The Yang Slinger: Vol. VI
My soup-to-nuts process for reporting and writing a book, five questions with Jonathan Mayo, my weekly journalism fuck-up (it's a doozy) and why the term "MLB Insider" means absolutely nothing.
Earlier today I handed in the first manuscript of my untitled Bo Jackson biography. I actually finished it on Halloween, but at the time this was the word count …
For those who might not know, 207,510 words for Bo Jackson would, eh, not be received particularly well by any sane publishing company. A biography of JFK might be 207,510 words. A deep dive into the French Revolution might be 207,510 words. But were I an editor, and some punk Bo Jackson biographer submitted 207,510 words, my response would approximate to something like, “Are you fucking insane? We are not publishing 207,510 words on Bo Jackson. There is no chance, and either you need to carve that thing up or I’ll do it for you.”
Hence, to avoid such a tongue lashing I spent the past week extracting (wait for it) 32,800 words. Which I imagine is sort of like opening up a body and taking out two lungs, a kidney, 34 bones and a spleen.
But I digress. I get asked a lot about the book process. Namely: How does someone write and report a biography? And while I’m pretty sure we all have different approaches, I figured this would be a good space to soup-to-nuts mine.1
So here I go …
Step 1: Picking a subject
In life, we utter a ton of bullshit. All of us. Nonsense about our first kiss, exaggerations about that amazing moment when we saved the lives of four passengers. We say things because they’re the things we say. In a sense, we’re automated …
Hey, Jeff, how are you?2
I’m fine.3
How are you, Phil?4
I’m fine, too.5
But one thing I am very consistent about is my thinking when it comes to picking a book subject. Namely, I always ask myself three questions:
Will I enjoy devoting two years of my life to the subject?
Has anyone else deep-dived the subject?
Can it (potentially) sell?
I only violated this trio of self-inquiries one time, and it came back to bite me. In 2009 I released a Roger Clemens biography titled, “The Rocket That Fell to Earth.” I did so because the payday was (for me, not Michael Lewis) large. But I had little-to-no interest in Clemens, and the resulting product reflected that.6 It’s just not reasonable to ask someone who loves what he does for a living to generate the requisite enthusiasm to write about an incurious asshole. The book flopped, and my next advance (fairly) reflected that. Clemens turned me into cold product.
With Bo Jackson, this was all relatively easy:
Will I enjoy devoting two years of my life to this subject?: Judging by the fact that I’m addicted to Bo Jackson YouTube clips—hell, yes.
Has anyone else deep-dived the subject?: Bo Jackson’s autobiography, “Bo Knows Bo,” dropped more than 30 years ago. It’s been pretty quiet ever since.
Can it sell?: I think so. Which doesn’t mean it’s a guarantee. But there’s a mystique about Bo Jackson that doesn’t come with most athletes who didn’t die young. The question that haunts Bo—what could have been?
Step 2: Landing a deal
I have a tremendous agent named David Black. He’s repped me for nine of the 10 books, and the man kicks some serious ass. Think of Ari Gold from Entourage and you’ve pretty much got David Black (in all the best ways). He hustles, he brings heat, he doesn’t let publishing companies walk all over his clients.
Back in the day, when I was younger and a bit more obscure (I’m not saying I matter in 2021. I just have a track record to point to), I wrote book proposals that ranged in length from, oh, 20 pages (double-spaced) to 40. They’re all fairly similar—start off with an eye-catching title that the 25-year-old marketing head will immediately shit on …
Follow with an eye-catching moment or two …
Explain why it can kick ass …
Break down the chapters …
Make it sound like you’re The (Only) Person who can do this …
And, if we’re being honest (which I am), it’s largely nonsense. You know it. The editor knows it. The agent knows it. It’s all a silly dance. You’re certainly not the only person who can write this book. You don’t know, for a fact, that it will sell.
And most important: If your book winds up as your proposal promises, you’ve failed in every possible measure. Or, stated more bluntly: If I do as I’m supposed to, and interview hundreds upon hundreds of people, the resulting material will be fresh and new and never-before chronicled (aka: unlike anything in the proposal). So, really, the proposal’s sole purpose is to convince the publishing house that the book will be good, and that you’d write it well.
Once I get a deal, I never look at the damn thing again.
Oh, almost forgot. For the most part I no longer make my proposals that long. Now it’s more a four-to-five pager. That is a perk of having enough of a track record to at least be able to say, “I know how to do this sorta thing.”
Step 3: Black Sunday (or whatever day)
This is one of my favorite moments.
I’ve got the deal.
I’m writing about Bo Jackson, and I need to attack.
First stop: Here.
Seriously, ebay is the author’s best friend. It’s cheap, it’s accessible and it’s home to pretty much everything. So you’re me, and you need to plunge into Bo Jackson’s Auburn years? All the old media guides are available. As are the old media guides from the Royals, the Raiders, the White Sox, the Angels. Even the Memphis Chicks. They’re literally all here, and fairly affordable.
I also do a wide search on Bo Jackson books. And then books relating to Bo Jackson. And then books relating to relating to relating to Bo Jackson. Which leads me to possessing these babies …
To better show how batshit crazy it gets around here, this is my running bibliography for the Bo project …
And, to be clear, this doesn’t mean I read the entirety of all those books. In fact, I rarely read the entirety of any of the books. Crap, I probably don’t read 1/20th of most of the books. For example, Willie Wilson’s autobiography (“Inside the Park”) spans 271 pages. Bo Jackson’s time with the Royals takes up roughly five of those. So that’s where I focus.
Step 4: Word files and tracking down
Because I’m an old loser/creature of habit, I still use Microsoft Word (as opposed to Google Docs). And after I purchase a media guide, I create a Word file for every single person. Meaning (for example) I’ll go through the 1984 Auburn football annual, name by name …
And make this …
I wind up with, oh, 2,500 people to try and find. If I’m lucky, I’ll get in contact with roughly a third (I’ve interviewed about 715 folks for Bo). And while buying the books is fine, and making the files is fine, the tracking down of sources is simultaneously joyful and exasperating. Joyful when you find someone. Exasperating when you don’t.
Not all that long ago, my go-to locating tool was Lexis/Nexis, a fantastic journalistic resource that offers a hefty newspaper database, scores of legal documents and a terrific people search tool. The problem, however, is it costs a lot of money, and once all the passwords I had from (cough, cough) friends/past places of employment/shady dudes in Fedoras stopped working, I was SOL.
Then, more recently, I discovered the power of the whitepages.com premium membership, which costs a few hundred dollars and has an endless supply of phone numbers. Wait. Not just phone numbers—cell phone numbers. Which, in 2021, is the best, because nobody (save my parents) uses a home phone with any regularity.
It’s actually really weird: Most whitepages.com premium member searches result in several cell numbers, a high percentage of which belong to a relative or friend or (egad) ex-spouse. I developed a new approach that seems to work fairly well. For example, I was trying to find old teammates of Joe Kucharski, the former Charlotte Orioles pitcher who surrendered Bo’s first-ever minor league homer. One name I came across in yellowed articles was Bret Baynham, a pitcher-turned-physician. Thanks to whitepages.com, I landed about five possible cell numbers. Before I texted any of them, I went to newspapers.com (more on that later) and found some Baynham-related clips. I texted the same thing in all five opening salvos (This is an all-time, all-time random text request, but I’m trying to reach Dr. Bret Baynham, former pitcher at the University of South Carolina. My name is Jeff Pearlman—I’m a longtime sports writer, author. Working on something that involved the old Gamecock baseball program … any chance I have the right guy?)
Here’s the result …
So I basically do this over and over and over again—for (egad) a year.
But it’s not the only thing I do.
Step 5: Building a digital library
If you’re a journalist, and you don’t have a newspapers.com subscription, something is wrong with you.
Seriously, it’s the greatest research tool on the planet and the blissful dream of anyone (I’m raising my hand) who spent far too many hours doing this in the dank, asbestos-poisoned basements of 1,000 different libraries …
Now, if you follow what I’m about to say, you’ll simultaneously lose your mind and research the hell out of a subject. I mean that. Your log of material will be amazing. But you’ll also start speaking in tongues and hearing German-translated Menudo songs in your sleep.
[Drumroll]
I build a digital library.
But not just a digital library—a day-by-day digital library of all things Bo Jackson. Which means, quite literally, I sit in front of newspapers.com and search every … single … day of “Bo Jackson” from the moment he entered the spotlight as a McAdory High sophomore to, well, today. It’s a soul-sucking experience. I can’t state that with enough emphasis—it drives you fucking mad and makes you want to run through the streets licking telephone poles. But … I just don’t see another way. Because if you limit yourself to, say, magazine profiles or website retrospectives, you wind up with the surface material that’s been regurgitated 100 times elsewhere. And I don’t want that. I want the small, gooey, weird, cool, funky stuff that reveals the innards of a man’s strange time on earth.
Perfect example: I’m researching Bo Jackson’s final season with the White Sox. By the end, he’s a shell of his former self and the team is clearly not interested in bringing him back for 1994.
And, via newspapers.com, I stumble upon this little gem in the Nov. 7, 1993 Chicago Tribune …
Which resulted in this …
Oh, one thing I forgot to mention: Because I’m a geriatric neanderthal, I print everything out. Every interview. Every clip. Everything. The papers are then shoved into proper subject folders. Even all my interviews are printed out and split into folders. That way, when I need, oh, the words of Ellis Burks, I have them right in front of me, marked up and tangible. (I recycle everything at the end. I’m also committing to more digital for the next project, because this is certainly unnecessarily wasteful).
Regrettably, when you build a library, then turn it into a physical object, you wind up with this mess …
Step 6: Writing
Generally I get two years to put together a book.
That sounds like a long time, but anyone who has done this will (correctly) insist it soars past.
I devote the first 1 1/2 years to reporting. That’s at-home research, as well as traveling to different locations for key interviews, visuals, etc. Because of Covid, I did very little on-the-scene work for Bo, though I did take two weeks last summer to hit up Alabama, visit Auburn and Birmingham and Bessemer (and return home with a brick from the foundation of Bo’s childhood home—now a vacant lot covered by leaves, broken glass and mud).
The best part, truly, is meeting people. Old coaches, old teammates, folks with stories to tell and apple pie in the oven. In Bessemer (Bo’s town), I literally walked up and down his childhood street, knocking on doors and hoping no one punches me.7 It’s the sort of stuff I live for—the unwinding of memories; the recording of itsy bitsy details that time had forgotten (and I have the honor of retrieving).
When I finally sit down to write, I do it straight-up chronologically. I’m sure there are plenty of superior scribes who feel comfortable telling Bo Jackson’s story in stanzas, or based upon a series of uniform numbers, or something funky and cool. Not me. I like the natural rhythm and order of the year-by-year unrolling of a life.
So basically, as I begin writing I only have the necessary books and folders before me (in this case—Bessemer, childhood friends, local schools, etc). When I move on to different stages, I place those folders aside and bring forth new ones. On and on—until I reach the completion of the journey.
As far as I can tell, if your goal is a truly definitive biography there are no shortcuts. This shit it hard. You will be sick of the subject, then find yourself rejuvenated, then grow sick again. No one in your family will want to ever hear another word about Bo Jackson. You’ll write, think is sucks, write some more, think it’s great—then realize, no, it sucks. It really sucks. You’ll delete, add, cut, paste. And this goes on for months upon months upon months. You want to run off and become a barista. You want to slam your head into the wall. You are surrounded by mounds of paper, and no matter how often you scream at the stacks, they never talk back.
Then, one day, you type your final word.
And you’re strangely sad.
You’ve accomplished something.
You’re really accomplished something.
[Until a month later, when your editor says it sucks and runs 50,000 words too long.]
The Quaz Five with … Jonathan Mayo
Jonathan Mayo, covers the Major League Draft and minor league baseball for MLB.com and mlbpipeline.com. You can follow him on Twitter here.
1. After writing about baseball for so long, how do you still care about baseball? I think there are two things. The first is the game itself. I still love the game itself and as the names change and the strategies change, the game is still the best game I know. The mental battles with each pitch, each at-bat, all that still captures my attention every time I get to watch a game. It's cliche, but it really is the kind of game where every time you watch, you can see something you've never seen before.
The second thing is the stories. It's why I love what I do so much, especially in covering prospects, the guys people don't know as well. I enjoy getting to know where players came from, how they were found, scouted, signed... how they became who they are and where they are going. And there are great stories each and every year.
2. Who's the ballplayer you were 100% convinced would make it big—but didn't?: Wow, where do I start? There are so many players I've "gotten wrong" (and a few on the flip side of that coin). I'm out in the Arizona Fall League currently and there are two players I saw here over the years who come to mind. One is Brandon Wood, who still has the AFL record for homers in a season with 14, after a regular season that saw him hit 43 homers. Yeah, there was a lot of swing-and-miss, but the power was real. I'm still convinced that is someone would have given him 500 at-bats in a year, he would have gotten to that power in the big leagues. Sure, he'd have hit .230, but in today's game, that seems to be enough if you hit 40 out, right?
The other is Domonic Brown. He actually made an All-Star team in the NL, in 2013, at age 25, but he was out of affiliated baseball and playing in Mexico by 2018. Another guy with big power, and other tools, too, who I thought had the chance to be that prototypical run-producing right fielder.
3. What's the best way social media has impacted sports reporting?: I think it can be a great way to get information out to fans in a hurry, a great way to share a story you've written, or even share news that you have. I like using it when I'm on site covering something as I think it can bring fans a little closer to the action. And it can be a great way to interact with baseball fans and readers.
4. What's the worst?: The need to always be first. I think in the rush to break news over social media, people move too fast to put something out there and sometimes being first takes precedence over being right. I also think the immediacy leads to some overly nasty reactions to things that are posted. That's not just in sports, obviously, but the vitriol level can reach fever pitch over the smallest things because people don't take time to consider what they're writing.
5. Rank in order (favorite to least): Tomato soup, the Omar Moreno-Jerry Mumphrey swap, Art Stewart, a very icy cold Sprite, Steve Bono, Cher, the ukulele, your kitchen table: Art Stewart, my kitchen table, tomato soup, the ukulele, Moreno-for-Mumphrey, Sprite, Cher, Steve Bono.
Yet another story of one of my myriad career fuckups …
In the spring of 1994, I was editor in chief of The Review, the University of Delaware’s student newspaper.
Because I had no filter, taste or judgment, I decided we should run an April Fool’s issue replete with phony gag stories. Some of the headlines included SNOOP EXCITED TO ADDRESS BITCHES AT COMMENCEMENT and UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT LEAVES FOR HEE HAW. Relatively harmless stuff.
There was another piece—MIDGETS FIGHT TO TAKE OVER NEWARK.
Oy.
The article featured a (fictitious) new Blue Hen football recruit named Butch Romano who was coming to Newark, Del. to play nose tackle at 3-foot-8. To illustrate it all, we dug up an old file picture of a short-stature student standing against a brick wall, cut out the real quarterback’s head and placed it on the little body. Ha, ha. Hee, hee. Making fun of people for the sake of making fun of people—what can be any better?8
Anyhow, a few days later I’m at the office when a woman calls. It turns out she’s the mother of the short-stature man, who graduated from UD a few years earlier. He moved out west, but she still lives in town and is absolutely heartbroken. “Do you have any idea how hard it’s been for my son?” she asks. “How hard it’s been for me?”
“No,” I say. “I don’t.”
I’ve never felt so pathetic.
This week’s college writer you should follow on Twitter …
Mikey DiLullo, University of Alabama junior, high school football stringer for the Tuscaloosa News and Southern Miss football beat guy for the Hattiesburg American.
So Mikey called a few days ago to talk USFL for a journalism assignment. And sometimes you hear a kid’s passion and drive and—even sitting here at age 49—it inspires you.
Mikey isn’t on the staff of the Alabama student newspaper because he’s working for two friggin’ publications. That means he’s got hustle, that means he’s willing to grind for this, that means he’s putting sweat equity behind the dream.
Wanna make it as a journalist in 2021? Be like Mikey (ohhh, if I could be like Mikey …).
Mikey is on Twitter here. Bravo, kid …
Random journalism musings for the week …
Musing 1: In this age when clicks seem far more important than reporting (I’m looking at you, CNN), it’s nice when you stumble across self-generated news sources that fill the void. In particular, one person who’s doing it for me is Tammi Fisher, the former Kalispell mayor and host of the wonderful Montana Values podcast. Her latest episode, IT’S ALL IN WHO YOU KNOW, exposes the unjustifiable corruption of the state’s attorney general, and is worth a listen. What makes me appreciate Tammi is she’s a lifelong conservative who prioritizes right before party. Trust me—this is worth your attention.
Musing 2: I don’t know who Michael Balko is, but I am beyond fed up with this stuff poisoning sports journalism (really, all journalism).
I’m OK with the occasional anonymous source. I’m probably even OK with, “A Major League general manager said …”. But “MLB Insider” takes this waaaaaay too far. An MLB Insider can be Justin Turner. It can be Aaron Boone. It can be Jon Daniels. It can also be the guy who cleans Jon Daniels’ toilet, or makes him his coffee at Starbucks. It can be the girlfriend of the guy’s uncle who makes Jon Daniels his coffee at Starbucks.
Seriously, that’s not reporting, and while I understand the desire to spark news (and re-tweets) on Twitter, this is not how you do it.
Musing 3: Interesting, important take here from Hermela Aregawi on the dangers of poor/shoddy/biased journalism directly impacting an international response to conflict. I know far too little about the strife in Ethiopia—where those of Tigrayan descent are being rounded up and prisoned solely for … being of Tigrayan descent (this piece explains it well). Aregawi can offer a PhD-level breakdown.
Musing 4: I have no remote idea why the media is showing such an interest in Chris Christie, but it was refreshing to see Nicole D. Wallace of MSNBC actually ask legitimate questions of the former New Jersey governor. I honestly thought, post-Trump, the political press would have learned some lessons about chasing the brightest lights and loudest horns. Alas, we’re back where we were in 2016, and as soon as Trump announces his candidacy reporters will return to lapping up his lies and basking in the glow of attention. Sigh.
Musing 5: The latest episode of Two Writers Slinging Yang, my journalism podcast, features the great Chuck Culpepper of the Washington Post. It’s available here.
Quote of the week …
“Read, read, read. Read everything — trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window.”
— William Faulkner
Plus, I ditched the original topic of this week’s Substack and need to write something. :)
He doesn’t care how I am.
I actually just pooped my pants.
I don’t care.
Phil’s girlfriend is having sex with the dog walker. He just learned this 10 minutes ago. He’s not fine.
The book sucks.
I made it. #mahopacstrong
To be clear, I ask this sarcastically. I was evil.
This was fascinating and insightful. Thanks for sharing your process.
Really enjoyed this! - Great reference recommendations too - https://www.newspapers.com/ https://www.whitepages.com/