by Joe Buck
Per Buck tradition, I introduced my father with the best speech I could give, and then he blew me away. He was shaking because of his Parkinson’s disease, but of course he just used that to make people laugh.
He told the crowd when he shook hands with Muhammad Ali, it took a half hour to untangle them. He thanked the Frenchwoman who saved his life during World War II by hiding him in her basement—“and that was in Cleveland, Ohio.” He boasted that he was now the only person in the world who had Parkinson’s, diabetes, a pacemaker, vertigo, eight kids, and an Emmy.
This was the man St. Louis had known and loved, always ready with a line. I once gave him a big hug and a kiss on the forehead at Busch Stadium and he said, “Be careful, Buck. Not everyone knows we’re father and son.”
After my father’s Emmy acceptance speech, executives from multiple TV networks told me they had no idea he was so funny. They meant it as a compliment, but it was bittersweet for me. I thought: “Really? You had no idea? Well, then, shame on you for not listening. He made rain delays as much fun as games. He brought the house down with speeches for charities for fifty years. He has always been this funny.”
But to them, he was a play-by-play guy. That’s it.
My father never told me this perception bothered him, but I think it did. I think that’s why he took his shot at Grandstand with Bryant Gumbel in 1975. He wanted to be more than just a play-by-play guy.
So did I.
And when I got my chance, I jumped at it.
—
The call came from Ross Greenburg of HBO Sports in 2009. He wanted to do a show that would lead into Pornucopia or G-String Divas. Well, those were not his exact words. Bob Costas had just left his HBO show, Costas Now. Ross wanted to create a show that would replace Costas, with me hosting.
And I’m actually a big fan of Pornucopia and G-String Divas. And Cathouse, too. It’s good stuff in a pinch. Here was my big chance to have a show on the same night on the same channel, and nobody was asking me to take my clothes off. (Thank God for everybody.)
Costas was doing serious work—special interviews with baseball legends, that kind of thing. I love Bob. No veteran broadcaster has been better to me in my career. When I started broadcasting, and everybody was saying (with some justification) that my name got me the job, Bob spoke up and said some very nice things. He gave me credibility. That meant the world to me.
So Bob is great. But we’re very different people. He’s a measured, thoughtful guy with an intelligent take on almost everything. I mean, whether it’s gun control or the suicide squeeze, he’s got an opinion and it’s well thought-out.
Me? I’m loose. I like to goof around. I like to wing it. I was a guest on Costas’s HBO show once, and my appearance says something about the difference between us. Before I went on, he had author Buzz Bissinger and Deadspin founder Will Leitch on, discussing the role of new media in society. It was supposed to be a serious discussion, and it quickly got a little too serious. Bissinger lost his shit. He read something from Deadspin on the air, quoting some commenter who had the screen name Balls Deep.
Honestly, Deadspin and sites like it scare the hell out of me, with their screen-grabs of announcers in mid-blink and their way of finding out what happens when the camera turns off. But Buzz acted like Leitch had just eaten his puppy.
When I came on for my segment, I sat down and asked Costas if he would refer to me by my screen name, Balls Deep. I had cleared the line with Steve Horn in the dressing room first. If Horn had said no, I probably wouldn’t have done it. But he knew Costas, and he knew the line would work with him. And it did.
So in my mind, the one thing I knew about my show is that it would be different from Bob’s. We would not host town meetings or fireside chats. We would not try to ease tensions with North Korea. We just wanted to entertain you before the boobs came on.
And this seems obvious now, but it wasn’t obvious to me then: You can’t build a show based on what it’s not. That just doesn’t work. You need a vision. That sticks with me as I look back on my frustrating experience on Joe Buck Live. The other thing that sticks with me: When I think of our debut, I don’t think of it as Joe Buck Live. I think of it as The Artie Lange Show.
—
I sort of assumed people would beg to be guests on an HBO show, especially after I assured them I would keep my clothes on. As it turned out, I had to do the begging. I basically had to book the show myself, which was not what I expected. It was OK, though. Whatever I had to do, I would do.
The first guest I booked was Brett Favre. He had just retired. I guess I need to be more specific with that: He had just retired from the Jets. The year before, he had retired from the Packers. There were rumors he would come back, but he hadn’t talked to anybody.
I had to work hard to get that interview. I’m not used to that. We get spoiled at FOX—for an NFL game, we arrive a few days early and the coaches and a few players sit down with us. It’s all prearranged.
I planted the seed with Brett early. I massaged it over time. I said, “Whatever it takes to get you to New York on this night, I’ll do . . . and if you can, don’t talk to anybody before you show up that night.” He was great. He said he would do it, and he didn’t talk to any reporters before our show.
I arranged for a private plane to pick up Favre in Mississippi and fly him to New York.* I asked Brett if he would come back to the NFL, and he said, “I am considering it.” Then he talked about his health, and said he’d been in contact with the Vikings, and by that point in the Favre retirement saga, everybody in America could read between the lines: He would play for the Vikings. There it was on the ESPN ticker, before our show was even over: Brett Favre tells HBO’s Joe Buck Live . . .
Then we had Michael Irvin and Chad Johnson (formerly Ochocinco) on for the next segment. I asked Chad about calling out his quarterbacks, and he told me to give an example. I didn’t have one. Oops! I had never done a live interview show before, and I learned a lesson there: If you challenge the interviewee on anything, you better be able to back it up.
But other than that, I thought it was going well. You have to understand: We didn’t do a pilot or a dry run. I believed I could host a show like this, but I had never done it. And most of the way through our first show, I felt good about it. I think the audience enjoyed it, because the rating was great throughout the show. But for the next week, nobody would be talking about the rating for Joe Buck Live. It’s the only time in my TV career where ratings didn’t seem to matter. All anybody talked about was Artie Lange.
—
I realize that whatever I say about this episode may smell like sour grapes. I hope not. I just want to explain what really happened.
I should say, up front, that having Artie as a guest was my idea. I’m a huge fan of the Howard Stern Show*—when I used to drop my daughters off at school, I would turn the radio to Howard as soon as they closed the car door. Artie’s humor was one of my favorite parts of Stern’s show. I know how brilliant he is, and he is a big sports fan.
So I suggested we have Artie as part of a panel, which would be the third and final segment. I also invited Paul Rudd. Paul had become a big star, and it’s been fun to see that happen for him, and for our other friend Jon Hamm. When we were all hanging out at nineteen or twenty years old, who could have predicted it?
Rudd has been successful in his career almost from the beginning. He appeared in the movie Clueless when he was in his twenties and blew everybody away. Hamm had a longer road. He was a waiter in both St. Louis and Los Angeles. He slept on Preston’s couch. At one point, he came back home to St. Louis to teach drama at his old high school. He went back out to try acting again.
Hamm was on TV a little—an episode here, an episode there—and he had supporting roles in some movies, but he was still looking for his big break. At one point, he told me, “I’m going to read this show on AMC. I don’t know wh
o watches AMC. I’ll give myself another eight months. If nothing really clicks, I’m going home. I’m going to get a job.”
The series, of course, was Mad Men. It changed his life. The funny thing is that all the qualities that made the Don Draper character so great were apparent when Jon was in high school. He was a stud—so smart, remembered everything. He just was a cut above. You could tell even then.
Anyway, I invited Rudd, and I also asked Jason Sudeikis, whom I knew through Rudd. So it was me, Rudd, Sudeikis, and Artie Lange. Artie was the only guest HBO booked that night. I booked the rest.
Before the show, I went into Artie’s dressing room.
I said, “When you go out there . . .”
He said, “Hey, man, thanks for having me on. This is fucking great. I’m a huge fan. I was a big fan of your dad’s.”
I’m thinking, “Well, this is going to go well.” Then I said, “When you get out there, just light me up, make fun of me, have fun. I don’t care. I can handle it. Not a big deal. Let’s just make this different.” This was one of the reasons I wanted to do the show in the first place, to let people know I don’t take myself that seriously.
Artie seemed like the perfect guy to tweak me. It was right in his wheelhouse. Unfortunately, he also keeps liquor and assorted drugs in his wheelhouse, and he snorted Vicodin and drank Jack Daniel’s before he came on the show. (He has since admitted this in his second book.)
When people are high, I don’t notice. My radar for that doesn’t exist. I learned that over the years. Other people say: “Man, that dude is so wired on coke.” I’m like, “What? Do you mean I shouldn’t have given him my car keys?” I’m oblivious to that stuff.
I was vaguely aware that Artie did not seem quite right. But the idea that he might be stoned out of his mind did not register with me.
Artie hijacked the segment. I said something tongue-in-cheek about TMZ being my favorite website, to set a light tone, and I asked Rudd a question, and then we turned to Artie . . .
“Joe, TMZ is your favorite website? What is your second one, SuckingDick.com?”
Well, that was a pretty sharp left turn. But the crowd laughed, and I laughed. And when he got that laugh, he just went off. He called Tony Romo “Tony Homo” and said Jessica Simpson looked like Chris Farley. I tried to steer the conversation toward Sudeikis, but Artie wasn’t going for it.
At one point he did compliment me. But most of what he said was just off. I wanted a good ribbing and he was attacking. He said, “Sorry to ruin your fucking great show.” He started imitating my dad. He tried lighting a cigarette, which made me really mad. (Odd, I guess, since my dad smoked for years.) We didn’t have a clear vision for the show, but it sure wasn’t that.
Do you think ten minutes on a treadmill feels like a long time? Try sitting out there, looking into the crazed eyes of Artie Lange, stuck.
I was thinking, “I have no way out of here.” I mean, if I lose it—if I get mad and jump down into the pit with him—where does that get me? First of all, I’m not going to win a battle of wits with Artie Lange. He is too funny. Second, if I start getting really vulgar or dirty, I lose everything I’ve built up in the other parts of my career.
I couldn’t say, “Yeah, I went on SuckingDick.com and I saw your mom’s picture there! Hahahahahahaha! Everybody, please forget that joke when you see me doing the World Series!” Plus, he was high, so he would always take the insults further than I wanted to go. I just had to sit there and take it.
I felt like the crowd turned on him after the second or third joke. It went from “Nice line!” to “Wow—that was pretty mean.” But he didn’t notice because he was so out of it. And it became really uncomfortable in the room.
When the show mercifully ended, I had to walk to the center of the stage and say, “Good night from New York!” You know, like the last ten minutes of the show had not happened.
I was not mad at Artie. Truly. Sure, he was over the line, and it was tense and awkward, but I had asked him to make fun of me. I couldn’t really get mad at him for doing it. I was just disappointed, because I thought the show had gone well to that point, and now all anybody would be talking about was Artie.
Little did I know: The people in charge of the show were about to wimp out.
—
My wife was there. My kids were there—they heard everything Artie said about their dad. And before I could get off the stage, HBO Sports’s media relations guy, Ray Stallone, let a group of reporters rush the stage and start asking me questions.
At that point, I had not seen Ross Greenburg. I hadn’t seen my family. I couldn’t even go to the bathroom. I couldn’t get off the stage. And these reporters came up. I always try to be respectful of journalists and their work. When I read an interesting sports story and discuss it on the air, I always try to mention the writer’s name. I think they deserve that recognition. But I was not quite ready for reporters to ask me questions in that moment.
Richard Sandomir of The New York Times asked me: “Joe, do you feel like you just got cornholed on national television?”
What? Can you even get “cornholed” into the austere pages of The New York Times? In the wake of his uncouth exchange with Mr. Lange, Mr. Buck denied feeling cornholed. I was like, “No, I don’t feel like I just got cornholed on national television. Thanks for asking!”
Another reporter (a stringer for the New York Post) asked if TMZ was really my favorite website. I could see where this was going, and I didn’t like it. So I got out of there. Greenburg came out from behind me, behind the stage, and started going off on Artie: “He will never be on HBO again! This was a travesty! This was insulting!”
So then it became HBO versus Artie Lange. And everybody assumed I was on HBO’s side, morally offended by Artie, curled up in the fetal position, crying and kissing my Jack Buck bobblehead doll. In reality, I was more disappointed by the reaction of HBO.
Come on, guys! This is HBO! It’s not Meet the Press or the 700 Club. I wasn’t happy with what Artie did, but the show was over—we couldn’t un-broadcast it. I wanted HBO’s people to talk about the ratings, which were strong. I wanted them to have fun with it.
I was used to working for David Hill at FOX, and he would have handled it completely differently. David is kind of a maverick Australian guy. He would have said, “There you go, folks! There’s the first episode of this live show! Tune in next time! Who knows what you’re going to see?” But I think HBO Sports people take HBO Sports so seriously, you’re not really allowed to have fun like that.
I had hoped the show would give people a different side of me. Instead, Artie’s appearance gave them ammunition to rip me. New York radio personality Mike Francesa devoted a big portion of his show to blasting me. This is a guy who has fallen asleep on his own show! At least my show kept him awake.
Howard Stern talked about Artie’s appearance at length on his next show. All the guys were ripping Artie. That’s how bad it was: Howard Stern thought Artie crossed a line.
When you start a new show, you usually need some time to find your rhythm, to see what works and what doesn’t. We were suddenly being talked about too much, and for the wrong reasons. It would be hard to recover.
I called Artie, and as you might expect, there was an apology. But the apology was from me to him, for HBO’s reaction. I left it on his voice mail.
Artie called back two minutes later. He felt terrible. He said, “Look, man, I’m just a comic. I got that first laugh and I went overboard. I never want to get in the way of a person making a living. That wasn’t my intent.” I had to convince him I wasn’t mad at him. But I really, truly wasn’t.
I wanted to have Artie on the next episode. I thought that was the only way to go—otherwise, we would look scared and embarrassed about what happened.
But Ross’s position was “Absolutely not!” God forbid we offend the people who tuned in early for
soft-core porn.
I said, “Ross, you’ve got to hear me out. That was me onstage. Not Ross Greenburg. Me. You don’t know me very well if you think that I can’t laugh at myself, or I can’t make light of it to try to win people back. I have to talk about this.”
He said he would think about it.
Then he called me back and said, “OK.”
I said I would write something fun and tasteful to open the show with Artie. There would be no mention of SuckingDick.com or its partner websites. Everybody would laugh and we could put the whole thing in perspective and continue with the show. Ross agreed.
I called Artie. I said, “Here’s what we’re going to do.”
He said, “Great. I’m in.” I think he was eager to make amends, too.
And about four days later, Greenburg called me back and said Richard Plepler wouldn’t allow it.
“Who’s Richard Plepler?” I asked.
“He runs HBO,” I was told.
Artie Lange had been banned from the network. Forget it.
Ross said, “Not only are you not allowed to have Artie Lange on, you’re not allowed to reference it on the second show.”
That was ridiculous. There was no way I could walk out on that same stage and act like Artie’s segment never happened. I would look like the same sensitive, weepy, self-important weasel that some people think I am.
I told Ross if I couldn’t talk about Artie, I would quit. I meant it. As much as I wanted the show to work, I didn’t need it. I had my job at FOX. I was in a good place.
They huddled to discuss it. I was hitting golf balls at Old Warson Country Club in St. Louis to get the frustration out. I was dreading having to disinvite Artie. I might as well call him and say, “Artie, why don’t you go on Howard’s show and rip me for an hour? By the way, I’m hitting golf balls at a place called Old Warson. Go use that to destroy my manhood, too.”
Plepler thought the ordeal was over.
“Nobody cares,” he said. “It’s under the pavement.”