Jim Gray - Talking to GOATs

Contents

In loving memory of my incredible father, Jerry.
In honor of my wonderful mother, Lorna.
With love and gratitude for the incomparable Frann.

Contents

I doubt many readers know that Jim Gray has a nickname. Well, they do now: its Scratchy. Jack Nicholson was the one who came up with it. When Nicholson wasnt in his courtside seat at the Forum watching the Los Angeles Lakers play, he would come home late, sometimes after filming a movie, and watch the games on replay, with Jim doing all the interviews. One night Jim picked up the phone and heard a familiar voice. Way to go, Scratchy. You just keep scratchin and digging until you get what you want. Keep scratchin for that story, Old Scratchy.

Scratching, persevering, pushingthose notions form the core of Jim and have since we first met in 2002 during a pregame interview at Super Bowl XXXVI, when the Patriots were playing the Rams at the Superdome in New Orleans. We ended up winning that game, 2017.

A few years later, when I moved to Los Angeles after my oldest son, Jack, was born, Jim and I struck up a friendship around our love of golfing and sports. In 2011, we decided to partner together on our own national weekly radio show on Westwood One for the pregame and halftime of Monday Night Football. Many hundreds of interviews later, Jim and I still talk on the air every Monday night. Someone once said marriage is a long conversation. My relationship with Jim is the same.

It might seem strange for athletes and sportscasters to become friends, but Jim isnt an ordinary sportscaster. He has no agendaand never has. He is warm, genuine, caring, and insightful. He remains a man of great loyalty and integrity, with strong principles and convictions. His relationships matter to him, and he works hard to maintain them. Its no surprise that so many of the sports figures Jim started off interviewing later turned into his close friends. Im proud to be one of them.

Still, being friends with Jim is no guarantee hell let you off easy in an interview. His M.O. is to dig beneath the surface, though always respectfully. Hes not out to make headlines, or create controversies. He wont ever hit you from behind with a question that leaves you stammering. Hes after only one thingauthenticityand he pushes hard to get it.

In fact, a few times over the years, Jim and I have been talking about something on the air, when suddenly hell start badgering me, drilling down, pressing me to elaborate on something I said. After the show wraps, Ive sometimes said, What the hell were you doing out there? I answered your question, and I answered your follow-up question, but then you asked me three more follow-up questions! Jims response? It is what it is, Tommy. Some questions and answers require follow-ups. Whenever that happens, I totally get where the nickname Scratchy comes from.

Jim has covered pretty much every sport over the years, from football and golf to baseball and basketball and boxing, as well as some of the greatest moments for each. He has worked for ESPN, NBC Sports, CBS Sports, ABC Sports, Fox, and Showtime. He has covered Super Bowls, the Olympics, the Masters, the World Series, the NBA Finals, the NCAA Final Fouryou name it. His knowledge of sports, and of leadership, and of how big sports institutions work and dont work, is second to none. He has been at the center of one huge sports story after another. Its not about luck. Its about his instincts, his focus, and his ability to connect an event, or a moment, to what viewers or listeners care about, and what they really want to see or hear.

To my mind, its not what people do in their twenties that leads to greatness, or a lasting legacy. Its what they keep doing, year after year, at a consistently high level. As a sportscaster and sports historian, Jims career genuinely stands the test of time. Hes elevated all sports, and on the worlds biggest stages, too, by working hard, putting in the time and energy, developing relationships, and telling stories.

Stories? Jim has hundreds, if not thousands, of themand an insanely good memory, too. It can be hard to play golf with him because Im too distracted by the anecdote hes telling about this guy, or that event, and what happened after the fight, during halftime, or inside the locker room. So many of these stories are in this book. Whether hes describing his first and last interviews with Muhammad Ali, or his interactions and friendships with Mike Tyson, Dr. J, Floyd Mayweather Jr., Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Kobe Bryant, Charles Barkley, Hank Aaron, and so many others (plus the last nine US presidents), youll find out the lesson Jim learned early on: that the key to interviewing anyone is to listen.

This book is sports history about some of the greats by one of the greats, who was taking it all in on the sidelines, in the stands or the dugout, by the eighteenth green, courtside, or in the broadcast booth. As for my own long conversation with Jim? Its not over, not even close. See you next Monday, Scratchy, and try to go easy on me.

Back in 1989, I happened to be strolling the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica with my friend and fellow broadcaster Bob Costas. We ran into a street performer who might have been homeless and who was rhyming and making jokes. I enjoyed the show, and Bob handed him $5.

The man looked at him. Yo! Yo! Yo! Bob! Bob! Bob Costa! Come on, Bob! You can do a whole lot better than that!

Bob handed the man another $20, despite the mispronunciation of his name. The man spit out a few more rhymes, and then he turned suddenly toward me. And what about you over there? You be on there analyzing some shit!

We doubled over in laughter, and I handed over another $20. That made $45 total. Big payday. Before we walked away, I said to that man, If you know who I am, theres no way youre homeless. Youre watching way too much television.

The man started laughing. We parted company. Theres the title of your book, my friend, Costas said. You be on there analyzing some shit.

This is that shit.

On the night before he bit off a chunk of another mans ear, Mike Tyson went to see Don King. More specifically, he went to see Don King about a check. This was June 27, 1997, a Friday, less than twenty-four hours before whats now known as the Bite Fight. That night changed so much, looking back at the events that had transpired, for boxing and its biggest superstar, and even me.

I was in Kings small temporary office at the MGM Grand as he scribbled out all those zeros, writing out a check for $30 million, then penning his signature at the bottom. It was a staggering amount of money for one nights work, then or now. But Tyson was worth every penny that King was set to pay him. He was something else: the most exciting, well-known, and thunderous athlete on the planet. On any given Saturday inside a boxing ring, he was liable to hit someone harder than youve ever seen a man hit another person. But he was just as likely to spectacularly combust. King knew all this as he tossed the check in my direction. You imagine? he said. Im paying him $30 million before he fights the fight!

King then began howling with laughter and shaking his head. I know I say it all the time, King boomed. But goddamn, only in America!

He wasnt wrong. Tyson was a decidedly American creation, a worldwide phenomenon whose origin story has transformed over the years into something closer to myth: raised in Brownsville, Brooklyn; molested as a child; he ran with convicts and drug dealers, committed crimes, landed in a juvenile detention center; he was saved by boxing and then nearly destroyed by it. At this point in his career, he had only lost twice: to James Buster Douglas in an epic 1990 upset and the first time he faced Evander Holyfield, who won their initial bout by technical knockout in 1996. Tyson complained afterward that Holyfield had leaned on and head-butted him, turning the fight into more of a brawl. This mind-set would become important in the rematch, a boutand a bitethat would come to help define careers. His and mine.