Author Interview:

Five Minutes with....Jeff Pearlman

Jeff Pearlman is a New York Times bestselling author and a good follow on Twitter. (I've asked him to come to Post.News...we'll see.  Nine of his books have appeared on the bestseller list, and I will list them below.  A former newspaper reporter, Pearlman also worked at Sports Illustrated magazine for over five years. The majority of Pearlman's books have been about sports, two about basketball, four about football, and three on baseball.  Some of the books are about teams, some about individual athletes.

After the research is done, do you have a specific process that you follow when doing the actual writing?

I don't really. I sit down with my pile of printed out notes, and I think, "Ok, where to begin." And I get writing. Usually in a coffee shop, hot drink by my side, dreams and terrors filling up my head, a blank screen and 180,000 words waiting to be written.

When do you write?

I used to be a night writer: 2 a.m., 3 a.m. Now I'm actually more of a day writer. Just harder at 50 to have the late-night energy I had at 35. Plus —and this is a biggie — the late0night diner situated near my house cut off its latest hours during Covid. That was my spot.

Do you have a writing nook or do you write wherever/whenever?

Wherever/whenever.

How many hours a day do you typically write?

During actual book writing months, 8-10.

If you could give your younger self any writing advice, what would it be?

The reporting is 800,000,000 times more important than the jaunty writing. Facts, facts, facts, and details, details, details are the difference between shit and great.

What does literary success mean to you?

It means I've spent the past two decades being available for every youth sporting event, every recital, every parent-teacher conference. That's been the greatest payoff, by far: my kids are 19 and 16, and I've been a huge presence.

Who are your writing heroes?

Mike Freeman, Joe Lombardi (http://dailyvoice.com/connecticut/fairfield/staff/21/joe-lombardi), the late Bill Fleischman, Stanley Herz, Sally Jenkins, Steve Rushin.

I would like to thank Jeff Pearlman for taking the time to answer a few questions and for being the first interview subject on the blog.  I look forward to hearing the answers from more authors.  Following is a list of Jeff Pearlman's books:

The Bad Guys Won - A biography of the 1986 New York Mets

Love Me, Hate Me - An unauthorized biography of Barry Bonds

Boys Will be Boys - on the 1990s Dallas Cowboys dynasty

The Rocket That Fell to Earth - a biography of Roger Clemens

Sweetness - a biography of Walter Payton

Showtime: Magic, Kareem, Riley and the Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty of the 1980s 

Gunslinger - a biography of Bret Favre

Football for a Buck - a biography of the United States Football League (USFL)

Three-Ring Circus: Kobe, Shaq, Phil, and the Crazy Years of the Lakers Dynasty

The Last Folk Hero: The Life and Myth of Bo Jackson 

Jeff Pearlman's website    

Available Now:

The Last Folk Hero:  The Life and Myth of Bo Jackson

by Jeff Pearlman

Mariner Books

Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

From the mid-1980s into the early 1990s, the greatest athlete of all time streaked across American sports and popular culture. Stadiums struggled to contain him. Clocks failed to capture his speed. His strength was legendary. His power unmatched. Video game makers turned him into an invincible character—and they were dead-on. He climbed (and walked across) walls, splintered baseball bats over his knee, turned oncoming tacklers into ground meat. He became the first person to simultaneously star in two major professional sports, and overtook Michael Jordan as America’s most recognizable pitchman. He was on our televisions, in our magazines, plastered across billboards. He was half man, half myth.

Then, almost overnight, he was gone.

He was Bo Jackson.

Drawing on an astonishing 720 original interviews, New York Times bestselling sportswriter Jeff Pearlman captures as never before the elusive truth about Jackson, Auburn University’s transcendent Heisman Trophy winner, superstar of both the NFL and Major League Baseball and ubiquitous “Bo Knows” Nike pitchman. Did Bo really jump over a parked Volkswagen? (Yes.) Did he actually run a 4.13 40? (Yes.) During the 1991 flight that nearly killed every member of the Chicago White Sox, was he in the cockpit trying to help? (Oddly, yes. Or no. Or … maybe.)

Bo Jackson isn’t Jim Thorpe.

He’s not Deion Sanders, either.

 No, Bo Jackson is Paul Bunyan.

 The Last Folk Hero is the true tale of Bo Jackson that only “master storyteller” (NPR.org) Jeff Pearlman could tell.

On My Radar:

Three-Ring Circus: Kobe, Shaq, Phil, and the Crazy Years of the Lakers Dynasty
by Jeff Pearlman
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Hardcover


From the publisher's website:

In the history of modern sport, there have never been two high-level teammates who loathed each other the way Shaquille O’Neal loathed Kobe Bryant, and Kobe Bryant loathed Shaquille O’Neal. From public sniping and sparring, to physical altercations and the repeated threats of trade, it was warfare. And yet, despite eight years of infighting and hostility, by turns mediated and encouraged by coach Phil Jackson, the Shaq-Kobe duo resulted in one of the greatest dynasties in NBA history. Together, the two led the Lakers to three straight championships and returned glory and excitement to Los Angeles.  

 

In the tradition of Jeff Pearlman’s bestsellers Showtime, Boys Will Be Boys, and The Bad Guys Won, Three-Ring Circus is a rollicking deep dive into one of sports’ most fraught yet successful pairings.  

New Release:

Football For A Buck: The Crazy Rise and Crazier Demise of the USFL
by Jeff Pearlman
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

The United States Football League—known fondly to millions of sports fans as the USFL—was the last football league to not merely challenge the NFL, but cause its owners and executives to collectively shudder. It spanned three seasons, 1983-85. It secured multiple television deals. It drew millions of fans and launched the careers of legends. But then it died beneath the weight of a particularly egotistical and bombastic owner—a New York businessman named Donald J. Trump. The league featured as many as 18 teams, and included such superstars as Steve Young, Jim Kelly, Herschel Walker, Reggie White, Doug Flutie and Mike Rozier. 

  

In Football for a Buck, the dogged reporter and biographer Jeff Pearlman draws on more than four hundred interviews to unearth all the salty, untold stories of one of the craziest sports entities to have ever captivated America. From 1980s drug excess to airplane brawls and player-coach punch outs, to backroom business deals, to some of the most enthralling and revolutionary football ever seen, Pearlman transports readers back in time to this crazy, boozy, audacious, unforgettable era of the game. He shows how fortunes were made and lost on the backs of professional athletes and also how, thirty years ago, Trump was a scoundrel and a spoiler. 

  

For fans of Terry Pluto’s Loose Balls or Jim Bouton’s Ball Four and of course Pearlman’s own stranger-than-fiction narratives, Football for a Buck is sports as high entertainment—and a cautionary tale of the dangers of ego and excess.

On My Radar:

Gunslinger: The Remarkable, Improbable, Iconic Life of Brett Favre
by Jeff Pearlman
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

A towering figure on the field for two decades who breezed into the Hall of Fame, Brett Favre was one of the game’s last cowboys, a fastball-throwing, tobacco-chewing gunslinger who refused to give up without a fight. This peerless quarterback guided the Green Bay Packers to two Super Bowls and one championship win, shattering countless NFL records along the way.  

Gunslinger tells Brett Favre’s story for the first time, drawing on more than five hundred interviews, including many from the people closest to Favre. Jeff Pearlman charts an unparalleled journey from his rough rural childhood and lackluster high school football career to landing the last scholarship at Southern Mississippi to a car accident that nearly took his life. Favre clawed back, getting drafted into the NFL by the Atlanta Falcons, then finding his way to Green Bay, where he restored the Packers to greatness and inspired a fan base as passionate as any in the game. Yet he struggled with demons: addiction, infidelity, the loss of his father, and a fraught, painfully prolonged exit from the game he loved, a game he couldn’t bear to leave. 

Grand, gritty, and revelatory, Gunslinger is a big sports biography of the highest order, a fascinating portrait of the man with the rocket arm whose life has been one of triumph, of fame, of tragedy, of embarrassment, and—ultimately—of redemption. 

On My Radar:

Showtime: Magic, Kareem, Riley, and the Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty of the 1980s
Jeff Pearlman
Gotham Books
Hardcover


From the publisher's website:

The Los Angeles Lakers of the 1980s personified the flamboyance and excess of the decade over which they reigned. Beginning with the arrival of Earvin “Magic” Johnson as the number-one overall pick of the 1979 draft, the Lakers played basketball with gusto and pizzazz, unleashing their famed “Showtime” run-and-gun style on a league unprepared for their speed and ferocity—and became the most captivating show in sports and, arguably, in all-around American entertainment. The Lakers’ roster overflowed with exciting all-star-caliber players, including center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and they were led by the incomparable Pat Riley, known for his slicked-back hair, his Armani suits, and his arrogant strut. Hollywood’s biggest celebrities lined the court and gorgeous women flocked to the arena. Best of all, the team was a winner. Between 1980 and 1991, the Lakers played in an unmatched nine NBA championship series, capturing five of them.

Bestselling sportswriter Jeff Pearlman draws from almost three hundred interviews to take the first full measure of the Lakers’ epic Showtime era. A dazzling account of one of America’s greatest sports sagas, Showtime is packed with indelible characters, vicious rivalries, and jaw-dropping, behind-the-scenes stories of the players’ decadent Hollywood lifestyles.  From the Showtime era’s remarkable rise to its tragic end—marked by Magic Johnson’s 1991 announcement that he had contracted HIV—Showtime is a gripping narrative of sports, celebrity, and 1980s-style excess.