One on One

by John Feinstein

  “We taped the scene over and over so many times I ran out of saliva,” McDowell said. “So they had to change it to just show me in the bushes, not doing the actual spitting.”

  Cox had been avoiding the question McDowell and I had already answered about a memory—not necessarily a game, but a moment. “Yeah, I’ve got one,” he finally said. “You remember Pete Sheehy?”

  I’d never met Pete Sheehy, but like anyone who followed baseball, I knew who he was. He had worked for the Yankees from 1927 to 1985 and had been their clubhouse manager until his death. The Yankees clubhouse is named for him, and he was famous for having known all the great Yankees from Ruth and Gehrig through DiMaggio, Mantle, and Berra to Jackson, Mattingly, and Guidry.

  “When I played for the team I tried to talk to Pete whenever I could,” Cox said. “He didn’t talk a lot, but I knew he knew all the stories. Whenever I was with him, I’d say, ‘Pete, who was the greatest Yankee? Was there one guy who stood out from all the rest?’ He’d just look at me and say, ‘I’ll never tell.’

  “When I was managing in the minors, I’d be in spring training every year and I’d actually help Pete with the laundry. I liked hanging out with him. I kept after him, ‘Come on, tell me, who’s the greatest Yankee?’

  “Still no answer. Finally, one year near the end of his life I was back for an Old-Timers’ Game. I saw Pete in the clubhouse before the game, and he kind of crooked a finger at me and waved me over to him. I went over and he pulled me close and whispered in my ear, ‘It was DiMaggio. The greatest Yankee was DiMaggio.’ That was one of the last times I ever saw him.”

  As it turned out, Cox did get to make his exit in the postseason. The Braves managed to beat the Phillies 8–7 (after leading 8–2) on the last day of the regular season, allowing them to beat the Padres by one game for the wild-card spot. After the final out, Cox came out of the Braves dugout to congratulate his players but also because he knew the fans wanted the chance to give him one last ovation after a win—since there was no guarantee at all his last game in Atlanta during the postseason would be a win. (It was, in fact, a loss in game four of the Division Series to the Giants, who would go on to win the World Series.)

  Cox waved his cap and shook hands not only with his players but with the Phillies. That didn’t surprise me. What did surprise me was seeing all four umpires walk over to shake hands with Cox. No manager in baseball history was ever ejected as often as Cox. His 158 ejections blew past the previous record of 132 held by the Giants’ John McGraw. Torre, who also ranks in the all-time top ten, had 65. Seeing the umpires lined up to congratulate Cox, I thought back to something he had said the previous Saturday at dinner.

  “I think the umps always knew it wasn’t personal. I stood up for my guys. I think that’s an important part of the job, letting the guys know you’re always going to stand up for them. I’ll bet 156 of my ejections were for that reason. A couple times I really was just pissed. But that was it.”

  I remembered Dean Smith pointing out to me that every time we’d had a disagreement, it was because he was standing up for his players. The great ones all do that. One way or the other, they take the hit for their players. And, almost without fail, their players know that.

  Which is why it isn’t surprising that when the great ones retire, the thing they miss most isn’t the winning or the glory or even the money. They miss “the guys,” as Cox put it. And, almost without exception, the guys miss them too.

  14

  Mark Twain Was Wrong

  AS MUCH AS I enjoyed doing the reporting and writing that went into Play Ball, the book’s sales were a little bit of a downer. The reviews were very good. But baseball is a tougher market than basketball or tennis. In the spring of 1993, there were a total of twenty-three baseball books from major publishing houses—higher than normal, but not that much higher.

  According to the sales figures I was given, Play Ball sold the best of those twenty-three. But the others cut into its sales. Kirby Puckett and Cal Ripken both had autobiographies out. I had written about both in Play Ball. No doubt some of their fans opted for the book just about them rather than one that included them. Peter Gammons, the dean of all baseball writers in the country, had cowritten a book about the coming problems in the game. There were baseball fans who were going to buy a book just because Peter Gammons’s name was on it. Heck, I was one of them.

  In those days there was no extended New York Times bestseller list. Unlike today, where the top thirty-five books are at least noted on the internet, you were either in the top fifteen or not in the top fifteen. There were several weeks when my publisher, Villard, was told that the book was being “tracked” for the bestseller list, meaning it was at least in contention, but the book never made the actual list.

  Which was a disappointment.

  The question then became what to do next. I had now written three books that had followed a year or a season in a sport. A Season Inside had done well but had not been a huge bestseller. Hard Courts had been a major bestseller, and Play Ball had not been a bestseller at all.

  So the question was whether I wanted to go back to tennis, where I’d had success (no); basketball, where I’d had lots of success (maybe); or look for a different sport. Esther Newberg and Peter Gethers thought basketball—again—might be a good idea, since I had written my previous two books on other sports.

  I had another idea: golf.

  I had come to the game relatively late and had never played it especially well. My excuse has always been that the pro who taught me the game, Bob DeStefano, suggested to my parents that since they didn’t want to spend a lot of money ordering lefty clubs—you had to get them made for you back then—that I learn to play right-handed.

  “Hogan was left-handed and played righty,” he said. “He did all right.”

  Yeah, well, I’m not exactly Ben Hogan, am I?

  So I learned to play righty (although I’ve always putted lefty) and just never became very good. Golf was never a priority sport for me: I was thirteen before I played at all, and during high school I spent a lot more time swimming than playing golf. My number two sport by then was baseball, which I played reasonably well in high school. There, being a lefty was an advantage.

  I have kidded Bob DeStefano for forty years about how good a player I could have been if I’d learned to play lefty. The fact is, I would have been just as mediocre. But I did learn to love the game and respect those who could play it well, whether they were the guys at Gardiner’s Bay Country Club (my younger brother among them) who regularly competed for the club championship, or the very good amateurs I played with on occasion, or, certainly, those who made it to the tour.

  I was lucky early on to play with some guys who were good enough to at least think about a career on tour: DeStefano, who stayed at Gardiner’s Bay for fifty years until he retired last summer, had dreamed of the tour as a young man. Instead, he had gone to Gardiner’s Bay, a tiny club on a tiny place called Shelter Island, at the age of twenty-one and built an extraordinary junior program that produced a remarkable number of very good players.

  The three best were Jay Sessa, Gary Blados, and Rick Southwick. All went to college dreaming of making it to the tour. Rick was good enough to beat Phil Mickelson in the U.S. Amateur in 1992. Having played with all three of them—and with Bob—I knew just how good they were. I also knew that none could come close to making it to the tour. As good as Rick’s amateur career was, he never made it out of the first stage of PGA Tour Qualifying School. Imagine that—a guy that talented and he couldn’t get out of first stage.

  That’s how good you have to be to make it to the tour at all, much less have success out there.

  When I had dinner in New York in February of 1993 with Esther and Peter, that was what I pitched them on: people don’t understand how hard it is to get to the tour and stay there. Sure, there’s no Nicklaus or Palmer or Watson dominating right now (golf was in its “faceless clones” stage, which turned out to be one of th
e greatest misnomers I’ve ever encountered). But I still thought there would be stories to tell.

  Peter and Esther were a little bit skeptical: the tennis book had involved names like McEnroe and Connors and Lendl and Evert and Capriati and Graf and Sabatini. Who would the golf book have for glamour? Greg Norman, who was known more for losing majors than for winning them? Nick Faldo, who seemed to have the personality of sandpaper? Were there even any American stars out there at all? Fred Couples? Maybe, but he’d won only one major. Davis Love III? He’d won no majors and no one had ever seen him smile. Payne Stewart? Okay, he’d won two majors, but he was best known for his clothes and for bristling at reporters. Curtis Strange? Interesting guy, but he also could be prickly and hadn’t won anything in four years.

  They weren’t wrong. This was one of my gut-feeling books though, the way Season on the Brink had been before, the way A Civil War would be in the future. Peter finally nodded his head. “I think you can write a great book,” he said. “I’m not sure it will sell like the tennis book did, but I think it can be great because you’re passionate about it. Let’s do it.”

  Peter was willing to let me follow my passion, although, understandably, he wasn’t willing to pay me as much in the advance as he had paid for the previous two books. That really didn’t bother me. If my experience with Season on the Brink had taught me one thing it was that if you didn’t get paid up front, you’d get paid at the back end if the book was successful. What’s more, the advance was still quite generous. And I was convinced, faceless clones or no faceless clones, that the book could sell.

  EVEN THOUGH I HAD covered golf on occasion for the Post, I had never been out on tour on a regular basis. I knew a handful of players and, perhaps just as important, a few caddies—most notably Bruce Edwards, Tom Watson’s caddy. Since Watson was going to be the Ryder Cup captain in 1993 and I wanted the book to begin at the Ryder Cup, the two of them would be an important starting point.

  The rest was pretty much going on instinct and advice from people I knew who had been around the game. Dave Kindred recommended I talk to Davis Love: “He doesn’t smile on the golf course very much, so people get the wrong idea about him,” Kindred said. “He’s a good guy and he may end up being a great player.”

  Chuck Adams, who I had known early in my career covering soccer, was working for the PGA Tour. He recommended Billy Andrade. Later, Dave Lancer, another PGA Tour media official, took me to dinner one night with two rookies he thought I’d like, Brian Henninger and Jeff Cook.

  I picked other guys based on having dealt with them in the past—Mike Donald, who had almost won the U.S. Open in 1990, and Paul Azinger, who had almost won the British Open I had covered in 1987. John Cook had a reputation as a good guy; Curtis Strange did not, but I thought he might be a good subject given the ups and downs he had been through.

  I stood on the putting green one night at Baltusrol, two days before the U.S. Open began, and watched Jeff Sluman, the 1988 PGA champion, clown around with some friends—making every single putt he looked at while wearing street shoes and talking nonstop.

  And then there was Paul Goydos, who ended up becoming the symbol of the book to many people and a symbol of the ups and downs of life on tour. I was at the Buick Open in August, still trying to get to know people. I’d had breakfast in the morning with Watson to do some background reporting prior to the Ryder Cup. I was supposed to have dinner with Billy Andrade after the first round of the tournament, and I was killing time late in the afternoon in the press tent.

  Almost all of the leaders had played in the morning: Larry Mize had shot 64 to take the lead. I was about to leave to go back to my hotel to shower before dinner, so I wandered over to say good-bye to Chuck Adams and Mark Mitchell, who was also a tour PR official. Chuck and Mark were engaged in conversation when I walked over.

  “Paul Goydos shot 66,” Chuck was saying. “I’m wondering if we should bring him in [to the interview room]. Looks like he’s the only guy going low this afternoon, but I’m guessing most people will be writing Mize and [Greg] Norman” (who was also on the leaderboard).

  “You’re probably right,” Mark said. “But it’s not a bad idea to give the rookies experience in here even if there are only five guys in the room.”

  Chuck nodded. “Do you know him? Can he handle it okay?”

  Mitchell laughed. “I know him from the Nike Tour. He can handle it. His nickname out there was ‘Sunshine.’ ”

  That got my attention.

  “Sunshine?” I said.

  “Oh yeah,” Mitchell said. “He can find a dark cloud in any silver lining.”

  At the very least I thought it was worth sticking around a few minutes to hear what “Sunshine” might have to say. I had plenty of time. So when Goydos came in, I wandered into the back of the interview room with the six or seven—maybe it was eight—others who walked in to listen to him.

  The very first thing I heard Paul Goydos say was this: “I’m guessing most of you have never heard of me. There’s a reason for that: I’ve never done anything.”

  At that moment I heard myself do something I almost never did in an interview room: laugh.

  Chuck Adams asked him to go through his round. “The thing about me is I need to get my slice going to play well,” Goydos said. “I know on the PGA Tour you’re supposed to call it a fade, but when you hit a seven iron and it goes twenty yards to the right, that’s a slice.”

  I had no idea if Paul Goydos could, as the players say, play dead. But I knew I wanted to know more about him. As he walked out of the room I introduced myself and told him that I was writing a book about life on tour and that I’d like to sit down with him at some point.

  He shrugged. “I’ll talk to you all you want. But believe me, you’re wasting your time writing a book about the tour. No one’s going to want to read it.”

  To this day Paul and I argue about that comment: not if he made it but when he made it. He says it was the first time we actually sat down, over breakfast at the Disney Tournament. In my memory it was that first day at the Buick because it was so classically Paul.

  Or, more accurately, Sunshine.

  “That nickname is unfair,” he always says. “I’m actually an optimist. Which is probably why I get upset when things don’t go as well as I expect them to. I’m really an upbeat person.”

  Paul always says this with a perfectly straight face.

  There may not be a better-liked player on the PGA Tour than Goydos because he is smart, he is funny, and he is honest. That’s why he’s been elected to the Player Advisory Council (PAC) and, more recently, the tour’s policy board. That’s why Corey Pavin asked him to be an assistant captain on the 2010 Ryder Cup team even though he’s never come close to making a Ryder Cup team. People like having him around because they respect what he has to say, and he makes you laugh even when he’s disagreeing with you.

  One night during a PAC meeting, commissioner Tim Finchem was talking about perhaps changing the rules for the Tournament of Champions to make champions from the previous two years eligible rather than champions from just the past year—to try to breathe some new life into the event. Goydos gave Finchem about fifty different reasons why that wasn’t, in his opinion, the answer or even the problem.

  A few minutes later, Finchem brought up another topic and turned to Goydos and said, “Do you want to tell me why I’m wrong about this one after I’m finished, or should we just save time and have you tell me right now?”

  On another occasion Finchem said, “Why don’t we all just agree with Goydos on everything so we can get out of here before midnight.”

  And what does Finchem say about Goydos? “I love the guy. I’m glad he’s on the board. We need him on the board.”

  One night in 1994 I was supposed to go out to dinner with Goydos. This was during the tournament at Doral, and the late John Morris, who was then the tour’s director of public relations, was organizing a dinner with a few writers and Tom Watson. He asked if I wante
d to come along. I did, but only if I could bring Goydos. John said that was fine.

  That night during dinner, Watson was railing about the subject of welfare, saying welfare fraud was one of the biggest problems we had. Right or wrong, Watson is tough to argue with because he’s smart and he’s articulate and he comes right at you. Everyone kind of sat around listening while Watson went off on welfare cheats. Finally, Goydos, who was in awe of Watson, said quietly, “You know, Tom, I actually knew quite a few kids from welfare families when I was teaching in Long Beach. I can tell you very honestly that most of them were trying very hard to find jobs, that they didn’t like being on welfare, and that they hated the idea that their kids were growing up on welfare.

  “I’m not saying there aren’t welfare cheats—of course there are. But I’m guessing there are a lot more guys working on Wall Street who break the rules to get rich than there are people on welfare who break the rules to try to be less poor.”

  Watson listened. He asked Goydos how he’d come to teach in Long Beach, and Paul explained how he hadn’t thought he’d be able to turn pro after college because of an arthritic condition in his hands, so he’d taught in the inner city in Long Beach for a while.

  Two years later, Goydos won at Bay Hill, his first of two victories on tour. I was there, walking with Paul most of the way on Sunday. That night I ran into Watson in a restaurant. “I was thinking about you today watching your boy [almost everyone on tour refers to Goydos as “my boy”] come up eighteen,” he said. “I was thinking back to that dinner at Doral a couple of years ago. I’m glad he won. We need him out here.”

  Paul has managed to stay out on tour for nineteen years now. He’s had to go back to Q School a couple of times, and he’s been through personal traumas that have been well documented: his wife, Wendy, became addicted to methamphetamines while trying to deal with constant migraine headaches. Her addiction brought about their divorce. Because she was in and out of rehab, Paul got custody of their daughters. He basically dropped off the tour for a year so he could stay home with them. In January of 2009, Wendy died of an overdose. Paul has never once complained or said woe-is-me about anything that has happened because of Wendy’s drug problems.