Those Guys Have All the Fun - James Andrew Miller [359]
Alex was extremely emotional. I don’t believe I’ve ever interviewed anyone who was that emotional. It was as if he had pulled up that veil that he had covered himself with all his professional life. He was extremely tense and nervous. I mean, he was sweating. I thought at one point he was going to hyperventilate. And it was difficult to keep the interview on track. I asked several questions twice, and I knew that I really felt that if I kept going and badgering him, the whole thing was going to break down. I was afraid his head was going to explode. I don’t think he or anyone else is capable of faking that kind of emotion. I just tried to get through and ask all the questions I thought had to be asked, repeating as many of them as I thought I had to. Keeping it on track was the most difficult thing about the whole interview.
Frank Deford said to me, “I really understand how difficult that was, because Alex Rodriguez has always believed that he’s playing the role of Alex Rodriguez in a movie about Alex Rodriguez.” And I thought that was absolutely right. Alex always liked to be perceived as close to perfect. And yet, because I found him so frail in that interview, so human and so contrary to the Hollywood image that he puts across, I’m really far more fond of Alex than I ever was before.
The dynamics were extraordinary. He later told me that after our interview, he just went right to bed and slept for like fourteen hours because he was so exhausted from it. It was extremely exhausting for me as well.
JOHN SAWATSKY:
Here’s the irony: Peter Gammons is a professional journalist. He’s been one all his career. And that’s where I get the most resistance. Nobody ever comes out and says they’re not going to do it the way you’ve discussed; they just go and do it the way they wanted. You don’t get that from ex-athletes, they are highly coachable. This is what always astounds me so much. But it actually shouldn’t because they’ve been coached all their life and one of the reasons they’ve excelled in their profession is they know how to take instruction.
Gammons and I didn’t have anything to do with each other for the last couple years he was here. He didn’t even respond to my e-mails. He thought he was above this. And that’s why he’s in this position where he can’t improve—because he doesn’t realize that he has weaknesses. Except now, maybe, because the reaction to that interview in the journalistic community was so strong, he has to realize now that he blew it.
Peter Gammons would announce that same year that he would leave ESPN for the Major League Baseball Network. For John Walsh, who had proudly brought Gammons to ESPN twenty years earlier, it was a moment of genuine frustration. Walsh had thought there were ways to keep Gammons, who basically didn’t want to work less, just do more of that work from his home rather than the studio or the road. As simple as a solution sounds, no deal could be hammered out—and off went Gammons to a new and serious competitor for ESPN.
PETER GAMMONS:
The MLB network is entirely baseball. Everything I’ll do now is basically centered on baseball. Bob [Costas] is tremendous to work with, and I’m back with a lot of friends of mine, like Harold Reynolds, Sean Casey, and Barry Larkin. This will also allow me more time to work on book projects, which I really need. There isn’t a lot of time to get that done at ESPN—which is understandable. It’s a twenty-four-hour news cycle.
ESPN’s brilliantly moved to being basically an NFL College Sports network. It’s really well done; they’re going to