The Peter Attia Drive - #44 - Jeremy Schaap, ESPN journalist： upsets, doping, triumphs, and the importance of sports

00:00:00.000 Hey everyone, welcome to the Peter Atiyah drive. I'm your host, Peter Atiyah. The drive

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00:04:10.580 for a monthly subscription. My guest this week is Jeremy Schaap, one of the preeminent journalists

00:04:15.760 at ESPN and a wonderful guy. We spend a lot of time in this episode talking about sports. Obviously,

00:04:21.280 Jeremy has done a lot of amazing work and he's written the book Cinderella Man, which is an incredible

00:04:26.440 story of James J. Braddock, who many of you probably have not heard of, but I think by the end of this

00:04:31.460 episode, you'll understand why the story is so beautiful. We also talk a lot about his most

00:04:35.820 recent project, which is directing a 30 for 30 special called 42 to one, which is the story of

00:04:41.880 the Buster Douglas upset of Mike Tyson. We get into a lot of things that go beyond sports or at least

00:04:47.160 are associated with sports, such as why these things matter to us, what they teach us about life

00:04:52.280 and the challenges that he faced following in his father's enormous footsteps and ultimately coping

00:04:57.100 with his father's early death as a result of a medical error. This episode could have gone on

00:05:02.840 for a really long time, but we kind of had a time limit on it and we had to draw it to a close

00:05:06.880 earlier than either one of us would have liked. But with that said, I think you'll really enjoy my

00:05:11.580 conversation with Jeremy Schaap. Hey Jeremy, thanks for coming, man. It's my pleasure, Peter. Thank you

00:05:18.840 for having me. First trip on the second subway, huh? I guess it's been a couple of years now. I mean,

00:05:23.520 they've been building it since 1929, but it was nice to, you know, I went out of my way to get

00:05:28.540 a chance to see the 72nd Street station. It was pretty impressive. Not having been in New York

00:05:32.720 that long, I don't appreciate the morass of like nonsense. Oh, you know, by the year 2400,

00:05:39.200 it should extend a little bit farther downtown, I would expect. Apparently it's going all the way to

00:05:45.420 Tribeca. Yeah. And then there's the LIRR, you know, extension to Grand Central and, you know,

00:05:51.500 the city is always improving, just sometimes very slowly.

00:05:55.920 So there's so many things I want to talk about on the sports front, but I also realize that maybe

00:06:01.180 not everybody wants to hear all of this stuff, but I want to start with something in boxing because

00:06:05.540 you and I have something in common, which is we are both completely obsessed with the history of

00:06:10.440 boxing. And we were talking about over dinner a few months ago. I don't think I know anything that

00:06:15.560 has happened in boxing from about the year 1996 forward. If you asked me to rattle off one champion in

00:06:21.120 one division. That year probably coincides with the beginning of some new professional endeavor,

00:06:27.140 or, you know, once you start building a family and your career and all that, it's harder to be

00:06:32.320 as obsessive about these things. And boxing itself has, let's face it, lost a lot of its luster over

00:06:40.320 the last several decades. I'm certainly not as up on the sport as I was when I was covering it for ESPN

00:06:46.080 on a regular basis. I was a ringside reporter for some time. I wrote a book about boxing history,

00:06:51.500 but that didn't have anything to do with the contemporary sport. My assignment for about 10

00:06:55.000 years was being like the Mike Tyson reporter from 1995 when he got out of prison until 2005 when he

00:07:01.300 retired. That constituted a lot of the work that I did.

00:07:05.020 His last fight was against Kevin McBride.

00:07:07.200 Kevin McBride, the Clonus Colossus. Yeah.

00:07:09.420 Unforgettable Clonus Colossus in Washington, DC.

00:07:11.520 And I guess I sort of, I'm exaggerating a little bit. I still followed it enough. I mean,

00:07:15.780 I would watch- If you remember Kevin McBride.

00:07:17.200 Yeah. The fact that I can remember the Kevin McBride fight tells you I was still somewhat

00:07:20.340 paying attention. But I had an almost ridiculous obsession going back to about Jack Johnson.

00:07:27.360 Okay.

00:07:27.860 So from Johnson to Dempsey to Lewis to Marciano to Ali-

00:07:33.520 All heavyweights.

00:07:34.320 Yeah. And of course, you know, Robinson, Armstrong, like it's hard to put in words how much I

00:07:39.800 obsessed over that stuff. Like I knew every detail of every one of their fights at one

00:07:43.040 point.

00:07:43.240 That goes way beyond me. I mean, I had-

00:07:45.820 But you wrote about Braddock, which I'd love to just-

00:07:47.640 Yeah. I mean, I immersed myself in the 30s. And the book that I wrote about Braddock and

00:07:52.340 Bear, it really was also kind of a primer on the first 50 years of the heavyweight division as

00:07:59.240 well. Because those stories for me, like you, are just so fascinating. These guys were such big

00:08:05.100 stars and so many of them were outsized personalities. And there was nothing else in

00:08:10.800 sports that even approached the significance of the heavyweight championship of the world. That was

00:08:16.280 it. I mean, you know, the middleweight champion of the world, I remember there were only eight

00:08:19.880 divisions and, you know, middleweight champion-

00:08:21.380 And one champion per division.

00:08:22.460 One champion per division. And there's something mythic about it. And it always fascinated me. And I

00:08:28.120 grew up in the 1970s. I was born in 1969. I grew up in the 1970s, obviously, in the sports

00:08:33.420 business. There was a lot of interesting stuff going on, epic stuff going on in the heavyweight

00:08:38.540 division. My father was very much Dick Schaap, very much a part of that. And I remember, you know,

00:08:43.200 being six, seven years old, I still have it, this encyclopedia of boxing champions just, you know,

00:08:48.540 sitting there memorizing it. Whether it was about Stanley Ketchel, the great middleweight, or it was

00:08:53.760 about the great heavyweights from, you know, the guys you named, Dempsey and Johnson and Sullivan.

00:09:00.180 There was something that always attracted me to those stories as well.

00:09:03.460 So you chose to dive into a really interesting story that is, I think, honestly, without your

00:09:09.000 work would be a footnote, right? So most people wouldn't even know who James J. Braddock is,

00:09:13.260 were it not for the movie Cinderella Man starring Russell Crowe, which of course was based entirely

00:09:17.860 on your book.

00:09:18.760 Well, it pains me to disabuse you of that misimpression, but I feel obligated to do so.

00:09:23.160 The movie was actually in the works before the book.

00:09:25.540 Oh, I didn't know that. I just assumed it.

00:09:28.020 And the movie had many people I wish.

00:09:29.780 The movie was in the works before the book.

00:09:32.540 Yes, I'm taking all that back.

00:09:33.880 Take all of it back.

00:09:34.760 Russell Crowe would have made everybody know who, yeah, yeah.

00:09:37.540 There had not been a book written about since ever really a big Max Baer book, and not since

00:09:43.620 the 30s had anyone written a book about Braddock. And I decided to make it kind of a dual biography

00:09:48.360 as they are on this collision course towards this heavyweight showdown in 1935.

00:09:53.180 And so let's give people a little bit of a sense of that, because for me, I've always,

00:09:57.100 like I looked at all of those heavyweights to me, the entire lineage from Sullivan to

00:10:01.740 Johnson to Lewis, et cetera. I mean, every one of those guys seemed like a god. They didn't

00:10:06.740 seem like they were mortal. They just, there was nothing about them that seemed normal.

00:10:11.240 Baer was like, first of all, like probably the most good looking guy I've ever seen in

00:10:15.220 my life.

00:10:15.860 Like it's hard to imagine a more handsome, beautiful, stunning human being.

00:10:20.840 And his career gets off to a kind of a weird start when he kills this guy. Was it Frankie

00:10:25.140 Campbell?

00:10:25.660 He kills Frankie Campbell in the ring. And it has been about 15 years since I wrote the

00:10:30.180 book. But if I recall correctly, Frankie died in a fight in San Francisco.

00:10:34.580 He died a couple days later. It was in San Francisco. Frank, it was 1930. And Baer was

00:10:41.040 from the Bay Area. I think Frankie was from the Bay Area as well. He happened to be the

00:10:45.580 older brother of Dolph Camilli, who would end up being an excellent first baseman in major

00:10:51.720 leagues, the MVP of the National League in, I think, 1941 for the Brooklyn Dodgers. And

00:10:56.480 there's an inquest. I mean, there is a criminal investigation because of the way in which

00:11:03.720 Campbell was battered in the ring and then died.

00:11:06.440 Yeah. Of course, all of the stuff I know about these things are from watching old documentaries

00:11:10.800 and reading about it. But I read that Baer was never the same since after that fight. First

00:11:15.700 of all, apparently he was just devastated by the fact that Campbell died. And I mean, I

00:11:20.680 remember reading something that his son wrote many years later that said, look, my dad was

00:11:24.240 he was a showman. I mean, he was not in this to hurt people. He sort of took that as his

00:11:28.320 job. But to have this guy die at your hands was he was never quite the same.

00:11:32.900 By all accounts, it really did shake him. And it affected the way that he approached

00:11:39.900 life. It affected the way that he approached his opponents in the ring. A few years later,

00:11:44.320 he would be blamed for the death of another heavyweight, Ernie Schaaf.

00:11:48.380 Yep. Although that one's a bit controversial because I believe there was an autopsy done

00:11:52.220 that suggested he actually had meningitis and he hadn't recovered from sort of a chronic meningitis

00:11:59.520 at the time that he actually died because he died in the ring at the hands of another fighter

00:12:03.440 whose name I'm blanking on.

00:12:04.540 That's right. You know, and it's been a while. I think it was Carnera.

00:12:08.000 Oh, you're right. It was Prima Carnera. You're right.

00:12:09.420 It was Prima Carnera. It was at Madison Square Garden. Although Carnera ends up administering

00:12:16.040 the blows in the fight in which Schaaf dies.

00:12:18.340 But it was a very gentle blow. It was almost a jab that killed him.

00:12:21.120 People said it was the beating he took at the hands of Bear that had made it possible for that.

00:12:25.620 So all of this is to basically say when Max Bear finally beats Prima Carnera, which he does in

00:12:31.840 ridiculous fashion, I think there was 10 knockdowns.

00:12:34.180 It's a laughable, laughable fight.

00:12:35.800 Yeah, yeah. Bear looks invincible.

00:12:37.880 And he'd already beaten Schmeling, correct?

00:12:42.020 He'd already beaten Schmeling, yeah.

00:12:43.420 And there was no way that he was going to give Schmeling a rematch given what was going

00:12:46.360 on politically.

00:12:47.540 Again, it's been a while, Peter. But my recollection is nobody was interested in giving Max Schmeling

00:12:52.360 a rematch against Bear just because he wasn't really – he was considered washed up, finished.

00:12:57.040 I mean, when he beats Joe Louis in 1936, he's considered washed up and finished.

00:12:59.060 Yeah, it's ridiculous, yeah.

00:13:00.300 Washed up and finished. He wasn't even part of the discussion.

00:13:03.120 Yeah. So they decide to take a tune-up fight, basically, with this guy who can't possibly

00:13:09.280 win, right?

00:13:10.340 Well, what happens, Jim Braddock has been out of the fight game. He's hurt. He had been a

00:13:16.420 light heavyweight contender in the late 1920s. He'd lost his one shot to Tommy Loughran, who

00:13:22.320 was a great light heavyweight. And at that point, Braddock's entire personal situation

00:13:28.460 really falls apart and his professional situation – not his personal, really, his professional

00:13:33.240 situation. He breaks his hand. He can't fight anymore. He can't make any money. The depression

00:13:37.940 hits. He is working on the docks across the Hudson River from Manhattan. He's desperate.

00:13:46.540 He goes on relief, which – that's a welfare, which at that time, in Braddock's mind and

00:13:52.420 the minds of a lot of people, that was a kind of humiliation, taking government assistance,

00:13:56.300 especially a guy like Braddock, who had been so successful. He fought for the light heavyweight

00:14:01.600 championship, which was a big, big deal in 1929 in a way that it's not now. And everybody

00:14:08.040 thinks he's through. He's finished. He's done. Totally kaput. But the interesting thing

00:14:12.880 is by doing the work on the docks, because he doesn't have the money for bus fare or cab

00:14:17.160 fare to get from his home to the docks. He's walking every day, 20 miles. Ridiculous.

00:14:22.200 He's working as a stevedore, hauling giant bales and stuff like that, even with a broken

00:14:27.500 hand. He builds up this strength, especially in his left hand. He'd never had a left hand

00:14:32.060 before. The right hand is broken. So he's building strength. All of these things, it sounds like

00:14:37.060 some kind of fairy tale or something, may prepare him in a way he hadn't been prepared

00:14:42.080 to seize the moment. He gets the shot against an up-and-comer named John Griffin, John Corn

00:14:47.280 Griffin, on the undercard of the Bear-Carnera fight.

00:14:51.160 Right. And he was not expected to beat Griffin.

00:14:53.060 He was just an opponent. He was the guy who was going to be a stepping stone for Corn Griffin

00:14:58.340 on his way to fighting Max Bear. But Braddock is a different Braddock. And he delivers against

00:15:05.640 Corn Griffin stunning the promoters, people who had, you know, these high hopes for Corn

00:15:11.060 Griffin, whose name is still in boxing circles, kind of stands for guy who couldn't get it

00:15:16.800 done, stepping stone. It's almost like a Wally Pip thing. And almost exactly a year later,

00:15:22.440 I think it's 364 days later, he beats a couple of more impressive fighters on the way, sets

00:15:27.840 himself up for a showdown with Max Bear for the heavyweight title, which-

00:15:31.140 But nobody gave him a shot. I believe it was eight or nine to one odds.

00:15:35.000 Huge underdog. Eight, nine, ten to one underdog, depending on who you ask, which at that time

00:15:40.220 was, I think, the most lopsided odds ever in a heavyweight championship fight. Of course,

00:15:44.540 we're going to come to one that's a little more lopsided in a minute.

00:15:47.720 And Braddock is this guy who's fighting for his family. He's got three little kids. He's got the

00:15:52.080 wife.

00:15:52.740 They're living in poverty.

00:15:53.820 They're living in poverty when this rise starts. After he wins one of the fights on the

00:15:58.380 way that year, you know, he goes back, he shows up at the relief office. I mean, it almost

00:16:02.940 sounds like it has to be apocryphal, but everybody said it really happened. He shows up at the relief

00:16:06.920 office and returns-

00:16:08.160 Returns the money.

00:16:09.160 Yeah.

00:16:09.240 $35 or whatever that he'd taken on government relief. And he becomes the people's hero.

00:16:14.800 But nobody thought he had a chance against Max Bear, who looked utterly-

00:16:17.700 Yeah, I mean, Max Bear looked like an executioner.

00:16:19.880 And he was physically demanding.

00:16:21.160 He's 22 pounds, bigger than him.

00:16:22.240 Oh, and he's a specimen.

00:16:24.240 We just saw Deontay Wilder fight for the heavyweight championship not long ago at 211 pounds. You

00:16:29.980 know, it ends up being a draw with Tyson Fury.

00:16:33.200 And he's 6'7", Deontay Wilder, I think 6'7", 6'6". Max Bear is 6'2", and he weighs

00:16:39.580 more, and he is cut.

00:16:41.820 Oh, he doesn't have an ounce.

00:16:43.000 You look at the pictures of him. He does not have an ounce. He is ripped in a way that

00:16:45.900 athletes were not ripped like that in that era.

00:16:47.920 And he's 250 pounds. He weighs more than Deontay Wilder without being tubby. And Jim Braddock's,

00:16:54.780 you know, a former light heavyweight, who somehow gets all the way up to like 192, 193,

00:17:00.000 something like that for the fight. It's not a good fight. It's a pretty boring fight. And Max

00:17:04.500 Bear is clowning his way through it. He doesn't seem to be taking it seriously. It's his first

00:17:08.100 title defense. For some reason, he seemed- Well, there are a lot of reasons why he was ambivalent

00:17:13.980 about the sport. We talked about Frankie Campbell and Ernie Schaaf, but he doesn't show

00:17:17.580 up and Braddock wins pretty easily.

00:17:20.340 Yeah. And, you know, it is a beautiful story because, again, maybe my recollection's not

00:17:26.500 there, but I remember reading that leading up to the fight, Braddock said, I'm not losing

00:17:30.880 this fight. Like, there is no way. Like, he was fighting for his life, his honor, his family.

00:17:37.060 Like, he was fighting for something much more beyond him. And you don't get to see that often.

00:17:40.340 No, it literally was. I mean, you don't often have in a heavyweight championship fight,

00:17:44.580 a guy who is that where the scent of desperation is so recently in his nostrils. You know, I mean,

00:17:51.740 if you're fighting for the heavyweight championship of the world, you're probably doing pretty okay

00:17:56.200 for a while at that point. You've been making money on other fights. You've been getting bigger

00:18:00.820 and stronger. You've been accustomed to success and only success. And Braddock was a guy who had

00:18:08.260 been broken. I mean, broken. And there was no chance he was ever going to challenge for anything

00:18:14.780 like the heavyweight championship again. I mean, impossible. And this would be everything to him.

00:18:20.500 And he inspired so many people. There were so many people pulling for him. But nobody really

00:18:25.400 thought that he had a chance against Max Baer, who was five years younger.

00:18:28.620 Yeah. By every metric was a superior man. He should have won the fight.

00:18:34.460 And then, of course, I think it was by that point, Schmeling had upset Lewis, which was,

00:18:38.800 you know, in 1936. That's right, 1936. Yeah.

00:18:42.360 And I think at that point, Baer did have a chance. I mean, you could have argued he should

00:18:46.560 have fought Schmeling. But by that point, the war was really starting to ramp up in Europe.

00:18:50.860 And again, maybe this isn't true. Maybe this is just sort of revisionist history. But he had a

00:18:56.700 choice to fight Lewis versus Schmeling. And the logical choice would have been Schmeling, right?

00:19:00.260 Because he had beat Lewis. But the sort of more American choice was you're going to fight-

00:19:04.720 All about Braddock's choice, right?

00:19:05.600 Yeah. Sorry, Braddock's choice. That's right. So he fights Lewis. And I mean, we all know how

00:19:11.400 the story ends, which is Lewis wins. And that goes on to create the most dominant heavyweight in

00:19:15.800 the history of the sport, 12 years champion, 25 final defenses. But the fight was more compelling

00:19:21.660 than people expected. I mean, Braddock put up a better fight.

00:19:24.000 Right. Well, as I recall, he knocks down Joe Lewis in the first round.

00:19:27.280 Yeah.

00:19:27.640 You know, that's really- I mean, he would fight one more fight after Lewis fight.

00:19:31.560 Which he won and then retired, right?

00:19:33.100 Which he won and retired. But the thing about Jim Braddock, what I think he embodies

00:19:37.320 is this idea, whether or not you buy into it, that there is something noble about that sport

00:19:42.920 and about the commitment required and about the dedication and about its code, whatever that code,

00:19:49.340 you know, the code of courage, personal courage, of total commitment, of believing there's something

00:19:55.580 honorable about fighting until you've got nothing left. None of that stuff mattered to Max Baer.

00:20:00.560 That's the contrast to Max Baer thought this was show business.

00:20:04.620 And it was a way for him to make a buck. And I think after he killed Frankie Campbell and

00:20:08.120 had a hand in the death of Ernie Schaaf, it was kind of like, I'd like to make some money.

00:20:12.360 I'd like to be in movies. He was in movies. He was starring in Hollywood movies while he was

00:20:15.760 champion, before he was champion, getting good notices. And of course, moved out to Hollywood

00:20:20.220 later. And Braddock really felt, you know what? I'm going down like a Roman centurion on my back.

00:20:27.820 If he's taking my title, Joe Lewis, he's younger, stronger.

00:20:30.740 He's going to damn near almost take my life.

00:20:32.640 And that's exactly it. And you know, there's the story in the corner after

00:20:35.520 Lewis almost rips off his head and he's battered and bloodied and his corner wants to throw in the

00:20:41.760 towel. And he tells Joe Gould, who's his manager, his best friend, the guy who's been there for

00:20:48.280 everything with him, he says, if you throw in the towel, never talk to you again. And I think he

00:20:52.400 meant it. Now today we'd say, that's just silly. You know, Jim, that's Joe Lewis. That's 23-year-old

00:20:58.580 Joe Lewis. Get out of the ring. But then it meant something.

00:21:02.580 And you know, you're so right about Joe Lewis. I mean, it does break my heart a little bit today when

00:21:07.360 you see people talking about this sport without an understanding of what came before. Like,

00:21:12.880 what did it mean to be Joe Lewis? Let's not even talk about the political and social side of it,

00:21:17.240 which to me is just as beautiful as what he could do athletically. But when you go back and look at

00:21:23.700 the film of him, including his rematch with Schmeling, which to me is one of the most remarkable

00:21:27.560 fights ever. He breaks his vertebrae. He breaks one of the bones in his back in the first round in

00:21:34.620 this revenge fight. Everything he went on to do, you know, bringing it back to Max Baer,

00:21:39.940 I remember reading that after, so Lewis fought Baer two years later. So now Lewis is champion,

00:21:45.720 Baer is not. And Lewis beats him badly. But Baer finishes on a knee. So you can, there's a very

00:21:52.620 famous image in boxing where Max Baer is on his knee, clearly looking like he could get up and gets

00:21:59.820 counted out. Yeah. I mean, what I remember though, is that Baer did not want to go into the ring.

00:22:04.360 I think he had a hand injury. He did. He should not have been in the fight in the first place.

00:22:09.500 And so at the press conference after, one of the reporters says to Baer,

00:22:13.740 Maxie, it looked like you could have beat the count. And he looks at him and he says something

00:22:18.000 to the effect of, you know, Baer always had a great way of saying stuff, including his last

00:22:22.620 words before he died. That's right.

00:22:23.940 But he said something to the effect of, if I'm going to get executed, you're going to have to pay a lot

00:22:28.660 more than $35 to see it or whatever the ticket price was.

00:22:31.460 That's right. That's exactly right. Which is kind of the summation of everything he felt about

00:22:36.900 the sport.

00:22:37.660 Yeah. And he died young, which broke my heart too. I mean, he died at 50, right? He had a heart attack.

00:22:42.600 50. And the famous line, you know, kid, you know, these things sound too good to be true.

00:22:47.360 We're so nerdy to be talking about this.

00:22:48.940 So you got to be skeptical. But, you know, he's staying in a hotel in Hollywood, I think,

00:22:52.780 and he calls down.

00:22:53.840 Yeah. He's having chest pain.

00:22:54.800 He's having chest pain.

00:22:55.960 Oh no, there's two lines. One line is, we'll send the house doctor. And he says,

00:23:01.300 I don't need a house doctor. I need a person doctor.

00:23:04.040 That's right, dummy.

00:23:05.360 And then they send somebody up. And then, you know, this is actually bringing it back to sort

00:23:08.940 of my world of heart disease. I mean, you didn't have any tools to help somebody having a heart

00:23:14.060 attack back then the way we do today. So once someone's going down that path, they're gone.

00:23:18.760 And by the time they did get the medical folks up to the hotel, he had a second heart attack.

00:23:23.020 And his last words apparently were, oh, here I go, or something to that effect.

00:23:26.940 This is it. I'm here. I go.

00:23:28.000 Yeah. He was a great, he was a fascinating figure. He was a colorful character.

00:23:32.880 He loses the title fight and then he fights Lewis and he didn't have any interest in the

00:23:37.080 fight game anymore.

00:23:38.280 Is it a coincidence that you've written the New York Times bestselling book that describes

00:23:41.880 the entire story of what we just described? And then you go on to make, you know, one of my

00:23:47.260 favorite ESPN 30 for 30s, which is 42 to 1. The parallels between Buster Douglas

00:23:52.760 Douglas and James J. Braddock are comical, right? He couldn't make it up.

00:23:57.140 Right. They're the two greatest underdogs in heavyweight championship history.

00:24:01.660 Who also rose for a moment. I mean, that's-

00:24:04.120 Right. You know, they're the two biggest underdogs, but they were bigger underdogs than all those guys

00:24:08.500 who lost the fights. You know, they're underdogs who win the fights, who seize the moment.

00:24:12.840 And I've always loved the Buster Douglas story. To me, you know, as I said, I was born in 1969. I'm

00:24:19.380 49. I've seen everything you could see in sports. A lot of it I've seen in person, you know, other

00:24:24.660 stuff I've watched on TV. And the night of that fight, it was nighttime here in the US.

00:24:30.240 It was the night of the slam dunk contest in the NBA. I remember this like it was yesterday.

00:24:36.800 It was that night and it was afternoon, early afternoon in Tokyo. And I found out the result

00:24:44.320 that night. I couldn't find anywhere that had regular HBO to watch it. I wanted to watch it.

00:24:49.340 I tried to locate regular HBO. I happened to be in Hanover, New Hampshire that night.

00:24:53.600 And I couldn't find it. But somebody told me later in the night, did you hear what happened?

00:24:57.660 Just like millions of people around the world. Did you hear what happened? Did you hear what

00:25:01.240 happened? No, can't be. Can't possibly be. Could not have possibly occurred. And then my mother sent

00:25:06.620 me a VHS. She had recorded it off HBO and watching it even a few days later in my apartment in college.

00:25:16.480 It was still so thrilling, so exciting that it's such a great fight.

00:25:21.560 It really is. It's such an incredible fight. And for Buster Douglas to rise to the occasion as he did,

00:25:28.380 again, when the stakes were so high, could not have been higher, 22 days after the death of his

00:25:33.580 mother, when nobody thought he had a chance, when Mike Tyson looked utterly invincible,

00:25:38.060 there's nothing else quite like it. I obviously watched it as soon as it came out. And I think

00:25:42.860 I'm going to watch it again with you tonight at the screening. But I had not seen the fight in about

00:25:47.860 15 years, right? So I watched it probably a million times at the time. But I'd forgotten a

00:25:53.480 lot of it. And I'd forgotten the ninth round. Oh, I'd forgot. I completely blanked on that round.

00:26:01.520 You don't see those kinds of rounds in heavyweight fighting. No, you put that in the category of round

00:26:06.600 10 of Riddick Bowe versus Evander Holyfield round, you know, round 10. You put that in a round of

00:26:12.040 Hagler Hearns round one, which was, by the way, that's what got me into boxing.

00:26:15.040 That was something. So Hagler Hearns round one, April 1985 was when I decided I wanted to be the

00:26:19.360 middleweight champion of the world. That was, that was, luckily I chose another path. But

00:26:23.980 no, the Douglas fight was unbelievable. And I don't know if you've ever heard it, you know,

00:26:28.560 I'm blanking on his name. Teddy Atlas was on Joe Rogan, I don't know, a while ago. And Teddy Atlas

00:26:33.680 made a really interesting point. He said, you know, Tyson's never won a fight in his life.

00:26:37.500 Because every fight he won, you know, won technically, the opponent was beat before they got in the ring.

00:26:43.020 And every fight he lost is because the guy came in and wasn't afraid. And Douglas was,

00:26:48.500 in many ways, the most impressive of those because he was the first one to beat him. And then, of

00:26:53.480 course, Holyfield would go on to do it twice, and then Lewis, and then ultimately McBride. I think

00:26:57.860 those were Tyson's five losses, correct? Yeah, it was Williams, McBride, two to Holyfield,

00:27:02.160 and Lewis, McBride, two to Holyfield, and Buster. Yeah. But the Douglas one is a different level.

00:27:07.520 Well, it's a different level because it's the first. And because he gave us not only the blueprint,

00:27:12.500 but because it was Mike Tyson at 23, not Mike Tyson after prison, not Mike Tyson at 37.

00:27:20.080 It was the Mike Tyson who had annihilated Michael Spinks and humiliated Larry Holmes.

00:27:27.420 And remember, his previous fight to Douglas, if I recall, wasn't it Frank Bruno, who he had obliterated?

00:27:33.820 The fight right before it was, I think it was Frank Bruno. I'm getting mixed up now. There's

00:27:38.720 Carl Williams. Oh, you're right. No, no, no. You're right. You're right. You're right. It was

00:27:41.820 Carl Williams in July of 89 was the previous one. And before that was Frank Bruno. Right, right. And

00:27:47.040 before that was Spinks. Right. He was 37 and 0, 34 knockouts. He got, Tony Tucker had taken him the

00:27:54.860 distance, but it wasn't a close fight at all. No. And then Bone Crusher Smith had taken him the distance.

00:28:00.240 That's right. And basically clinching the whole way there. He'd gone the distance twice before.

00:28:05.200 Quick Tillis took him the distance. Three of them. Yeah, yeah. It was three of them. Right.

00:28:08.880 And so there was a sense maybe some big guys could give him some trouble, you know, if they approach,

00:28:13.440 but those guys weren't in those fights. Those fights were not close fights. There was no one

00:28:18.880 who had stood up to him and who had matched him punch for punch. And Buster Douglas did more than that.

00:28:27.400 The thing about the Buster Douglas story, why I really wanted for this to be given this kind

00:28:32.280 of treatment was because I've known Buster for a long time. I did stories about the 20th

00:28:36.720 anniversary of the fight, the 25th anniversary of the fight. And this moment for me as a young

00:28:41.060 person, it was just so, it was such a transcendent sports moment. I said, and people don't get it.

00:28:45.500 They don't want to give Buster credit. They want to say it was a one hit wonder or he got lucky

00:28:50.060 with a punch or that he wasn't, he didn't deserve to even be in the same ring with Mike Tyson.

00:28:55.460 Buster, everything people thought they knew about Buster Douglas was really wrong. Buster Douglas,

00:28:59.960 of course, you know, dominates that fight. I mean, it is an epic performance. He doesn't get lucky.

00:29:05.540 It's not a Sim Rachman in South Africa against Lennox Lewis. It's not one punch. It is a butt

00:29:11.240 kicking. It's an ass kicking by round three. Yeah. Like if you go back and watch that fight,

00:29:17.480 knowing the outcome, which of course now we would all do, you're not blinded by the way you are the

00:29:23.360 first time you saw it live, which is you're in denial. You're in denial. And by the way,

00:29:28.640 you just think something's going to happen. Yeah. Didn't two of the three judges have Tyson

00:29:32.460 ahead at the time of the knockout? I think that's right. Which is like those people should be removed

00:29:37.000 from the score. And my co-director went to Japan and interviewed one of them. And he's just like,

00:29:40.340 yeah, that's what it looked like to me. But that speaks to the aura of Tyson that you could have had

00:29:44.920 Tyson winning one goddamn round besides. Or the aura of Don King. Yeah. Yeah. So, but you're right.

00:29:50.480 It's a total ass kicking. Tyson's eye is swelling shut by the third round. Even the eighth round where

00:29:56.520 he knocks Douglas down. I mean, Douglas still dominated that round. Yeah. And then the ninth

00:30:01.840 round, he almost takes Tyson's head off his shoulders. I mean, that's sequence in the corner,

00:30:05.960 you know? And that's the thing we didn't know. It also speaks to how tough Tyson was. Yeah,

00:30:09.040 we didn't know Mike Tyson had a chin. We had no idea until that fight. Nobody had ever challenged him.

00:30:13.900 And I mean, the beating that he took, I think the people who thought Buster were going to win,

00:30:18.820 and there were about four of them, thought that he would win because he would be able to keep his

00:30:23.820 distance, use his jab, and Tyson wouldn't know what to do after four or five rounds. That he would

00:30:30.880 just kind of get frustrated and DQ himself or just fall apart physically from the exhaustion.

00:30:39.240 And instead, Mike Tyson, I mean, he's in there for 40 minutes taking an epic beating,

00:30:48.680 an epic beating from a bigger, stronger, more athletic man. I mean, you know, you could say

00:30:54.180 everything. And look, Mike Tyson was a phenomenon. What Mike Tyson did from 1985 up until that moment

00:30:59.060 in Tokyo, it's pretty impressive. And it's pretty special. It doesn't look as special now because we

00:31:04.420 know the next chapter of the story. But of course, at that time, you know, for Buster Douglas to,

00:31:10.500 you know, Buster Douglas is a bigger guy. He is a stronger guy. Maybe stronger is not the right word.

00:31:16.000 He was a more focused guy and he was a better athlete. And he used all of his advantages and

00:31:22.280 he marshaled all of his talents. And that's what's so fascinating about the story to me

00:31:25.480 is that here's a guy who had been considered an underachiever at best and a quitter at worst.

00:31:32.760 And by the way, I got to tell you, you guys made a great point of that. And the thing,

00:31:36.840 I guess I have a different view. He was beating Tucker handily, right? And then he basically fails

00:31:44.180 to answer a few punches and the ref stops it. I'm not sure I call that quitting. I mean,

00:31:48.900 I'm not sure I do either. I think that was always a very unfair label.

00:31:52.460 It's totally unfair. Look, boxing is a cruel sport. This is another reason why I want to tell

00:31:58.400 this story. Boxing, unlike other sports, right? Here's a guy, Buster Douglas, who at that point,

00:32:05.240 when he gets into the ring with Mike Tyson, right? You know, he'd fought for the heavyweight title.

00:32:09.380 He'd fought big, tough guys. He'd beaten Greg Page, who would be a heavyweight champion.

00:32:15.560 He'd beaten Oliver McCall, who was going to be a heavyweight champion. And yet people thought of him

00:32:20.160 not as just a guy who's not Mike Tyson's peer, but as a bump, you know, but only in boxing,

00:32:26.760 there's that quote that you guys have in the movie where, what did Don King say about him?

00:32:31.060 He's a dog. He's a dog. I mean, he's a quitter and he's a dog.

00:32:35.300 Like Don King, if anybody would know a dog. I mean, it is something, but that's the way

00:32:40.300 I think the average sports fan and even boxing fans talk about boxers. I've said this before,

00:32:45.060 like if you're the 15th best left-handed pitcher in the national league, you're getting a contract

00:32:50.280 for like 110, $120 million. Maybe, maybe that's a slight exaggeration, 85, $90 million guaranteed.

00:32:55.920 And you're an all-star and people want your autograph and people say, oh, he's so effective

00:33:00.760 and he can do this. If you're the third best middleweight in the world, but you're not the

00:33:05.660 best, nobody knows your name. And it's like, oh, he lost that fight. He's a bump. You know, 0.87

00:33:10.580 you hear that all the time. And Buster Douglas, the reputation fairly or unfairly had been established

00:33:18.600 in that fight against Tony Tucker when he's winning. He's five rounds away. I think it was a 15

00:33:25.080 rounder still at that time. You're right. That would have been the last of the 15 rounders.

00:33:29.280 I think it was 87. I think that, I think it was still a 15 rounder. I can't remember.

00:33:32.160 It was May of 87. So yeah. I mean, Mills Lane did the right thing. It was time to stop that fight

00:33:37.260 because Buster is standing there. He just wasn't returning them. Yeah. Six or seven massive. I mean,

00:33:41.660 Tony Tucker was a good fighter. Tony Duggar is a big guy. He's pummeling Buster and Buster's not doing

00:33:46.860 anything. So the fight had to end, but to call him a quitter, you get in the ring and take some of

00:33:51.280 those punches from Tony Tucker. Yeah. The other thing I remember at the time was when Douglas's

00:33:58.100 mother died two weeks before the fight. And I remember that getting like small news. Remember

00:34:02.860 this fight wasn't getting that much news because this was the people are already talking about the

00:34:07.040 Holyfield fight that was supposed to happen in June. I think there's already a contract.

00:34:10.260 So, and I remember thinking, oh man, they're going to have to postpone the fight and he's never going

00:34:15.800 to get his shot. And I remember just feeling kind of sorry for Douglas. Like I at least want him to

00:34:19.540 get paid. You know what I mean? Like at this point, it's like, at least you deserve a couple

00:34:23.480 million bucks because you've been through all of this stuff. There's only 1.2, but that's 2 million

00:34:27.340 today. So yeah. Yeah. There were people who thought, I mean, you saw in the film, Bruce Trampler,

00:34:33.220 the hall of fame promoter and matchmaker who knew Buster from the time he was a little kid because

00:34:38.060 he was his father's manager. He said, I thought he should pull out. I didn't see how he could possibly

00:34:43.880 have enough focus after his mother's death to get in the ring. That's how his brother kind of thought.

00:34:50.000 Buster said, no, let's go. Let's do this. And there's something you did that was really

00:34:55.020 beautiful in the film, which was after one of Buster's fights, he's, I don't remember which

00:35:01.140 fight it was, but he's standing on the, on the left. His mom is in the middle and the dad is on

00:35:05.160 the right. Right. The interview, I forget who it was. It wasn't. It's Al Bernstein. It's right. It was

00:35:09.780 a young Al Bernstein. Big Al Bernstein. I barely recognize him, right? So Al Bernstein says to his mom,

00:35:15.020 something to the effect of, are you proud of your son? Al, that's not because you look old. That's not why

00:35:18.480 Peter said that. It's just, you were wearing a strange suit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And your hair was

00:35:22.760 a bit darker. Right. And he says to the mom, are you proud of your boy? And, you know, you initially,

00:35:28.040 his mom didn't want him to take, go down this path because she knew he was just a gentler soul

00:35:32.680 than, than her husband, who was like a hard ass. And then you see in this moment, how proud she is of

00:35:39.240 him. And you see his face. It was this beautiful look on Douglas's face as he looks at his mom saying,

00:35:45.280 how proud she is of him. And I think at that point, someone basically makes the comment,

00:35:50.980 might've been in the narration that he was just always closer to his mom. Like he was really his

00:35:55.160 mom's child. Yeah. It's Bruce talking and he says, you know, that he favored his mother. I think those

00:35:59.820 are the exact words. He, his disposition was more like his mother, little pearls. He was not the stone

00:36:06.560 cold killer that his father, Bill Douglas was in the ring. And that's the contrast to, of course,

00:36:12.100 you know, Bill Douglas was not a world champion. Bill Douglas was not Mike Tyson. He was a guy who

00:36:18.600 many people thought deserved title shots and didn't get them because he could do so much damage and

00:36:24.560 upset the apple cart. But his approach was Tyson like, and he fought with the same style and the

00:36:31.380 same commitment and the same determination to not just win, but to destroy. And that wasn't Buster.

00:36:37.780 On a little segue that I want to come back to the boxers who have fought with that ethos,

00:36:43.200 Sonny Liston, Jack Dempsey, George Foreman, Mike Tyson. There was a really interesting article in

00:36:50.380 Sports Illustrated, and I believe it was March of 88. So it was even before Tyson fought Spinks.

00:36:55.580 If I recall, Larry Bird was on the cover. So it was a very nondescript article and I wish I could find

00:37:02.040 it. Because, you know, I used to have every Sports Illustrated ever. Wow. And my mom, like 15 years

00:37:07.660 ago, called me. You know where this story is going, don't you? It's just going to break your heart.

00:37:11.340 I had the first. I had the Eddie Matthews on the cover one. I mean, I had every newspaper clipping

00:37:17.240 you could ever have on this stuff. And it was boxes upon boxes upon boxes. And my mom calls me

00:37:21.480 like 15 years ago and she's like, look, Peter, do you want to come and get these things? And I don't

00:37:25.860 know. I just was like, no, you can pitch them. And like, it's like top three shames of my life.

00:37:33.280 But nevertheless, there was this- You can't blame her. She asked.

00:37:35.800 Yeah, yeah. No, no, no. My mom. Mom, it's my fault, not yours. So at least I could have had

00:37:40.880 them digitally archived or something. Something. Christ. Something.

00:37:44.080 So it's this, again, March 7th, 1988, throwaway article of Sports Illustrated just before the

00:37:50.620 Tony Tubbs fight, if I recall. Because remember, he fought Tubbs in Tokyo. In Tokyo.

00:37:53.700 In like- First event at the Tokyo Dome.

00:37:56.820 That's right. March 21st, 88 or something like that.

00:37:59.100 Wow, you're really good.

00:37:59.880 Two-round knockout. Tony Tubbs looked like, he looked like nothing. The article makes an

00:38:04.780 interesting point. And the point was this. Now remember, Mike Tyson is three years into the

00:38:09.920 reign of terror and he looks utterly invincible. And the author says, you know what? The flames

00:38:16.800 that burn this bright burn out really quick. And the author went back and said, look at Dempsey.

00:38:22.140 This is how bright that light shone. And then it was gone. And look at Liston. And look at

00:38:27.500 Frazier. And look at Foreman. And they're like, if you put Tyson in that bucket, this is not a guy

00:38:33.060 who's going to have a long career. He is going to implode. And I remember reading that as a 13-year-old

00:38:38.960 going, or 12-year-old, whatever the hell I was, thinking, this guy's an idiot. He doesn't know what 0.78

00:38:43.540 he's talking about. Tyson's going to be the champion until he's 40. Like, again, which-

00:38:49.140 Mike didn't even think he'd be alive until he was 30. You were going out on a limb.

00:38:53.120 So you just sort of think, like, how much does history repeat itself? Whereas when you look at

00:38:58.560 the guys like Lewis and Ali, the ones that have had their really, really long careers,

00:39:05.680 you know, there's something different about it. There's just something different about their

00:39:08.680 ethos. They're a different type of person. They're not killers. And it's not to say, like,

00:39:14.180 they're gentlemen versus killers, but it's just they're artists in a way that I think some of the

00:39:19.600 most destructive and feared fighters were not. Yeah. Well, there's no doubt about that because

00:39:25.080 if you fall in love with your right hand and the knockout in particular, you're going to get lazy

00:39:32.980 and you're going to get one dimensional and you're going to get exposed eventually. And there are enough

00:39:38.760 good fighters out there who can box, who bring other skills to bear.

00:39:42.300 And if you've got some kind of deficiency, they're going to locate it. They're going to find it.

00:39:46.820 They're going to wear you down. It is one of those interesting things, though. Those guys,

00:39:51.000 those destroyers, you know, the Dempsey's and the Liston's and the Tyson's. And you know,

00:39:56.800 as well as I do, there are similarities and there are a lot of differences also when we talk about guys

00:40:01.360 like that. But if you are being hailed as the destroyer, as the guy who can do everything and can get

00:40:09.920 it done with one punch, you're not going to be listening the same way to your trainer,

00:40:14.980 to Kevin Rooney or Teddy Atlas or Aaron Snowell, the way if you've had to box, you've had some

00:40:20.520 challenges. I mean, the interesting thing about I've been talking about this a lot the last couple

00:40:25.480 of months. And the thing about Tyson, right, is that he's the heavyweight champion. He's considered

00:40:31.900 invincible. He has this aura about him that no one has had since Dempsey.

00:40:36.740 So I was going to ask you about that. Because I just, it's hard to extract that from the

00:40:41.720 literature. Do you believe that Tyson's aura was greater than that of Foreman's and Liston's

00:40:47.280 at the respective times?

00:40:49.060 Yeah. I mean, I guess I'd have to go back and look. I mean, after Foreman does what he does to

00:40:54.700 Joe Frazier and all that. But I think so because, you know-

00:40:58.680 There was just more of it, too.

00:40:59.840 And at that point, he'd taken on all comers. And there was more of it.

00:41:04.000 And the fashion in which he did it to so many different guys, I think it was bigger. I think

00:41:09.760 it was more impressive with Tyson at that time. And it was also his own way of speaking

00:41:15.620 about things, his story, where he came from, the kid from reform school. Anyway, I mean,

00:41:21.300 you know, there's similarities, too, with Liston. But I think it's not a parallel, really, with

00:41:27.000 Lewis. Because most people would tell you, and I'm going to assume you're one of them,

00:41:32.640 that Joe Lewis is the greatest heavyweight champion of all time.

00:41:35.060 I was going to ask you what your thought was.

00:41:37.020 It's certainly between Lewis and Ali.

00:41:38.880 Right. So let's say it's Joe Lewis, right? But Joe Lewis, before he becomes champion,

00:41:43.500 as we earlier discussed, has already lost a fight.

00:41:45.660 Yeah. He was knocked out.

00:41:46.780 Knocked out, humiliated against an older guy that everybody thought was over the hill.

00:41:52.340 So when he becomes champion, he doesn't have that aura that Tyson has. He builds a different

00:41:57.260 kind of aura. And he builds a different kind of championship record with that blemish from the

00:42:04.200 Schmeling fight already behind him. Now, if he doesn't have that moment with Schmeling, right,

00:42:10.620 maybe it's a different story. The fact that he had that moment, that more than a moment of

00:42:15.460 adversity, he had that huge setback to his career.

00:42:19.100 It was a year before he would fight again, wasn't it?

00:42:21.840 Before he would get the Braddock fight. And it was no sure thing that Braddock would fight him.

00:42:26.060 I mean, remember at this point, it's been more than 20, it's been 22 years since an African 1.00

00:42:31.320 American has been allowed to fight for the heavyweight championship. And there was no

00:42:36.700 guarantee that in 1937, that the boxing establishments would permit it or the public

00:42:43.480 would demand it. It looked like he was heading that way until he lost to Schmeling. And then it

00:42:48.040 was like, well, we don't have anyone who has an excuse. Yeah, exactly.

00:42:50.700 Right. But Braddock gives him a shot. And it's part of a business deal where he gets a percentage

00:42:54.720 of Lewis's earnings for 10 years. Great business deal. You wonder ethically about the deal. But

00:43:02.200 anyway, I don't remember exactly the point I was making, but Lewis is different. Dempsey,

00:43:07.900 I think is similar. Dempsey, he was a destroyer and there was this cloak of menace.

00:43:13.380 Did your dad ever meet Dempsey? Because Dempsey didn't, I mean, he lived around for a long time.

00:43:17.900 He lived on 1983, had a restaurant here. He lived for a very long time, Jack Dempsey.

00:43:23.300 And apparently, I mean, I'm not sure about the very last years, but up until his mid-70s,

00:43:28.380 I mean, I know that he was all there. And it's remarkable. This isn't a guy who just had all

00:43:32.840 of those knockdown, drag out professional fights. I mean, he fought hundreds of fights. He's basically

00:43:38.560 a semi-pro in mining camps in Colorado and the toughest possible atmosphere you can imagine. I mean,

00:43:45.420 a lot of it was bare-fisted and no holds barred. And I mean, I can't imagine the kinds of,

00:43:52.000 now he was great, so I don't know how much punishment he was taking. But when you're a

00:43:55.080 young guy coming up there, you're getting hit. Oh, but to look at the Dempsey fights are some

00:43:59.140 of the most amazing things you can watch. Remember though, when he becomes champion,

00:44:01.720 right? I mean, he goes three years from 1923 to 1926 without defending his title. He is such a big

00:44:07.600 celebrity. He's making so much money just off the championship and its significance that he

00:44:14.740 doesn't have to get into the ring. Finally, you know, he gets in the ring in 1926 and he loses

00:44:19.200 to Gene Tunney in Sesquicentennial Stadium in Philadelphia. And then they got the rematch a year

00:44:24.200 later, which is still arguably the biggest sports event in the history of the world. Dempsey Tunney

00:44:28.760 two at Soldier Field. I'd probably make the case it's the biggest sports event in its moment of

00:44:34.300 all time. And he loses again. This one's the long count. The long count and all that. But

00:44:38.860 it's funny, the two biggest sports events of all time in my book are Ali Frazier won,

00:44:45.160 March 8th, 1971, and Dempsey Tunney two, 1927 in Soldier Field. And the guys that we always talk

00:44:51.260 about are the guys who lost those fights, Ali and Dempsey, not the guys who won them, Tunney and

00:44:55.320 Frazier. There's a beautiful picture I once saw of Ali that morning walking in Central Park in the

00:45:01.100 snow. And it's sort of amazing. I mean, that's part of, I think, what makes New York such an

00:45:05.560 interesting place is the history. And I think the whole Atlantic City in the 80s and Las Vegas,

00:45:10.460 it's sort of taken away a little bit from how remarkable it is to fight in Madison Square Garden

00:45:15.380 and what that would have meant, like how anticipated that fight was. And of course, when Tyson fought

00:45:19.800 Spinks in 88 in Atlantic City, most people who knew enough about the sport said, look, this is

00:45:25.060 the most anticipated fight in the heavyweight division since 1971. I mean, this is a really

00:45:30.080 big deal. And of course, at the time, that was only 16 years earlier, which seems kind of amazing

00:45:34.380 to me, given what an eternity 16 years is when you are 16 years old. When you're young. Yeah.

00:45:39.760 It's like, oh my God, that was the dark ages. Yeah. Whatever it was. So one question on the 42 to

00:45:46.120 one, 30 for 30, did you guys even try to interview Tyson? Yeah. So it's interesting because some people

00:45:53.460 felt dissatisfied that we didn't have today's stuff from Mike, we made a decision. I went to talk to

00:45:59.080 Mike. Mike declined to take part in the process. I had interviewed him in 2017, though, and asked him

00:46:05.300 a lot of questions about the fight. And we hadn't used that, I think, anywhere. And at one point,

00:46:10.320 we had a cut of the film where we had a lot of it and we had a few bites from it. And we made an

00:46:15.980 artistic decision, essentially, at that point, that we wanted to see Mike only in context from

00:46:22.700 the time of the fight, who he was then. Because seeing him now with the tattoo and the way that

00:46:30.420 he's changed, he can be very quiet and low energy. It's such a stark contrast to what we're showing

00:46:40.020 you of him then, that it's almost jarring. And everybody knows the Mike Tyson story. I've done,

00:46:45.100 nobody's done more Mike Tyson stories than me, literally, you know, on TV anyway. Interviewed

00:46:49.960 him more on TV than I have, I would think. Long form stories about him, all that. I just felt,

00:46:55.740 this is Buster's story. People know the Mike story. People hear from Mike all the time. We still hear

00:47:00.380 from Mike all the time. The more you put Mike in it from today, it's more distracting.

00:47:06.220 You detract. You detract a bit. Yeah. And what did Mike talk about in 2017 when you interviewed him

00:47:10.960 about that fight specifically? Because I've never really heard him talk much about that fight.

00:47:14.520 There's so much about him and Holyfield and the men's that's been made and all those other things.

00:47:18.680 But what is the recollection of that? Probably the best bite we had from that interview is

00:47:22.020 something like where he said, look, was Buster Douglas a better fighter that morning, that afternoon?

00:47:27.660 Yes. Does that mean that he's a better fighter than me? No. That's a fair point. He's certainly

00:47:33.080 entitled to make that point. But in terms of like what happened, he said, I was living my life too

00:47:38.120 fast. I was doing crazy stuff. I was this, I was that. You know, it was, and people say, well,

00:47:43.080 that's making excuses. It's like, well, I asked him what happened. I mean, whether it's an excuse or

00:47:46.340 not. I mean, that's the truth, I think, in his mind. I think he feels if he had approached that fight

00:47:51.860 with full commitment, he would have won it. But of course, he's going to think that. And

00:47:57.860 that does not diminish what Buster Douglas did. Because I mean, if we're gonna, if we're gonna

00:48:03.620 say, well, it doesn't count, then, you know, nothing counts. Did the Soviet team really approach

00:48:10.000 the American kids in the Olympics the way they would have approached the Czechs or something

00:48:16.300 like that? No. Or the Canadian all-star team or the, you know, NHL all-star team? No. But if you're

00:48:21.960 gonna say, well, then it doesn't count, then nothing counts. It's just silly.

00:48:24.560 No, in the end, everything counts. That was a great line, by the way, with the bookie in Vegas.

00:48:29.680 I love that part, by the way, of him actually talking about the bets. And, you know, he was

00:48:35.260 like, look, people say that the miracle on ice was the biggest upset in sport. It's not even within a

00:48:39.500 country mile that that was the biggest upset in sport. Is there ever been Vegas odds bigger than

00:48:43.940 42 to 1 overcome? In a heavyweight championship fight? No. In any sport? Oh, I think so. You know,

00:48:50.660 a lot of people say, well, Leicester City's a bigger upset because they were 5,001 or

00:48:54.540 something to win the Premier League. Oh, yeah. Of course. How could I forget? That's a pretty

00:48:57.880 amazing example. Yeah. But to me, that's totally different. There wasn't a single game that season.

00:49:03.440 I mean, I don't know what it, I'd have to go back and look. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I bet there

00:49:06.260 wasn't a single game that was more than 4 to 1 or 5 to 1. You know what I mean? And a season-long

00:49:11.360 thing. That's a very good point. Yeah, yeah. You know, and every year, there's somebody who wins a

00:49:15.680 conference or who wins a professional league or a championship who was, I think, the St. Louis Rams were

00:49:22.040 300 to 1 at the beginning of the year. That's right. So, I mean, look, even the New England

00:49:25.360 Patriots, the first year they won the Super Bowl. But all of that stuff is based on teams that,

00:49:29.980 because we don't know how those teams are constituted. Buster Douglas was Buster Douglas.

00:49:34.000 He was the guy who'd had six fights since Tony Tucker. People still thought he was 42 to 1.

00:49:38.560 Leicester City, the St. Louis Rams, whatever you want to say, nobody knew who that team was. That

00:49:42.920 wasn't the team that you had seen the previous season. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's in this single event,

00:49:46.800 that's still kind of unusual odds. Well, it was great. You know, the other thing that was nice

00:49:51.060 to see was, for me at least, because I hadn't seen much of Buster Douglas in many years, because I

00:49:56.280 remember in 95 when he was almost dead. I mean, five years after that fight, he's in a diabetic

00:50:01.260 coma, 380 pounds. Bigger than that, yeah. Really. I mean, yeah, it was kind of nice to see him.

00:50:07.740 I like Buster very much. I've spent a lot of time with Buster over the years. You know,

00:50:11.060 I'm always cautious about saying he's this or he's that when, by the standards of my profession,

00:50:15.920 I've spent a lot of time with him. You know, three days here, two days here, a dinner here,

00:50:19.760 a dinner there. Is he somebody that I've spent, like a work colleague where he's spent years

00:50:24.020 around him? I don't know. But I like Buster. I think he's a good guy. He's a good person.

00:50:28.660 He's not been a self-promoter, which I think has hurt him financially over the years. I think his

00:50:34.540 feelings have been hurt because people for so long have tried to diminish this victory. And there's so

00:50:40.300 many avid Mike Tyson fans who always want to make excuses for him, who always want to discredit

00:50:45.860 Buster. For whatever reason it is, I felt like he had not been fully appreciated for the magnitude of

00:50:53.240 this. What do you think went wrong after Tyson? Why do you think he didn't show up in shape for

00:50:58.320 Holyfield? Because on paper, he should have given Holyfield a hell of a fight. I think Douglas was a

00:51:04.740 better fighter than Riddick Bowe. I mean, you could certainly make that case. I mean, Riddick had some

00:51:09.400 great moments, most of them against Evander Holyfield. But he was, Buster was a very skilled boxer,

00:51:14.780 and he was a very good athlete, and he was schooled in the sport. And when he was fully

00:51:20.260 dedicated and committed, which we saw only on a few occasions, he was very tough to beat. And I don't

00:51:26.860 think anybody, I don't care if it's Jack Dempsey or Gene Tunney or John L. Sullivan himself would

00:51:32.060 have beaten him in Tokyo that day. I really don't think so. But after he defeats Tyson, everything is

00:51:40.560 just so chaotic. It's the typical story we hear, you know, too much, too fast, too many people pulling

00:51:46.320 at him. He's in court with Don King. He's in court over the long count in the eighth round. All of

00:51:52.680 this, as we would say, Mishigas is, you know, driving him crazy. He's getting rid of the people 1.00

00:51:58.980 in his camp who had made it possible for him to achieve these great heights. He's got a new team in

00:52:04.500 there. And he signs at the time for $24 million to fight Holyfield, the largest check in the history

00:52:12.260 of sports. Nobody had ever gotten a check like that in the history of sports, which is like $48 million

00:52:16.000 now. And even after the taxes and paying out Don King and paying off his team, he still got like

00:52:22.920 $9 million in cash, like $18 million today, something like that. And I think his motivation

00:52:28.580 was gone. And I think the reality of his mother's death sunk in. When she died, he had the fight to

00:52:34.260 focus on. And now he's got this complicated, weird relationship at times with his father, who's now

00:52:41.420 like going to Don King's party when I think Buster is still suing Don King. I mean, there's all kinds

00:52:46.860 of crazy stuff going on. He doesn't, I think Buster would be the first to admit he doesn't show up for

00:52:51.820 that fight. Physically, mentally, motivationally, didn't care. There's something about boxing that

00:53:00.080 I guess this is part of what attracted me to it as a participant. And then eventually always just as a

00:53:05.620 fan. And maybe I have a slightly different insight into it because I've done it, but the ring is a

00:53:11.920 really lonely place. It's hard to put in words what the fear is like when you get in the ring. And,

00:53:17.040 and again, maybe it's just that that was just who I was. And maybe there are some people who get in

00:53:22.220 the ring and they're not afraid. But even Tyson, I remember once said, anybody who gets in a boxing

00:53:26.680 ring and who is not scared senseless is lying or crazy. Yeah. Now, I don't think he was scared by

00:53:32.560 the time he got in the ring against Buster. I don't think Mike was. But you have to have a

00:53:37.300 relationship with fear. And even if you feel like you're going to win, like, I mean, I think anytime I

00:53:42.600 stepped into a ring, I felt like I was going to win. I mean, there are no words to describe

00:53:46.940 that anxiety. There's nothing I've ever experienced since. No professional thing I've ever done that

00:53:53.540 has put that much adrenaline into my body that borders on the point of being like, you're on

00:53:58.520 the verge of it being unproductive. And the audience can sense that. I mean, for me, I said,

00:54:02.960 you know, I've seen a lot of great things in person. By the time they fight in 2002, Lennox and Mike are

00:54:08.460 both over the hill. They're 36 years old, 37 years old, something like that. And yet people have called

00:54:14.740 it, you know, the last great fight, the last big fight. I was covering that fight. I wasn't far

00:54:20.340 from. Did you see that beating being that bad? That's what I thought. I really did think so. And

00:54:25.460 I was working with a lot of people who thought I was crazy, who thought that Mike was going to win.

00:54:30.120 I think Mike was the favorite in a lot. Oh my God. I thought he was going to lose,

00:54:33.540 no question. But I didn't expect to see him beat up that badly. I'd seen Mike fight a lot

00:54:39.100 over the previous seven years. I'd seen Lennox fight more. And yeah, I didn't see how he would

00:54:45.780 beat Lennox. Lennox Lewis, top 10 heavyweights of all time? You know, off the top of my head,

00:54:50.820 without going back and looking at those two losses to McCall and Rahman, which they count. Yeah,

00:54:57.780 I guess he's probably somewhere right around there, right around the 10, 11, 12, something like that.

00:55:03.180 So asked another way, from Muhammad Ali until today, who are the three best? Larry Holmes. Let's

00:55:10.420 give you Larry Holmes, right? Okay. He's got to be in there. Yep. Larry Holmes has got to be in there.

00:55:14.680 Lennox has got to be in there. Put Klitschko in there? I think, yeah, the question is which one or

00:55:20.420 both? You know, I mean, two pretty impressive guys who did impressive things. After Lennox fights,

00:55:28.840 Vitaly in 2003 and Vitaly performs well, but he doesn't win the fight and he gets a cut and,

00:55:35.880 you know, all that. After that, I kind of stopped paying as much attention to the heavyweights and

00:55:40.780 they, you know, they took the belts off to Germany and we never really saw much of those fights. And

00:55:45.540 there were a lot of guys that were fighting who were kind of unknown entities. So I'm a little

00:55:51.080 reluctant to talk too much about the careers of either Klitschko brother. I don't know quite how to

00:55:57.680 measure them. But there was a sea change, right? I mean, I think there was an introduction of

00:56:03.260 athleticism to the heavyweight division that I don't think you saw before. And I think that

00:56:08.280 the prototype of the Lewis, the Riddick Bowe, the Razor Roddicks, the Klitschko's, I mean,

00:56:15.260 there's just a different level of athleticism size and-

00:56:18.440 They are so big.

00:56:19.840 So big.

00:56:20.340 They are so freaking big.

00:56:21.660 Which is why it was so amazing to me to see a guy like Deontay Wilder, who is still undefeated

00:56:27.200 at this point after the Fury fight. And, you know, maybe he's the guy who fights Joshua.

00:56:32.480 Maybe it's Fury. Who knows? Whatever it is. There's a guy who's 212, fighting at 212 pounds,

00:56:38.520 who's arguably the best heavyweight in the world, arguably. Because we saw these guys getting 240,

00:56:44.760 250, and they're gigantic. They're mountains. They're Primo Carnera-sized, these guys.

00:56:50.300 Yeah, but with skill, right? I mean, Carnera was just a clown.

00:56:52.840 Just size.

00:56:53.420 Yeah.

00:56:53.720 So you don't think you're ever going to go backwards from that. They were very tough,

00:56:59.180 very tough guys, the Klitschko brothers.

00:57:01.700 I could sit here and talk about boxing forever because it's not often I get to talk to somebody

00:57:06.120 who sort of thinks about it the way I do. But there are a few other things I want to talk

00:57:09.840 about. And sort of one of them is your most famous interview with Bobby Knight. So you don't have to

00:57:16.900 say anything good or bad about him. But having never met him, he just strikes me as just a

00:57:21.420 deplorable human being. I don't know what it is about him. Maybe truthfully, maybe there's a part

00:57:25.880 of myself I see. Like, you know, I have a really bad temper. And I look at him and I think, God,

00:57:30.660 I hope I've never done one 100th of what that guy has done. I hope I've never hurt anybody the way

00:57:35.900 he's hurt somebody. Did you see the 30 for 30? I did. And it only solidified in my mind how much

00:57:42.240 I despise him. Yeah, my friend Robert Abbott. Oh, it's one of the saddest ones I've ever seen.

00:57:46.600 It is so goddamn sad to me how many people's lives have been destroyed by him. Here's the thing. I

00:57:51.860 knew Bob Knight. I mean, again, you know, I say I know somebody. My father was a friend of Bob

00:57:58.240 Knight's. I had spent time with Bob Knight before that interview. I was one of those people who

00:58:04.180 appreciated his talents and he had this- His quote unquote genius.

00:58:10.200 Quote unquote genius. And his sense of history, his sense of loyalty. Look, there are good qualities

00:58:16.820 there. There are other people who can, you know, talk, you can watch the film, talk about

00:58:22.640 the dark side of Bob Knight. The interview was a challenge.

00:58:28.000 How many days after he was fired was the interview?

00:58:30.480 I want to say it was 72 hours later. It might've been 48. It was, I can't remember exactly.

00:58:36.920 Why did he give you that interview?

00:58:38.540 Well, I think he gave me that interview because he thought he could steamroll me and he'd known me.

00:58:45.300 And so he assumed- What year was this?

00:58:47.640 This was 2000.

00:58:48.900 2000. So your dad was still alive.

00:58:51.360 My dad was still alive.

00:58:52.500 What did your dad tell you going into that interview?

00:58:54.780 You know, I spoke to a lot of people the night before the interview and the day of the interview

00:58:58.360 because it's one of those situations. And I was young. I just turned 31. And this is the biggest

00:59:06.740 thing that's going on, not just in sports, but in America, period. At this moment in time, it really

00:59:12.080 was. And I knew I had to get it right. I knew the stakes were high for me. And so I spoke to a lot

00:59:20.120 of people and I'm trying to remember what my dad told me. I really don't remember what his advice

00:59:26.860 was about the questions or this or that. I spoke to a lot of people who told me, you know, it was

00:59:32.140 important, of course, to ask him the tough questions and not back down. And I think that's what I did.

00:59:39.020 And that's what people said at the time. They said, you know, Schapp stood up tonight. He didn't let the

00:59:44.500 bully, bully him. I asked the right questions. I got to the important points. And I think perhaps

00:59:50.440 most important, because there was a moment of peak when I think he revealed himself in a way

00:59:57.080 that he wouldn't often in a live television interview, that that really kind of said who

01:00:02.280 he was more than anything else. And so people still remember that interview. It was kind of surreal.

01:00:07.340 What do you think is the most memorable exchange of that interview?

01:00:09.380 Well, that's indisputable because people remember it very well. We're having a discussion. We're

01:00:15.800 having a talk about the zero tolerance policy. Which is ultimately what led to his termination.

01:00:20.800 Ultimately what led to his termination. And he's explaining, telling me how he doesn't know what

01:00:24.940 zero tolerance meant and nobody ever defined it for him. And he was put in a lose-lose situation,

01:00:31.460 whatever the exact words were. And he says, and the real victim here is Pat, his son,

01:00:37.600 who was one of the assistant coaches. The real victim here is Pat, because Pat is going to lose

01:00:40.980 his job. And I feel it's my obligation at this point to point out and say, Bob, but Pat wouldn't

01:00:48.700 be losing his job if you had behaved yourself, if you had done what you were told to do.

01:00:56.440 And that's when he got angry, very angry. And he looked at me and he said, and he glared at me,

01:01:03.580 and he said, be careful here. You've got a long way to go until you're as good as your dad.

01:01:09.800 And I said, I appreciate that. And moved on. But that's the exchange that everybody remembers.

01:01:14.540 And my friend, Willie Weinbaum, producer I work with a lot, he's one of the guys I talked to before

01:01:18.920 the interview. Great journalist, great interviewer. And he said, just remember, he's probably going to

01:01:24.920 invoke your dad at some point or compare you unfavorably. Use that as a weapon in his arsenal.

01:01:31.580 And I don't really remember if it registered or didn't register, but I remember Willie did say

01:01:37.120 that. And of course, that's what people remember. But at the time, for me, it was like a career

01:01:43.040 defining moment. All of a sudden, it was like, welcome to the big leagues.

01:01:47.900 So what is it like then with a father who's a legend? And it's not like you decided to become

01:01:55.360 a dentist or an anesthesiologist. You decided to do what your dad did. And that means subject

01:02:02.100 yourself to constantly being compared to him and living in his shadow. What did your mom say about

01:02:07.600 that?

01:02:08.320 You know, maybe I'm just getting old. I don't remember. I don't remember us ever having really

01:02:12.880 a conversation about it. Not only not with my mother, but not really with my father. I mean,

01:02:18.060 I grew up, especially when I was very young, before my parents divorced, like at his side. I

01:02:24.120 mean, going to sports events with him, going to the, I remember on the weekends, you know,

01:02:28.940 what I did was I went to the office with my father in the morning while he prepared sports stories and

01:02:32.700 sports reports on NBC back then. And I hung around the office and I read sports books. It was almost

01:02:37.760 like my entire life had been an apprenticeship in the business. So.

01:02:41.380 And you weren't worried about the shadow.

01:02:45.360 Maybe I should have been, but I don't think I ever gave it a second thought. I know that

01:02:49.400 sounds ridiculous.

01:02:50.300 No, no, it doesn't actually. It's, it's, it's remarkable. I mean, I don't do anything that

01:02:54.080 my dad does. My dad, you know, he runs quarries. So I couldn't be further from what my dad does.

01:02:59.440 But yet in many ways I do compare myself to his work ethic. Right. I mean, like even a few weeks ago,

01:03:07.900 I was sort of complaining to my therapist. I was like, God, you know, I don't think I can work as

01:03:13.060 hard as my dad. And it's deep down. It makes me feel a little bit ashamed that, you know, my father's

01:03:17.800 never been in a bad mood. He's like the most upbeat, positive, optimistic immigrant that ever

01:03:23.980 lived. Tomorrow's always going to be a better day. And he can, where did he come from?

01:03:27.600 From Egypt. And he can will his way into the world. Like what he wants to happen will happen. 0.92

01:03:33.040 And, you know, as a kid, I never once saw my dad even in bed. You know, he was coming home after I

01:03:38.880 was sleeping. He'd be up and gone in the morning. Like he never slept in on a Saturday or anything

01:03:43.020 like that. So you just had this view of like, this is like a Superman. And of course me, you know,

01:03:48.360 I'm different. I can be lazy at times and I can get into, you know, a fun.

01:03:52.500 But you're still a very productive person. You're just measuring yourself against an impossible

01:03:57.000 standard.

01:03:58.220 Right. But don't we all do that? I mean, don't we all compare ourselves to,

01:04:02.780 that's what I'm saying is at least for me, I can keep the distance between what we've done

01:04:06.320 professionally. So, so I really can only compare myself to my father in terms of work ethic,

01:04:10.640 sacrifice, and just general disposition. But now you have all of those things to compare yourself to,

01:04:15.880 plus, you know, being on the son of one of the most legendary sportscasters of all time.

01:04:19.640 Well, I think I'm just going to go lie down on the couch.

01:04:22.580 We can continue this conversation.

01:04:23.360 Tell me, tell me how you really feel. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:04:24.880 So you're right. I got to say that it really is a testament, I guess, to my naivete or just

01:04:29.920 stupidity that I got into this business without really thinking about that. And I just knew that

01:04:37.100 I wanted to be in the media. I wanted to work in TV. I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to work.

01:04:45.460 I wasn't sure if I wanted initially to be in sports or news. I started out working in news at a local

01:04:50.100 TV station here in New York and transitioned into sports, but I'd been in sports. So that was kind

01:04:56.500 of, the tension wasn't, was I going to be in the media? It was like, what exactly am I going to do

01:05:01.300 for me? That was the question. And of course, when I made the decision to do sports and not to do news,

01:05:08.320 not to do something else, then of course, you know, I was walking right into my father's field.

01:05:13.180 And I grew up around a guy who I really think was the best at what he did. He was a great writer.

01:05:20.340 He was a great journalist. He was, he was a great TV storyteller. And I figured, well, if he could do

01:05:25.500 it, I could do it. That's amazing. You know, I do remember reading an interview very recent,

01:05:30.340 actually, maybe it was, maybe, maybe it was a year ago, but someone once asked you about, you know,

01:05:35.020 lessons you learn from your father. And I, what I remember you saying, I'm going to have to

01:05:38.860 paraphrase it. The gist of it was what it means to be fair as a reporter, what fair journalism

01:05:45.540 means, which means you do have to ask hard questions and you do have to probe in areas

01:05:51.740 that are uncomfortable, but you've got to have a bit of empathy. You have to be able to put

01:05:55.380 yourself in the shoes of the person you're speaking with. And I don't know, I, I feel like

01:06:01.220 that doesn't exist all that much in journalism anymore, does it? I mean, maybe it does and I'm just

01:06:05.380 not aware of it. And we see so many exceptions, but anyway, the way you described it, I thought

01:06:09.540 was very beautiful. And, and you really attributed it all to your father.

01:06:12.740 Yeah. And I think he did operate in that manner. It wasn't just idle talk. It was what informed his,

01:06:19.720 his body of work. And I work in a business where there are people who are all about access and they

01:06:29.400 never ask the tough questions. And then I work, you know, with people too, who work with, or there are

01:06:35.300 people in the business. I don't really, I can't think of any colleagues who are like this, but you

01:06:38.860 see it happen. It's like, they're tough for the sake of being tough.

01:06:42.180 Yeah, yeah, exactly. They're antagonistic just to be antagonistic.

01:06:44.780 And I think I've built a reputation 30 years of the business of being the guy who does ask the tough

01:06:49.140 questions and doesn't shy away and is willing to sacrifice relationships for the truth. And that's

01:06:56.020 important, but fairness is the underpinning of everything, right? You know, it's not just about being

01:07:01.500 fair to the subject. It's about being fair to the audience. It's about being fair to the story and

01:07:08.380 fair to the truth. And it seems like it's a pretty simple principle really to, I think it's not like

01:07:16.080 I'm a Scotty Reston here or, but I mean, you know, I work at the world of sports or the toy department,

01:07:21.460 but it's a pretty simple principle, but I can't say that it's always applied.

01:07:25.680 We were talking about this a while ago, but it's sort of hard to believe your father died in 2001

01:07:31.600 because it feels a lot more recent to me. And maybe that's just a sign that we're all getting

01:07:37.520 a little older. Time starts to travel faster because 2001 on paper is a long time ago, but

01:07:44.220 it's interesting because I believe his last broadcast was the Sunday after 9-11. And he actually

01:07:51.240 talked about the insignificance of sport in the context of what had happened, what, five days

01:07:57.420 earlier. He would go on to have an elective hip operation a couple of weeks later and one

01:08:04.320 complication slash medical error after another. And ultimately he died. You're young, you're 30 at the

01:08:10.060 time? 32. 32. How hard was that? Oh, it was devastating. On two levels, right? I mean, I'm asking,

01:08:16.340 it sounds like an idiotic question, right? No. It's not hard to lose somebody, but it's one thing to lose

01:08:20.680 somebody when they're old enough that you just expect to lose them. It's another thing when someone

01:08:25.040 goes into the hospital to have a procedure done and mistakes get made and they don't come out of

01:08:30.320 the hospital. It was devastating. I was extremely close with my father and we had been, you know,

01:08:37.360 for a long time at that point, there had been a period, you know, in my teens and my parents

01:08:41.720 divorced where the relationship had frayed. I mean, it felt like a million years at the point when it was

01:08:46.620 happening, but it's probably 18 months or something like that. And then, you know, I went off to college

01:08:50.800 and then I went into the business and we were doing radio shows. I mean, we probably spoke

01:08:54.500 once or twice a day and saw each other frequently and lived in the same place and connected by the

01:09:02.700 business, work for the same company. I mean, you know, so there's the personal anguish seeing your

01:09:08.260 father go through something like this and he's in a coma most of the time, you know, you can't

01:09:11.600 communicate with him. There's nothing. When he goes under, they put him in, you know, an induced

01:09:16.140 coma to let him heal. You never get a chance to say goodbye. And 13 weeks in ICU, you know what that

01:09:24.600 takes out of family and the guilt, like, are you there every day? Are you not there? I mean,

01:09:30.480 all of that stuff. And then for it to also be playing out, you know, as a public story as well,

01:09:37.400 people, what happened to Dick Schaap? What's going on? How sick is he? Is he going to recover?

01:09:40.640 You know, that doesn't make it any easier. And this is all against the backdrop of this

01:09:45.680 national calamity, which had taken place a few miles south of the hospital in which

01:09:49.540 he was in the intensive care unit. So there is that surreal grief stricken moment as well

01:09:57.560 in the history of this city in that country. So it all feels like a bad dream. Everything that was

01:10:03.180 going on in the fall of 2001 for me, you know, and then, you know, there were moments also,

01:10:09.820 it's all, it's made even more painful by the moments where you think they're telling you,

01:10:14.220 oh, he's made a turn for the better. He's going to be, I mean, literally, I think within two or

01:10:20.240 three days before he died, it seemed like he'd suddenly recovered and they were making plans

01:10:26.600 to take him out of the coma and slowly wake him up again. And, you know, but you got to remember,

01:10:31.820 you know, I remember having a talk with one of the doctors, like, you got to understand your

01:10:35.160 father's going to be, he's recovering, but he's not going to be the same guy. He's going to have

01:10:38.940 to go to a rehab facility for a while to get his strength back and this and that, but he's going

01:10:42.820 to be back. I mean, and then all of a sudden it was like, and I don't even, you know, honestly,

01:10:46.720 I don't remember what happened in those two or three days after that. I mean, I remember what

01:10:52.160 happened. I remember being there when he died, but I don't remember how it went from so hopeful

01:10:56.620 and optimistic to over very quickly. So it was very hard on several levels.

01:11:02.300 Was there anything about that collective experience, meaning the loss of your father,

01:11:06.760 which is, I mean, literally superimposed on 9-11 that made you revisit your connection to sports?

01:11:14.400 Did you ever go through the phase of, oh my God, I'm devoting my life to a game versus no,

01:11:21.140 wait a minute. Sports is an amazing substrate for metaphor for life. Like how did you go through that

01:11:27.220 thought process? Well, I mean, I remember very vividly having a discussion. I don't know if

01:11:33.540 he remembers, but having a discussion with Keith Olbermann during the baseball playoffs that year.

01:11:39.580 And we were, so this is a few weeks after 9-11 with my father in a coma in the hospital.

01:11:45.920 And we weren't talking about that. We were talking about 9-11 and Keith with that time was still

01:11:50.040 working in sports. I think at Fox Sports at that time, Keith's a very smart guy, friend of mine,

01:11:56.960 smart guy. He was telling me like, we can't be in sports anymore. Everything is over. Everything

01:12:01.600 we've known has changed. Everything, nothing will ever be the same. The country's going to be under

01:12:06.260 constant attack. I mean, there was all, you know, he's saying, you know, get out of sports now because

01:12:10.060 nobody's going to care about sports anymore. And I remember not being able really to even in that

01:12:15.460 moment process. What are you saying? But it certainly made sense. It's how we felt at the

01:12:18.940 time as a country. Like everything was discombobulated. We didn't know where we stood anymore

01:12:25.460 in some regards. But for me personally, I remember having that discussion, but I don't remember that

01:12:30.600 being a moment where I was saying to myself, I want to get out of sports. I want to do something

01:12:35.780 different. I had had those discussions a few years before that. People at ABC News about maybe

01:12:42.120 transition. I remember I wanted to go. I had a meeting up there at one point where I said,

01:12:47.280 you know, I don't want to work in sports anymore. I want to transition. I want to go cover the war 0.97

01:12:51.820 in the Balkans or something like that. And like, no, we don't want you to get killed over there.

01:12:56.320 Something like that. And I wasn't qualified. But no, I don't remember reassessing my relationship

01:13:02.240 with sports in that moment, except I did have an immediate reaction to the whole idea that sports was

01:13:07.980 going to make everything better. And if the Yankees won the World Series, which they ended up

01:13:12.100 losing, that it was this, that it would be this incredible moment of catharsis or something like

01:13:17.880 that, I thought it would be a few minutes of catharsis. What do you think today, many years

01:13:23.920 later, right? We're already, we're back in the swing of things. What do you think is the most

01:13:28.480 important thing that following sports as a spectator, as a fan does for us? Because in many ways,

01:13:35.480 what people like you do is you provide a narrative that gives us who don't know as much

01:13:43.660 a nuanced understanding. Again, just even to me, like you probably won't find a bigger ESPN 30 for

01:13:48.500 30 fan than me. Like there might be two I haven't seen, but I love that type of deep exploration,

01:13:55.260 the story behind the story behind the story. What do you think that does for people outside of

01:14:00.440 the obvious, which is teaches you about a sporting event? Well, I think that there's a

01:14:05.120 greater appreciation now for sports as something more than the toys or the toy department when we

01:14:11.940 cover it, that, you know, it's not just tribal, it brings us all together, right? I mean, I travel

01:14:18.360 all over the country. I travel internationally a lot. You can have discussions with sports with people

01:14:23.820 anywhere. And it's, you know, in a lot of ways, it's gotten harder to have discussions about other

01:14:28.100 things as we know. And, and sports can be divisive as well. So, so there is the sense that it is this

01:14:34.100 lingua franca, right? Some guy, I don't know, I'm sitting next to on a plane. We could have a

01:14:39.580 four hour discussion about the NFL. Right. Because you can't, you don't want to talk about religion 1.00

01:14:42.440 or politics. And yeah, there are too many things you can't talk about anymore. There's that. And we

01:14:47.260 just like talking about sports too. We like sports. And sometimes we overlook like the physicality of

01:14:51.880 it. How much watching just the remarkable way that athletes use their bodies and their minds,

01:14:58.560 we sometimes lose appreciation for that. There's so many things about sports that can be edifying.

01:15:04.520 And also for me, I've used sports as a platform to tell stories about other things going on in the

01:15:10.060 world that transcend sports, about societal issues, about cultural issues, about crises of sexual abuse,

01:15:17.640 sex, homophobia, whatever they are. I mean, a lot of the stories that I've done over the years,

01:15:24.300 sports is a starting point. It's a hook. And then it's about something bigger. And sports does that

01:15:29.660 in a way, right? That other things don't because so much of us are interested in sports. You know,

01:15:36.360 there's a reason why Jackie Robinson breaking the color line in 1947 is one of the most important

01:15:44.560 moments in the annals of the civil rights struggle, why that's a watershed moment. There's a reason 0.99

01:15:51.540 why Muhammad Ali refusing induction is a watershed moment, whether you agree or disagree with him.

01:15:57.480 Sports touches us in a different way and it touches society in a different way. In Title IX,

01:16:01.560 which wasn't just about sports, we see mostly through the prism of sports when we talk about

01:16:06.420 equality for women. And the way in my father's lifetime that the emergence of the African-American

01:16:12.840 athlete was, I think, the big story. You know, in a lot of ways, the last 40 years, the emergence of

01:16:20.260 the female athlete, the empowerment of the female athlete has been the big story. And sports is 0.98

01:16:26.940 usually, I'm not going to say always, but it seems usually to be in the vanguard. You know, where society

01:16:31.340 is going, you see it first happening in sports. Now, in some ways, sports is old-fashioned and

01:16:37.760 resistant to change. And there are plenty of examples of that as well. I mean, we could talk

01:16:42.460 about golf clubs and that kind of stuff. But sports has sparked change and it's drawn our attention to

01:16:48.740 issues. And I did a story about Al Campanis on the 30th, I guess it was the 25th anniversary of the

01:16:54.920 time of, you know, his infamous Nightline interview where he said blacks lack the necessities to be

01:17:00.200 coaches and general managers. And I interviewed Ted Koppel. And Ted Koppel told me, I mean, Ted Koppel,

01:17:05.460 the greatest television newsman, I would argue, of the last 50 years, the guy. You know, he said

01:17:16.520 the one episode of Nightline, the one edition of Nightline he gets asked about the most is the

01:17:22.020 Al Campanis episode, where he was so great in that moment. And he was so fair, but persistent and

01:17:30.560 tough. And, you know, but my point is that that moment, it sparked a discussion about a lot more

01:17:36.480 than- Coaches in the NFL or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. So, Jeremy, you've reported on a ton of stories in

01:17:42.640 sports. And again, I'm a fan of many of them, but has there ever been one that you've done where,

01:17:48.520 in retrospect, you look back and you feel you made a mistake? Yeah. You know, I'm not sure if I would

01:17:53.740 characterize it as a mistake and it's complicated, but I was the guy covering the home run chase in

01:18:00.760 1998 for ESPN with Mark McGuire. Wow. You know, so I was there, I saw, I think, 20 of the 70 home

01:18:09.240 runs he hit in person. And I dipped in a couple of times early in the season to do stuff when he was on

01:18:16.000 a great pace, I think. But I really picked it up in September, I think, when he had that crazy

01:18:21.160 September. So does that mean you interacted with Maris' family as well? I never interacted with

01:18:26.100 Roger Maris' family, no. But I was there when he broke the record, when he hit 62. I mean, I was

01:18:31.380 there, I think, for every home run from 52 to 70. Wow. And there had been the story that summer

01:18:39.420 about the Andro in the locker, which now seems like, I don't know if it was a red herring that

01:18:45.580 he was planting or, oh, you know, if that's been the right way to put whatever it was. But

01:18:49.500 looking back now, of course, 20 years later, or even five years afterwards,

01:18:53.780 I wish I had approached that story with more skepticism.

01:18:57.680 Do you think you were just so caught up in the moment, like you couldn't believe this was

01:19:01.140 happening? Well, you know, it was funny, because of course, it wasn't as if it wasn't out there in

01:19:05.580 the ether. You know, people were talking about steroids, people had talked about them with him

01:19:09.880 going back, you know, years before. But the subject was kind of taboo. The Andro story

01:19:16.440 seemed to put everything to rest, like, oh, he's not doing steroids that are-

01:19:20.720 Yeah, it's Anderstein-Dione, which at the time was a supplement that was basically legal.

01:19:24.940 Right. And the question became, well, maybe it is legal, but you shouldn't be using it. And the

01:19:29.680 guy was prying it. And I certainly didn't say vouch for him and say he's clean or anything like that.

01:19:34.960 But in the absence of evidence that he was cheating, we just kind of bought the story.

01:19:42.660 And I wish I'd been more skeptical, because I don't know what I could have expressed at the time.

01:19:50.060 And I'm not letting myself off the hook. It was the entire national media. There was nobody

01:19:54.200 expressing any skepticism. Everybody was celebrating this. Everybody was so excited about the home run

01:19:58.480 chase and Sammy and Mark and all that. I was around Sammy too, but not the way that I was around Mark.

01:20:04.780 I was covering Mark every day for like a month plus. I wish I'd been more skeptical. Now,

01:20:10.780 because everything I saw was fake. It was all fake. It doesn't mean anything anymore. You know,

01:20:17.100 I saved the newspaper when Mark hit 62. I'm like, wow, I saw something really historic. And the whole

01:20:22.900 country was, I mean, you would have thought that, you know, he'd landed on the moon. So I wish I had

01:20:28.580 approached that with more skepticism. Later, when I covered cycling and I covered the Tour de France,

01:20:34.080 I covered Lance Armstrong's last two Tour de France victories, and then I covered his comeback as

01:20:41.040 well. I did ask the questions, as I recall. You know, I asked them, Lance, you know, how does

01:20:47.420 anybody do this without being on EPO or whatever? I mean, I asked the questions. But again, after he

01:20:54.220 denies it, there was great reporting. There was some great reporting being done by David Walsh at the

01:20:59.460 London Times. He got sued. The London Times lost a million pounds, I believe.

01:21:04.280 So I'm sure they've got back more in spades.

01:21:06.280 Right.

01:21:06.620 Yeah.

01:21:07.000 Going after him. So I asked the questions, but it was kind of like everybody else, asking the

01:21:10.860 questions, but not digging deep enough to get to the truth, which was that Lance was cheating too.

01:21:17.000 In some ways, it's a bit sad. I've always had a soft spot in my heart for Roger Maris,

01:21:21.800 because he's sort of a footnote to this story. But in some ways, you could make the case,

01:21:26.180 he's still the home run king. And in that sense, that to me is where, and I'm probably biased,

01:21:31.800 but I find the cycling, quote unquote, scandal to be less upsetting because it really was a

01:21:36.620 uniform playing field.

01:21:37.480 It was everybody doing it.

01:21:38.460 I mean, you couldn't be a GC contender between 91 and 2010 without being on-

01:21:42.940 The protocols were too good. They were too effective.

01:21:44.640 Yeah. Whereas we do tend to forget what Mickey Mantle did and what, I mean, Mickey Mantle,

01:21:51.140 he's in a different league because he's so loved, but Maris sort of gets forgotten in a way.

01:21:55.260 And when you think of that season when he hit 61 and how hated he was trying to do it

01:22:00.900 and chase down Babe Ruth's record, like, I don't know, I just have this softest spot in my heart

01:22:05.560 for this guy.

01:22:06.220 Oh, you know, and then that phony stuff with McGuire and Sosa paying tribute to Maris's family

01:22:13.000 at the time. I mean, that now we look at and it's upsetting. This was Roger Maris's legacy,

01:22:18.060 that record, the 61. And it was stolen from him. And I think that's a fair way to characterize it.

01:22:24.680 Look, a lot of guys were doing it.

01:22:26.600 Now, the counterargument, which again, I think the counterargument's a reasonable one is,

01:22:30.320 hey, the pitches were also doing it and the pitches were harder to hit off. And does that

01:22:33.560 normalize it? Does that equalize it?

01:22:35.360 Well, the evidence, of course, is that it didn't normalize it enough because the-

01:22:39.200 That's right.

01:22:39.640 The offense is what exploded.

01:22:41.320 The magnitude by which, yeah.

01:22:42.100 And it's not just, it's the magnitude. You're the doctor. You understand this stuff.

01:22:45.340 Just because they're both using it doesn't mean that it's as beneficial to the pitchers as it is

01:22:50.220 to the hitters. And we saw that.

01:22:52.120 Well, that's interesting because when you think of it that way, and I can see why in hindsight,

01:22:57.740 you know, and I've actually had this discussion with Lance, which was, I actually believed Lance

01:23:02.860 was clean until, and this might make me sound like a dope.

01:23:07.220 Alpe d'Awez?

01:23:08.140 Nope. Because this is so silly.

01:23:09.760 I was there.

01:23:10.040 You can do the math and justify on a watts per kilo. You could say, look, given what he did in

01:23:16.420 93 as a world champion in Oslo, like-

01:23:19.140 The stuff that he would say back then.

01:23:20.700 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:23:20.820 I was a world champion, you know, before.

01:23:22.240 Well, but even doing the numbers, like you look at the watts per kilo then and the watts per

01:23:25.540 kilo in the climb. When it became clear to me that he absolutely had to be doing this

01:23:30.180 was when Tyler Hamilton came out. Because Tyler Hamilton was the first guy that came

01:23:35.840 out that I thought was truly believable. I don't know. I don't know, Tyler. I've never

01:23:39.460 met him. But he just struck me as so credible. And when Tyler basically spilled his beans,

01:23:45.160 and that's when you realized how ubiquitous it was. Because prior to Tyler, like, you could

01:23:50.180 make the case, man, not everybody's doing it. But when Tyler came out and said, oh, no,

01:23:53.820 no, no, no, we're all doing this.

01:23:55.960 Well, also, the stuff with the Andreus, it was frankly, I remember thinking,

01:24:00.180 well, why would they be lying? I mean, the position as I remember it was they were compelled

01:24:06.520 to testify to tell what happened in that hospital room. They didn't volunteer. They weren't selling

01:24:13.640 books. They weren't doing anything like that. They were asked under oath, what happened? What

01:24:17.680 was the conversation? Because Lance was getting sued. And they said, you know, he had done steroids.

01:24:24.400 And so it was easier for me to dismiss that because I always thought Betsy had a little bit

01:24:29.300 of a different agenda. I thought deep down, Betsy was more pissed that Frankie had done these drugs 1.00

01:24:33.840 behind her back. I always thought there was something going on there.

01:24:36.320 Right. I just didn't see why they would lie under oath.

01:24:39.640 I always thought Betsy kind of wanted to be in the limelight more. But to me,

01:24:43.080 Tyler was the most credible cyclist to come forward.

01:24:47.260 And everybody who was covering it, and I was there for three summers,

01:24:51.460 if you'd ask them, your life's at stake, what's the right answer here? You know,

01:24:56.160 the lady or the tiger, like, he would have said, he's doing it. They're all doing it. He's doing it.

01:25:01.080 But we didn't have the proof. I mean, WADA couldn't bust them. The Cycling Federation

01:25:06.560 couldn't bust them. The French couldn't bust them. The Spanish couldn't bust them. 0.92

01:25:10.500 They had a very sophisticated, I mean, in some ways, very sophisticated, almost clownishly also brazen

01:25:16.400 in some ways. You know, they were so good at concealing it. And they were so aggressive about

01:25:21.800 going after anybody who questioned them. But we all thought.

01:25:26.120 And I will say this, though, Jeremy, it really chaps my ass that those seven years have no

01:25:31.740 champion. And yet you look in the years before and the years after, and there's a champion. I mean,

01:25:36.520 to me, that is ridiculous. And this will be-

01:25:38.940 There's a lot that's ridiculous.

01:25:40.020 This will be the single most unpopular thing I'll ever say, I'm sure. I absolutely believe Lance

01:25:44.820 Armstrong deserves his yellow jerseys back. Because if you're going to take his away,

01:25:48.460 you better take away Pantanis, you better take away Ulrich, and you better take away

01:25:52.940 Bjorn Reis, and probably Miguel Indoran. And you know what I mean?

01:25:55.700 They did take away some of those.

01:25:56.940 Did they? Am I wrong?

01:25:57.740 None. None. None. It is ridiculous hypocrisy.

01:26:00.140 Well, that doesn't-

01:26:00.860 You're right. That doesn't make any sense.

01:26:02.060 It's totally crazy.

01:26:04.160 Well-

01:26:04.620 And they certainly took away Floyd's.

01:26:06.600 Yes, but then they gave it to the guy right behind him. I mean, it's so ridiculous.

01:26:09.780 Yeah. So, well, anyway, no, that's- I can see how now with the benefits of hindsight and

01:26:15.120 you feel foolish for having been swept up into it. We all do, right? I mean, we feel like-

01:26:21.060 Yeah. And at the same time, it's like, well, you ask the question, you get your kind of

01:26:25.100 same response from Lance, you know, why would I do that? Why would I put that in my body?

01:26:29.940 And everybody was so swept up in the story, the redemption story, the comeback story,

01:26:36.820 the survivor story. It was tough.

01:26:40.060 I think it's interesting today to look at cycling, because to be honest with you,

01:26:42.620 I'm too far away from the sport and the numbers, and they're still very concealed in what they do.

01:26:48.680 But I still think there's something going on. I just don't know what it is.

01:26:51.920 Me neither.

01:26:53.140 What's the most interesting story you think that's out there that isn't being told yet in sports?

01:27:00.300 There's so many stories that I think we don't pay attention to. I mean,

01:27:03.080 they're big issue stories. Obviously, the head trauma story is the biggest,

01:27:06.320 I think the biggest story the last 20 years in sports. That's a story that's still obviously in

01:27:11.700 the news all the time. That is being covered.

01:27:13.940 Are you surprised it hasn't had a bigger impact? I mean, or maybe it hasn't. I just am not aware

01:27:18.700 of the metrics, but-

01:27:19.800 I would say it's had a big impact. I mean, youth participation and tackle football in certain

01:27:25.160 parts of the country plummeting. And if that happens, it's a time question until college

01:27:31.180 football starts to decline. And if college football declines, then what does the NFL look

01:27:35.400 like in 20 years?

01:27:36.560 And that's the million dollar question, right? Does football have an existential problem?

01:27:41.980 Does it find a way to change the nature of what it's been for so long in a way that will

01:27:49.600 alleviate concerns about the long-term effects of head trauma? Does it become more regionalized

01:27:55.680 where we see it in certain parts of the country where people say, this is part of what we do,

01:28:00.500 that's part of our culture, and we reject the narrative that it's going to destroy the brains

01:28:08.240 of those who play? We don't know. We don't know. I mean, of course, what we do know is that

01:28:13.960 everything changes. When you're in the moment, it seems like nothing will change. The NFL will

01:28:20.420 always be number one. Football will always be the most popular sport. That's probably how it felt to

01:28:26.320 fans of baseball 60 years ago. Or to fans of boxing in the 1930s.

01:28:30.820 Or fans of boxing in the 1930s. Or fans of harness racing in the first decade of the 20th century.

01:28:36.220 But what we do know is everything changes. Is head trauma going to be what changes the way we consume

01:28:41.820 football? Or is it only going to change the way that we participate in football? Does a decline in

01:28:47.200 participation necessarily lead to a decline in fan interest and viewership? The other thing I have

01:28:55.700 learned is that not only does nothing stay number one and everything changes, but no one can see

01:29:00.100 the future. I mean, nobody is good at seeing the future with anything. Those who can, many just get

01:29:07.880 lucky and they don't do it a lot. Or they'd be in Vegas. Or now New Jersey, I guess.

01:29:12.740 Yeah. I'd love to know what you think is the story that's not being told yet. Because I mean,

01:29:18.900 I think about it a little bit from my lens. And one of the things that I find interesting is why

01:29:25.320 drugs will always exist in some sports and why some sports seem relatively free of drugs. Because

01:29:30.020 I think drugs would help any athlete in any sport. I mean, I can't think of a sport in which a drug,

01:29:34.820 a performance enhancing drug won't make a difference. And yet there are some sports that

01:29:37.860 are relatively clean. Like swimming. If you look at the United States and Australia, the two most

01:29:42.740 dominant countries, there are certainly countries that have had lots of cheating. But I do believe,

01:29:47.300 and I don't think history will prove me wrong, but it could. I don't think that Australia and

01:29:52.200 the United States have a doping program and swimming. And yet they're the two most dominant

01:29:56.220 countries. But yet if you look at other Olympic sports, I mean, I am convinced the track and field

01:30:01.660 is always going to be full of growth hormone because it's undetectable.

01:30:05.320 Right. That's the story I was going to say is the biggest story once you brought up drugs is that

01:30:08.940 human growth hormone is undetectable. So when we talk about guys who are clean,

01:30:14.040 we talk about female athletes who are clean, we really don't know what we're talking about.

01:30:17.640 Yeah.

01:30:18.080 Because HGH is effective. It does work. It makes a huge difference. And they say they're

01:30:24.940 tests that detect it, but they really don't, right?

01:30:27.240 You can test for its byproducts, but it's not like testosterone. If a person takes exogenous

01:30:32.180 testosterone, you can look for pair molecules. You can look for epitestosterone. And if that's not

01:30:38.080 rising at the levels of testosterone, you know they're taking it exogenously. And you can look at

01:30:41.340 other hormones that get suppressed when you take testosterone. So if you're taking testosterone

01:30:45.700 exogenously from outside the body, the pituitary hormones that tell the body to make it,

01:30:50.160 luteinizing hormone, follicle assimilating hormone, they go down. Yeah. There's lots of

01:30:53.620 ways, but no, I think human growth hormone, I don't have a lot of experience with it even

01:30:57.620 clinically to know how effective it is, but I think it's used pretty rampantly. My intuition is

01:31:03.380 that that is certainly in most sports got to be the drug of choice right now. And I think from my

01:31:11.940 standpoint, the interest is, do we have any sense of what the long-term harm is, which I don't pretend

01:31:17.100 to know. Yeah, I don't either, obviously. Well, we've got to get to this thing tonight, don't we?

01:31:22.840 We do. We do. We have to get there. We have to, we've got about a mile and a quarter to cover.

01:31:27.080 So it's rush hour in New York. We're going to walk there faster than we're going to go.

01:31:32.340 Last question. What is your favorite 30 for 30 that you weren't involved in making?

01:31:38.160 Wow. If I'm not involved. Give me three without even ranking them if you want. Just give me a

01:31:42.860 few of your 30 for 30s that you love. It's an answer I think a lot of people give. I thought

01:31:46.580 the Escobars, the two Escobars was great. I thought that was a great show. It was so heartbreaking.

01:31:51.960 Yeah. I was at that game at the Rose Bowl. You were. I was at that game at the Rose Bowl.

01:31:55.980 That was 94. 94. I remember that vividly.

01:32:00.520 Do you buy that if Pablo Escobar was still alive, Escobar would not have been killed?

01:32:05.240 You know, it's been about nine years since that came out. I don't remember my feelings. I don't

01:32:11.180 even remember. Was that the conclusion that was drawn basically?

01:32:13.420 I don't even remember if that was the conclusion drawn from the 30 for 30 or if it was just my

01:32:17.180 conclusion post hoc. And maybe it was like rejuvenated when I watched Narcos a few years ago and I

01:32:22.260 got all reminded of everything in Escobar's life and sort of the weird sense of loyalty that he

01:32:27.740 had. Like he was sort of this evil guy with like a good streak in him. And would he have, you know,

01:32:34.180 I don't know. I wondered. Yeah. I thought that was really powerful and well done. I thought the

01:32:39.980 night show was really, really well done as well. That's a very recent one. There've been so many.

01:32:45.520 Last year alone, there was the two bills thing.

01:32:47.880 Oh, the two bills was pretty darn good.

01:32:49.660 That's interesting. Yeah. Those guys.

01:32:52.140 Well, you know, one of the ones that I loved watching, even when it came out, because it

01:32:56.040 came out. So Bo Jackson, when I was a kid, like that was my prime.

01:33:00.180 I couldn't say that one. I was in that one.

01:33:02.120 That's right.

01:33:02.760 I'm disqualified from mentioning that one.

01:33:05.220 When I go back and watch that, and my wife and I were talking about this because we watched it

01:33:09.920 for like a third time a year ago, maybe we had that moment of, are you freaking kidding me?

01:33:15.900 Like, I almost forgot how athletic that guy was. Like, you could make the case he's the

01:33:21.420 greatest athlete ever.

01:33:22.400 Well, my father said he was. My father voted for him as the greatest athlete of the 20th century

01:33:26.680 in the sports century polling. And I think he had a great case. It's interesting though.

01:33:33.200 Recently, I was with somebody who had played. I was interviewing Matt Millen,

01:33:39.280 who was waiting for a new heart. Just got a heart on Christmas Eve. He's doing well.

01:33:43.820 Well, at this point, I'm going to see him again next week. And Matt was telling me,

01:33:47.940 you know, the teammate in Oakland, he said, the funny thing is, and he had teammates who said

01:33:51.440 this, like, Bo was obviously an incredible track athlete, incredible football player,

01:33:56.140 incredible baseball player, but he couldn't dribble a basketball.

01:34:00.100 Interesting.

01:34:00.500 And he couldn't, this was what Matt was telling me, he couldn't catch the football.

01:34:06.460 Which, you know, because he was a pretty good defensive player in the outfield. Like, he was

01:34:10.500 not a good pass catcher. I mean, he didn't know the right technique to catch a football as a running

01:34:16.040 back coming out of the backfield. It was all hands. And he didn't know how to use his body to catch a

01:34:21.780 ball. And he said, I think he said, you know, there were guys, they tried to teach him. And I

01:34:25.020 say, so it's an interesting dichotomy, right? Because he's this incredible athlete with incredible

01:34:29.960 hand-eye coordination, incredible strength, incredible speed, could have won the Olympic

01:34:34.140 decathlon, I think, honestly, if he dedicated himself to that. But there are also these kind of

01:34:40.040 little gaps.

01:34:40.780 Little gaps. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which remind, when we talk about him, of course, then I also think about,

01:34:45.380 you know what story hasn't been done yet? Because it's been done, but it hasn't been closed.

01:34:49.140 I'm kind of waiting for Barry Bonds to just acknowledge the steroid use. Like, I feel like,

01:34:55.140 aren't we past the point where this matters? Can't we just have an open and honest discussion

01:34:59.160 about it and close the chapter? Well, Sammy Sosa would tell you no. I did something with Sammy this

01:35:03.780 year. He certainly wasn't prepared to go that far. I think from Barry's perspective, what does he have

01:35:10.240 to gain? And Barry's always had, how do I put this, a complicated relationship with the media.

01:35:16.220 Yeah, I think that's putting it in my opinion.

01:35:17.800 And I don't think he cares. I don't think he has any interest in creating closure for us.

01:35:23.060 I'm going to create a lot of enemies by saying this, but I wish that Barry Bonds could just

01:35:28.100 acknowledge what he did and get into the Hall of Fame and be done with it. And we could acknowledge

01:35:31.140 that that was the era that we were in. A lot of people would find that a very controversial view,

01:35:35.440 but...

01:35:35.980 Oh, I don't think it's necessarily going to work either, because Mark McGuire's admitted,

01:35:39.020 and he's not in the Hall of Fame.

01:35:40.440 Yeah, no, I don't know. Truthfully, it helps me out.

01:35:42.640 No, they're different.

01:35:43.700 But Barry, you could make a much better case for Barry Bonds than Mark McGuire, right?

01:35:46.740 Yeah, you could. It's an interesting thing though, right? I've thought about this a lot,

01:35:50.480 probably way too much over the years, the Hall of Fame and steroids and all that. And I've heard the

01:35:54.860 argument many times, Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds are different because they were Hall of Fame

01:35:58.500 players before they started taking steroids. Although, of course, we don't know when they started

01:36:03.420 taking steroids. And this is based on the assumption that they did take steroids. And

01:36:07.560 it's hard to state that as just a fact. It's more complicated than that. But let's assume they did

01:36:12.900 take steroids. And they should be in the Hall of Fame because they were these kinds of once in a

01:36:18.340 lifetime, once in a generation players before. I said, okay, I get that. But they're being kept out

01:36:24.640 because they desecrated the record book in the minds of the voters by cheating. They broke faith with

01:36:32.000 the history of the game and the record book and all that. They made a mockery of these hallowed

01:36:37.540 numbers, which means so much in baseball and not other sports. And nobody says, well, Joe Jackson,

01:36:43.980 I guess a few people, Joe Jackson's not in the Hall of Fame. Nobody would dispute the fact that he was

01:36:48.120 a Hall of Fame player before the 1919 World Series. It's like, well, he should be in the Hall of Fame

01:36:54.040 because up until the point that he participated in the fix or did not do anything to stand in its way,

01:36:59.900 he was a Hall of Fame player. Yeah, 356 career hitter. He's one of the greatest hitters of all

01:37:04.400 time. Babe Ruth, I think, called him the greatest hitter of all time. He'd been around long enough.

01:37:07.640 He's got the career numbers and all that. But you don't make the argument, well, okay, but let's

01:37:13.020 put him in the Hall of Fame because of what he did. It's what you did at that moment that disqualifies

01:37:17.120 you. Yeah. These are such tough questions. And for the sake of time, I'm not going to take us down

01:37:21.780 the path of cycling, which is another sport where I think you can't do grand tours without drugs.

01:37:26.840 And we've had a period, there was a 20-year period from, call it 91 to 2011, 2010, I would say, when

01:37:33.900 the drug use was simply comical. And what do we do with those years? But anyway, all that said,

01:37:39.240 Jeremy, this has been, I think it will be the shortest podcast I've ever done, but that's only

01:37:43.580 because we have this time constraint. I apologize.

01:37:45.220 We're going to have to do it again then. I'm in.

01:37:47.120 We'll have to do a round two. I'm all in.

01:37:48.420 But no, this has been super interesting. And I just think that I have a complicated relationship

01:37:53.280 with sports. Sometimes I feel guilty for caring. Sometimes I feel like, why do I care so much

01:37:57.920 about this? Why am I not caring more about something else that, quote unquote, matters

01:38:01.700 more? But in the end, I think why I care about sports is they are basically the substrate for

01:38:08.820 some of the greatest metaphors we have in life. And I think, when I think about why do I want

01:38:13.640 my kids to play sports? It's not because I think any one of them will ever be a professional

01:38:18.480 athlete. It's because of what they learn about themselves in this quest.

01:38:23.880 There's no doubt about that. And the other thing is, I mean, sometimes I think most people

01:38:27.500 are over this, but kind of the snobbish way of, you know, sports is one thing, but the fine arts

01:38:33.380 are something else. Or, you know, ballet or opera or theater are on some plane that's above sports.

01:38:40.580 Look, I'll say this. There is nothing else. I mean, I'm a Giants fan. I was at the Super Bowl,

01:38:45.040 Super Bowl XXV, when they won that game against the Bills in the last second when

01:38:49.140 Scott Norwood missed that kick. That kind of joy you feel.

01:38:52.420 By the way, that's another amazing – that might have been –

01:38:55.300 That was good.

01:38:55.940 The Four Falls of Buffalo is –

01:38:57.820 There's nothing else. I am a fan of the theater. I'm a fan of the arts. I'm a fan of music.

01:39:04.000 You don't go to a concert or you don't go to a Broadway show or anything like that. At the end

01:39:09.640 of it, go completely nuts the way that, say, for instance, at Super Bowl XXV, I was going nuts.

01:39:15.000 Or all those hundreds of thousands of other fans are going. I was at the World Cup final in 98 in

01:39:19.800 Paris. I've been at three World Cup final games. I was only one, the one in France in 98 where the

01:39:25.180 home team won. France wins its first World Cup at home in that stadium in Saint-Denis with 100,000

01:39:30.400 people. There's nothing else that gives us that kind of moment. And that's universal. I mean,

01:39:35.640 that's around the whole world. So there's something special about sports that we've got to acknowledge.

01:39:40.420 I think your point about it being the lingua franca is actually – I'd never thought of it

01:39:43.780 that way. But I think you're right. It may be the greatest lingua franca of them all.

01:39:49.300 Or as I said it incorrectly, lingua franca.

01:39:51.900 Maybe I'm saying it incorrectly.

01:39:53.100 I think you're right. I think you're right.

01:39:54.920 Well, Jeremy, this is awesome, man. Thank you so much for your time. And let's go watch 42 to 1.

01:40:00.160 For me, it's only the 42nd time.

01:40:02.900 It'll only be my second.

01:40:04.020 Good. You might still appreciate it.

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The Peter Attia Drive - March 11, 2019

#44 - Jeremy Schaap, ESPN journalist： upsets, doping, triumphs, and the importance of sports

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