Call the Carrier and every day that nobody picks a winner three-quarters of the entire pot carries over what we've gone five great racing days now without anybody picking all sex. So today we go in with a $235,000 the stash in the kiddie to start with yesterday's carryover going into yesterday's Pick 6 was a hundred and $40,000 and they actually bet more than that yesterday so that the total total pot was around $300,000 and they paid a little bit to the people to pick 5. I would even one of those I take $244.Angry people around here when you get back to anybody involved in the different people who work in this building who were in on this with my dollar to $10. They're all very angry with me right now. I would think so. It might be a good crowd out there this afternoon via weather be on but it is bringing the people out. That's what it is. Definitely be in excess of $400,000 in the pot by the time today's pets get in there for 2 year old first starters in there there to where there's one quarter horse race, and there's some other oh, there's just another garbage running after me neither is not 6 good races to try to pick so even though a lot of folks will be out there taking a stab at it today and play some serious money into it because of the carryover. I'm not sure I'm going to do it today and might be a bigger carry over tomorrow may be a good day today for those of us who don't know anything about horse racing and may just get plain lucky.$2 cold Pick 6 You Pick 6 worth of they all went. I'd love to see him organization of kicked into this one song speaking of the Twins game last night. Yeah, look real good, but not the right time for the right places. If the Tigers last night 12 to 4, but they lost 3 to 2, cuz the Tigers put all their heads together and the twins didn't put enough it together a couple of singles and leave a couple guys on base and three guys thrown out stealing, tough night. Alan Trammell hit a two-run homer in the first inning for the Tigers and then Larry Herndon and Chet lemon. They should have double in the seventh inning to break a 2-2 tie the twins lose 3-2 to buy was two and five on the Year, Jack Morris pitching despite what he claims are broken ribs suffered in a freak fall through a drain grate in Texas earlier this week more still pitch seven Innings last night held the twins tattoo.17 and 5 lifetime against the Twins and he's never lost in the Twin Cities with the Metrodome 3 and I with the old map. And it was on the Tigers playing tonight at the Dome Alan Anderson. The left-hander makes his first start of the year for the twins against DeWalt Terrell rhymes with Barrel pitching for the Tigers. I haven't heard much about Anderson this year or even down at AAA AAA AAA table listed as well as anybody does down there so he came up. He just made one brief relief appearances for start. He was with the twins are about half the last season when 3 and 6 in that time, so I want to see what he's made up tonight and it's Wednesday to win to get back up to 500 or under 500 for the first time all season. That's all I really want to talk about on the sports cast portion of this Mark. You don't care about the Gophers playing right now and I went on and things are things could change things could happen must win. If they want to stay in the turnip Gophers lost and 4 last night 12 to 1 in the first round of the double elimination tournament. All right. Now you got that out of the way. Okay, I'll let you go. Okay, because it's time for portfolio more. Thank you very much. Mark will be back. I don't know if it's a promise or a threat but he will be back. In the meantime. I'm JD Preston and it's time for portfolio here on ksjn today. We're talking with the one of my favorite people in the print World senior writer for Sports Illustrated Frank Deford who has a new book out a collection of some of his best pieces in there. So I called the world's tallest midget right before we got to get to hear you on National Public Radio Morning Edition, and it's great to have you on sportfolio. Play forsaken your Baltimore Roots forever, Urban, Connecticut. Trade if my taxes and everything are or up here whether to the craft of writing or specific things that Frank has done over the years or just I don't know pick his brain about something completely unrelated like why they call Connecticut the Nutmeg State give us a call at 227-6019 switch is worth the price of the phone call all by itself to 276 thousand the area code of 612 if by some happenstance, you're picking up our signal outside the Twin Cities metro area to 276 thousand and you talked to Frank Deford of Sports Illustrated this afternoon review copy of the book on my desk and it home and carried around with me for about 3 weeks now and the title never fails to catch people's attention the world's tallest midget. How do you make reference to a during early in the introduction of the book but for those who haven't seen it where does it come from? Most of the pieces are on far from Sports Illustrated, but I did write a new introduction think that anybody who would want to be a good sports writer, but that's analogous to wanting to be the world's tallest midget and publishes liked it in then and made it the title as you say it certainly does catch your attention which is which is nice. It doesn't hurt that you're by yourself. It makes the point even more. So now you've had to call yourself a sportswriter professionally for all the years you've been in business. I just called writers and sports writers are always limited to that very carefully identified as single doubt it as sportswriters. I think that most people feel that he can't write about anything else that if you took him outside of of Athletics, they would they would forget vowels and consonants and just fall apart altogether. Whose fault is that do you think Frank is is it the fault of of us the reader who who misunderstands what we're reading is it? Is it the fault of the for a long time and then an awful lot of people who went into it really weren't very good writers. They just wanted to try very hard to just stay in Inns in sports. But I think that the image has remained long after the reality has disappeared. I think that on most newspapers for a sample some of the best if indeed not the best writing takes place on the sports pages. I think they're obvious reasons for that. I think that Sports lends itself to good writing very well. If there's a great trauma you reach a climax in every game. I mean you have a conclusion they are all the time for the characters tend to be a great deal more colorful than people at large their young and their uninhibited and for the most part they're extra virgin or outlands a good copy and psoriasis. Probably there's more good sports riding around now than there ever has been has been and then we shouldn't be surprised that either in the introduction to the book it as to say that really any aspiring young journalist. Maybe you should consider getting a start in the sports Department provide such a wonderful Kansas to to paint words on that you want to take advantage of it by the same token. I also make the point whenever kids in high school or even in college ask me. How do they get to be a sportswriter? I always make the point to say well don't concentrate on Sports too soon. And I would have believed the best sports writers of those who are the most well-rounded human beings know and can bring to bear a great deal of the rest of the world. Broad general knowledge Believe It or Not There are a few things like that. What? Frank Deford senior writer from Sports Illustrated Our Guest on sportfolio this afternoon. Frank has a collection of some of his best pieces from SSI in hardback available right now called the world's tallest midget came out this month of Sports Illustrated book. Let's talk to Frank Deford. 2276 thousands are phone number to 276 thousand pieces you put in the book. I can I guess think of a few others that I think of immediately when I think of your name and I know it must have been hard wiggling it down this far. This is where I thought events that overtaking them profile example that I might have done on someone 10 or 12 years ago. I wrote one that I like very much on Billie Jean King and I think about a decade ago and so much has happened to her in the interim that I should think simply thought that the pieces lost so much currency that it would be more confusing to run it and everything else. Anything that the book life in balance, it sucks many of the profiles that I've done. I do have a couple in there one on Jimmy Connors because that dealt mostly with his childhood and obviously that hasn't changed no matter how many things have changed in his life. I also included one that many people like on Al McGuire the basketball coach at his basketball coaching career was concluding and so it seemed to me to to be a benchmark there. But I also thought to include articles that had a certain amount of fallot. I didn't want to write all very sad articles are all very funny articles. I try to include a ride arranged as I could and I think I I think I meant is that I don't know amongst the major sports if if I think every sport just about is included in one one way. Another so it's a pretty far-reaching collection admit. The McGuire profile was maybe it's my favorite that appears in the book, but it's one that I remembered real vividly. I had a hard time when I saw that it was was first published in 1976. It seemed like it was so much more recent than that. But you know for all that I Maguire is done in the in the intervening time is still stands very Lively today. What outfit is a ton? I'm going to go into business and he get that and Chrissy also became more of them will recognize figure because he also went into television but I think this McGuire the purse Forum he was 50 or 52 years old at that time. I think he was born. He had completed one part of his life. And so I thought it was very funny. I just don't eat when you're writing about athletes who may only be in their twenties or thirties or 15 years later begin to get terribly dated. And then he didn't answer or three years supposed to get the shirt. You must. Frank Deford is our guest on Sports add-ons for Sports Illustrated hard to tell the two apart. Even the one His Radio Show in one is a magazine. I can understand your confusion for does Our Guest here on ksjn 1330 and we'll take your calls with questions for Frank at 227-6002 to 76 thousand 17 minutes after 12. Noon and Frank Deford is with us on the portfolio Frank Johnson little bit about how you actually go about that's how much the riding the pizza man. I don't expect anybody was playing that but but the research time you put in in in working with a subject in and being around a subject. I'm sure with the magazine you get a chance to really invest some time. I don't know if it's such a thing as a typical process, but maybe it was a couple of case studies talk about what the preparation for a for a major piece like this is like You're right. There is no such thing as a zit typical article it Sports Illustrated. Most of the ones that I do and most of the ones that I've included in the Boro car or long probably 7/8 even in some cases 10 or 11 thousand words with famous people celebrities and trying to write articles about that time as you did actually doing them the interviewing in the end of the research itself. But it's difficult to say article took me so many weeks because it off a lot of that time might be empty air. Sure. Just waiting to see somebody or making phone calls. You're waiting for phone calls to come back like the Army. That's an awful lot of hurry up and wait when it comes to the writing articles. What I try to do is it is to do it all for a lot of research ahead of time to have some sort of an idea of what I'm going to write about. Lisa directions that I'm going and you never want to write the article first and then look for the facts to support your conclusions, but I think by the same token you are looking for something different when you writing about well-known people. You don't want to just repeat what is already been done. And that indeed is the advantage of writing about someone well-known are already everybody knows the basics and you can use that as a jumping-off point and draw more conclusions. I think and be more respect even more subjective when you're dealing with somebody who's who's well know if you're introducing someone to the world and you have to spend an awful lot of time. Performing the introduction for the Avenger that is that is an article for example of a cyclone Sullivan. So obviously a great deal of that article was just introducing bull Cyclone to the world that is basic stories for the first time. You write a story about some important figure right now and 90% of his life and all the good anecdotes are already in the public domain and he can't go around again. So that it kind of balances it is itself out. I love to find story about people who nobody I've ever heard of before but obviously when you're ready for National, I thought I had some kind of significant. You can't just write a story about a nice little high school coach that would because he's a nice little high school coach. It's got to be writing me letters story on Joe Smith Aaron Hill Fair Lake, Utah, cuz he's won 200 games and boy everybody just loves him in a fair Lake. Can you eat it's hard to say what you know, I hate to tell you there's a guy like that in every city in America just about every little town on the left when you when you stumble on somebody who really is. I really feel like I just opened up Ali Baba's cave. It's a wonderful wonderful feeling about riding with this afternoon. Iran's portfolio Frank questions as well at 227 6002 276 Thousand Oaks Cooperative couple autobiography. About that test for the Pro game today and I'll hang up. Wow, that's that's a little bit like saying. What do you think of the weather? What do you think about sex? That's that Embraces an awful lot. Let's start with this much. I know you wrote there. I know you wrote in and I'm sure it's really actually longer ago than I remembered. But within the last year anyway, skating peace about the state of us tennis today several other American International sport. Is it where little bit too spoiled and content and it most of our best athletes are perfectly happy to do it. I'm with the understanding that they just doing that regularly without pretty challenging themselves. And trying to be best is going to make him on the interim 2 million dollars a year and I see somebody farters today who dominate those kind of sport obviously when it comes to things like the same sort of thing applies there and if you don't see teams repeat anymore, I think that's the same kind of disease that everybody's perfectly happy to win once and then settle back and pick up the spoils what you can but I think that's the internet. People start playing it and can enjoy a certain amount of success at such an early age. And there's a tendency to try to win national championships at the age of 10 or 12 or 14 or things like that. And you do that by developing a game that's good for 12 year olds first record wasn't any prize when he was 10 or 12 years old another good Prospect and he wasn't trying to win it. Well, he was developing a game that would be good when he was 18 or 20, which is exactly what happened and too many of the Americans male and female rush into that and try to have an early success that can be blamed on the parents. We don't don't look far enough ahead and And I think that this is a problem that has a lot to do with what the American attitude today with the whole sort of those Yuppie walk. Doesn't it the not getting so far ahead of yourself that you're knocking yourself out at an early age and yet still being willing to make the commitment a little bit later on when maybe it's more appropriate. Easy to work on an intake Genesis for example on and off-court game learning how to rush the net and so forth when your body isn't fully prepared for that. I need to take your lunch and you're going to lose the people who are simply going to play a children's game. Most people can't wait and and so I don't think it's any coincidence that the only American champion male or female soccer player, and I don't think it's any surprise whatsoever that his growing-up describes an entirely different power than almost every other tennis player Mcenroe sort of a divine intervention. He's such an extraordinary. absolutely coincidental in many respects I'm trying to think is going absolutely at the peak of his game and that was the year that he 1 Wimbleton I think cars won three games in the match off of and he was just absolutely astride the world. He was ranting on the court and he also was better behave that here than he ever has been in his life and to run that article now, Accurate the time and it was it was a betrayal and reading between the lines. I think you could see what conceivably could happen to him. And it did what are things I wrote with it. He kept his physical shape basically trained on potato chips 7Up that was his idea of a training Neil and he was fine self in the way that I do. This was surprised that he can go but he's wonderful company when you're with him if you're very charming and he's a very bright guy. I mean the same thing about Connors in the piece that appears in the book that the individually he was terrific and have anywhere near the breath that he does. I think Jimmy's interest once you get outside of tennis. There's not a whole lot. It really involves him a whole lot tired of being around Connors then you will around back and I think Jimmy will have a very hard time in life and is beginning to have that already since he's lost his Is privacy and Inns in Harrison when he can't play on them toward off going to have a hard time backing up? It's been a some consequence 20 years from now. When is portfolio here on Minnesota Public Radio? Ksjn, 1330 Minneapolis-Saint Paul 12, 28 28 minutes after 12 noon. I'm the Preston. I guess this afternoon is Frank Deford senior Sports Illustrated was just published in hardback a collection of some of his best and favorite pieces from the magazine book is called the world's tallest midget talking with Frank about riding this afternoon to 276 thousand is our phone number here on sportfolio 227 6000 cleaning on my hand when I cross the glass is always on me about my my posture in here because I just like to have fun and relaxing. They think I get my hand in the way of my mouth and I think it sounds like I'm humble, you know that from listening to me that you're used to it by now. Could you listen every week right to 276 thousands are phone number for Frank Deford Iran's portfolio. Frank talk if you would about the the atmosphere for the senior writer is it outside is it isn't much of a collegial type of process or you are really pretty much free agents out on your own with very little contact with the others by them bright for a while. I was in the office next to Dan check to Chris Brooks Mi test any other stuff for 5 years ago, but I think we went a whole year and so each other one. A lot of a lot of the Riders don't even live in the New York area. I need to make a great deal of difference where you live now as long as you're close to an airport to telephone basically that that's the requirement and so there's no sense that they use your words of a sphere whatsoever and see the writers are not free agent in one sense because we're salary to snow for a part of a structure but the people who betray the Primitive Country that puts out the magazine week after week is not include writers that includes editors and researchers and and and people like that the photographer's simply because they have to bring their films are much more involved with the magazine on a week-to-week basis and then the writer and that particularly applied to someone like myself who writes feature Story the football writer in football season is going to be much more in evidence and get it is working hand-in-glove with the editor and he's going to show up at baseball writer Peter gabb. I lived in Boston and I think he can probably go two or three months without ever setting foot in the in the Sports Illustrated office. When I first came to Sports Illustrated in the 1960s that was much more of the old world atmosphere where a man and it was basically all men would assemble at the bar every night and then a great deal of of the magazine and magazines and newspapers in general where the deepest thinking took place in the bar at the end of that kind of thing is all changed a lot of that is if The demographics of the suburbs now people don't hang out in the in the same central place. Whether it's the New Yorker Minneapolis-Saint Paul or or whatever. It's it's an entirely different world came in on the cusp of that old world. You mentioned in the introduction that you've been born in a different the time that the sports writing may never have involved you at all. If if I hadn't come in this era where I had such such a larger field to write it in the old days basically Sports writers wrote about the games. You just wonder very far afield it wasn't much market for the long kind of of feature articles or newspaper take out. That's the sort of thing that I do and I think I simply would have gotten bored with this with the day-to-day life and Sport. I never knew this right now. I could never be a sports columnist one who get up with me right. Now. Most of the major colonist. This country are in Indianapolis right now to go they were in in in louiville before that. They were the ncaa's before everything. Add itinerary that you have every year going to the major events and that would have just I just know I don't have the temperament for that. I would have gone out of my mind. I was lucky that I had Sports Illustrated as it so much of the world changed the Sports World changed since I came in on I write that a large part of this is because of Television television. Not adversely affect Sports writing. It was a tremendous Boon Sports writing because it did two things. Number one is brought more people into the Arena Sports from being the sort of male privates in the boys. The guys would sit around after dinner and and the girls would talk about Davies and knitting in the guys with talk about sports and that's that simply isn't true anymore. And the other than television did is it because Cuz it shows you the game. You don't have to write about them in that much detail. If I were covering the Boston Celtics Detroit Pistons Series right now. I know that most of my readers have already seen the bloody thing. And so it's not necessary for me to say this Larry Bird put up a 20-foot shut. Everybody saw that you can go beyond that gives you a great deal more latitude and you ever had before I think a lot of people this here at 8, some people who stay in effect. That's not the province of a sports writer gets back to the people who think it's sportswriters a pretty dim-witted to start with an m and that they should just be playing with blocks. And that we don't have any right to do that kind of thing to the sports don't write that these people take drugs don't write that. They think they're why. Got no business doing that and then that's a large part of that is the keys people use forces escape and I don't blame them. I can't pretend that the world in the real world doesn't intrude on the World of Sports. Frank Deford of Sports Illustrated Our Guest on sportfolio this afternoon to 276 thousands are phone number if you have a question for Frank to 276 thousand if I give me a couple of passing Illusions to gender in the course of our discussion, I look down the roster of the 20 or so senior writers It Sports Illustrated. That's the only one woman. Is that a ratio you think is likely to change in in the near future anyway, and and how are women being more involved in writing about sports? You would see if you looked on them on the thing. There's a lot more Sports a female editor there such quite as bad as you made it sound so I don't think it's particularly admirable what it is. I think what surprises me is that it hasn't changed in other words women broke into sports journalism 10 or 15 years ago, and there was this big burst and they all entered the field and then it seems so. And I can't quite figure out why that's the case. But since indeed that is the case, I have no reason to think that more women are going to enter next year or the year after the graph is not continued upwards in the last 10 or 12 years. And so since it has it, I don't know why we should expect it. Anything should change in the years ahead. I think part of it is that women are just worn down by the fact that every time you go to cover a game is going to be a certain amount of harassed. I know a lot of women who that way and if they themselves I just don't need it to go cover city hall or whatever where there is not this problem and if if they have an additional twenty or twenty-five or thirty percent of just the nooses factor covering Sports. I think it drives them away. And that's all I can imagine. There's a lot of good female sports writers around and if I were an editor, I want to have them around that because I'm a good guy or anything and believe in the ER because I think it makes good sense. If you've got a guy's start, he's 25 years old and I would think he's some more likely to talk to a woman than a man. That's the way life Works interviewing is like being on a high school date, you know it and then and I think that people talk better to the opposite gender. I just think it worked at work that way you're more likely to unburden yourself. Did someone of the opposite sex so we can come in right now? Too much better when I'm interviewing women and I think that I'm much more revealing when women are interviewing me. Maybe I'm just using extrapolating my own personal situation. I don't think so. I think that's a very natural soda open up to each other as a general rule. And so I think it's it stands to reason that you're going to more revealing outlook on athlete's if you have women around but it just didn't work out that way they can say All right, and maybe some of it has to do is fight our self kind of want the old boy that were the women feel uncomfortable breaking into what was talking about being part of a branch of Journalism, which was basically all male maybe those two things together just wear you down and if they say after while you throw you something you say the more your questions for Frank Deford of Sports Illustrated his book the world's tallest midget that publish this month the collection of some of his favorite pieces from SI over the years to 276 thousands are phone number to Ron's portfolio and go to Saint Paul Eye Joe. We have it out here and TV and on monk certain of our writers who are cheerleaders and mouthpieces for the sports. They cover you think that this is decreasing at all. Chick Webb used to be even more true. But I'd appreciate what you think of a sports writer for that on television and radio but I think there's a good reason for that is in this is a lot of guys you quote bring you the games indeed paid by the team and it's never bothered me that Harry Caray for example, this is a cheerleader for the Chicago Cubs or Phil Rizzuto is a cheerleader for the New York Yankees. I think it would be Somewhat foolish and naive to think that that those guys would be totally objective and it really doesn't that doesn't trouble me. I do think I'm trouble when you see that sort of writing in the newspapers because we are not paid by the teams that we are supposed to be observers and and and not Partners. I think it is decreasing. I think there's still a large amount of it. And I think that you find it in different parts of the company the country and existing in Greater amounts than another party. For example, you see the least cheerleading you will see the most cheerleading in small communities small newspaper small towns. You will see more cheerleading for college sports than you will for professional sports and a place like Nola steak, Oklahoma or Alabama. Where there's really no professional sports to speak of and the state university is so important becomes almost sacrilegious to write anything critical. I remember as a matter of fact that I did a story in Oklahoma once on a journalist who was practically thrown out of state because he wrote a couple of critical things about the University of Oklahoma football team. He was considered a traitor and things like that eventually just moved to Colorado so that we see more and more colleges being caught by the NCAA is because the journalists are blowing the whistle of these places. It's not Alabama and it's not Oklahoma but places like Georgia for let's take that free. For example, you've got writers writing for the Atlanta Constitution of the Atlanta Journal probably come from Saint Paul or Missoula Montana and for Portland Oregon and field in the same way that the guy who covers the State House is going to blow up a blow whistle on a store Scandal if he finds it. So the moving around the transient nature journalist, which has increased Has led to a more honest reporting of of the teams has only places that you still find it relatively sparsely populated states if a guy and I just walked off the top of my head now cuz I don't know any individual but I guarantee it would be very hard to write for the newspaper in Lincoln Nebraska and write objectively and credit about the University of Nebraska football team. I would want that job, but it's a no-win situation as a journalist. That's Frank Deford. I'm JG Preston. You're on ksjn 1330 from its portfolio. And we invite your questions for Frank about writing or whatever to 276 thousands are phone number to 276 thousand Frank. I have a recollection that that you did a cover profile of Bobby Knight about the six years ago. I think that you're Bobby want a second until double a championship. Is 5 million dollars? the reason it didn't wind up in the book with specially because John Feinstein has has a whole book out of Bobby Knight right now, and I guess it came down to writing to either include Maguire Bobby Knight and then I thought again with night certain things that happened then his career with continuing and that insurance and maybe it is but as I said John Spencer, Call Sue cansler busman's holiday or whatever you want to call it. And I just didn't want to curl up with 400 Pages something that already knew the answer to but John prine's things are terrific reporter, but he hangs in there and I'm absolutely delighted for him that he's done. So well, I just hope that some of those 5 million people or whatever it is. We'll go out and buy my book a carryover effect. The name of the book where the name of the book by the way is the world's tallest midget, which is prominently displayed on the jacket itself the best of Frank Deford by Frank Deford pieces from Sports Illustrated that have appeared over the years most of fairly recent vintage within the last 10 years or so, but the high I couldn't help it to enjoy a story from from 1969 about a frozen whale Frank that was real different. For my favorite ruler be as far as I know he is still being trucked around the country the last time I talked with his owner. During the loan call the whale in Frozen it taking it around the country. Pretty quickly. It's in a freezer. So just like a truck to carry strawberries and they're only part of the truck is has been removed and so you can look in and see it see the strawberries in the truck, but he had it worked out there with a glass panel there. And you paid at that time was $0.35 in 1969. I think Jerry's kidding. Expensive $0.85 now for free for that the last time I talked to a bank and says this is what I want to do when I catch you well and it'll kill him around the country and show it to people and the record store. They were said crazy the bank and the article in there about Florida which I subsequently more less turned into a movie which we just finished shooting down in Florida. next year about Florida with all the tacky stuff in Chains and things like that and I took that article basically the same premise for it and we just finished shooting a movie in Beverly D'Angelo. What should be at song? I'm very good at recycling things. As well, but I'm a great lover of of Americana and so you find it is also a trip to Hawaii that I take which is in the book which is obviously on the fringes of sports, but they were shooting the swimsuit issue added Hawaii that here. So where else they sent me to Waikiki Beach and all that nonsense. I didn't get the good stuff. and much of what I wrote about in the book is locative of the past which tends to be very much the here and now and if there's anything that sets me apart from many writers most writers is that I am very much involved in Roots and where people came from and I maybe didn't realize that how much I am that way until I had to read all my pieces and sand and saw one of them fit since I had placed on where people came from and and there's a great sense in there a thread that runs through the 15 or 16 pieces of a sense of where you are and where you came from and who you are. That's that's a lot of America on the Thunderbirds Air Force pilots fly Loop Pandora play some guy to shoot baskets to carry. Whales around woven into the fabric of America that that piece of cloth that were cut from are Amusement Center and what we love and do that's the book is really more about America and growing up. I think that it is about sports or it worth. It's about growing up a postwar America scene to the prisoners Sports restaurants portfolio here on ksjn 1330. MJG Preston at some length about the toughest coach there ever was I can still remember the the issue of Sports Illustrated which that originally appeared. There was a cover Montage connect with the article. It must have been at that time the longest piece of the magazine that ever run and it may still be talked about the process of selling that article to to the magazine that being able to it's very rare to see a cover for such as it's almost a conceptual type of thing has come about The fasting part is how I stumbled on the article and I mentioned earlier in the broadcast. This guy's name was Bull Cyclone Sullivan Scooba, Mississippi, which was Philadelphia, Mississippi 25 years ago. What was the next County over? I was really going to the end of the Earth. I think it was the poorest county in the poorest state in America and this guy bull Cyclone coach there and he died around 1972 or 70 billeted Leung age in his 50s. I was down doing a story on Bear Bryant and in Alabama when he set the record whenever that was for 5 years ago and the plane had originated in Jackson, Mississippi and sitting on the seat next to me was a newspaper that morning's newspaper from Jackson, Mississippi. Anna Peach water goes in there and a cyclone is it turned out? I mean, this is almost too much to believe that was the first article that it ever been written about full cycle and some ten years after his death and The Jackson newspaper had been running a series of articles on Mississippi characters. This is the first piece of any consequence that it ever been written on this van and it was 10 or 12 years after he died if I had not been on that plane that morning. Is that is that c? I am the world would never have known about bull Cyclone Sullivan. I mean, it's almost boggles the mind and I picked it up and started reading. It was a darn. It was well written article to which you would and what do you want to start on it any question to talk anybody and anything I actually put it off for a year or so because I was working on their Brian and Southern coaches is one was right, but I did put it off for a year or so and then it turned out that there was much more to the article into the man. I have known mean from The Jackson teacher turned out to be a grown up in the depression in the South and then became a football coach and became much more than that. He became a character and will it affect run out of the school by the president of the college who became jealous of him at the school the year before he was going to have his first championship team. Never imagined. I think the American coach is a very important symbol in our society. I think that most young men. They look back look like a one male figure. I don't figure it's much more tends to be the coach that a teacher say or somebody else's minister or whatever and I'm What I wrote the article I was thinking the only other person but it's a representative and I can't tell you how many letters I've got four people who still come up to me and I had a coach just like that. I could really identify with that. I mean at least people comes not from Mississippi from Maine and Iowa on the coach the American coach High School coach of college coach is a very important just to fit around the thing often has the most wonderful thing about that whole thing was that A year later was voted into the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame which doesn't sound like much to be here in Connecticut. Are you with in Minnesota that was easy for him and nobody from a little Junior College ever gone in there before because of that article he was voted in and I went down and and maybe introduction and so it would experience for me is as well as one of my very very favorite article pronunciation of coach. Coach and we always say in sports defense. We don't play defense which is what we used to say airline pilots doubt if that's the way you're supposed to say those words for Sullivan with put the defense in a pond and the office come down like you like chips to at the Cavalry or something. Cleats in the mud and everything out. There wasn't there alligators in that? I found out that nobody stayed in there long enough to find out. Practice and he was convinced they respond. I've heard some people think it might have done very well if they weren't spies, but it certainly added to the urgency of the acacian if you thought that you were so important to people spying on you if I think it made you got you up for the game. Frank we only have a minute or two left, but I just want to ask you real quickly about the comment you made in the book that many of your favorite subjects are jockeys or boxers. Why you think that is random sounds much more characters in there. They stand out that's probably why they selected to play in individual packages because maybe I'm six foot four and they're a lot smaller than I am. And I I think they're very brave little people. I think if anybody saw the Kentucky Derby in Stockbridge macaron who was practically killed six months ago almost gets knocked off that horse coming down the stretch know why I buy those guys. So I hate Square boxing at the matter of fact, but it's one of those things where you hate the sin and love The Sinner it seems for the people that I like the most there in the world. Baseball pictures that I think about it a baseball picture is really an individual figure within a team contacts. And so he he enjoyed the conversation very much. I appreciate your taking the time in the best of luck. We look forward to more Sports Illustrated faces and maybe some day some more books talk with you. Thanks Frank Frank the cord by buy Sports Illustrated. He has a collection of some of his best pieces for the magazine over the years in hardback. Called the world's tallest midget best of Frank Deford. It's a Sports Illustrated book from Little Brown and Company got to get that stuff in just in case a publisher ever checks up on me. You know how I got these books for free at least do something nice and return huh and actually counts portfolio has been part of the hour with the Arthur Ashe the former tennis great who suffered a heart attack during his career and we'll be talking about tennis and heart disease and things like that also for the other part of the hour, although he doesn't know it yet. I hope to talk to a category. Track announcer Toni Bentley the frustrated opera singer turn the race track announcer an interesting story to tell there as well. So look for that took care of all the associate producer type of stuff and did all the things that make the show run on time, which I'm very appreciative MJG Preston. Thank you for listening and Mark I said will be your pilot of the Airways. Now you bet you are there are just moments away seduced a to him. You're trying to cash Jam Minneapolis-Saint Paul. It's one