it was the new york world tribunal and that influenced you in the readings and then the writers that you had read in the newspaper herald tribune herald tribune it became the world telegram when only can the world journal tribune later all in its last dying moments they hope the growing free papers and detailed tribune was a writer's paper and boy that's a curse you go back in time

and every play every newspaper that was called a writer's paper it's stupid it's become worse and it's the same way as people say he's a player's manager he gets fired rufus and sense doesn't win the nearby likes him for but that doesnt use i was the same way but the tribune was a wonderful wonderful wonderfully written paper in much better writers than many archives of the new york times was so much better commercial enterprise how assured that when the war came the tribune was doing very well and it's it had used it used all the extra advertising that came in to run advertising where's the times where more stories and took short term profit less profit and by the end of the war the times of john forte head of the tribune maybe that's unwise to a manager

is judged by wins and losses how is a great newspaper with great writers judged what i think for a long time and the scope of a love from what you were doing really matter life i grew up in baltimore the baltimore sun relatively small city and then compared to new york chicago los angeles and so forth it had correspondents all over the world and so it was by definition a great newspaper strip about what it covered the kansas city star louisville courier journal papers that were not in the big cities had a reputation that went far beyond their size of of what they covered and were as a city like san francisco never had a good newspaper there's some of you know was more sophisticated cities the country know it was junk and in consensus but so it did matter the tradition of the paper and humble what percent how

objective it wasn't simply the people that hired to write about this sense the culture on them and i think and to date i dont think you have that opportunity as much as you used to i think it's much more of a commercial fiction became you get in and off readers but i do know this that as newspaper's cutback they become less attractive it's just and streams and so so it's soulful it's vicious circle a slippery slope for trevor cliche you prefer if there's less good stuff and more for people to really didn't get minimal writers for people to read at the center of the eastern seaboard you had a chance to appreciate and even work elbow to elbow with some of the great writers and for us in this part of the country who would stand out in your mind west

of the mississippi i would think jim murray would be the first one who would come to my mary was the best comic sportswriter there was he says there's no question it quickly grew up in hartford connecticut filled with well we'll keep him out in the east and it was gonna try mccabe was a terrific writer and indian savages go for the chronicle was painted on a spring them bilious green paper but there weren't that many good writers that were celebrated in the worsening the main chicago of course that huge reputation than a west of the mississippi it's close but are they and so there are very very few of the best writers in the newspapers came the i can think of a summit on the news side of the los angeles times who particularly

so that in truth journalistic experts will us remember you forgot shone joins sean show that but generally speaking most of the best writers she came from eastern specifically for me or i know your feelings art for the ncaa in the way it's set up in college baseball you have to play three years at a school before you become eligible to play professionally but in college basketball you have won and done and they might have won your chances here that sheer what your thoughts on why that is and who dictates that the first of all in baseball you can go to high school player you do have an alternative and so they should not only eat it you get that choice which is fair in many respects was the nba tickets alone into the nba says we will catch you when you get silly as the ncaa kept of all the things i can blame the ncaa for him well to pick a diverse in spades it can't be blamed for that the nba is saying in

effect on we want you to go to college were maybe you can develop a reputation so that should be a bit more than drawing card when you come into the nba i think it's more of a commercial thing than anything else it's clear that some guys can jump from supply chains and the classic example called the bride can jump from high school on the other hand i do think it is sort of protective in a way because in all kinds of instances of kids who came out and then because they didn't have the chance to develop lost that opportunity football i think you have to play to your children before you could be drafted and given the nature of the physical nature of football i think it would be criminal to have somebody come out of high school and then try to play him in the nfl and that's a protective rules for fifth if nothing else but it's the

nba that makes the decision not the ncaa with regard to vegetable but there have been in regards to professional basketball legal ramifications that you know in the spencer heywood case where their head they have been taken to the courts and have them warm those cases as if somebody wants to do that now i'm sure that when a jew i mean i can imagine that that that they had any right to do that from a legal sense if anybody ever wants to take the ncaa record and really carried out on whole basis of amateurism and the whole student athlete issue of should they could win but the trouble is it would take years and years of meandering through the courts just like the case now which is about who owns the images of players i think that started four years ago it's been scheduled ncaa keeps fighting and putting it off and delaying tactics and that's fine he scheduled to come to court yeah i mean in the spring of twenty fourteen and so

what players going to bother with that you're going to get a lot of life and but i think you're absolutely right great at that the nba rule would not hold up in any american choral you have through the years i've written pieces that will be enjoyed for generations howard frank to ford like to be remembered i think i'd like to be remembered as somebody who was shy consistent and other words the fancy word but i like my oeuvre i like what i've gone as a full body of work i am as opposed to someone who may have written wanted to absolutely magnificent things but that i never wrote water to magnificent things but i think i've been hugely culture and i've been able to do it even though most of my work has been in

sports but i'm unable to do it in various ways you know short everything from radio to to long pieces the books shelia like people show you know he was at the jam honest writer for a long period of time i think that's what it was one final question why have you always hated editors at the races that the editor's get in the way you know they failed writers by authorities he says and then there was a whole mess every man named gene fowler very famous famous character and then gene kelly said every editor should have a pimp for a brother so they would have some of the family to look up to i can't i can't do any better than that you just heard sportswriter frank to ford speaking with k pr sports

correspondent greg echlin to ford was at the university of kansas and february eighth two thousand thirteen to receive the william allen white national citation the first sportscaster to win that honor in addition to his work for sports illustrated hbo is a real sports with bryant gumbel and national public radio's morning edition to forty is the author of sixteen books his latest is over time my life as a sportswriter for the rest of this hour to afford talks about that book with diana court producer of book talk this program comes to us from pr x the public radio exchange has no my guest is frank to ford author of over time my life as a sportswriter welcome to our program and to remain true along with being a novelist screenwriter biographer you must be america's most famous sports writer well a lot of people decide that but i've had

the advantage of being around for fifty years so i'm probably imbedded in people's minds whether they like it or not was your first act covering sports i first it was every kid in queens where it is a school journalist you do everyday so good i was covering sports when i was twelve thirteen years old what i've ever cover sports full time until i went to sports illustrated and i really didn't go to sports illustrated to be a sportswriter i wanted to be a writer i was tremendously admiring of the magazine and its literary quality i want to go to new york and then all of a sudden i realize i was just with our life sometimes take you by the scruff of the neck you know so what happens was exploded sports illustrated exploded and i felt it was so much you could do with sports that i didn't i'd never thought before a dangerous portraits it's that submits little microcosm of life how is forcing the country

over the years i covered obviously most of the specific squad and field hockey games i've been there curling i've seen dragon boat races in china so i can't say i'm a sports i can say we're going to fifty two countries and people think of sport as kind of the thing next door but i've been to every continent except antarctica and every state except north dakota my apologies to the people from north dakota and so i've seen an awful lot of different kinds of games was never hard to learn all the rules not really because the stories that i do really have anything to do with the expertise of knowing the game i'm usually doing stories about the people involved about some kind of of cultural or social logical element of never even in the games i know well like say basketball and baseball in ten years i've never once

set myself up posters as an ex is in those six or it's never been my dream dina figures were as a fan is a fan as a fan my favorite sport is baseball as the writer i couldn't care less what's more i'm doing as long as it's a good story for example i really can't stand soccer is one of the profound mysteries of the world to me that so many people like soccer and the soccer people paid before but that's ok one their stories angered that touched me more than anything else was as cyber story in little southwestern african country of cameron so i don't care about the sport and just ensure and he had a favorite john williams aside from being a sportswriter or writing about people in the stories was there a particular job i think effective devoted my life towards a lot of infection and you know that that to me is so on i'd say for a writer with fictions of the mojave

city published and all kinds of what i do with my fiction is unable to get away from sports and given the areas which i like which which really have not do with my main job those ash novel i wrote was called bliss remembered an irish a woman a love story as a woman and you can't do that when we went because fiction is the most creative and most challenging in that sense that's been my favorite on the other hand i probably couldn't have written just fiction i needed to get out and belts around into the real stuff so you really have a variety of worlds colliding worlds yet its versatility is the fault of injured today i mean i've never really slowed know i'm seventy three years old and a lawyer with just about everything and you can do that

yeah i've tried places now have much success place that's a great believer in screenplays screenplays and had some success for ten novels lots of book countless you know magazine articles at the writing commentaries for npr since nineteen eighty have to like fifteen and so given the whole lot that i that i haven't done and maybe that's because i would just maybe i should concentrate on something got it right you really don't think so do you know cause i don't think mr r i don't get it don't think i have patients and the army i read something the other extreme is robert carroll who was two years three years at mit princeton he's devoted his whole life to lyndon johnson the idea of theo i don't care who really doesn't then radiated that the charlemagne out there who it is but i would go crazy if i had to devote myself to one subject for that

all i'm just not wired that way right i'm better off moving around or do you know how many awards you know muslim rooms full i got lots of all stunned and now in a position where a morning of color time achievement award slight fifty give it did you have to give your you fall bird a word i think i'm up for that at the idea that at that time means very i'm you say that i really love and have required big three to get awards you're particularly on senators to move it i like it like an honorary degree from a college town and the reason i like it it's because sportswriters don't usually get that i've apply and i accepted yes for me but i think in you know those college was nice enough to give this to a sportswriter and not the lapels knows just because i write about fun and games and saw those mean special mouth and today well speaking of

sportswriters old movies often depicts journalist spending more time at local bars and then bang on the keys true yes sorry i can't i came into the business where i think it was almost due regard for us journalists to be our drinking it was always part of the job description there wasn't a newspaper in this country or a magazine i don't think it didn't have its ball the special place where guys won and was advised it was virtually organize when the day was over a new a new adventure story and then you would go there in an ad at the bar with a larger piano chords enough drinkers even have some of the debt problems and that which tutu there were an awful lot of writers who thruway radio talent at the bar and i saw some of the talk about the mind and a memoir over time it says still what sportswriters to knock on animal no i mean now

we're we've gone pretty much the other way for two interview huge is the hyperbole no no but i mean they they tend to get up in the morning and then and run their very athletic a well behaved as i say my book is still do but they've become the worst dressers of the world at least when we drank we look respectable even if you fell down in your crops you look good now sportswriters dress terribly but behave much better and i don't know whether that means they ride a better that was a very important moment in my life when my editor and i may and not really there was almost as a given that my life was my first editor he had been the goals press secretary during the war in this freshmen who saves sports illustrated and one neither the barnes a man consumed a great deal of scotch it could hold as

we said no he said frankly colby frank is unknown time in my life that i ever wish i had that image of always been for a issue frankly it isn't what you write about it's how well you i said it doesn't matter he made a difference to me and i think it says so for instance for intruders because you're writing about politics or religion there's an image of the rider doesn't among them any athlete you write about in the book you identify one as the most imposing physical specimen you ever encountered on this or interviews will tremble so race last fifty years what's been the biggest change is worse when your questions or answer the second thing would be money in

television but money in television as tom and every element of our lives if you look at fifty years ago where women stood in sports and where they are today it's been an absolute sea change with at lake this is free to ford author of overtime published by the atlantic monthly press society you've just heard sportswriter frank to ford on book talk this program comes from pr x the public radio exchange you can hear frank before it every wednesday morning on national public radio's morning edition many of his as aids are our current on their website debuted debbie debbie you that npr dot org i'm kay mcintyre kbr present is a production of kansas public radio at the university of kansas it's b

every week at our prisons brings you some of the most interesting people that come to the katie our listening area i'm kate mcintyre every week i'm pleased to take you to the dole institute of politics and the call center for the humanities at the university of kansas to the landon lecture series and the state university and right here to keep your studios for locally produced programs it's radio programming you won't hear anywhere else and that's only possible with your support if you enjoy keep your prisons every sunday evening support this program during our upcoming pledge drive or pledge your support right now at cpr that eu dot edu and thanks for your support