Those Guys Have All the Fun - James Andrew Miller [347]
JIM ROME:
Of course, I don’t want a bunch of lunatics calling up and ranting and raving irresponsibly and recklessly. If they take offense at something I say, and they want to challenge me or go up against me, great. That’s fine. I’d say the same thing about a guest. Most people would never ever call a radio show. Who can afford to stay on hold for an hour or ninety minutes or two hours to call a radio show? Our research indicates that, like, 1 or 2 percent of the audience would ever call in. You need to program to the 98 percent that would never call and not cater just to the 2 percent that does. You gotta know your room. There’s a wide sampling of the audience that would never call the show, so don’t assume that everybody who calls in is everybody who’s listening and that it’s one and the same, because it’s not.
CHRIS BERMAN:
I’ve been treated unfairly by the TV sports critics. They say I’m a clown. It’s an act. When they use the word “act,” it’s like “aaact.” “Act” would be playing a character who you’re clearly not, by definition in Webster’s. To act is to take on the characteristics of someone else. “We don’t like Berman’s style.” Fine. “Don’t like Berman’s act” is, “What act?!” What is that? What would that be? Or that he’s a clown. You mean I don’t come prepared? Stop. Stop. The most hurtful thing they write is that I’m just out there making events be about me. God, no. I’m just excited to be part of it. So maybe it’s a little over the top for some people. But some people aren’t excited enough. I think, “God, I wish he would show a little bit of excitement. Doesn’t he like being at this football game?” The company really hasn’t had my back on that front. They never felt it was important enough.
STUART SCOTT:
I had cancer last year. I had appendicular cancer, which is very, very, very rare, like extremely rare. I had appendicitis. It didn’t rupture. It was inflamed, it got taken out—I was in Pittsburgh for the Monday night game. It was malignant.
So three or four days later I had surgery to remove, like, anything close. I got a big scar. They took apart my colon, anything. I did six months’ chemotherapy. Now, after they finished the surgery, they didn’t find any more cancer, but they said to do chemo anyway. Every six months I have to have a CT scan. Now, I’ve been clean. I worry, what if this comes back and I’ve got to live every day? So juxtapose that up against what somebody says.
As late as 2000, Bill Simmons was still thinking seriously about quitting the sports business and getting into real estate, imagining he’d never make it as a writer.
Many years earlier, little William J. Simmons III had first been turned on to sports journalism when he read David Halberstam’s 1981 bestseller The Breaks of the Game, an account of the author’s travels with the Portland Trail Blazers during their 1979–80 season. Halberstam reflected on what he’d learned about the NBA, pro sports, and life in general while traveling with the team. Simmons “plowed through” the book in one weekend and kept rereading it over months, and years, to come.
After earning a BA in Political Science from Holy Cross College in 1992 and a masters in print journalism from Boston University in 1994, Simmons went looking for work. Hired to report on high school sports for the Boston Herald, he found himself mainly going on “food runs” for the “real” writers on the staff. A subsequent gig at the Boston Phoenix left him so discouraged and broke that he quit the paper to work as a bartender.
Then, in 2001, he gathered his resolve and what money he had and launched his own website, BostonSportsGuy.com—while holding on to the bartending job just in case.
BILL SIMMONS, Columnist:
My first goal was to play pro sports. My dad had season tickets