The Y2K Interview: Jeff Pearlman

[Below, Sip breaks down the Mitchell Report. Holler.]

Bit of a treat today. Just in time for your holiday gift-giving pleasure (well, the goyim), we've got an interview with the author of the finest stocking-stuffer in all Metsdom. The stuffer is "The Bad Guys Won! A Season of Brawling, Boozing, Bimbo Chasing, and Championship Baseball With Straw, Doc, Mookie, Nails, the Kid, and the Rest of the 1986 Mets, the Rowdiest Team to Ever Put on a New York Uniform - and Maybe the Best," and the author is Jeff Pearlman, currently of ESPN.com. Young Sip keeps a copy of this book by his bedstand, and A.F.O.M.G. recommends it to strangers on the street. It's that good. For his part, Pearlman was good enough to answer our questions, and we thank him again.

Y2K: You're from Mahopac, N.Y., nestled in the scenic Catskills. A kid growing up there would be a fan of ... who? The Yankees? Mets? The Danbury Westerners? Vassar varsity baseball?

Pearlman: Well, when I was growing up Mahopac was a Met town. It was the mid-80s, the Mets were hot, etc ... etc. But I was actually torn, because a kid up the street named Dave Fleming was drafted by the Seattle Mariners. So I guess I was a Met/Mariners fan. An odd combo, admittedly.
You went right from the preps beat at the Tennessean in Nashville to covering baseball for Sports Illustrated -- quite a jump. Do you remember what your first piece for SI was? What was like to see your byline in the magazine?

My first SI story actually came while I was at The Tennessean. I had pitched some freelance ideas to the magazine, and they liked one particular idea. When I was in college at the University of Delaware, I'd applied to the NBA to take part in the draft after my junior year. Granted, I never played college basketball. So I did the whole process just on a lark, and the result was this really funny exchange of phone calls and letters between me and the NBA. SI thought it was cool [and] asked me to write it up.

And to see that first byline ... ecstacy. Truly. One of the great thrills of my life.

Unlike writers who were already established in their field when they came to SI (a guy like Peter King, say), you presumably had to build a base of sources and contacts from scratch? Baseball's basically a small, insular club. How difficult was it to develop that toehold, and how did it prepare you for what you do now?

It's a long process. You think saying, "Jeff Pearlman from SI" leads to automatic credibility, and it really doesn't. It gets you in the door, but it doesn't mean people consider you anything ... unique. But over time, and by showing up and showing up and showing up, people start to remember you and notice your work. I did one thing that, in hindsight, is sorta laughable. Because I was doing national stories, bopping from team to team, I wanted players and coaches to remember me. So I started wearing a backward Kangol, so to stand out. I often got ripped for that by other writers, like I was trying to be hip-hop. Truth is, I just wanted a marker so people remember who I was. Silly, but true.

You were with SI from 1996 to 2002 -- a rather formative time period for many readers of this site. What, to you, was the big story in baseball during the period you were covering it?

At the time I would say the return of the Yankees to dominance, maybe along with the Braves' inability to win multiple World Series. But, in hindsight, it's steroids and how many of us dropped the ball/missed the story/etc. I include myself in that, because I should have noticed the size differences. But I was blind.

I sent out an e-mail to the other authors of this site after this interview was set up, and got one back almost immediately. It said, "Author of the greatest book of all time." From what I gather, that's not an unusual reaction to "The Bad Guys Won!" Is that so, and why do you think that is?

Well, I don't get "greatest book of all time" very much—ever, actually. But I appreciate it. I just think that book touched something for a lot of Met fans. I'm not saying this to be modest, but
the truth is the subject matter carried that book, not the writing. I worked my ass off, interviewed as many people as possible, loaded up on stories. But it was really a matter of unfolding one insanely funny/odd tale after another. Also, Met fans don't equal Yankee fans
in quantity, but the intensity is far greater. Met fans know suffering; know pain; know their stadium's peeling paint and cruddy outfield apple. So a book that celebrates an amazing year in team history ... well, I guess it was sorta treasured. Which I really, really appreciate.

Is there a story behind how you came up for the idea for the book?

Not a good one. My friend Jon Wertheim at SI was working on a book. I got jealous, hired an agent. I said, "I'd love to write a biography of Kiss drummer Peter Criss." She said, "How about the '86 Mets?" I said, "That sounds better."

The task of tracking down all the various characters on the '86 team for the necessary interviews seems incredibly daunting, even in retrospect. How difficult did the research prove to be?

Very, very, very hard. Early on Doug Sisk gave me a list of phone numbers, but many of them didn't work. So I did a ton of digging at spring training, jumping from camp to camp, hoping to find this guy coaching here, that guy coaching there. Really, the key to a book like that is finding the little guys--backup catchers, clubhouse kids, ballboys. You need stories that have never been told by guys willing to tell them.

Chapter 1 begins with an epigraph from Randy Niemann. As a result, the first line of the book wound up being, "It wasn't just guys destroying a plane." Which kind of says it all. You might have led off the book in a million different ways, but now, the post-NLCS debauchery on the flight back from Houston seems like the most fitting place to jump in. What kind of deliberation led to the decision to start the story there?

Actually, very little. That plane trip just perfectly sums up that team. The World Series would have been a little cliche, Gooden and Straw's downfall sorta drap. The flight—perfect. It was good and bad, happy and sad, triumphant and pathetic.

In a similar vein, the '86 Mets were chock full of stars, and we hear plenty about them, but we're also introduced in the book to less famous personalities like the Scum Bunch, whose antics are unthinkable by modern baseball standards. How surprised, or maybe even scandalized, were you by the stories you turned up?

I wasn't surprised, because I knew they existed. If anything, I was elated. It was just one story after another after another after another, and almost everyone was willing to talk freely. I ended up holding some stories, because there was just soooooooooo much. And I wasn't scandalized at all. I knew what I was getting into ...

Were there any conflicts with editors or the publisher about including those types of tawdry details? Failing that, were there any great stories that you just didn't have space for in the book?

There were no conflicts; and a couple of mediocre stories that got cut. Being 100% honest–none I really remember well.

On the one hand, recent editions of the team have had big-time stars, strong personalities, issues of their own. Few would argue that these Mets don't have an identity of their own. Yet on the other hand, you've got two breathing reminders of the '86 team in the SNY announcers' booth every night, and only unwelcome memories of a Subway Series to distract from the last pennant. To what extent does the greatness of the '86 team still casta shadow over the club?

I don't think it does, to be honest. First, it's just a different era of baseball. Guys jump from team to team, salaries are insane, players don't hang out after games. Anyone waiting for the '86 Mets to return will be hugely disappointed. It makes me sad, as a baseball fan, because that team in '86 gave New York a ton. Not just pride and excellent baseball, but an interactive feel. They were New York. New York was the Mets. They were out at bars, at restaurants, sleeping in
your bed with your wife, etc ...

In an article for ESPN.com's Page 2 this week about the supposed reverse colonization of the Mets (or, 'Los Mets'), you wrote, "Yet, despite the on-field success, an increasing number of Mets fans are griping about their team's continued (and apparently all-encompassing) determination to bring in as many Latin-American ballplayers as possible." True enough. In
your opinion, if the exact same moves are made, but New York's GM is named Johnny Whiteside instead of Omar Minaya (and is, you know, white), does anyone say "Boo?"

Of course not. I've received so many angry e-mails over this, it's pathetic. People whine how, "Look how Omar paid Alou so much more than any other team was offering." Well, A. We don't know this for sure; B. Alou was fantastic last year; C. Shawn Green was playing right, and
last I checked he's celebrating Chanukah. So gimme a break.

You conclude by writing that it's human nature for fans to root for players they can relate to (i.e., players who look like them). I don't disagree, but if that's the case, is it such a stretch to believe the same thing about executives? Even if we agree that Omar Minaya's personnel moves are purely merit-based, how universal is that approach among his fellow decision-makers? Which is to say, isn't any argument that assumes complete professionalism among baseball's general managers inherently flawed?

No, because at the end of the day Omar has to feed his family, and the best way to do that is doing a good job. He'd be sabotaging himself by signing players because of their ethnicity and ignoring white and African-American ballplayers. Plus, I believe Minaya is a man of integrity. I really, truly do. It's one thing for me to root for someone who looks like me. But a job is a job.

This is pretty inside baseball (so to speak), but your ESPN.com colleague Jim Caple was recently tapped for inclusion into the Baseball Writers' Association of America, one of 16 Web-based writers so recommended. Two of your other coworkers, Keith Law and Rob Neyer, were turned down after failing to fulfill the requirement of maintaining "a regular presence at big-league parks." In the day and age of MLB.tv, player blogs and streaming charts of pitch-by-pitch location and velocity, how relevant is that standard?

I actually think it's very important. Being at the games, talking to the players, meeting face to face with executives is significantly more vital to the job than watching a game on TV. I can't understate this—because of blogging (and I dig blogs), people think they can dowhat journalists do from home. Well, you can't. You need to know what David Wright is thinking, what Jose Reyes is feeling, what the dirt feels like, what the grass smells like. That's true journalism.
Putting the reader in the place; adding feel and narrative to a game
story.

You're working now on a project about the Dallas Cowboys. I'm a big Bills fan, so I'd sooner tear the thing apart than look at it, but that's not very welcoming. What's the project about, and when will it be on bookshelves?

It's a biography of the 1990s Cowboys under Jimmy Johnson and Barry Switzer. Should hit shelves before the start of next season.

(Thanks again to Jeff.)