The Futility Infielder

I've had interviews on the brain for the past few months -- verbal ones, written ones, for business and for pleasure. Earlier this winter, I had the opportunity to appear twice on Baseball Prospectus Radio -- the first to discuss my BP articles on the Hall of Fame, the second as part of a Yankee roundtable -- answering questions by phone from host Will Carroll for recorded segments which would air later that week. Later in February, I was queried twice in connection with this website, both times in written form -- once for Rich Lederer's Weekend Baseball Beat site, and once for a Westchester Journal News feature -- enjoyable experiences in which I had the opportunity to craft thoughtful responses to questions about this site, its history, and my passion for writing about baseball.

Earlier this month, I went on a pair of job interviews, selling my skills to a potential employer and discussing my design portfolio and related experience at length. Unlike the written interviews, when I was entirely in control of my responses and their pace, in the job interview, like the BPR segments, I was Johnny on the spot, answering complex questions in real time. The BPR segments, of course, were discussions among friends, with a safety net present if need be, whereas the job interviews found me at the mercy of a panel scrutinizing my record, my responses, and my body language. In both types of live interviews, I was subject to nervousness, adrenaline flows, and the need to process the questions rapidly while subtly gauging the intent of the interviewer.

Interviews, of course, are a building block for writing, whether it's for an article in a newspaper informed by a few relevant quotes or an in-depth grilling like the ones Alex Belth so masterfully does with his subjects on Bronx Banter. In both cases what you usually end up reading is only the tip of the iceberg. It's fraction of what the interviewee said, often ironed a bit to remove the um's and uh's, the false starts which can invade impromptu speech, especially when one is conscious that they're "on the record." And it's a fraction of both the preperatory work the interviewer has done, reading the subject's book or doing other background research, and of the grunt work transcribing what was said and editing it down to a succinct and compelling representation of the conversation.

For all of these interviews swirling around me, until Sunday, I had yet to perform one in the service of my baseball writing. Not that I hadn't done any before -- back in my long-haired, early '90s career as a so-called rock journalist (an oxymoron about as accurate as "military intelligence" or "virgin whore"), I did loads of them with a variety of bands ranging from Providence locals like Six Finger Satellite and Dungbeetle to members of nationally prominent indie-rock bands such as Soul Asylum, the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, King Missile, and the Jesus Lizard. Hours of work at the front and back end go into something which ultimately might take five or fifteen minutes to read, and the physical and emotional rollercoaster of doing them while trying to balance earnest enthusiasm with professional cool can be taxing.

So last night I had a great hour-long phone conversation with a minor-league pitcher who's got a unique back story, one you'll soon get to read about, whether it's here or at another baseball site (I'm trying to avoid jinxing anything). Getting to the point of doing the interview was something of a fiasco, however. Because I started with neither a phone number nor an email address, it took over three weeks from the time I floated a thought balloon on a public website to actually taping a conversation. I spent a good portion of this past weekend preparing, rereading a relevant chapter in a book, chasing down statistics, quotations, and other facts on the web, and hammering it all into a series of questions which in the end only served as a general outline for our discussion.

Along the way, I had solve what I thought was a big problem when it came to recording. I spent hours running around Manhattan's Union Square trying to cobble together a low-cost, low-fi solution rather than shelling out over $100 for professional-grade equipment. Already the owner of two microcassette recorders (one bought frantically last summer while visiting Salt Lake City when my 91-year-old grandmother decided she was ready to talk about her family's history and their capture by the Nazis), I discovered that neither had a microphone jack, and on top of that, I didn't have a way to get a line feed out of either my fancy digital phone or my cheapo handset. Fifty dollars and two hours later, I had resignedly purchased a third microcassette recorder, this one with a mic jack but otherwise identical to my last-purchased one, and a funny-looking doodad which I was told would solve all of my line problems. I got home and opened both packages, only to discover that the two items were incompatible with each other and ultimately with either phone. Pigeons fled their stoops in terror, mothers covered their babies' ears, and plants wilted at the sound of my curse words.

Fortunately my pal Nick talked me through my mini(plug) crisis. "You can do speakerphone, right?" he asked, "So why not just put the recorder [which has a built-in condenser mic] right up to the speaker?" Um, because that would be too easy? We tried it; lo and behold, problem solved. Sometimes the simplest solutions are the most elusive.

I still spent a good portion of the interview carefully eying the recorder as we chatted, hoping that the moment of flipping the tape wouldn't cut off an answer or interrupt our momentum. When the conversation finally ended, I immediately checked the tape, praying that I'd gotten it all down at a usable sound level. Hearing both voices coming through loud and clear, I did a celebration reminicsent of Jorge Posada's Game Seven-tying bloop double off of Pedro Martinez, bouncing around the exact spot in my tiny living room where I had viewed that memorable hit.

My point in relating this entire story is that my appreciation for interviews has been renewed. I pointed out Alex Ciepley's well-done interview with Michael Muska on Friday, so keeping it within my city brethren, I'll turn your attention to Alex Belth's debut on The Hardball Times, an interview with Howard Bryant, author of Shut Out: A Story of Race and Baseball in Boston. I haven't read Bryant's book, though I'm aware of its implications. The Red Sox, owned for 44 years by Tom Yawkey, have had a decidedly dubious history in matters of race. They were the last team to integrate, twelve years after Jackie Robinson arrived (the immortal Pumpsie Green debuted on July 21, 1959), and not until 1993 when the signed Andre Dawson did the Sox ink a black free agent. In the meantime, bright black stars from Reggie Smith to Jim Rice to Ellis Burks to Mo Vaughan departed either via trade or free agency, and with no shortage of controversy. Placed against such backdrops as the hometown Celtics' trailblazing status as the first NBA team to integrate and to hire a black head coach, and the city's busing crisis in the 1970s, this is one hell of a ripe subject. (Speaking of the Celtics, my dad once related a memorable quote, perhaps apocryphal, regarding Celtics coach Red Auerbach and his integrated lineup strategy: "Two at home, three on the road, and five when we're behind.")

Belth has kept me abreast of the back story of the interview for quite some time. He read the book well over a year ago, placing it on his 2002 year-end list as "poorly written but informative" (it turns out this was an uncorrected advance proof), quoting from it at length and referring to it several times since then.

Belth actually met Bryant at the Winter Meetings in New Orleans, an awkward encounter of which he wrote:

On Saturday afternoon, I spotted Howard Bryant of The Boston Herald. After I introduced myself, he said something to the effect of, "Oh yeah, I've been by your site. You were pretty tough on my book." Gulp. Indeed I had been. Talk about being put on the spot. But that didn't stop us from having an interesting conversation about the book's subject -- racism in the Boston sports world. Bryant is an engaging, bright guy, and I enjoyed getting a chance to rap with him for a minute. We talked about the stigma of being black and playing in Boston, and it wasn't until later in the afternoon that I wondered to myself if Howard is in fact the only black reporter on the Red Sox beat.

There was a lesson in our encounter for me as well. If you write something and put it out there, you have to be accountable for it. When he brought up that I had been critical of his book, I didn't exactly recall what I had written about "Shut Out" -- I remember thinking that book was in need of a better editor than it had, because the subject was fascinating -- but I'm glad that he didn't seem to take my criticism personally, and that I didn't let it trip me up enough to feel humiliated or uncomfortable.

Now Alex has repaid Bryant's lack of a grudge with the lengthy THT interview discussing the book. An African American Massachusetts native who served as a beat reporter for the Oakland A's at the time of the book's writing, Bryant has since moved back to Boston to write for the Herald. Of his own personal stake in the book, he says:

[T]he book was probably 85-95% personal because there is no way you can be African American and a baseball fan and then a journalist as well and not be cognizant of the history [of race in Boston] and not be moved by it. And not only be cognizant of the history, but also be cognizant of what hasn't been written.

When you grow up in the African American community in Boston, everybody knows the story; everybody knows what's happening. And to your side of society, it's one of the most important, if not the most important pieces of Red Sox history. But to the mainstream society it wasn't. And that makes you wonder about your values and it makes you question the value of your point-of-view. That's why the book was so important to me. Because it wasn't just about what had been written but about what hadn't been written.

Bryant goes on to discuss the city's history, the Yawkey regime, the team's spotty relationship with black employees -- not just players, though by 1979 Jim Rice was the only black on the team -- the media's complicity, and the Sox' perfunctory tryouts of Jackie Robinson and Willie Mays. Here's the exchange regarding the latter:

THT: Could you talk about the Jackie Robinson tryout, and the fact that the Red Sox passed over Willie Mays as landmark moments in Red Sox history?

Bryant: They weren't at first. The reason why the refusal to treat Robinson with any dignity, or the reason why failing to sign Willie Mays was a problem for the Red Sox was because of what they did later. Because not only were they the last team to integrate, but they had horrible problems with black players as the '60s and '70s continued. And of course, the '80s.

That gave the past much more weight. Had the Red Sox integrated in '52, '53 along with same lines as every other team, the Jackie Robinson tryout wouldn't have meant anything. Because no team was going to integrate in 1945. The Red Sox weren't any different from the Yankees or the Giants or the Dodgers. What gave that tryout weight was what came after, because the Red Sox were in constant conflict with not just African American journalists and white Journalists alike who wanted equality, but also the city statutes and state law.

You had the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination suing the Red Sox on two occasions for not hiring, not only black players, but secretaries, janitors and grounds crew people as well. Because of those histories, you have this paper trail that began to grow and grow and grow. That's where it all comes from.

The conversation turns to the the team's contrast with the Celtics, then Bryant points to GM Dick O'Connell as the beacon of change and the architect of both the 1967 "Impossible Dream" team (which featured George Scott, Reggie Smith, and John Wyatt in prominent roles) and '75 pennant winners (who had Rice, Cecil Cooper, Luis Tiant and others), and later mentions Burks, who returned to Boston as a free agent this offseason, as his favorite intervewee.

Suffice it to say that Belth does his usual fantastic job with the interview. Not that I didn't already have a great respect for his work, but after the weekend, my appreciation has been heightened. Even moreso, I more fully undertand the hard work done by anybody who relies on interviews as their bread and butter and who can make such conversations appear to come off seamlessly. In some ways it's not all that different from a batter who steps into the box in a key situation and coolly delivers the clutch RBI. The "on the record" nature makes an inteview a response to a pressure situation, and you don't see all of the preparation that went into making the resolution of that intense moment appear routine. Think about that next time you read a well-done Q & A.