July 5, 2022 • 38 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, John Feinstein tells us the story of how Duke University's legendary basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski almost didn't become who he is today. Tedd Long of Holy Toledo History tells the story of three famous and unexpected visitors to Toledo, Ohio.
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Time Codes:
00:00 - How Duke’s Coach K Was Almost Fired in 1983
35:00 - The Unexpected Visitors of Toledo
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American People.
To search for the Our American Stories podcast, go to
the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. John
Feinstein is a sportswriter of forty two books, twenty three
of them New York Times bestsellers. His first book, about
(00:33):
Bobby Knight and the Indiana Hoosiers, A Season on the Brink,
is the best selling sports book of all time. He's
also the friend of Duke University's legendary basketball coach Mike Shashevski,
otherwise known as Coach K, who won five national titles
at Duke and three consecutive gold medals as the head
(00:54):
coach of the US men's Olympic basketball team. John's here
to tell the story of how that most didn't happen.
I actually first met Mike Shashevsky and Jim Valvano on
the same day when I was a senior in college.
Duke was playing Connecticut in New York City at Madison
Square Garden. Duke was bad. In those days. People refused
(01:16):
to believe that Duke was ever bad in basketball, but
they were bad. In fact, that Duke Yukon game was
the first game of the Garden Double Headed. The feature
game was Fordham in Rutgers. That's how different times were.
And I flew into New York, which was my hometown,
with Bill Foster, who was then Duke's coach, Tom Michel,
who was Duke's sports information director, and Kad Armstrong who
(01:37):
was the star of the team who had played on
the nineteen seventy six Olympic team for Dean Smith. And
there was a media lunch every Tuesday in those days
in New York for the New York basketball coaches, and
Jim Valvano was coaching at Iona and Mike Schevsky was
coaching at Army, his alma mater where he had played
for Bob Knight. And when the lunch was over, Valvano
(02:00):
came over to see Bill Foster because he played for
him at Rutgers, and he brought along with him Shishevsky
and Tom Penders, who was then the coach at Columbia
who would go on to win six hundred and forty
eight games in his career. And as we were talking,
I mentioned to Shashevsky that I had seen his greatest
game in the nineteen sixty nine and ninety when I
(02:22):
was a kid in New York, when Army had upset
South Carolina and he had guarded John Roach, South Carolina's
All American the whole game and held him to eleven points.
So that sort of got us off to a good start,
although we did vehemently disagree on the subject of the
Cubs and Mets. He's a Chicago kid Cubs fan. I
obviously New York kid Mets fan. But after I got
(02:44):
to the Washington Post a year later, I kept in
touch with both Shashevsky and delven Him So I knew
them both when they were hired, respectively at Duke and
at North Carolina State in nineteen eighty and by then
I was covering acc basketball for the Washington Post, and
so I dealt with them a lot, and I think
it's fair to say I became close to both of them.
(03:06):
I later years and years later, I wrote a book
called The Legends Club, which was about Shshevsky, Valvano and
Dean Smith, all of whom I was fortunate enough to
deal with quite a bit in the nineteen eighties when
they were coaching against each other in the research Triangle
in North Carolina, and Valvano, of course, was a rocket.
(03:26):
His team won the national championship in nineteen eighty three,
the famous Survive and Advanced team, the championship ending with
Lorenzo Charles's dunk off of what Derek Whittenberg still insists
was a past and so Valvano, because of his personality,
because of his success, was a huge star. Shashevski not
so much. He used to joke about how he had
(03:47):
to follow Valvano at ACC media days. Jim would get up,
do twenty minutes of stand up, leave everybody on the floor,
and then Mike would follow and talk about the battle
for the center position between Mike Tissau and Alan Williams,
which didn't exactly rock the room. So Shashevsky's first recruiting
class was the bust. They finished second for a bunch
of very good players, the most notable being Chris Mullen
(04:09):
who went to Saint John's. But then the second year
they had a better recruiting class, a very good recruiting
class in fact, but that in Mike's third season nineteen
eighty three, the team was divided seniors and freshmen resenting
one another. They lost a game early in the season
to Wagner at home, and the drumbeats were getting louder
(04:32):
that the alumni thought that Shashevsky was a bad hire
and he had to go back. The two real heroes
of this story, other than Mike are Tom Butters, the
athletic director, and Steve Visendak, who was the number two
guy in the athletic department, who had been a star
at Duke in the nineteen sixties under Vic Bubis played
on Final four teams there, and it was Visendak who
(04:54):
first brought Shashevsky to Butter's attention. Butters knew that Bill
Foster was going to leave for South Carolina end of
the nineteen eighty season, and he put the Sendeck in
charge of the coaching search because the Sendeck was a
basketball player and there were a bunch of names that
were out there. Bob Weltlick was at Mississippi. Bob Knight
was pushing him hard. Weltlick had played coached under under Knight,
(05:15):
as had Shashevsky. Of course, Bob Wenzel was Bill Foster's
number one assistant and helped build the program. People forget
that the year Foster left Dude glossed in the Elite eight.
They were good, but most of their key players graduated
off that team. Not all, but most. And there was
a guy named Paul Webb who had had great success
at All Dominion. In fact, the day that Duke hired
(05:36):
its new coach, that Durham Mulling Harold had a story
saying that the new Duke coach's last name would start
with a w Wenzel, Webb or Weltlick. But the Sendak
had met Shashevsky when Shashevsky was coaching an army he
was living in Annapolis, went and spent some time with
him as he was preparing for a Navy game Army
(05:56):
Navy game, and was blown away by him. He was
very young, but very much in command of his team
and was clearly, in Steve's opinion, a great defensive coach.
So he brought Shashevsky's name to Butters. Butters had never
heard of him, literally, had never heard of him. And
he said, okay, what was his record an army this year?
And the Sendek went nine and seventeen, And but I
(06:18):
can't hire a coach at Duke who was just nine
and seventeen an Army. Vs Sendek convinced him to meet Shashevsky,
and he did twice and was blown away by him
and said to Viscendek at one point, I think this
is the next great coach. And Steve said, good hire him.
I can't hire a coach from Army with a nine
and seventeen record, and that is indeed true. Nine and
(06:42):
seventeen at Army isn't exactly what you want to bring
to an ACC program that had just gotten to the
Elite eight. True, they were losing many of those star
players who got him to the Elite eight. But my goodness,
nine and seventeen from Army no powerhouse when it comes
to NCAA basketball, that's for sure. When we come back,
(07:02):
more of this remarkable story of how coach Kay's career
almost didn't come to be here on our American Stories.
(07:30):
Here are our American Stories. We bring you inspiring stories
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Give a little, give a lot, help us keep the
great American stories coming. That's our American Stories dot com.
And we continue with our American stories. We last left
(08:13):
off learning the Duke. Athletic director Tom Butters saw coach
K as the next great basketball coach. Talk about some vision,
but he couldn't bring himself to pull the trigger. And
a coach from Army with a nine and seventeen record,
Let's return to a friend of coach K's and sportswriter
of twenty three New York Times bestsellers, including the one
(08:35):
he wrote about Coach K, The Legends Club, Here's John Feinstein.
Butters did hire Szewski, and in fact he shocked the
basketball world. It was completely unexpected. As I said, he'd
been nine and seventeen at Army, and Night interestingly was
pushing Weltlick for the job. Butters had spoken to Night
(08:55):
about who we should hire, and Night had told him Weltlick,
and Butters said, well, what about Mike Shashevsky, because Steve
as Sendek had brought him up, And Knight said well,
I don't think this is the time for Mike, but
he's got all of my good qualities and none of
my bad, which was a very accurate statement as it
turned out. But the other thing is that when Shishevsky
(09:19):
got the job, he literally had to spell his name
for the media at his opening press conference, and he
said that one of his goals as a coach was
for his players to be able to spell his name
by the time they graduated. Of course, this is in
the days when players did actually graduate. The next day,
the student newspaper at Duke, the Chronicle, which is where
I started my career, had a headline that said not
(09:41):
a typo Shishevsky, and most people had not heard of
the guy. I mean, basketball junkies like me had heard
of him and knew him, but nobody in the acc
had any idea who he was. And again, he took
a lot of guts for Tom Butters to hi fire
him at that moment, and in fact, after Shashevsky's third year,
(10:04):
when Butters didn't fire him, he got death threats literally
from boosters. And in fact I met with him Tom
Butters when I was working on my book The Legends
club on Shashevsky, Jim Belvano and Dean Smith, and he
brought with him a box, and in the box were letters,
and one stack of the letters were from boosters in
nineteen eighties, written in nineteen eight three, nineteen eighty four,
(10:27):
saying fire him or I will never give another dollar
to Duke. In the second stack of the letters were
letters sent in nineteen ninety after Duke had turned it
around and Shashevsky had income a star and he was
offered the Boston Celtics job by none other than Red
hour Back, and the letters were from essentially the same
group who had written in nineteen eighty three eighty four
saying get rid of this guy, saying whatever you have
(10:50):
to do, whatever you have to pay him, do not
let him leave. And fortunately for Duke, it wasn't about
the money. Mike felt that he hadn't won a national
championship yet, and so even though he'd grown up as
a Celtics fan and worshiped at hour Back, he said,
the job's not done yet and turned it down, and
of course won his first national title the next year.
And that's how much it turned around. When Mike was
(11:12):
offered the Laker's job in two thousand and four, he
was offered forty million dollars for five years, and he
wasn't going to take it, but he had to give
it some thought given the money, and it was the Lakers,
and he called Butters and he said, what do you think, Tom?
And he said, I think you should give me a
ten percent finders fee if you take the job. And
Mike said, okay, I'll send you four thousand dollars because
(11:33):
his first year salary was forty thousand dollars. And so
they flailed for three years, and in nineteen eighty three,
Mike's third year, they lost their last game of the
season one hundred nine sixty six to Virginia in the
ACC Tournament. Ralph Sampson, if you walk up to Mike
Schefsky right now and say what was the score of
(11:55):
the game against Virginia in the ACC Tournament in nineteen
eighty three, he can tell tell you what it was
in an instant. He's never forgotten. And the fourth game
that night, first night of the ACC Tournament was Georgia
Tech in Maryland, and I was the Maryland beat writer
for the Post and Bobby Dwyer, who was Mike's number
(12:17):
one assistant at the time who'd come with him from Army,
came into the Omni, the old arena there which is
now long gone, and found me and Keith Drum who
was the sports editor of Durham Morning Herald at the
time and was probably the only member of the North
Carolina media who hadn't attacked Shashevsky and hadn't called for
(12:37):
him to be fired. North Carolina media then as now,
is made up largely of North Carolina graduates. School has
a great journalism school, and many, if not most, stay
in the state. Keith had also gone to North Carolina,
but he liked Shashevsky, liked and respected Dean Smith too,
but he likes Shashevsky and thought he was going to
be a great coach someday. Keith ended up being an
(13:00):
NBA scout, so his level of understanding of basketball was
different than most sports writers. So Dwyer came to the
press table where Keith and I were sitting and said,
when this game is over, you both need to come
with me back to our hotel. And we said why,
and he said, because Mickey, Mike's wife is in the
(13:20):
room crying because she's convinced they're going to get fired.
All the alumni and boosters have Tom Butters backed up
against a wall in the lobby, demanding that he fires
Sheshevsky immediately, and Mike is pacing around trying to figure
out who to kill first because he's so angry with everybody.
And so when the game was over, Keith and I
(13:43):
it was after midnight by then, got in a car
with Bobby and we drove to the perimeter of Atlanta
where Duke was staying and went to the hotel and
it was pouring down rain and we drove to a
Denny's nearby. It was Mike, it was Bobby, Keith, me,
Tom Mickle, the sports and information director, Keith's wife, Barbie,
(14:03):
and Johnny Moore, who was Tom Michel's assistant, and we
walked into the Dennys. We sat down and they gave
us water. And by now it's two in the morning
and Tom mikeel held up his glass and said, here's
two forgetting tonight, and Sheshevsky held up his glass and said,
here's to never blanking forgetting tonight. Blanking is one of
(14:26):
his favorite words for the record, and so we all
we didn't laugh because he was dead serious. And then
the discussion went on and Dwyer mentioned that Tom Sheehy,
who had verbally committed to Virginia very good player, might
be thinking twice about that commitment and maybe they could
get back involved and try to recruit Sheehy, and Sheshevsky
(14:50):
shook his head and said, no, no, First of all,
we don't do that. Second of all, if we can't
win next year with these four freshmen Alleri Billis Dawkins
and David Henderson and Tommy Amaker who was coming in
as the point guard, then we should get fired. And
in many ways that statement to me, having known Mike
(15:11):
for as long as I have, that's who Mike Chevski is.
It's never someone else's fault. Mike Chewski has always taken
the approach what did I do wrong? How do I
get better now? Some of that is his West Point training,
because when you're a plead at West Point and an
upperclassman speaks to you, you're allowed three answers, yes sir,
(15:32):
no sir, no excuse sir. And Shashevski's life has been
built on no excuse sir, I've never met a coach
who uses failure to his advantage more than Sischevski, and
that night was a perfect example. So the next year,
of course, with those five guys I mentioned, they went
twenty four and ten. They beat North Carolina with Michael
(15:55):
Jordan in the ACC Tournament, and that was the turnaround.
And you've been listen seeing to John Feinstein tell a
heck of a story about how coach Ka's career at
Duke almost didn't happen. After year three, still not winning.
At the heart of Tobacco Road, the heart of ACC
basketball country, Coach K loses to the University of Virginia
(16:18):
and Ralph Sampson's team by an epic, epic blowout one
O nine to sixty six. It does not get worse
than that. And losing it in of all places in
the ACC Tournament, everyone was sure that was it. The
boosters were coming after Coach K. Everyone was. The wife
was crying, and he was just mad. And who was
(16:38):
he mad at? He was mad at Coach K in
the end, and he was taking responsibility in ownership for
that loss as he was taught to do at West
Point three. Answers to a question at West Point by
an older person, and that is an older student. Folks,
when you're a freshman, a senior has to be addressed
(16:59):
as yes, sir, no sir, or no excuse sir. And
as John Feinstein said, no excuse sir, those were the
words that Coach K lived by. And by the way,
I love that scene in that Dennis. It's pouring rain
and there's one coach toasting to forgetting the game. And
what does coach K say, reflecting his true character, his
(17:20):
competitive nature and a little bit of his Irish Catholic well,
let us just say fanciful nature. With some swear words,
he says, here's to never blanking forgetting tonight, never forgetting,
and that's what animated coach K. That loss, that failure
drove so much of his life. When we come back
(17:40):
more of this remarkable piece of storytelling by the great
sportswriter John Feinstein. Here on our American story and we
(18:08):
continue with our American stories and with John Feinstein. Duke's
head basketball coach KA was almost fired in nineteen eighty three,
as we learned, but the following year he went twenty
four and ten. This was the turnaround season for coach
k Let's return to his friend and sportswriter of twenty
(18:28):
three New York Times bestsellers, including the one he wrote
about coach Ka the Legends Club Let's return to John Feinstein.
From there again, they made the tournament the next year,
and in nineteen eighty six they went thirty seven and three,
went to the national championship game lost, I will say
on a bad call. Chevski would never say that, but
(18:50):
I will, and became college basketball's next great dynasty. It's
my opinion that the only coach who you can put
ahead Shashefsky amount Rushmore is John Wooden. But five national championships,
thirteen Final four is more than Wooden even and ACC championships.
(19:10):
And I mean he went to twenty three sweet sixteens.
That's just stupid, twenty three and in every one of
them because in the old days, of course, you know,
before they expanded the tournament, conference champions went straight to
the sweet sixteen. But starting in nineteen eighty five, you
had to win two games to get to the sweet
(19:30):
sixteen and six to win the championships. So twenty three
sweet sixteens? Are you? I mean, Dean Smith, great coach longevity.
All that went to eighteen, which is a great number,
but the first three he didn't have to win a
game to get there because they once they won the
ACC they were in the sweet sixteen. So his numbers
are just ridiculous. Twelve hundred and five wins. I mean,
(19:53):
the numbers just go on and on and but to me,
the one thing about Sheshevsky that shouldn't be forgotten. He
went to his first Final four in nineteen eighty six.
He went to his last Final four thirty six years later,
in twenty twenty two. And think about how much college
basketball changed during those thirty six years. There was a
forty five second clock for the first year in nineteen
(20:16):
eighty six. There was no three point shot in nineteen
eighty six, there was no one had ever heard the
phase one and done in nineteen eighty six. And the game,
the way the game was played, has changed so much
since Mike first started coaching, which was an army in
nineteen seventy six, and he adapted. He kept saying, if
I want to continue to coach, I have to change.
(20:39):
Not I'm going to sit here and say it's terrible.
The change has taken place I'm like that myself. But
twenty twenty two is last year he goes to a
Final four with the youngest team he ever coached. So
I could see that in him very early on. I
really believed if gave him the time, he was going
(21:01):
to become a great coach. That night at Denny's was
sort of a key moment. In fact, so in nineteen
ninety one when they won the national championship for the
first time, I walked on the court after the game
and I walked up to Mike and I put out
my hand and I said, hey, congratulations, I'm so happy
for you. And he pulled me in and he said,
who'd come a long way from the blanking Denny's, havn't it?
(21:24):
And twenty years after that, I was working on a
book called One on One, which was sort of about
my experiences with the people I dealt with in my
first ten books. It was a professional semi memoir, and
one of the people, obviously I wanted to talk to
was Mike and I called him and I said, look,
next week, when you play at UNC Greensboro, you're going
(21:47):
to go past Dean Smith on the all time wins list.
And if you go back to those early days at Duke.
There's no way we would have ever thought about you
and Dean Smith in the same sentence much unless you're
going past Dean Smith. And I'd like to come down
and just hang out with you and talk to you
about those early days and things like that. And he said, sure,
come on down, meet me in my office at two thirty.
(22:08):
You can ride the bus to Greensboro with us. We'll
talk then, and once we get there we'll have time
in the locker room before the game starts. Do is
that okay for you? And I said great. So I
drove down to Durham and met two friends for lunch.
One was Bill Brill, who was also a Dude graduate,
and the other was Mike Craig, who's now the athletic
director at Saint John's, but back then he was kind
(22:29):
of a Shishevsky's man Friday. He was his chief fundraiser,
and if you watched Mike walk off a court after
a game, two feet behind him was Mike Craig at
all times. And so we went to lunch and Mike
Craig said, so, when are you going to talk to
Coach K And I saw on the bus going to Greensboro,
and he said, you came all the way down here
(22:51):
just to talk to him on a cell phone. And
I said, no, I'm gonna talk to him from the
next seat. And he said, no, no, no, no, you
misunderstood something. Nobody who's not part of the team rides
that bus except for Mickey. He said, I don't even
ride that bus, so you misunderstood something. So I walked
him through what Mike had said. I said, what did
I misunderstand? And he Mike Crick's shaking his head and
(23:12):
he goes, I don't understand it. Why would he let
you do that? Why would he let you do that?
And I said, because I was in the blanket Dennis
and that. And to this day, Mike will bring that
up to me when we're, you know, just talking about
how important that night was in his life. Mike will
tell you. And Dean Smith said the same thing about
his first three years at North Carolina that in today's world,
(23:35):
with social media, with the internet, with sports talk radio,
with twenty four hours sports networks, he probably would have
been fired by the end of his third year. That
you know, I got emails and tweets from North Carolina
fans during this past season when North Carolina was sixteen
and sixteen and seven, but they had just lost a
(23:57):
duke by twenty at home, saying, Hubert Davis can't do this,
Hubert Davis was the wrong guy. We gotta get rid
of Hubert Davis. Well, they ended up in the National
Championship Game and be twice along the way to get there.
So that's the way the world is today. It's knee
jerk reactions. It wasn't that way. There weren't nearly as
many games on television in those days. Sports talk radio
(24:18):
hadn't started yet. In nineteen eighty seven, wf AN was
the first all sports talk station in New York City.
There was no social media, there was no internet, so
Mike was able to fly pretty much under the radar
other than with Duke people during that time. And even then,
it took a lot of guts for Tom Butters to
(24:38):
stand by him throughout that period. And like I always,
I always say this to people that he's a better
guy than he was a coach. And that's a hell
of a statement if you think about it. But he's
still digging out right now from all the emails and
cards and letters and that he's gotten from people. He
said he had three thousand of them after the season ended,
(25:01):
and he wants to answer every one of them. And
the things that he's done for people that nobody knows about.
It goes on. The list goes on and on and
on and on. My brother had cancer twenty one years ago,
and he's also a dude graduate. And I called Mike
and I said, listen, would you mind giving my brother
(25:22):
a call, you know, because it would cheer him up
just to hear from you right now. Mike said sure,
So we called them and they were on the phone
for about an hour. And my brother is a typical fan,
you know, he knows better than the coach. So he said, coach,
can I give you some advice? And Mike said, yeah, sure, Bobby,
and he said, you need to play Casey Sanders more.
(25:44):
Casey Sanders was the backup center, and Mike said, okay,
I'll give that some thought. Well, in February, Carlos Boozer
got hurt, so Sanders became a starter while Boozer was out,
and then when Boozer came back, because they've been playing well,
continue to start. Although Boozer still got the bulk of
the minutes and when they won the national championship that year,
(26:06):
and to this day, my brother takes credit for that
national championship, and every once in a whildhood Columnisty Sheshevsky
should do this, and I'll say, here's his cell number,
you give McCall and tell him that. And a terrific
job on the production and the editing by Greg Hangler,
And a special thanks to John Feinstein for sharing this
(26:27):
remarkable story about his friend. And what a thing to
be able to say after years of writing sports is
that these weren't near subjects. You were writing about the friends,
and that shows the character and nature of John's work
and his commitment to telling the story of American sports
and the people who make it hum And it's a business,
but it's more than a business, my goodness. We learned
(26:47):
that from the passion from the fans, their knee jerk
reactions to losses. It's overwhelming. I listened to sports talk
radio sometimes and I just pity any head coach of anything.
The relentless criticism and the desire for immediate gratification is
almost unrelenting. And how to manage it in today's environment
will kudos to the people who do. And that night
(27:08):
at Denny, that's stuck with Coach K all the way through.
He never did forget John Feinstein, the story of Coach
K and how his career almost didn't happen. Here at
our American Stories. This is our American stories. We like
(27:40):
to think that we know our hometowns like the back
of our own hands. But do we Our next story
is about the famous and important visitors who were forgotten
to time, but who made an impact on one particular
American city in Ohio. Here's our own Monty Montgomery with
the story hometowns. They're the places we know best. We've
(28:06):
grown up there, after all, every street corner has a story.
Even if we've left. We know how to get around.
We even know who lives where. But do we know
who's visited? Ted Long of Holy Toledo History, Sure does,
and he wrote a book about them. But why so?
My name's Ted Long and I've been around the local
(28:29):
history scene here in Toledo for twenty years. Years ago,
got started doing day long regional tours for Leadership Toledo
class of like fifty young executives that you want to
learn more about their community, and that kind of sucked
me into all the different local history stories. As I
took them around the community and told those stories, I
got more and more intrigued. And the idea for the
(28:52):
book Forgotten Visitors really came from just kind of a
serendipitous thing that I was reading a story in the
New York Times and it was essentially a theme about
Wyatt Earp and in it, and he talked about the
Willard Dempsey heavyweight championship fight that happened in Toledo in
(29:15):
nineteen nineteen, and how when Jack Dempsey stepped into the
ring to start that fight, he looked out in the
crowd and saw Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson taking guns
from the tough guys in the crowd. And I was
blown away. I mean, I'm just stunned, Like I had
no idea these two icons from the Old West ever
(29:38):
visited Toledo. But on top of that, I never would
have imagined they did it together in nineteen nineteen. So
I started to scratch my head and think, you know
what other visitors came through this area that you don't
know about, that you've never heard about. One that I
feel is really fascinating is the Mark Twain Store. You know,
(30:00):
it's not surprising to me that Mark Twain visited Toledo. Frankly,
it's kind of makes sense in terms of him traveling
the Midwest and promoting his books. But what's interesting it
was eighteen sixty nine, so it was really early in
his writing career. You know. It was at a time
too where he was pretty still unsure of himself. And
(30:25):
the real twist in that chapter is his own fear
of visiting Toledo and making a presentation because it was
the hometown of David Ross Locke, whose pen name was
Petroleum V. Nasby, and Nasby at that time was probably
the most famous newspaper columnist in the United States, and
(30:49):
Locke had recently purchased the Toledo Blade newspaper and was
running out of Toledo his weekly column. And so if
you read the letters that Twain was writing to his
future wife and some of his partners, he was really
worried about coming here and then having to perform in
(31:09):
front of an audience that's very familiar with Petroleum V. Nasby.
He ends up, he hits a home run, does a
fantastic job, but afterwards he writes these letters where he's
all of a sudden cocky and he's real sure of
himself that you know, he really brought the house down
in Nasby's hometown, and that really made him proud of himself.
(31:31):
And he wrote this commediately after his performance in Toledo.
He said, it was splendid tonight. The Great Hall was crowded,
full of the pleasantest and handsomest people, and I did
the very best I possibly could, and I did better
than I ever did before. And then he says, I
felt the importance of the occasion, for I knew that
(31:52):
this being Nasby's residence, every person in the audience would
be comparing and contrasting me with him, and I'm sad
as fied with the performance. Eventually, he's offered a position
at the Toledo Blade, and there's another letter where he
writes to his mother and explains, you know, he's just
not sure what he wants to do next, including taking
(32:12):
up Nasby's offer to move to Toledo and write for
the Toledo Blade. You know, his decision not to take
that job was probably the best thing that could have
happened for the writer's world and the reader's world, because
he went on to write such great books. So that's
that's an interesting chapter that has a twist you wouldn't expect.
You know, Mark Twain visits Toledo, so what Then you
(32:32):
get the backstory and you find out there's really a
lot to it. And then there's the story of Wrong
Way Corrigan. I fell in love with Wrong Way Corrigan
when I started to research that story. I was aware
of the idea of Wrong Way Corrigan, but I wasn't
really sure what the whole story was. He was a
pilot who had actually worked on the Lindberg project, and
(32:56):
you know, as a as a workman, and then the
meantime was lying at night, and he had the idea
that he wanted to fly from the East Coast to Ireland,
and he particularly wanted to go to Ireland to pay
tribute to his family's background. And he builds this monstrosity
of an airplane that people called a Frankenstein. He took
(33:18):
pieces and parts from all these different planes and he
builds this monstrosity and he was not able to get licensed.
He kept submitting requests for this big trip, and they
kept the aviation administration kept turning him down, and finally
I think as you read into the story, they felt
sorry enough for him that they said, look, we'll give
you a cross country license. So he was given license
(33:41):
to fly from California to New York and back. And
he flies to New York and decides to take off
from New York supposedly go to California, makes a wrong
turn and ends up in Ireland. And that's how he
got the nickname Wrong Way Corrigan. And of course, as
you read into this, you'll find that he was a
pretty sharp guy and he didn't make a wrong turn
(34:02):
at all. He knew exactly what he was doing. I
found out just weeks after he came back from Ireland
he had a ticker tape parade in New York that was,
they say, bigger than Lindbergh's. He did end up flying
into Toledo for a quick luncheon and then back out
to the airport for his next trip. Another famous visitor
to Toledo Harry Houdini himself, whose trip became quite instrumental
(34:27):
in the development of his daring Feats of Escape later on. Well,
Houdini's an interesting subject because he was in Toledo quite often. Frankly,
it came here early on in his career with his brother,
right after they had first appeared at the Chicago World's
Fair and then had many many appearances here at several
of our theaters. Interestingly, there's an unpublished biography that he
(34:51):
wrote in which he described his most harrowing or most
difficult escape, and he said it happened in Toledo, where
he he had the Toledo Boiler Company come and essentially
welled him into a boiler on a stage, and then
he escaped. It took him ninety minutes that night. When
he got back to his hotel, he wrote in the diary,
(35:13):
he has to find some other big trick because this
one's just taking too much out of him. And he
went on to say that that was his most difficult
trick and it happened in Toledo. The other thing that
happened in Toledo that's interesting is he started off working
with his brother but eventually runs into his wife in
New York. She becomes his lifelong partner. As the Houdini's
(35:34):
and early in their career they were having difficulties of
people were looking at different types of entertainment and they
weren't really attracted to the magic kind of act that
Houdini was doing, and frankly, he was shut down in
a Toledo show halfway through there weren't enough tickets sold.
And he tells the story of being totally dejected and
(35:57):
heading back home, thinking he may just quit the business entirely.
And it was right at that time that he runs
into this Minnesota based production giant who convinces him, you've
got to change your program, move into these big, bold escapes,
and you know that became, you know, the Houdini that
we all know today. And it turns out, when you
(36:20):
research your city enough, you'll find out what makes it
so interesting and special in the first place. I learned
a lot of different things, but the one thing that
I think really stuck with me was that Toledo was
really an important transportation center. Quite a few of these
visitors came through Toledo because of its size. It was
good size city, but many of them showed up here
(36:42):
because it was unavoidable. You know, you were if you're
on your way from Chicago to New York, you're gonna
stop in Toledo. If you're on your way from Detroit
to Pittsburgh, you're gonna come through Toledo. All the railroads.
You know, we were at one time second only to
Chicago and the number of railroads coming in to town
in the country, and that played a big part not
only and who visited here, but who moved here. And
(37:03):
it says a lot about kind of that whole idea
of you know, the mixed bag of Americans that came
to the Toledo area and made up you know, what
we have today, which I think gives Toledo its signature flavor.
It's a city with a lot of variety and a
lot of cultures and I think that's still today. What
(37:25):
makes it for me a great place to work, live
and play. And great job on the production and the
story to Monty Montgomery and also thanks to Ted Long.
By the way, send your stories about your towns to
our American Stories dot com. We want to hear them.
And again our American Stories dot Com. Ted Long, He's
(37:50):
stories of famous Toledo visitors and that's everyone from Mark
Twain to Houdini here on our American Story
This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American People.
To search for the Our American Stories podcast, go to
the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. John
Feinstein is a sportswriter of forty two books, twenty three
of them New York Times bestsellers. His first book, about
(00:33):
Bobby Knight and the Indiana Hoosiers, A Season on the Brink,
is the best selling sports book of all time. He's
also the friend of Duke University's legendary basketball coach Mike Shashevski,
otherwise known as Coach K, who won five national titles
at Duke and three consecutive gold medals as the head
(00:54):
coach of the US men's Olympic basketball team. John's here
to tell the story of how that most didn't happen.
I actually first met Mike Shashevsky and Jim Valvano on
the same day when I was a senior in college.
Duke was playing Connecticut in New York City at Madison
Square Garden. Duke was bad. In those days. People refused
(01:16):
to believe that Duke was ever bad in basketball, but
they were bad. In fact, that Duke Yukon game was
the first game of the Garden Double Headed. The feature
game was Fordham in Rutgers. That's how different times were.
And I flew into New York, which was my hometown,
with Bill Foster, who was then Duke's coach, Tom Michel,
who was Duke's sports information director, and Kad Armstrong who
(01:37):
was the star of the team who had played on
the nineteen seventy six Olympic team for Dean Smith. And
there was a media lunch every Tuesday in those days
in New York for the New York basketball coaches, and
Jim Valvano was coaching at Iona and Mike Schevsky was
coaching at Army, his alma mater where he had played
for Bob Knight. And when the lunch was over, Valvano
(02:00):
came over to see Bill Foster because he played for
him at Rutgers, and he brought along with him Shishevsky
and Tom Penders, who was then the coach at Columbia
who would go on to win six hundred and forty
eight games in his career. And as we were talking,
I mentioned to Shashevsky that I had seen his greatest
game in the nineteen sixty nine and ninety when I
(02:22):
was a kid in New York, when Army had upset
South Carolina and he had guarded John Roach, South Carolina's
All American the whole game and held him to eleven points.
So that sort of got us off to a good start,
although we did vehemently disagree on the subject of the
Cubs and Mets. He's a Chicago kid Cubs fan. I
obviously New York kid Mets fan. But after I got
(02:44):
to the Washington Post a year later, I kept in
touch with both Shashevsky and delven Him So I knew
them both when they were hired, respectively at Duke and
at North Carolina State in nineteen eighty and by then
I was covering acc basketball for the Washington Post, and
so I dealt with them a lot, and I think
it's fair to say I became close to both of them.
(03:06):
I later years and years later, I wrote a book
called The Legends Club, which was about Shshevsky, Valvano and
Dean Smith, all of whom I was fortunate enough to
deal with quite a bit in the nineteen eighties when
they were coaching against each other in the research Triangle
in North Carolina, and Valvano, of course, was a rocket.
(03:26):
His team won the national championship in nineteen eighty three,
the famous Survive and Advanced team, the championship ending with
Lorenzo Charles's dunk off of what Derek Whittenberg still insists
was a past and so Valvano, because of his personality,
because of his success, was a huge star. Shashevski not
so much. He used to joke about how he had
(03:47):
to follow Valvano at ACC media days. Jim would get up,
do twenty minutes of stand up, leave everybody on the floor,
and then Mike would follow and talk about the battle
for the center position between Mike Tissau and Alan Williams,
which didn't exactly rock the room. So Shashevsky's first recruiting
class was the bust. They finished second for a bunch
of very good players, the most notable being Chris Mullen
(04:09):
who went to Saint John's. But then the second year
they had a better recruiting class, a very good recruiting
class in fact, but that in Mike's third season nineteen
eighty three, the team was divided seniors and freshmen resenting
one another. They lost a game early in the season
to Wagner at home, and the drumbeats were getting louder
(04:32):
that the alumni thought that Shashevsky was a bad hire
and he had to go back. The two real heroes
of this story, other than Mike are Tom Butters, the
athletic director, and Steve Visendak, who was the number two
guy in the athletic department, who had been a star
at Duke in the nineteen sixties under Vic Bubis played
on Final four teams there, and it was Visendak who
(04:54):
first brought Shashevsky to Butter's attention. Butters knew that Bill
Foster was going to leave for South Carolina end of
the nineteen eighty season, and he put the Sendeck in
charge of the coaching search because the Sendeck was a
basketball player and there were a bunch of names that
were out there. Bob Weltlick was at Mississippi. Bob Knight
was pushing him hard. Weltlick had played coached under under Knight,
(05:15):
as had Shashevsky. Of course, Bob Wenzel was Bill Foster's
number one assistant and helped build the program. People forget
that the year Foster left Dude glossed in the Elite eight.
They were good, but most of their key players graduated
off that team. Not all, but most. And there was
a guy named Paul Webb who had had great success
at All Dominion. In fact, the day that Duke hired
(05:36):
its new coach, that Durham Mulling Harold had a story
saying that the new Duke coach's last name would start
with a w Wenzel, Webb or Weltlick. But the Sendak
had met Shashevsky when Shashevsky was coaching an army he
was living in Annapolis, went and spent some time with
him as he was preparing for a Navy game Army
(05:56):
Navy game, and was blown away by him. He was
very young, but very much in command of his team
and was clearly, in Steve's opinion, a great defensive coach.
So he brought Shashevsky's name to Butters. Butters had never
heard of him, literally, had never heard of him. And
he said, okay, what was his record an army this year?
And the Sendek went nine and seventeen, And but I
(06:18):
can't hire a coach at Duke who was just nine
and seventeen an Army. Vs Sendek convinced him to meet Shashevsky,
and he did twice and was blown away by him
and said to Viscendek at one point, I think this
is the next great coach. And Steve said, good hire him.
I can't hire a coach from Army with a nine
and seventeen record, and that is indeed true. Nine and
(06:42):
seventeen at Army isn't exactly what you want to bring
to an ACC program that had just gotten to the
Elite eight. True, they were losing many of those star
players who got him to the Elite eight. But my goodness,
nine and seventeen from Army no powerhouse when it comes
to NCAA basketball, that's for sure. When we come back,
(07:02):
more of this remarkable story of how coach Kay's career
almost didn't come to be here on our American Stories.
(07:30):
Here are our American Stories. We bring you inspiring stories
of history, sports, business, faith and love. Stories from a
great and beautiful country that need to be told. We
can't do it without you. Our stories are free to
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(07:52):
Give a little, give a lot, help us keep the
great American stories coming. That's our American Stories dot com.
And we continue with our American stories. We last left
(08:13):
off learning the Duke. Athletic director Tom Butters saw coach
K as the next great basketball coach. Talk about some vision,
but he couldn't bring himself to pull the trigger. And
a coach from Army with a nine and seventeen record,
Let's return to a friend of coach K's and sportswriter
of twenty three New York Times bestsellers, including the one
(08:35):
he wrote about Coach K, The Legends Club, Here's John Feinstein.
Butters did hire Szewski, and in fact he shocked the
basketball world. It was completely unexpected. As I said, he'd
been nine and seventeen at Army, and Night interestingly was
pushing Weltlick for the job. Butters had spoken to Night
(08:55):
about who we should hire, and Night had told him Weltlick,
and Butters said, well, what about Mike Shashevsky, because Steve
as Sendek had brought him up, And Knight said well,
I don't think this is the time for Mike, but
he's got all of my good qualities and none of
my bad, which was a very accurate statement as it
turned out. But the other thing is that when Shishevsky
(09:19):
got the job, he literally had to spell his name
for the media at his opening press conference, and he
said that one of his goals as a coach was
for his players to be able to spell his name
by the time they graduated. Of course, this is in
the days when players did actually graduate. The next day,
the student newspaper at Duke, the Chronicle, which is where
I started my career, had a headline that said not
(09:41):
a typo Shishevsky, and most people had not heard of
the guy. I mean, basketball junkies like me had heard
of him and knew him, but nobody in the acc
had any idea who he was. And again, he took
a lot of guts for Tom Butters to hi fire
him at that moment, and in fact, after Shashevsky's third year,
(10:04):
when Butters didn't fire him, he got death threats literally
from boosters. And in fact I met with him Tom
Butters when I was working on my book The Legends
club on Shashevsky, Jim Belvano and Dean Smith, and he
brought with him a box, and in the box were letters,
and one stack of the letters were from boosters in
nineteen eighties, written in nineteen eight three, nineteen eighty four,
(10:27):
saying fire him or I will never give another dollar
to Duke. In the second stack of the letters were
letters sent in nineteen ninety after Duke had turned it
around and Shashevsky had income a star and he was
offered the Boston Celtics job by none other than Red
hour Back, and the letters were from essentially the same
group who had written in nineteen eighty three eighty four
saying get rid of this guy, saying whatever you have
(10:50):
to do, whatever you have to pay him, do not
let him leave. And fortunately for Duke, it wasn't about
the money. Mike felt that he hadn't won a national
championship yet, and so even though he'd grown up as
a Celtics fan and worshiped at hour Back, he said,
the job's not done yet and turned it down, and
of course won his first national title the next year.
And that's how much it turned around. When Mike was
(11:12):
offered the Laker's job in two thousand and four, he
was offered forty million dollars for five years, and he
wasn't going to take it, but he had to give
it some thought given the money, and it was the Lakers,
and he called Butters and he said, what do you think, Tom?
And he said, I think you should give me a
ten percent finders fee if you take the job. And
Mike said, okay, I'll send you four thousand dollars because
(11:33):
his first year salary was forty thousand dollars. And so
they flailed for three years, and in nineteen eighty three,
Mike's third year, they lost their last game of the
season one hundred nine sixty six to Virginia in the
ACC Tournament. Ralph Sampson, if you walk up to Mike
Schefsky right now and say what was the score of
(11:55):
the game against Virginia in the ACC Tournament in nineteen
eighty three, he can tell tell you what it was
in an instant. He's never forgotten. And the fourth game
that night, first night of the ACC Tournament was Georgia
Tech in Maryland, and I was the Maryland beat writer
for the Post and Bobby Dwyer, who was Mike's number
(12:17):
one assistant at the time who'd come with him from Army,
came into the Omni, the old arena there which is
now long gone, and found me and Keith Drum who
was the sports editor of Durham Morning Herald at the
time and was probably the only member of the North
Carolina media who hadn't attacked Shashevsky and hadn't called for
(12:37):
him to be fired. North Carolina media then as now,
is made up largely of North Carolina graduates. School has
a great journalism school, and many, if not most, stay
in the state. Keith had also gone to North Carolina,
but he liked Shashevsky, liked and respected Dean Smith too,
but he likes Shashevsky and thought he was going to
be a great coach someday. Keith ended up being an
(13:00):
NBA scout, so his level of understanding of basketball was
different than most sports writers. So Dwyer came to the
press table where Keith and I were sitting and said,
when this game is over, you both need to come
with me back to our hotel. And we said why,
and he said, because Mickey, Mike's wife is in the
(13:20):
room crying because she's convinced they're going to get fired.
All the alumni and boosters have Tom Butters backed up
against a wall in the lobby, demanding that he fires
Sheshevsky immediately, and Mike is pacing around trying to figure
out who to kill first because he's so angry with everybody.
And so when the game was over, Keith and I
(13:43):
it was after midnight by then, got in a car
with Bobby and we drove to the perimeter of Atlanta
where Duke was staying and went to the hotel and
it was pouring down rain and we drove to a
Denny's nearby. It was Mike, it was Bobby, Keith, me,
Tom Mickle, the sports and information director, Keith's wife, Barbie,
(14:03):
and Johnny Moore, who was Tom Michel's assistant, and we
walked into the Dennys. We sat down and they gave
us water. And by now it's two in the morning
and Tom mikeel held up his glass and said, here's
two forgetting tonight, and Sheshevsky held up his glass and said,
here's to never blanking forgetting tonight. Blanking is one of
(14:26):
his favorite words for the record, and so we all
we didn't laugh because he was dead serious. And then
the discussion went on and Dwyer mentioned that Tom Sheehy,
who had verbally committed to Virginia very good player, might
be thinking twice about that commitment and maybe they could
get back involved and try to recruit Sheehy, and Sheshevsky
(14:50):
shook his head and said, no, no, First of all,
we don't do that. Second of all, if we can't
win next year with these four freshmen Alleri Billis Dawkins
and David Henderson and Tommy Amaker who was coming in
as the point guard, then we should get fired. And
in many ways that statement to me, having known Mike
(15:11):
for as long as I have, that's who Mike Chevski is.
It's never someone else's fault. Mike Chewski has always taken
the approach what did I do wrong? How do I
get better now? Some of that is his West Point training,
because when you're a plead at West Point and an
upperclassman speaks to you, you're allowed three answers, yes sir,
(15:32):
no sir, no excuse sir. And Shashevski's life has been
built on no excuse sir, I've never met a coach
who uses failure to his advantage more than Sischevski, and
that night was a perfect example. So the next year,
of course, with those five guys I mentioned, they went
twenty four and ten. They beat North Carolina with Michael
(15:55):
Jordan in the ACC Tournament, and that was the turnaround.
And you've been listen seeing to John Feinstein tell a
heck of a story about how coach Ka's career at
Duke almost didn't happen. After year three, still not winning.
At the heart of Tobacco Road, the heart of ACC
basketball country, Coach K loses to the University of Virginia
(16:18):
and Ralph Sampson's team by an epic, epic blowout one
O nine to sixty six. It does not get worse
than that. And losing it in of all places in
the ACC Tournament, everyone was sure that was it. The
boosters were coming after Coach K. Everyone was. The wife
was crying, and he was just mad. And who was
(16:38):
he mad at? He was mad at Coach K in
the end, and he was taking responsibility in ownership for
that loss as he was taught to do at West
Point three. Answers to a question at West Point by
an older person, and that is an older student. Folks,
when you're a freshman, a senior has to be addressed
(16:59):
as yes, sir, no sir, or no excuse sir. And
as John Feinstein said, no excuse sir, those were the
words that Coach K lived by. And by the way,
I love that scene in that Dennis. It's pouring rain
and there's one coach toasting to forgetting the game. And
what does coach K say, reflecting his true character, his
(17:20):
competitive nature and a little bit of his Irish Catholic well,
let us just say fanciful nature. With some swear words,
he says, here's to never blanking forgetting tonight, never forgetting,
and that's what animated coach K. That loss, that failure
drove so much of his life. When we come back
(17:40):
more of this remarkable piece of storytelling by the great
sportswriter John Feinstein. Here on our American story and we
(18:08):
continue with our American stories and with John Feinstein. Duke's
head basketball coach KA was almost fired in nineteen eighty three,
as we learned, but the following year he went twenty
four and ten. This was the turnaround season for coach
k Let's return to his friend and sportswriter of twenty
(18:28):
three New York Times bestsellers, including the one he wrote
about coach Ka the Legends Club Let's return to John Feinstein.
From there again, they made the tournament the next year,
and in nineteen eighty six they went thirty seven and three,
went to the national championship game lost, I will say
on a bad call. Chevski would never say that, but
(18:50):
I will, and became college basketball's next great dynasty. It's
my opinion that the only coach who you can put
ahead Shashefsky amount Rushmore is John Wooden. But five national championships,
thirteen Final four is more than Wooden even and ACC championships.
(19:10):
And I mean he went to twenty three sweet sixteens.
That's just stupid, twenty three and in every one of
them because in the old days, of course, you know,
before they expanded the tournament, conference champions went straight to
the sweet sixteen. But starting in nineteen eighty five, you
had to win two games to get to the sweet
(19:30):
sixteen and six to win the championships. So twenty three
sweet sixteens? Are you? I mean, Dean Smith, great coach longevity.
All that went to eighteen, which is a great number,
but the first three he didn't have to win a
game to get there because they once they won the
ACC they were in the sweet sixteen. So his numbers
are just ridiculous. Twelve hundred and five wins. I mean,
(19:53):
the numbers just go on and on and but to me,
the one thing about Sheshevsky that shouldn't be forgotten. He
went to his first Final four in nineteen eighty six.
He went to his last Final four thirty six years later,
in twenty twenty two. And think about how much college
basketball changed during those thirty six years. There was a
forty five second clock for the first year in nineteen
(20:16):
eighty six. There was no three point shot in nineteen
eighty six, there was no one had ever heard the
phase one and done in nineteen eighty six. And the game,
the way the game was played, has changed so much
since Mike first started coaching, which was an army in
nineteen seventy six, and he adapted. He kept saying, if
I want to continue to coach, I have to change.
(20:39):
Not I'm going to sit here and say it's terrible.
The change has taken place I'm like that myself. But
twenty twenty two is last year he goes to a
Final four with the youngest team he ever coached. So
I could see that in him very early on. I
really believed if gave him the time, he was going
(21:01):
to become a great coach. That night at Denny's was
sort of a key moment. In fact, so in nineteen
ninety one when they won the national championship for the
first time, I walked on the court after the game
and I walked up to Mike and I put out
my hand and I said, hey, congratulations, I'm so happy
for you. And he pulled me in and he said,
who'd come a long way from the blanking Denny's, havn't it?
(21:24):
And twenty years after that, I was working on a
book called One on One, which was sort of about
my experiences with the people I dealt with in my
first ten books. It was a professional semi memoir, and
one of the people, obviously I wanted to talk to
was Mike and I called him and I said, look,
next week, when you play at UNC Greensboro, you're going
(21:47):
to go past Dean Smith on the all time wins list.
And if you go back to those early days at Duke.
There's no way we would have ever thought about you
and Dean Smith in the same sentence much unless you're
going past Dean Smith. And I'd like to come down
and just hang out with you and talk to you
about those early days and things like that. And he said, sure,
come on down, meet me in my office at two thirty.
(22:08):
You can ride the bus to Greensboro with us. We'll
talk then, and once we get there we'll have time
in the locker room before the game starts. Do is
that okay for you? And I said great. So I
drove down to Durham and met two friends for lunch.
One was Bill Brill, who was also a Dude graduate,
and the other was Mike Craig, who's now the athletic
director at Saint John's, but back then he was kind
(22:29):
of a Shishevsky's man Friday. He was his chief fundraiser,
and if you watched Mike walk off a court after
a game, two feet behind him was Mike Craig at
all times. And so we went to lunch and Mike
Craig said, so, when are you going to talk to
Coach K And I saw on the bus going to Greensboro,
and he said, you came all the way down here
(22:51):
just to talk to him on a cell phone. And
I said, no, I'm gonna talk to him from the
next seat. And he said, no, no, no, no, you
misunderstood something. Nobody who's not part of the team rides
that bus except for Mickey. He said, I don't even
ride that bus, so you misunderstood something. So I walked
him through what Mike had said. I said, what did
I misunderstand? And he Mike Crick's shaking his head and
(23:12):
he goes, I don't understand it. Why would he let
you do that? Why would he let you do that?
And I said, because I was in the blanket Dennis
and that. And to this day, Mike will bring that
up to me when we're, you know, just talking about
how important that night was in his life. Mike will
tell you. And Dean Smith said the same thing about
his first three years at North Carolina that in today's world,
(23:35):
with social media, with the internet, with sports talk radio,
with twenty four hours sports networks, he probably would have
been fired by the end of his third year. That
you know, I got emails and tweets from North Carolina
fans during this past season when North Carolina was sixteen
and sixteen and seven, but they had just lost a
(23:57):
duke by twenty at home, saying, Hubert Davis can't do this,
Hubert Davis was the wrong guy. We gotta get rid
of Hubert Davis. Well, they ended up in the National
Championship Game and be twice along the way to get there.
So that's the way the world is today. It's knee
jerk reactions. It wasn't that way. There weren't nearly as
many games on television in those days. Sports talk radio
(24:18):
hadn't started yet. In nineteen eighty seven, wf AN was
the first all sports talk station in New York City.
There was no social media, there was no internet, so
Mike was able to fly pretty much under the radar
other than with Duke people during that time. And even then,
it took a lot of guts for Tom Butters to
(24:38):
stand by him throughout that period. And like I always,
I always say this to people that he's a better
guy than he was a coach. And that's a hell
of a statement if you think about it. But he's
still digging out right now from all the emails and
cards and letters and that he's gotten from people. He
said he had three thousand of them after the season ended,
(25:01):
and he wants to answer every one of them. And
the things that he's done for people that nobody knows about.
It goes on. The list goes on and on and
on and on. My brother had cancer twenty one years ago,
and he's also a dude graduate. And I called Mike
and I said, listen, would you mind giving my brother
(25:22):
a call, you know, because it would cheer him up
just to hear from you right now. Mike said sure,
So we called them and they were on the phone
for about an hour. And my brother is a typical fan,
you know, he knows better than the coach. So he said, coach,
can I give you some advice? And Mike said, yeah, sure, Bobby,
and he said, you need to play Casey Sanders more.
(25:44):
Casey Sanders was the backup center, and Mike said, okay,
I'll give that some thought. Well, in February, Carlos Boozer
got hurt, so Sanders became a starter while Boozer was out,
and then when Boozer came back, because they've been playing well,
continue to start. Although Boozer still got the bulk of
the minutes and when they won the national championship that year,
(26:06):
and to this day, my brother takes credit for that
national championship, and every once in a whildhood Columnisty Sheshevsky
should do this, and I'll say, here's his cell number,
you give McCall and tell him that. And a terrific
job on the production and the editing by Greg Hangler,
And a special thanks to John Feinstein for sharing this
(26:27):
remarkable story about his friend. And what a thing to
be able to say after years of writing sports is
that these weren't near subjects. You were writing about the friends,
and that shows the character and nature of John's work
and his commitment to telling the story of American sports
and the people who make it hum And it's a business,
but it's more than a business, my goodness. We learned
(26:47):
that from the passion from the fans, their knee jerk
reactions to losses. It's overwhelming. I listened to sports talk
radio sometimes and I just pity any head coach of anything.
The relentless criticism and the desire for immediate gratification is
almost unrelenting. And how to manage it in today's environment
will kudos to the people who do. And that night
(27:08):
at Denny, that's stuck with Coach K all the way through.
He never did forget John Feinstein, the story of Coach
K and how his career almost didn't happen. Here at
our American Stories. This is our American stories. We like
(27:40):
to think that we know our hometowns like the back
of our own hands. But do we Our next story
is about the famous and important visitors who were forgotten
to time, but who made an impact on one particular
American city in Ohio. Here's our own Monty Montgomery with
the story hometowns. They're the places we know best. We've
(28:06):
grown up there, after all, every street corner has a story.
Even if we've left. We know how to get around.
We even know who lives where. But do we know
who's visited? Ted Long of Holy Toledo History, Sure does,
and he wrote a book about them. But why so?
My name's Ted Long and I've been around the local
(28:29):
history scene here in Toledo for twenty years. Years ago,
got started doing day long regional tours for Leadership Toledo
class of like fifty young executives that you want to
learn more about their community, and that kind of sucked
me into all the different local history stories. As I
took them around the community and told those stories, I
got more and more intrigued. And the idea for the
(28:52):
book Forgotten Visitors really came from just kind of a
serendipitous thing that I was reading a story in the
New York Times and it was essentially a theme about
Wyatt Earp and in it, and he talked about the
Willard Dempsey heavyweight championship fight that happened in Toledo in
(29:15):
nineteen nineteen, and how when Jack Dempsey stepped into the
ring to start that fight, he looked out in the
crowd and saw Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson taking guns
from the tough guys in the crowd. And I was
blown away. I mean, I'm just stunned, Like I had
no idea these two icons from the Old West ever
(29:38):
visited Toledo. But on top of that, I never would
have imagined they did it together in nineteen nineteen. So
I started to scratch my head and think, you know
what other visitors came through this area that you don't
know about, that you've never heard about. One that I
feel is really fascinating is the Mark Twain Store. You know,
(30:00):
it's not surprising to me that Mark Twain visited Toledo. Frankly,
it's kind of makes sense in terms of him traveling
the Midwest and promoting his books. But what's interesting it
was eighteen sixty nine, so it was really early in
his writing career. You know. It was at a time
too where he was pretty still unsure of himself. And
(30:25):
the real twist in that chapter is his own fear
of visiting Toledo and making a presentation because it was
the hometown of David Ross Locke, whose pen name was
Petroleum V. Nasby, and Nasby at that time was probably
the most famous newspaper columnist in the United States, and
(30:49):
Locke had recently purchased the Toledo Blade newspaper and was
running out of Toledo his weekly column. And so if
you read the letters that Twain was writing to his
future wife and some of his partners, he was really
worried about coming here and then having to perform in
(31:09):
front of an audience that's very familiar with Petroleum V. Nasby.
He ends up, he hits a home run, does a
fantastic job, but afterwards he writes these letters where he's
all of a sudden cocky and he's real sure of
himself that you know, he really brought the house down
in Nasby's hometown, and that really made him proud of himself.
(31:31):
And he wrote this commediately after his performance in Toledo.
He said, it was splendid tonight. The Great Hall was crowded,
full of the pleasantest and handsomest people, and I did
the very best I possibly could, and I did better
than I ever did before. And then he says, I
felt the importance of the occasion, for I knew that
(31:52):
this being Nasby's residence, every person in the audience would
be comparing and contrasting me with him, and I'm sad
as fied with the performance. Eventually, he's offered a position
at the Toledo Blade, and there's another letter where he
writes to his mother and explains, you know, he's just
not sure what he wants to do next, including taking
(32:12):
up Nasby's offer to move to Toledo and write for
the Toledo Blade. You know, his decision not to take
that job was probably the best thing that could have
happened for the writer's world and the reader's world, because
he went on to write such great books. So that's
that's an interesting chapter that has a twist you wouldn't expect.
You know, Mark Twain visits Toledo, so what Then you
(32:32):
get the backstory and you find out there's really a
lot to it. And then there's the story of Wrong
Way Corrigan. I fell in love with Wrong Way Corrigan
when I started to research that story. I was aware
of the idea of Wrong Way Corrigan, but I wasn't
really sure what the whole story was. He was a
pilot who had actually worked on the Lindberg project, and
(32:56):
you know, as a as a workman, and then the
meantime was lying at night, and he had the idea
that he wanted to fly from the East Coast to Ireland,
and he particularly wanted to go to Ireland to pay
tribute to his family's background. And he builds this monstrosity
of an airplane that people called a Frankenstein. He took
(33:18):
pieces and parts from all these different planes and he
builds this monstrosity and he was not able to get licensed.
He kept submitting requests for this big trip, and they
kept the aviation administration kept turning him down, and finally
I think as you read into the story, they felt
sorry enough for him that they said, look, we'll give
you a cross country license. So he was given license
(33:41):
to fly from California to New York and back. And
he flies to New York and decides to take off
from New York supposedly go to California, makes a wrong
turn and ends up in Ireland. And that's how he
got the nickname Wrong Way Corrigan. And of course, as
you read into this, you'll find that he was a
pretty sharp guy and he didn't make a wrong turn
(34:02):
at all. He knew exactly what he was doing. I
found out just weeks after he came back from Ireland
he had a ticker tape parade in New York that was,
they say, bigger than Lindbergh's. He did end up flying
into Toledo for a quick luncheon and then back out
to the airport for his next trip. Another famous visitor
to Toledo Harry Houdini himself, whose trip became quite instrumental
(34:27):
in the development of his daring Feats of Escape later on. Well,
Houdini's an interesting subject because he was in Toledo quite often. Frankly,
it came here early on in his career with his brother,
right after they had first appeared at the Chicago World's
Fair and then had many many appearances here at several
of our theaters. Interestingly, there's an unpublished biography that he
(34:51):
wrote in which he described his most harrowing or most
difficult escape, and he said it happened in Toledo, where
he he had the Toledo Boiler Company come and essentially
welled him into a boiler on a stage, and then
he escaped. It took him ninety minutes that night. When
he got back to his hotel, he wrote in the diary,
(35:13):
he has to find some other big trick because this
one's just taking too much out of him. And he
went on to say that that was his most difficult
trick and it happened in Toledo. The other thing that
happened in Toledo that's interesting is he started off working
with his brother but eventually runs into his wife in
New York. She becomes his lifelong partner. As the Houdini's
(35:34):
and early in their career they were having difficulties of
people were looking at different types of entertainment and they
weren't really attracted to the magic kind of act that
Houdini was doing, and frankly, he was shut down in
a Toledo show halfway through there weren't enough tickets sold.
And he tells the story of being totally dejected and
(35:57):
heading back home, thinking he may just quit the business entirely.
And it was right at that time that he runs
into this Minnesota based production giant who convinces him, you've
got to change your program, move into these big, bold escapes,
and you know that became, you know, the Houdini that
we all know today. And it turns out, when you
(36:20):
research your city enough, you'll find out what makes it
so interesting and special in the first place. I learned
a lot of different things, but the one thing that
I think really stuck with me was that Toledo was
really an important transportation center. Quite a few of these
visitors came through Toledo because of its size. It was
good size city, but many of them showed up here
(36:42):
because it was unavoidable. You know, you were if you're
on your way from Chicago to New York, you're gonna
stop in Toledo. If you're on your way from Detroit
to Pittsburgh, you're gonna come through Toledo. All the railroads.
You know, we were at one time second only to
Chicago and the number of railroads coming in to town
in the country, and that played a big part not
only and who visited here, but who moved here. And
(37:03):
it says a lot about kind of that whole idea
of you know, the mixed bag of Americans that came
to the Toledo area and made up you know, what
we have today, which I think gives Toledo its signature flavor.
It's a city with a lot of variety and a
lot of cultures and I think that's still today. What
(37:25):
makes it for me a great place to work, live
and play. And great job on the production and the
story to Monty Montgomery and also thanks to Ted Long.
By the way, send your stories about your towns to
our American Stories dot com. We want to hear them.
And again our American Stories dot Com. Ted Long, He's
(37:50):
stories of famous Toledo visitors and that's everyone from Mark
Twain to Houdini here on our American Story
Host
Lee Habeeb
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