Scheft - The best of The show : a classic collection of wit and wisdom

New text copyright 2005 by Bill Scheft

All previously published material copyright 2002, 2003, 2004 by Sports Illustrated. All rights reserved.

Warner Books

Hachette Book Group

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First eBook Edition: May 2005

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ISBN: 978-0-446-51091-2

To Zoyd, who would have gotten every joke.

T raditionally (and you know how I feel about tradition), this is the part of the book where someone more wellknown than the author gives his blessing over what you are about to read. To achieve a kind of faux legitimacy the guy writing the foreword usually manufactures a relationship between himself and the author, based on a loosely knit string of coincidences. If done correctly, it praises the author, but more important, makes the guy writing the foreword pivotal to the author's career and responsible for the success of the work.

I like to think that I am above such artifice. I like to think that over the last two-plus decades I have built up an integrity-funded equity with the American sporting public as a broadcaster, journalist and fan that has engendered a deep and abiding trust.

That saidI invented Bill Scheft, and I have proof.

Bill Scheft was a struggling, multi-Emmy-nominated writer on the world's most influential late-night comedy-variety show when I plucked him off the scrap heap in 1994 to write some after-dinner jokes for me for a sports charity function I was emceeing in Kansas City. (I forget which charity. Something like the George Brett chapter of the National Hemorrhoid Awareness Association.)

I can't remember what made me decide to call him. Perhaps it was a remark I had overheard him make at the NBC commissary: I'll have the Julio Gotay Chicken. That doesn't matter. What matters is that he wrote a line for me that night about then-Chiefs head coach Marty Schottenheimer: Marty Schottenheimer is here tonight. This is a nice change of pace for Marty. Usually, at these dinners, John Elway shows up in the last two minutes and eats his dessert.

Screams. Where else could you go with a joke like that and not get stares? And who else could deliver it, smile impishly and move on? Letterman? At a CART awards banquet, maybe. Not here.

There were other dinners, other events, other jokes. (They're having Jamie Quirk Day at Royals Stadium this season. All fans 14 and under get a free cap with revolving team logo in the front...) but I believe getting the opportunity to write that Marty Schottenheimer joke was the seminal event in Bill Scheft's professional life. I believe a switch went off in his head that told him, Why can't I write sports jokes like this all the time? And why can't I get the credit when I do? Sure, it would be another six years before he began to write this sort of joke regularly, first at ESPN Magazine, now Sports Illustrated, and build the ever-growing audience of those among us who crave smart laughs about our sports heroes and villains, peppered with cultural references obscure enough to drive Dennis Miller into APBAA. But again, that is not my point.

My point is this. That switch I referred to? It was flipped by me. And, I guess, some greater unseen power. But, whoever or whatever that may have been, he, she or it wasn't even considered to emcee the dinner that fateful night in Kansas City. In fact, here was the entire list: me, Roy Firestone and, oddly enough, U.L. Washington. I got the nod and fate took Bill Scheft's hand.

Whew. I am so glad we could straighten this out. God knows we can all use a laugh or two. Or a couple thousand. So read on.

Foreword by Rick Reilly

I am insane. I'll prove it to you.

The best definition I ever heard of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.

For the last three years, I have done the same thing over and over again, every Thursday. I go to the mailbox, flip open my Sports Illustrated (no, employees don't get the sneakerphone), and turn to Bill Scheft's column, The Show. On my way there, I say to myself, O.K., this is it. This is the week he runs out of jokes. Nothing humorous happened this week. Humor Took a Holiday. Sports was duller than fat-free rice cakes. Scheft's done. Emptied out. Thanks for stopping by the booth. Show's over.

And every week, after waking the dog by laughing out loud, reaggravating the bruise on my palm from banging the Formica and drying my eyes in admiration and envy, I say to myself, The bastard did it again.

Look, I have seen some things in my life. I have seen Al Davis walk past a courthouse. I have heard Charles Barkley ask a waiter if there's anything light on the dessert menu. I have seen a coatroom girl try to check Donald Trump's hair. I have seen John Elway eat a minute steak and not use any of his timeouts. I have heard Reggie Jackson refer to himself in the first person. I have heard Chris Berman say he needed some quiet time.

But I've never seen a guy who can write 20 topical, funny, edgy sports jokes a week, every week. And not this AM radio sports-talk O.K., JoeBob, you're on Get Off My Jock! with Double-Down Dave and The Coach! gratuitous cuts with laugh track. Scheft does it without a laugh track, without a net, without a staff of minions. Twenty kills. Twenty top-shelfers. Twenty line drives back at your head. Nobody can do that. No human, at least.

I'm telling you, with God as my witness, Bill Scheft is going to run out of hilarious things to say one day. Not in these next 200-plus pages, maybe not next Thursday, but one of these days. I'm going to turn back there and his page is going to be blank. And it will read at the top, Doodle Up Some Fun, or This Page for Autographs.

And when that happens, I'll know I should have quit the year before.

B efore we begin, here are my goals for this first chapter. I want to avoid self-indulgence. What I mean by that, what I mean to say is, I, I, I, IO.K., let's get back to that.

How about if I teach you how to write a joke? You know, get a return on that $22 you just shelled out? It's very simple. You pretend your brain has double-stick tape around it. You pick a celebrity, someone universal with a lot of baggage, and free-associate. Topics, words, phrases start to stick to the tape. Pick one you like, remove the rest and free-associate off that. More words, more phrases stick to the tape. Repeat the last step and get more specific free-associating. Keep doing that, keep boiling it down, like you're making crack. Eventually, you can see the connection between each step. Add some attitude, some nonsense logic, you've got a joke.

I'll do an easy one. President Bush. Let's see Dad was President, disputed election, loves tax cuts, compassionate conservative, quit drinking, former owner of the Rangers, big baseball fan. I'll take big baseball fan. O.K. big baseball fan, T-ball court at White House, against steroids, honors championship teams. I'll take honors championship teams. O.K. honors championship teams. Ceremony in Rose Garden. Bush among the Red Sox. What could happen during a ceremony with Bush and the Red Sox?

Wait, I got it.

The World Champion Red Sox recently visited the White House. They presented the President with a customized jersey: BUSH 43. Come on. Am I the only one thinking? How about IDIOT 1?

Basically, that is my life. I gather items from sportspeople, places, things, arraignments, pharmaceuticalsand I try to logically free-associate off them. Eventually, it congeals into something resembling a joke. And if not, I just stick the word Tagliabue at the end. Because, come on, who are we kidding? Tagliabue is funny. Say it. No, better yet, take two gulps of water, don't swallow, now say it. Huh? Funny? Do I know what I'm talking about? Give it to me.