McGuire looked at him, disgusted. “Because your last name isn’t McGuire,” he said.
With Marquette, Utah, and St. Louis basketball coach Rick Majerus and fellow CBS broadcaster Pat O’Brien at the 1998 Final Four in San Antonio
I had a great time with Majerus. Terribly overweight, he wanted us to do a TV show called 10, where I would be the 1 and he would be the 0. He loved going to dinner with me, because he could eat all of his food and half of mine. One time, we drove hundreds of miles to a trailer in El Paso, Texas, where Don “The Bear” Haskins lived with his wife Mary, because Rick said Haskins—who famously coached Texas Western to the NCAA Championship over Kentucky in 1966—was an original and I should meet him. Majerus called Haskins the “John Wayne” of coaching—a fierce competitor who ate and drank and laughed in a larger-than-life cowboy style. I remember Haskins told stories of growing up in Enid, Oklahoma, where one of the water fountains was marked “Colored,” and that the only reason he agreed to do a cameo role (as a gas station attendant) in Glory Road, Jerry Bruckheimer’s brilliant movie about the ’66 title game, was that it was important for society to record that an all-black team beat an all-white one. Haskins didn’t care about color, he cared about life.
With Coach Rick Majerus at the 1991 Kentucky Derby
Majerus had been a student, a “player,” an assistant coach, and a head coach at Marquette and was on the bench when Al McGuire and the Warriors won the 1977 national title. I wish I knew McGuire better. I remember getting T-shirts for my friends one Christmas in the seventies with McGuire’s famous slogan “Life is seashells and balloons, bare feet and wet grass,” and I had the honor of working some games with him in the 1990s. At dinner, McGuire would make you introduce yourself to the waiter, “who’s just as important as you are.” In truth, I think he intimidated me, but I respected everything about him. He once said of Kentucky, “They were there before you, they are there during you, and they will be there after you.” He called life how he saw it, and Majerus was blessed to have a lifelong relationship with the quirky coach. Unfortunately, Majerus lost to Rick Pitino and Kentucky in the title game. I used to say there were two things Majerus couldn’t beat—saturated fat and Rick Pitino.
Not that Majerus wasn’t quirky himself. In all his fifteen years at Utah, he lived in a hotel. I used to say that they’d put a rope around the maid every afternoon and drag her out. Majerus’s room was a mess, cold food and half-opened boxes everywhere in sight. I used to hold my nose and go into his room—sneakers and shorts and towels all over the floor. Majerus was famous for doing everything naked, but, thank heavens, he didn’t do that around me. One time he invited me to Michael Jordan’s “Flight School” in Las Vegas, where Majerus was one of the coaches. At night, he’d order all kinds of appetizers and fall asleep on my shoulder while watching TV. How romantic.
Rick said that in many ways, he was just like me. He worried about his diet. He worried about his mom. He tried to exercise. His final job was St. Louis, where he led the Billikens to a 10–1 start and won his 500th game. From his earliest memories, he was a coach, “putting the pieces together.” Here’s one story that sums up his connection with people. When Doc Rivers was a high school great, Louisville had Muhammad Ali call to recruit the Chicago legend to play with the Cardinals. Rivers instead went to Marquette—such was the influence of Rick Majerus, who gave him the nickname “Doc” in honor of Julius Erving. Rick’s book, with Gene Wojciechowski, was called My Life on a Napkin, and it was perfect for Rick, who was always taking notes from working with McGuire or Don Nelson or Del Harris. His wit was legendary. One time, when we were driving too fast, he looked over at me and said, “Don’t worry, I’m your airbag.”
Bill Parcells was the opposite of Majerus: sly, confrontational, defensive. I loved Parcells; he always grabbed the higher ground. In my first TV interview with him, I was understandably nervous. In the middle of the interview, he leaned over quietly and said to me, “How much would it cost to keep you?”
I was thrown off, unnerved. I stammered, “Well, DeBartolo money,” referring to the billionaire owner of the San Francisco 49ers. He sat back and laughed, “Don’t flatter yourself.” That was Bill Parcells.
I run from confrontation. Parcells embraced it. He saw it as a way to get straight with people. It’s not a coincidence that his favorite people were Al Davis and Lawrence Taylor and Bob Knight. He went salmon fishing with Ted Williams and to the Kentucky Derby with Wayne Lukas, all champions. Parcells thought it best to be blunt, to tell a player or a reporter or an assistant coach exactly where that person could be better. It’s why his greatest line is so often quoted: “You are what your record says you are.” Period. Parcells didn’t use humor, he used philosophy—to win games you have to win games. Be a smart team, be well conditioned, be a team with pride. Parcells understood trial and error, but your job was to cut down on the errors. He said he was no psychologist, but he really was, which is why the bad boys—from LT to Bryan Cox—loved the guy. I don’t think I could have played for Knight, but I would have loved to have played for Parcells.
The first time I ever saw Jim Valvano, who would become such a part of my life, the scene was unforget-table. Do you remember the song “Ain’t No Stopping Us Now” by McFadden & Whitehead? In 1979, it was playing on a loudspeaker (there were no sound systems in gyms back then) at an event called “The Boston Shootout.” It was held every year for great high school basketball players from around the country. At the end of the game, when the music stopped, Coach Valvano went over to two of the nationally known players, Dereck Whittenburg and Sidney Lowe from DeMatha Catholic High School in Washington. Jim stuck his hand out and said, “Hi, I’m Jim Valvano, Iona College.”
Confused, the two players looked at each other and said, “Wow, this guy owns a college? We better go with him.”
And they did, to NC State, where Valvano had begun coaching and the Wolfpack beat Houston for the national title in 1983. Valvano was diagnosed with bone cancer in June of 1992, gave his famous ESPY speech in March of ’93, and died almost two months later. He left us with much laughter, a foundation, and memories to last a lifetime. His motto, which he lived by, was, “If you can think, laugh, and cry, you’ve had a pretty full day.”
I’ve been on the board of the V Foundation for Cancer Research for more than twenty years and I know that Jim Valvano could have been a professional comedian. He was a riot, in addition to being a fantastic coach. The guy majored in English at Rutgers and we would talk Shakespeare as much as we talked Dean Smith’s four-corner offense. I once took a two-week road trip with Valvano when he was recruiting for NC State. We’d finish the dinner, after he’d smiled and posed for a thousand pictures. Then we’d get in the van, headed for the next small town. “Wasn’t that the absolute worst chicken you ever ate in your life?” he’d ask, speaking to no one in particular. This was a guy who grew up eating great Italian dinners in New York. When Jim got sick—the cancer that was never discovered or named—I wrote him a note, “You’ll always be the best white dancer I’ve ever known.”
He wrote me back: “F—you—that’s like calling me the world’s tallest dwarf!”
We give 100 percent of every dollar we raise for cancer research. Jim insisted on it.
I owe my career to four people—Vince Doria, Ted Shaker, Les Moonves, and Sean McManus—but honestly, there’s a fifth, the second love of my life, Pitino. I promise his wife Joanne will understand. As I mentioned, we were kids together. In 1978, at Boston University, Pitino and I would count the people in the stands.
“Forty-nine, fifty, fifty-one—”
“No, Rick,” I’d say, “that guy went out to get popcorn, we already counted him.”
Rick was able to take chances, trying a press here or an offense there and was able to try a different approach here or an anecdote there.
We grew up together. Then Pitino got great, and he kept getting better. After seven Final Fours (three each at Louisville and Kentucky, o
ne at Providence), I told him I couldn’t keep changing T-shirts. A six-foot guard from Long Island who kept changing his methodology to stay ahead of the pack, his approach to success has been to outwork everyone. What I love about Rick is that I’ve never known him to sell something as a gimmick—he truly embraced the three-point shot—and he really tells a player what his chances of playing are. When you’ve taken three programs to the Final Four—winning two titles, with Kentucky in 1996 and Louisville in 2013—you’re either the greatest overachiever or one of the most brilliant coaches. I’ve read all his books; the best is the The One-Day Contract. Rick Pitino, my buddy from BU, becomes your coach and tells you how to add value to every day—how you can, just for today, make a deal with yourself that you will be your best. Rick is my ultimate gut check; he always has been.
Interviewing Coach Rick Pitino after the championship 2013 Final Four game in Atlanta. ©2013 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All rights reserved.
At the 2010 Kentucky Derby, when Rick introduced me to Bob, I had been in the press room where my friend Jeff DeForrest, a South Florida radio legend, had been bothering me about getting into the big-time “Gold Room” at Churchill Downs. My pal Victoria has controlled the Gold Room for decades, and she finally took pity on DeForrest (whose nose was pressed up against the glass door like a dog) and let him in, but I was so appalled at the way he begged that I left to go find Pitino on Millionaire’s Row, where the introduction to Bob happened. In my heart, I believe Pitino knew nothing of the sex scandal in Minardi Hall (named after his best friend and brother-in-law, Billy Minardi) in 2016, where one of his staff members was paying for strippers. I believe that Rick was heartbroken. He’s been a coach for more than forty years, a Hall of Famer, and he knows how to get people to work for the common good, to overachieve and to own the consequences. I’ve been at his fortieth birthday party, his fiftieth, and his sixtieth, and he’s had the same friends, the same people, and the same music. His methods of friendship and coaching are both winning and proven.
In front of the twin spires at the 2009 Kentucky Derby
I was as surprised as anyone when he got a tattoo of a capital “L” over his left shoulder after Louisville won the national championship in 2013. He’d promised his team, and they offered tattoo suggestions, like Mike Tyson’s facial tattoo or the Chinese symbol for a redbird. I’d just about gotten used to that horrible white suit Rick drags out every year, but a sixty-year-old man with a tattoo? “It was bad,” said Pitino, “but it didn’t hurt as much as kidney stones.”
One man I worked with in television was unlike any other. I thought Frank Gifford was an American James Bond. He had the résumé that young women, especially young football fans, dreamed about—thirteen years with the New York Giants as the glamour halfback. He was out of USC and movie-star handsome, and I knew his whole story—how he’d moved more than thirty times because his father had been an oil-rigger. After Frank retired from the NFL in 1964, he went into broadcasting. I got to work with him one year on Monday Night Football and many days or nights in other sports. My favorite memory was in Sierra Nevada, Spain, for the World Skiing Championships in the late 1990s. Because the sun was so strong and melted the mountain runs, the skiing would be over by noon, and we would retire to a chalet and drink white wine.
With Frank Gifford while covering the World Skiing Championship in Sierra Nevada, Spain, in 1999
Gifford would talk about the old days of the NFL, including the vicious hit from Philadelphia linebacker Chuck Bednarik, the one that forced Gifford to miss the ’61 season. But he also talked about how much fun it was to line up at defensive back—people don’t remember that he made eight Pro Bowls at three different positions. That spring, covering skiing in southern Spain (where you can see Morocco from the top of the mountain), we would drive into historic Granada and see the famous all-white Andalusian horses perform, then we’d drive through the fields of sunflowers all the way to the Costa del Sol. It was magical.
My worst experience with Frank Gifford was flying home to New York from a Pro Bowl in Honolulu. l thought, “Great, I get Frank for nine hours and I can hear every story of the old NFL.” But then Richard Simmons, that exercise guy in the shorts and a tank top, happened to be in the row in front of us, and he hung—for nine hours—over the back of the seat, flirting with Frank.
CHAPTER 8
In addition to my favorite coaches, three other sports leaders—one a baseball manager, and two NFL coaches—have made a huge impression on me, both for their stories and their strength. The first is former manager Joe Torre, who grew up with four brothers and sisters in Marine Park, Brooklyn. He lived in a tidy row house on T Street, where his father was a New York City cop and his mother was a housewife. But inside the small house was a cauldron of rage, a nightly repeat of verbal and emotional abuse. From 1940 until 1995, Joe Torre never admitted the drama that went on behind the pretty lace curtains, but the famously serene man who won four World Series with the New York Yankees, who was there when Don Larsen pitched his perfect game against the Dodgers in 1956, and who became baseball’s winningest manager in postseason history—is the man who finally acknowledged the abuse his father Joseph unleashed on his beloved mother Margaret. Hall of Famer Joe Torre, who made the journey from being a terrified child hiding behind a couch in Brooklyn to a plaque in Cooperstown, told me his story of joy and redemption, of winning and losing, of laughter and loss, and about his foundation, Safe At Home, dedicated to young people who have nowhere to go and who witness bullying or worse inside their own homes.
Joe Torre got a hit in his first major-league at-bat. “I was only twenty years old, but I can still feel that person inside me,” said Torre, settling in for one of his well-known musings about life and baseball. “The first-place Pittsburgh Pirates were facing us in County Stadium [Torre was a rookie with the Milwaukee Braves]. It was the bottom of the eighth—our manager, Chuck Dressen, decided to put me in as a pinch hitter. The first pitch from Harvey Haddix came in and I didn’t swing, but I said to myself, ‘Wow, I think I can hit that.’ The next pitch, I got a base hit up the middle.”
That was late September of 1960, the first of his 2,342 hits over an eighteen-year career as a catcher, first baseman, and third baseman with three teams, the Braves (later Atlanta), the St. Louis Cardinals, and the New York Mets. Although he was a nine-time All Star and the ’71 National League MVP, Torre never got to postseason play. That glory would come as a manager, with Yankee titles in ’96, ’98, ’99, and 2000. Ah, those were the years. Joe and his wife Ali, the beauty he found reading a book in a bar in Cincinnati ten years before, lived in Westchester and owned the town. Torre’s favorite pregame meal (frittata or whole wheat pasta) would be waiting for him every day at Trattoria Vivolo in Harrison, NY, and the family would gather after games at places like Ponte’s downtown (where they’d had their honeymoon meal in 1987) or Elia’s on Manhattan’s Upper East Side (“I love the fish,” said Torre, “and since my prostate cancer in 1999, the chef takes care of me”). There was always a table for them at Primola’s, also on Second Avenue, and another one at II Pastaio in Beverly Hills, especially when Joe was managing the Dodgers from 2008 to 2010.
“I do eat other things besides Italian,” said Torre, now chief baseball officer for Major League Baseball, “but I’m just an old dog when it comes to food. I did try wheatgrass once in L.A., but it, ahh, wasn’t for me.”
Living in Westchester, managing the Yankees for twelve years, was the longest Torre ever lived in one place since childhood. He was able to completely settle in, taking his daughter Andrea trick-or-treating (being mindful to cover his face—one time as the Grim Reaper—so as not to invite long discussions about moving the runner over or managing the bullpen). He loved the job and the job loved him. Derek Jeter often said, “Mr. T is like a second father to me,” and Jorge Posada added, “When anyone was struggling, he gave you confidence.” Tino Martinez was down on himself and went into Torre’s office. “He gave me a cigar, told me t
hat I knew how to play the game, and ordered me to get a good Italian meal,” said Martinez. “He never embarrassed you and he never quit on you.”
Before Ali, Torre was married twice, in 1963 to Jackie, and in 1968 to Dani. Both earlier marriages were struggles (“I only cared about baseball,” he said), and he also struggled to know his adult children, Michael, Lauren, and Christine. Torre had been deeply scarred by the abuse he had witnessed as the youngest of five children. “My father, Joseph, would make my mother get up in the middle of the night to cook for his friends. If he didn’t like the food, he would throw it against the wall,” Torre said. Although Joe was not physically abused himself, he grew up in fear, panicked to see his father’s car in the driveway. Witnessing domestic abuse and feeling helpless to stop it, Joe said he grew up feeling worthless and alone. His cherished older brother, Frank, who’d signed a major league contract with the Boston Braves in 1953, was eight years older and living away. It wasn’t until 1995, when Ali encouraged Joe to attend a seminar on life skills, that Torre’s feelings came flooding out.
“Ali always made me feel comfortable,” said Torre about the much younger woman he met at Stouffer’s in Cincinnati the day after a game in 1986. “Although she grew up in a huge family, no one ever doubted the love. I learned so much from her. She basically gave me freedom.”
In 2002, with Ali’s love and support, Joe started the Safe At Home Foundation. He is the chairman, she is the president. The organization, whose annual gala in New York raises almost $1 million a year with people like Jon Bon Jovi or Paul Simon or James Taylor giving an intimate concert for free, has a mission to tell the children of domestic violence that it’s not their fault. Ali and Joe Torre want to educate children about the issues of violence and also give them a place to go. Through more than a dozen safe havens called Margaret’s Place (named after Joe’s mother), Safe At Home provides protected healing rooms, with everything from counseling to computers to educational opportunities.
Sometimes You Have to Cross When It Says Don't Walk Page 6