Mike Vaccaro: Interviewed on October 18, 2008
Position: Sports Columnist, New York Post
Born: 1967, Flushing, N.Y.
Education: St. Bonaventure, 1989, B.A. in mass communication
Career: Times-Herald (Olean, NY) 1989-91; Northwest Arkansas Times (Fayetteville, Ark.) 91-93; Times Herald-Record (Middletown NY) 93-97; Kansas City Star 97-98; Newark Star-Ledger 98-02; New York Post 02 -
Personal: married (Leigh)
Favorite restaurant (home): Sushi Samba, NYC, “where I would eat every meal if I ever write a runaway best-seller.”
Favorite restaurant (away): Ghengis Khan, Kansas City “Mongolian barbecue that is more addictive than caffeine.”
Favorite hotel: Hollywood Renaissance, Hollywood, Calif.: “Hollywood fascinates me, and this hotel is walking distance to everything you could possibly want to see - including an In & Out burger a few blocks away, next to Hollywood High School. And so what if it’s corny: when I get a room with a view of the “HOLLYWOOD” sign, I can sit and stare at it for an hour at a time.”
Author of: ”1941: The Greatest Year in Sports”; “Emperors and Idiots”

Mike Vaccaro, New York Post, September 12, 2008:
        SEVENTEEN.
        There’s the number. Ruminate over it. Stew over it. Agonize over it one more time. Seventeen: It used to be such a happy number in Mets lore. That was Keith Hernandez’s number, the first old number that should be retired in the new ballpark.
        It was Rod Gaspar’s number on the ‘69 Mets. That October, after the 109-win Orioles beat the Twins in the playoffs, Frank Robinson bellowed, “Bring on Ron Gaspar!” To which teammate Merv Rettenmund replied: “It’s Rod, stupid.” To which Robinson responded: “OK! Then bring on Rod Stupid!”
        Seventeen means something else now. You know the morbid math: seven games up, 17 games to play. If you are a Mets fan, it is burned into your brain, seared into your soul, tattooed onto your tongue. This morning, the Mets awaken with 17 games remaining in their schedule, four games up on the Phillies in the loss column.
        So I tell you this from the heart, Mets fans: Fear not. Here are 17 reasons why the Mets will not allow history to repeat itself; why, sometime within these 17 days you can officially wash away the residue of 2007 with champagne, with tears of joy, with anything you’d like. There will be no encore this time. Here’s why:
        1. Jerry Manuel is the manager now, and he channels Joe Torre cool rather than collar-tightening tension, Willie Randolph’s specialty last year.
        2. Carlos Delgado is slugging, not sulking, and what a difference that makes.
        3. David Wright was the only one who seemed obviously offended by the collapse last year. This time around, he’s one of 25 who get their uniforms dirty every night.
        4. The Phillies aren’t as good as they were last year: no Aaron Rowand, no MVP-caliber Jimmy Rollins, and they have Kyle Kendrick throwing batting practice once every five days.
        5. The Phillies started the collapse by slicing three games in three days from games 17 to 15 last year. They already had their shot to sweep, and missed.
        6. Johan Santana is in Flushing, and starting tonight he will have four starts to close the season, and the Mets believe with 100 percent certainty they should win those starts.
        7. Tom Glavine is in Atlanta, and on the disabled list.
        8. Carlos Beltran has two healthy knees, and he has been bashing the baseball for weeks. When he is hitting that way, the heart of the Mets’ batting order is murderous.
        9. The Mets’ bullpen is still a cartoon strip, but it was even more of one last year, when no lead was safe and there was no emerging help like Luis Ayala and Brian Stokes.
        10. The Mets were lulled to sleep by the lowliness of their opponents in the final week last year. This time, no such worry: They have the Cubs for four and the Marlins for three to close out Shea Stadium. The Cubs need no introduction. And the Mets would like nothing more than to pay the feisty Fish back for last year.
        11. This time last year, Jose Reyes was in a full-blown coma.
        12. This time this year, he is the most valuable Met not named Delgado.
        13. This is hope, more than fact, but if things get shaky in the final week, the nostalgia waves in the stands should neutralize the panic of waiting for the other shoe to drop.
        14. The Nats series exposed a glaring difference between ‘07 and ‘08. Last year down the stretch the teams played six games, the Nats won five. In four of those losses the Mets took early leads, saw the Nats overtake them, and the Mets hadn’t the heart to come back. The Amazin’s showed resolve in both games at Shea this week, against a far feistier Washington team.
        15. Guillermo Mota terrifies the citizens of Milwaukee now.
        16. These Mets are not spoiled by success. They had to overcome their own seven-game deficit in the standings. That built a character missing all last year.
        17. With everyone in love with the Cubs this year (warning: John Cusack will be this October’s Ben Affleck), the Mets are playing with house money, and not with a skyscraper of expectations sitting on their backs like last year. The difference in how free and easy they play now compared to last year is startling.

Q. No disrespect intended, but what were you thinking when you wrote “17 reasons why the Mets will not choke”?

A. None taken. At the risk of sounding glib: I was thinking that the Mets wouldn’t choke. It was an off-day, and it just so happened the Mets had 17 games left in the season, and for the past 50 weeks all anyone around the Mets had talked about were the 17 games that fouled up the 2007 season. And, frankly, I truly believed that the Mets would be fine. I thought with Santana in the fold they’d be fine, and with the way they were playing … I just didn’t see another collapse coming. Believe me, I’ve only gotten one or two thousand e-mails reminding me of this column, which is fine. I wish it was the first time I got a sports prediction wrong.

Q. Hindsight about that column? Isn’t it safer to react to news than predict it?

A. Sure it is, but who wants to be safe? Isn’t safe boring? To me, if you have the rare privilege to write a column, you’d better be able to do a lot of things well: predict and react; write funny and poignant; write with anger and compassion; and be ready to go off-beat if that’s what the day calls for.

One of my favorite days in my career was the next-to-last day of the 2007 baseball season, Mets-Marlins at Shea, and I got to sit next to Jimmy Breslin. And without outing myself too much as a shameless fanboy, I did engage him in a little columnist chit-chat and this was my favorite thing he said: being a good columnist is like being a crafty pitcher: you’d better absolutely have a fastball, but it helps to have a curve, a slider and a forkball, too.

I do think that most readers understand I’m a columnist who is not only unafraid to admit when I’m wrong – and in print – I go out of my way to acknowledge those mistakes. A better example than this one: Two years ago, in the midst of the Giants’ meltdown, I was the first New York columnist who put it in the paper that Tom Coughlin should be fired. Now, I should say here: I do not revel in firing people, and I don’t get a thrill writing vicious for the sake of writing vicious. I wrote it because I believed it. Obviously, about 14 months later the Giants were in the Super Bowl and I wrote a long mea culpa of a column, and was amazed how much positive reaction there was among readers. I think we’re in trouble as columnists if we’re willing to shout our opinions at you and unwilling to fess up when we’re wrong.

And one other thing: If the Mets are up next September with 17 games to go, you can rest assured I will write something about it.

Q. Beat reporters compete for breaking news, and are measured by the news they break. What about columnists – how are they measured? Is it easier to be a columnist than a beat reporter?

A. I think we’re measured against two scales: how well a column is written, and how much impact the words have in the community you cover. I am still naïve enough – or maybe it’s vain enough – to believe that if you are given a column then you’d better respect what that means, you’d better understand that going back to the beginning of newspapers that columns were given, by and large, to men and women who understood the power of the written word, how elegant those words could be, how devastating, how influential. I’m not saying all columns should be poetry: I am saying they should be written with as much care, and as much thought, as a brain can muster.

That said, you’d better have something to say. Think about how audacious a column is: here is my picture, here is my opinion, and I expect you to read every word, digest it, and be moved one way or another. Maybe in an “Around-the-Horn” world it seems less of a daring idea, but I still believe that you’d better make it worth a reader’s while to pick you up and read you. “Grab the son of a bitch by the throat” is what my sports editor preaches, and I think it’s the most eloquent advice an editor can give a columnist.

As for the columnist/beat writer dynamic: I would never say writing a column is easy. I have a reputation for being fast, for getting a column done quickly on deadline, and I suppose that could look easy. I like to think my speed is the product of having taken about 40,000 high school calls, on deadline, in the first eight years of my career, a task at which you’d better be blessed with some kind of good 40 time, and a chore that makes filing a World Series game column at 12:54 a.m. seem like a day down the shore.

That said, the very best beat writers I work with – and without wanting to exclude anyone, I’ll limit it to two guys I work with at the Post, George King and Marc Berman, who cover the Yankees and the Knicks for us – amaze me with their combination of work ethic, passion, anger, love for the sport they write about, and genuine concern that everyone writing off a game they cover – themselves, the sidebar guys, the columnists – bring the same kind of energy that they do. I have no problem admitting that what they do is harder than what I do. I travel a lot; not the way they do. I write more than most columnists do, but not seven days a week, as they do. And I like to think of myself as a reporting columnist, but it pales next to the hours they spend on the phone chasing and breaking stories.

Q. This may sound stupid but I’ll ask it anyway: You write for a tabloid. Are you a tabloid columnist?

A. Here’s what’s funny: when I left the Ledger for the Post in 2002, and that news got around, a very small percentage of people congratulated me, and an even smaller amount of people did whatever the opposite of that would be. Ninety percent of the reaction I got was: are you sure you can make that transition? It was a fair question, and I guess it remains so. Here’s what I’ve always answered: to me, the essence of a tabloid columnist is this: to write in such a way that the end result is that the reader gets some kind of visceral reaction: laughter, tears, anger, happiness, whatever. Most people agree with that. And what I say then is this: well if you aren’t doing that at a broad sheet, also, aren’t you stealing money?

Look, when A-Rod strays on the missus, and I weigh in on it, I’m going to write the same column I would have written for the Ledger, the Times or the Chicago Tribune; I will not write the column that Cindy Adams or Liz Smith would write in the front of the Post, or what Richard Johnson would write for Page Six. They have their way of columnizing off the news and I have mine, and I think that makes for a healthy, interesting mix.

Q. You once criticized Mike Lupica for not showing up at the events he writes about. Is that still the case, and why does it matter if columnists show up or not? Does that principle apply to sports talk radio hosts?

A. Unless Lupica has been secretly showing up for events wearing Filip Bondy or Vic Ziegel masks, then I would say it is still the case, yes.

I happen to think it’s essential for columnists to show up, to be around, to be visible, to be willing to get on an airplane once in a while and be where the teams are. Let’s face it: we are in the opinion business, and if you think you can formulate an effective opinion simply by calling up your beat writers and getting their opinion and asking for their quotes, you’re kidding yourself. Here’s what I find funny: the columnists who scream the loudest about bloggers invading “our” turf are generally the ones who try to do their jobs the same way bloggers do: off TV, off reading the newspapers, off being so detached from the proceedings it’s laughable.

People ask me all the time if I find bloggers like Bill Simmons disagreeable, and I always say: just the opposite. I think Simmons has invented a whole new way to look at sports, and to write about them, and I give him credit for that. I also give him credit for this: he is so good at what he does – and so unabashed about being an “outsider” – that he forces columnists at mainstream outlets to work twice as hard to provide something different than he can. I can’t compete with Simmons or the guys at FireJoeMorgan when it comes to doing what they do well; I have to do what I do well. And that means being there. And, yes: in my perfect world, sports-talk folks would be right there alongside the rest of us stiffs. I think it’s sad that last year, after I ripped into Isiah Thomas one day, I actually received kudos from other members of the press corps for having the “guts” to show up the next day. I mean: If you aren’t going to be willing to show up and show your face to the people you criticize, you don’t deserve the respect of anyone who reads you, or listens to you.

Q. Difficult as it is to describe, can you describe your creative process?

A. I am a guy who feeds off deadlines. I love deadlines. I love knowing I have a clock ticking in my ear and an editor waiting for my copy in an office. And I know, regrettably, that makes me a dinosaur, that within 10 years the idea of writing “on deadline” will belong to the nostalgic mutterings of burnt-out journalists trying to explain to their grandchildren what this thing called “newspapers” used to be. But as long as we exist, I am a guy whose creative juices flow best when I need to summon them on the fly.

When I am in a non-deadline situation, I need to rely on my reporting, whether it’s someone I called that day or something I’ve picked up or someone I’ve talked to in the past. The best days off-deadline, writing can almost be like a narcotic: I’ve just finished writing a book on the 1912 World Series, for instance. On my most productive writing days – and I swear this is true – I would have this eerie sense that I was in a black-and-white world, wearing a fedora, chomping a cigar … and when it was time to end those sessions, and the color returned, and my fedora became a Brooklyn Dodgers cap, it was a terrible come-down. But I did mostly like the words those spasms of fantasia produced.

Q. How do you keep up with sports – mainstream and non-mainstream? Tell us who and what you read, and who and what you watch and listen to? How much time do you put into it?

A. Some sportswriters don’t like to admit that they’re still fans, they think it’s some kind of black mark against their permanent record, and I feel sorry for people like that. I mean, if you’re going to be in this racket, you’d better care about the teams, the games, the players, who wins and who loses. You’d better be at least partially invested, and think the way the people who read you think. I think detachment is a terrible byproduct of modern media. I’m not saying you should be a homer – far from it. But it should matter to you who wins and who loses and why. So I am a banana when it comes to checking scores on my Blackberry, about watching SportsCenter, about refreshing Internet pages constantly to track breaking news.

And, yes, I read constantly, both for information and because I have always believed the best way to get better as a writer is to be insatiable as a reader. I am lucky; some of my best friends in life are some of the most gifted people in this field, and so I would read them even if I didn’t think I could benefit from them: Joe Posnanski (KC Star), Adrian Wojnarowski and Dan Wetzel (Yahoo! Sports), Les Carpenter (Washington Post), Steve Politi (Newark Star-Ledger), Pat Forde (espn.com), Ian O’Connor and Bob Klapisch (Bergen Record), Jack Curry (New York Times), Gary Shelton (St. Petersburg Times), Mark Kriegel (foxsports.com), David Ramsey (Colorado Springs Gazette) and Michael Rosenberg (Detroit Free Press). Outside that circle of friends, I rarely miss anything by Bob Ryan (Boston Globe), by Bill Plaschke (LA Times) , by Dave Hyde (South Florida Sun Sentinel) and Martin Fennelly (Tampa Tribune) and Mike Wise (Washington Post) and Tom Archdeacon (Dayton Daily News), because these are writers who damn well know what they are doing.

Q. What aspects of sports media annoy you? If you were king of sports media, what would you change?

A. I’m annoyed that TV hasn’t better utilized the sports reporters they’ve lured to TV. I’m glad that my friend T.J. Quinn, for instance, was able to parlay a great run at the Daily News into a gig at ESPN, but I fear his impact there, regardless of the high quality of his work, will never be as broad as the screamers who fill up that channel every day from 4 o’clock on – and those screamers, by and large, are newspaper people whose talents far exceed the ability to out-shout each other.

I’m annoyed that we in the newspaper business we’re slow to embrace the powers of the Internet, and now find ourselves constantly spinning our wheels trying to latch onto a lasting part of it. I’m annoyed when people on sportsjournalists.com, a site I think has a lot of value and is generally frequented by good, decent folks, decide to settle old scores and air ancient jealousies behind the cloak of anonymity.

I’m annoyed whenever anyone asks me – even innocently – “how long before you jump ship and get a real job.” I’m annoyed that more sports writing groups don’t follow the lead of the BBWAA and demand better access and better accessibility from the teams and leagues they cover, and I fret that in the future the people who run BBWAA will inch that association closer to everybody else. I’m annoyed by the very essence of journalism awards (even as I’ll admit I’ve never handed any back) because I think there are some who would be wise to spend more time at their jobs and less trying to be congratulated for them.

Q. If you were king of sports media, who would be your queen?

A. Sally Jenkins (Washington Post). After her performance in Beijing, she might have trouble being my secretary of state, but she can be the one who wears the crown and the sash in my sports writing kingdom any day of the week.

Mike Vaccaro, New York Post, January 3, 2008:
        I WANT to live in Isiah Thomas’ world. I do. I want to wake up in the morning, and even though the thermometer insists it’s 23 degrees in the sun, you can walk the streets in your Bermudas and your tank top and your flip-flops and have to keep the sunscreen at the ready.
        I want to go to lunch, eat my hamburger and fries, then close my eyes really, really tight and convince myself that I’ve just consumed filet mignon and a side of lobster (with drawn butter). I want to step on the scale at my health club on the day after the holiday season ends and discover that I have - tada! - lost 25 pounds!
        I want to live a life unburdened by facts, unaffected by reality. If possible, I would love it if my boss would accompany me into that world, because once he does he’ll never want to fire me, no matter how unreadable my columns become, no matter how many times I misspell “Krzyzewski,” no matter how many participles I dangle.
        ”Well done!” my boss will wail with delight. “Four more years!”
        This is Isiah’s World: a world in which the morning newspapers may insist that the Knicks are now 8-22 after getting clobbered 107-97 by fellow NBA dregs Sacramento (missing its three best players, of course) at the Garden last night, but in reality they are moments away from mounting a championship run. As an old Garden employee might have opined: Yessss!
        It is a world in which Isiah can actually shake his head and mutter about how the Zach Randolph-Eddy Curry partnership may have been doomed to failure because “this is a small man’s league now.” And because it is Isiah’s World, before he can be asked a relevant question - such as, “If you knew it was a small-man’s league, why in the world would you have traded for two of the biggest, most plodding and one-dimensional players on the planet in the last two years?” - he is instead whisked away by a PR man who quickly says “Thanks, Isiah.”
        It is a wonderful world. I want to live in that world. I want to buy property in that world, and I want to move there immediately.
        ”I believe we will win a championship,” Isiah says, speaking of winning a title in the middle of a season when it’s been all he can do to win one out of every four games he plays, when he loses home games routinely to the abysmal likes of the Heat, Sonics, Sixers and Kings and now has an upcoming Texas two-step road trip at San Antonio and Houston. “Some guys here will be a part of that. I’ll be a part of it. I’m telling you, it’s not long until we get it done.”
        Of course he believes. Who doesn’t? I want to live in Isiah’s World, because in that world I could utter the following sentence and not be sent off to a quiet, reflective place somewhere in the woods:
        ”I want to be John Lennon. Some of my friends will be a part of it when I actually become John Lennon. I know I’ll be a part of. I’m telling you, it’s not long until we get it done. Now give peace a chance.” And if it were
        Isiah’s World, I could have all of this and it would come without Yoko, too.
        ”For us there is light at the end of the tunnel,” Isiah said, meaning that in Isiah’s World, you can see light that almost no one else can see. No need to buy light bulbs!
        In Isiah’s World, there are many inspirations. For instance, there are the Portland Trail Blazers, who recently won 13 games in a row and completely transformed themselves from bottom-feeders to playoff contenders in the space of a month. Look at Portland, is the rallying cry in Isiah’s World. Why can’t we do here what they did there?
        In our world, there is the inconvenient explanation that the Blazers can now play that fun brand of “small ball” since they’ve managed to locate some poor sap who allowed them to rid themselves of Zach Randolph. But such worries never penetrate the vast Isiahsphere that protects Isiah’s World.
        Seriously. Don’t you want to live in Isiah’s World, too? Don’t you want to live in a world where you don’t have to pay for ice cream, where the rivers are made of Heineken, where Oompah-Loompahs cut our grass and the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders draw our baths?
        And where the man in charge of the New York Knicks believes that anyone presently alive will live to see the day the Knicks win a championship on his watch?
        Sign me up for that world, yes sir. Sign me up immediately.
(SMG thanks Mike Vaccaro for his cooperation)

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