September 4, 2024 • 76 mins
The legendary sports commentator tells tales of his career beginnings with Muhammad Ali, his intimate friendship with Mike Tyson and more.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Our Way with yours truly Paul Anka and my buddy
Skip Bronson, is a production of iHeartRadio. Hi, folks, this
is Paul Anka.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
And my name is Skip Bronson.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
We've been friends for decades and we've decided to let
you in on our late night phone calls by starting
a new podcast, and.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Welcome to Our Way. We'd like you to meet some
real good friends of ours.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Your leaders in entertainment and.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Sports, innovators in business and technology, and even a sitting
president or two.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
Join us as we ask the questions they've not been
asked before, tell it like it is, and even sing
a song or two.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
This is our podcast and we'll be doing it our way.
Speaker 4 (00:46):
Well, it was a great life with Holly from the
start in nineteen seventy seven up until his passing, obviously,
but a great public life with him as well, having
been able to do all those interviews and have such
close proximity and to just learned so much from him,
see how he treated people, have so much fun with
all the magic tricks that he did, and just a
(01:07):
lifetime of experiences. And I love him, I'm grateful to him.
I'll never forget him. You'd just always being a special
thing in my heart that you know. It was like
hitting the lottery.
Speaker 5 (01:26):
How was dinner? Dinner was great?
Speaker 6 (01:28):
And thanks for calling me just before I decided to
close my eyes.
Speaker 5 (01:32):
You closing your eyes. That could have it at any
moment in twenty four hours, your early bird. You know what.
Speaker 6 (01:37):
I can never nap. You know, I always admire people
who can nap. They can take a power nap and
they wake up and they're refreshed. I literally can never nap,
can't sleep on a plane, can't nap.
Speaker 5 (01:48):
I'm there, I'm there with you. But you will as
you get older. Watch you hate you, don't haties. I
want to get older. That's part of the layer. You
know what I realized my last birthday. I didn't think
that getting older came so fast, very pissed off. How
you like it? Football man, we're getting there, aren't we? Yeah?
Speaker 6 (02:08):
I know, getting getting ready. We had before his preseason
in the works, and you and I are gonna talk
to getting our pits from James Carville on one end,
and then your guys in Vegas on the other end,
and we're gonna figure out what to do and we're
gonna bust them.
Speaker 5 (02:23):
There's our guests coming up, mister sportsman Jim Gray.
Speaker 6 (02:28):
How excited he's interviewed everybody. I mean, he's had a
long career in his mid sixties. We not only football
and sports and all of that look good and deella,
he said Armstrong John Glenn Garba Chev. I mean he's
mixed the pot up. I can't wait because you have
so many stories, you know, with Ali, and he has
(02:49):
some rather amazing Ali stories. So to be fun for
the two of you to sort of banter a little
bit about the great Muhammad Ali Andy and then Mike Tyson. Yeah,
and Tyson fifty eight years old and still going at it.
He has that big exhibition fight coming up with Jake Paul.
Speaker 5 (03:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (03:07):
They think that's going to set records in terms of
you know, the number one's watch it. So, you know,
I want to get his take on what they're like
away from sports. It's I mean, we know what Ali accomplished,
we know what Tyson did, and the irony of it
is they're two totally different people, but there are I
believe some similarities as well. So I think to talk
(03:30):
to him about the human side of these guys will
be fun. And he just came back from the Olympics,
so he'll be able to talk, like to hear his
take on how he thinks they did in pair is
in terms of staging it and everything house and talk
about that.
Speaker 5 (03:43):
Yeah, he is absolutely everywhere. So I'm looking forward to it.
I think would be very informal. He's a smart guy
and he's he's an icon and what he does.
Speaker 6 (03:53):
He wrote a best selling book, Talking to Goats, Yeah,
and Tyson's all over the first chapter. And then of
course he and Tom Brady have this podcast that's that's
done very well, so he certainly knows this business. There's
so much to talk to him about from one end
of the spectrum to the other, so that it'd be
an interesting interview. It'd be hard to hard to hold
him to an hour, because we've been able to keep
(04:14):
everybody to an hour.
Speaker 5 (04:15):
But you know, it never happens with us, very rarely, doesn't.
We have more than enough good stuff, good problem to have.
But I'm looking forward to it. So, were you itching
to get back on the road. Yeah, you know, busy.
We're doing the dock promotion. Now, where is that gonna
burst appear in the Toronto Film Festival. Yeah, we're premiering
in there at a big theater. When is that September? Oh,
(04:38):
that's so oh wow. Yeah, that's right around the corner.
So I'm looking forward to that. And then I start.
I had to road October, November and January and then
Florida and februarymast. You know, I love getting out there.
I just it's my rest period. When I'm on that stage.
Nothing bothers you on, no phone calls, nothing. He's doing
what you love. I know you love it. And then
getting back to the dock because you know you showed
(05:01):
it to me. You know, I've seen segments of it. Jesus,
it's really good. I have to say, it's really a good documentary.
Thank you a lot of it. Since I said that
you it's going to work in progress, morphing it. You know,
it's the first time I'm sick of looking at myself
and those things. But well, we're gonna finish it up
and you know, we'll see what happens. It was good.
It was a lot of fun, good people working with it,
(05:22):
and it was cathartic to say the least. Right right,
all right, my boy, all right, brother, all my boy,
get some sleep and dianks talk and I lived Eadie
and we'll see you next week have our usual break
bread session. Talk to you.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
So there's the man right there, there he is. Man.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
Are you doing, Jim?
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Oh?
Speaker 4 (05:53):
Great, good to see you, Paul Skipper? How hard you pal?
Speaker 2 (05:56):
I'm all right.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Well we got you on the other side of the fence. Man,
you and Brak you're usually wrapping it up pretty good.
Now you're gonna get nailed today.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
Nicely.
Speaker 4 (06:05):
How you doing, I'm doing great? Thank you. Where are
you today?
Speaker 1 (06:08):
I'm in Los Angeles. Skippy is about twelve miles away.
Speaker 4 (06:11):
And where are you in the palace?
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Eight? Oh?
Speaker 1 (06:13):
So you're a neighbor to all of us.
Speaker 4 (06:16):
Local local, Yes, sir, Do.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
You remember the first time we met? Because I do.
I mean, you've had such an amazing.
Speaker 4 (06:20):
Career and you've I met you.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
You've went, that's right, Steve Win's office next time. Do
you remember Yellowstone?
Speaker 4 (06:26):
Yep?
Speaker 2 (06:27):
Sure.
Speaker 4 (06:27):
Do they look like I'm not paying attention, mister Eka.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
No, No, You're always paying attention. I've seen you on
both sides of the battle and the ring with some
of those animals.
Speaker 7 (06:36):
Well, Jim and I have known each other forty years.
Sorry to hear that The thing that's funny is our
producer Jordan, who's not on today but whenever we have
a guest, of course, and you've got your own podcast,
so you know, talking to you about how to run
a podcast sort of funny. But he, you know, always
sends us some questions like these are topics that you
(06:57):
should talk about whatever. And I'm lait of myself because
this is one of the only podcasts that we've done
so far where I don't even have to look at
the questions because I've got so much history with you.
It's just so many funny things. But I think at
one thing out of the way quickly. My daughter Bella
wanted me to remind you that you took us to
the Floyd Mayweather birthday party and they had tigers and
(07:22):
the giant ice carvings and the whole and what an
extravagnswer that was.
Speaker 4 (07:26):
You're the Staples Center in that in that hotel.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Hilarious she saw.
Speaker 7 (07:29):
She said, yeah, they have tigers here walking around, and.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Bella, without a doubt, not even in the.
Speaker 4 (07:39):
Entire building I'm talking about.
Speaker 7 (07:40):
There were thousands of people, really something. It was a
hell of a party, a lot of fun I.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Hear this guy's a prankster just like us.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
Skip.
Speaker 4 (07:48):
He is not like you. I've heard about you.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
Oh yeah, all True told.
Speaker 4 (07:52):
Me something the ones that you did it. Steve told
me of one you did too.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Steve, one of twelve. But I want to hear about Jim,
so I want to hear what he does. I want
to see if he's up on my Did you ever
pull anything on Skip?
Speaker 2 (08:02):
I don't think so.
Speaker 7 (08:02):
But one thing he did pull which wasn't a prank,
and it's one of our favorite stories that we have together.
As our mutual friend, the late Mel Simon was very
important in both of our lives. And of course Jim
and I we wrestle over who's closer to herb Simon
between the two of us. But Mel was such a kook,
and he was such a golf fanatic. And you know, Paul,
(08:24):
some billionaires they'd build their own nine hole golf course
at their home. Others built an eighteen whole golf course. Well,
Mel built a twenty seven whole golf course his property
in Indianapolis, and Jim and I went there to play it.
And we went in the garage and Jim said, seen
anything like this? I said, never in my life, and
(08:45):
I've been a golfer all my life.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
I've never seen it like this.
Speaker 7 (08:48):
He had more sets of clubs, Paul in this garage
than they have at the Roger Dunn Golf Superstory. You've
never seen anything like it. And two days after we
played mel what there?
Speaker 2 (09:00):
You know? Went out to play golf and he calls
me up and goes.
Speaker 4 (09:04):
Yeah, your trench and right, what about?
Speaker 7 (09:06):
He stalled like clubs? I said, what what are you
talking like? He's stalled like clubs?
Speaker 4 (09:11):
My clubs.
Speaker 7 (09:11):
I had a set of Yanak sirns, and they're gone.
He must have taken him. I said, what are you crazy?
The last he's got his own golf clubs. What does
he need your clubs for? And by the way, you've
got thousands of golf clubs. How would you even know?
He was just one of the great characters.
Speaker 4 (09:31):
There must have been seven hundred golf clubs in there.
And by the way, Skip had given me a set
of Yannis, but I don't travel with them to Indianapolis.
During the NBA Finals, out there and Larry walked through
the fence, he had the same fence line playing with
this golf. Skip calls me, he says, did you take
those golf clubs back to Los Angeles? I said, Skip,
I have not checked a bag for the last twenty
(09:53):
two years on the airlines, and the last one I
checked they're still looking for. So no, without without question,
I do not have this man's golf clubs, and I think.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
They're on the golf cart.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
I just left Dennis Washington. He's got an island up
in British Columbia called Stuart Island, and I've known him
in Phyllis for years. So we go up to the
island and he's got a nine hole golf course. Trent Jones,
I said, Dennis, how the hell did you do this?
He said, I just blasted my way through everything. He
(10:29):
blasted this island. It's unbelievable what he's done with this
ninety acres and in the middle of it, he's got
this nine hold. It's just amazing, amazing. I think Callaway
helped them with it, and they did some kind of
a documentary, but I've never seen anything like it. Well,
you know, Dennis, he does it right, Skip, He's a
good guy. You must know, Kevin, right, Jim.
Speaker 4 (10:50):
Yeah, sure, I've been to Dennis's house a couple times.
And Kevin. Kevin's so much fun. He's truly that guy's
had everything that can happen in life. He's experienced nine times.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
I was there with him from the age eight on
when I met that family. I almost raised those two kids.
I got him into Sherwood out here, which was a task.
Speaker 4 (11:09):
But the question is have you been able to keep
him in?
Speaker 2 (11:11):
Sure?
Speaker 1 (11:12):
I didn't even want to go there, but there were
something those two they're great, they're great kids.
Speaker 4 (11:16):
He lives on Riviera, and we got him in Riviera
on the condition, on the condition that he overlooks let
me see what is that. I think it's the seventh
hole or the eighth hole, one of those two. I'm
not sure. Seventh hole. And he last this music and
they said to him, you know, we can hear the
music in the clubhouse, so you might want to consider
(11:36):
turning that down at least, you know, maybe seven hours
of the day. So Kevin turned off music and he's
a member.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Now Lee's up to some good stuff. Now you do
it very well. You know, you've you've you've interviewed so
many people. Man, you've got an amazing career. But this
guy behind me, I don't know if you can see
the picture of Ali up there, I mean you and
I know he's probably the most recognizable human on the
planet at one point. And he used to come to
(12:03):
my dressing room at Caesar's, and the side of him
that I saw on I know that you saw was
just amazing to be in his company. Forget about how
smart he was. And you know, I'd go to dinner
parties and he'd be sitting there and somebody'd be blabbing
on for about twenty thirty minutes. He lift his head up,
go yeah, right, Japan was out of line, and we
(12:24):
did the right thing. I mean, he'd make one comment, right, Jim,
and then go back into listening. But he'd come into
my dressing rooms gift, and you know he loved music.
He loved music. And you can imagine listen all of
us in life, and Jim, you can attest to this.
You meet that one person and it's like you can't
even open your mouth. And it's happened to me a
(12:45):
couple of times, and he was one of them. But
he'd come in the dressing room at Caesar's and he said, hey, Polly,
you know I love that lonely boy. I'm just a
lonely boy. And I had to listen to three minutes
of lonely boy and I could never tell him it
wasn't the best version. But what a guy. But give
me some stuff on him, because you probably have more
(13:07):
than I did. You ever know when he was with
the there's a company out of Australia, Jim that really
looked after him. They made boxes and he did a
lot of work for them. Yeah, they made the Pratt family.
Is that ring a bell?
Speaker 2 (13:21):
No?
Speaker 4 (13:21):
No, But I knew him quite well and got to travel.
But you know, you just kind of stopped me in
my tracks with that. You know, I've been lucky to,
you know, do all these interviews and meet all these
people and last ten presidents of the United States, and
Ali was my first interview. And I'll tell you that
in a second. But only one time in my life
did I meet somebody where I got goosebumps. I couldn't
(13:45):
talk and I was just so so amazed. I was
with the late Gary Shandling, who was a dear friend,
and we were in a restaurant Tuscano, and we were
eating dinner and I still get chills telling this. Carol
Burnett and Carol Burnett came in and came over to
the table, and there was my whole childhood right there
(14:06):
in front of me. And I watched her. Obviously, we
watched the Jackie Gleeson Show, and there were some other
big stars, but like Carol Burnett was Saturday night to me.
My parents would go out, I'd have a babysitter, and
my brothers would be there. We looked forward to seeing
her and Tim Conway and just all those folks come on.
And there she was right in front of me. And
about two minutes into it, Gary said, Jim, this is
(14:29):
the first time I've seen you can't say anything. And
my wife friend was with me and Skip and Paul
I said, you know what, I'm speechless because that's just
how great you are. And she was so nice. She
put her arm around me. She sat there and talked.
That was it. It wasn't you know. Sounds silly to say,
(14:49):
but it wasn't President Bush or Nelson Mandela or Muhammad Ali.
I literally could not talk when I saw cal Burnett.
And so when I wrote my book Talking to Goats,
I had several people do some voiceovers. So I called
her on a whim having just met her that one
time I got her number and she was in Santa
barber and I said, would you read this last chapter?
(15:10):
It's about you. The final portion of my book is
about you and meeting you. And she did it, and
she sang, I'm so glad we had this time together.
And I just thought, Wow. And you just never know
who's going to impact you in that way. And Skip,
I'm sure you've had it. And Paul, you've met everybody
in your life, but Carol Burnett and I just would
have never ever thought that, you know, having interviewed Borbachoufsen
(15:34):
so many of these folks, this is the one where
I was going to be so stupefied. I was just
so enamored. And guess what she lived up to it all.
Speaker 7 (15:42):
She exceeded what was in my head. I had that
happen to me because of you. I had that experience
because Jim had arranged for Steve Whinn and his great
friend Julie is serving and I had to go to
the Masters to watch the tournament one year, and he
arranged for us to be up in the tower right
by the fifteenth Green that overlooks the fifteenth Green. Paul
(16:05):
the par five and the sixteenth team the par three,
and Jim was, you know, of course, working the tournament,
and we were up, way up in the air in
this tower, and Steve Wynn, who as we know, you know,
had challenges with his eyes, was having difficulty, you know,
really seeing what we were seeing, of course, but he
(16:27):
would say to me once in a while, he'd say,
who's coming up now? And I'd say Ray Floyd, and
Steve would yell out, Raymond, Hey, Ray, it's Steve Wynn
in the middle of the masters, right, And everybody is like,
oh my god, what's going on with this?
Speaker 2 (16:42):
Are you kidding me?
Speaker 7 (16:43):
I mean, you know, this is hallowed ground, and he's
yelling out the names of these people. So make a
long story short, the next day, Jim arranged for us
to watch the tournament inside the broadcast truck, whereas you
both know, they have like forty monitors and you're in
this very dark space and the only light is coming
from the monitors. And as we're looking at the at
(17:07):
the monitors and we're sitting there and it's surreal for
me that I'm with doctor j Right, He's on one
side of me, and there's a person sitting to my right.
But it's so dark in here you can't make out
anybody's face or anything. And I figured I want to
be in here for the next four hours. So she
just introduced myself. So I just took my hand and
I put it over and stuck it out, and I
(17:29):
put my hand down and said, Hi, I'm Skip Bronson,
and the guy said, Hi, Mickey Mantle. I just literally understand.
I grew up in Hertford, Connecticut, big Yankees fan. Mickey
Mantle was my idol. I had Mickey Mantle plastered in
my pictures of him in my room, and everything was
about my old essence was about Mickey Mantle. And now
(17:49):
all of a sudden, I mean, I to your point, Paul,
I was you know, Ahamed Ahamad Ahameda.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
It was just.
Speaker 7 (17:56):
Unbelievable and he was great. And then you know, when
when it was over. Of course we have time later
we'll tell the story about Steve trying to direct the
Master's golf tournament.
Speaker 4 (18:07):
Like, oh, I want to ask you a question. I
know it's my nature. I want to ask you a question.
Has that ever happened to you when somebody has met
you and they just became in such awe that they
couldn't they didn't know what to do.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
Vice versus all I'd remember, you know, I don't. I
can't really recall anyone with that kind of posturing. To me,
it happened also with Sophia Lauren and Elizabeth Taylor. But no, no,
I've done it. I mean recently a couple of years
ago with Putin. But you know, as much as he
was only in awe in the way that Jim. You know,
(18:44):
these guys are on a whole political vibe, and they
treat businessmen and politicians with a certain kind of restraint.
But when they meet celebrity, and a lot of guys,
you know, a lot of the guys with money that
I've met, because they're only interested in me because of celebrity,
but they act differently. And to see Putin, who had
heard so much about open up and have this great
(19:06):
smile and gracious output to you one. You know, all
most of these guys love my way. You know, we're
all narcissistic in one way or egotistical, but my way,
for somehow has blessed me with a neclectic rat of fans.
And my way to him was like everything, And when
I sang it to him. You could see the kind
of unusual glow in his face. And then we went
(19:26):
to the Ermitage Museum and in Russia, and he was
treating me very much like I was with you know,
a coach at the great football team, like Eddie de Bartolo,
you know, our dear friend Eddie. We all love Eddie.
The only instance where I saw it was with him.
I was and you know, he sat down and he
played Fats Domino's Blueberry Hill at the piano. I couldn't
fuck and believe it put singer Bloberry Hill almost is English.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
Not good.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
But I didn't tell him that. He had a few
people around him and it would be what you assume
it would be in terms of the atmosphere. It wasn't good,
and we all got through it, but it was just
an experience with everyone I've met all over the world too. Finally,
and I've been over there a few times to really
(20:11):
get the vibe of what's going on there, and you
walk away understanding a lot of things. But as I
said to me, it was Sophia Lauren and Elizabeth Taylor.
And that's a whole other story, but let's talk about
you can you tap into Ali a little more. I
loved him. I mean, I just thought he was an amazing,
amazing human being, and I'm a big fan of his.
Speaker 4 (20:32):
So I was seventeen years old and nineteen seventy seven,
and I was a sports interned for the ABC Bureau
ABC station in Denver, and I was a freshman in college,
and they were converting Skip and Paul from film to
video tape. So all of the union guys took the buyout.
(20:53):
They didn't want to learn a new craft. So I
became a videotape editor at seventeen years of age, graduated
from an internship very quickly, and they were paying me
fifteen thousand dollars. Fifteen thousand dollars to me in nineteen
seventy seven was more money than I thought I'd have
the rest of my life, because I bought a car
for two thousand dollars, a gold Toyota Corolla, and then
(21:14):
I would buy a keg of beer for everybody in
the dorm on my haull on Friday nights. And I
still had and I still would have twelve eight hundred
dollars left at the end of the year. This was
a lot of money. So I was a videotape editor.
What happened was I would come into the station early
to edit the sports videotape. And I was there at
seven am one morning and in come running the bureau
(21:38):
assignment editor station assignment editor. Her name was Sue Two's
and she said, you know something about sports? She were
the sports intern. I said yeah. She said, Muhammad Ali's
at two hours early at Stapleton International Airport, go interview. Well,
I was dressed worse than this. I had jeans and
a T shirt on. You know, it wasn't dressed very well.
I was in a cubicle edited booth. Cubicles were very
very small, and so I was in there and I
(22:01):
was getting ready for the Broncos draft and I was
editing something with Their coach at the time was a
man named Red Miller. He took him to their first
Super Bowl. So she came running in. He said, Stapleton
International Airport, go interview. I'd never done an interview before
in my life. I never thought about doing an interview
before in my life. I'd watch Howard Cosell and I'd
watch all of these guys. But you know, so now,
(22:23):
back then there's no cell phones, there's no beepers if
the reporter wasn't available at seven am, if they're in
the shower, if they're eating breakfast, if they're out for
a run. There was nobody there, so I was the
only one in the station. So I went out there
and there was Ali. There was about twenty people in
the room, and I asked my first question and he said,
you're doing this interview you don't even shape and everybody
(22:45):
started to laugh. Well that really relaxed me, and you know,
it was funny. By the third or fourth question, he said,
you sound like the local Howard Cosell, and that was
the nicest compliment I'd added in my life. So he
gave me forty five minutes, forty five.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
Minute, forty five minutes wow.
Speaker 4 (23:02):
Getting ready to fight Leon Spinks in their first fight,
and that he was upset. Then after that he was
going to fight a man named Lyle l Alzado in
Denver who was at Denver Bronco in an exhibition. Well
that's why he had come through Denver and he was early.
So we did forty five minutes and we talked about
everything and it went great, and I came back to
the station to edit myself out because they're not going
to put me on the news. I'm seventeen years old.
(23:22):
I've never done it. So I was just editing myself out.
The head of the bureau, the head of the station,
a man named Roger Ogden, came into the booths, and
Roger didn't even know my name. And he looked at
this tape for forty five minutes and he said, play
that again. So we looked at it for an hour
and a half and he got up and he said, Jim,
you and this videotape are going on the air. It's
(23:44):
barely adequate. Barely adequate. So somehow, some way, Paul and
Skip when I got into the Boxing Hall of Fame
forty years later and then into the Basketball Hall of
Fame forty two years later, I said, somehow barely ended
up here. So they took that tape and put it
on the air. And back in the days, ABC stations
(24:07):
were all connected by cable, by cabling AT and T
and so forth, and they put this on ABC and
then they had df ABC daily electronic feed where the
stations would connect and send their best in. Well, there
was a man by the name you remember, Frank Reynolds,
he anchored World News Tonight, and Frank Reynolds saw Ali
(24:29):
having fun with a seventeen year old young kid, so
he put it on World News Tonight. Ali saw that
when he got to Houston, his next stop, and saw
how much fun had got in the reaction that had
got and so then he had me come interview and
before and after each of his remaining fights for the
rest of his career. Don King saw it, Bob Aaron
saw it. So they hired me as a very young man,
(24:51):
and that was the start of my career. It was
all because of Ali. And make a long story short,
Ali let me do his last interview ever on television.
The last time he ever spoke to the public was
in two thousand and four. Was his last television interview.
I called Lannie and Muhammad, and we took Muhammad with
Mary Lourettin, who revolutionized women's sports with her nineteen eighty
four performance, Ray Leonard, who pattered his whole life sugar
(25:14):
Ray Leonard, after Ali, and Carl Lewis, who to this
day is still the most decorated track and field athlete
in the history of the Olympics, and the four of
us went up to the Stanford Pool four nights before
Michael Phelps left for Athens Grease. He had not won
a medal yet and he didn't feel that he belonged
on the show. He is now the most decorated athlete
(25:35):
in the history of the Olympics with I believe twenty
three gold medals and twenty nine medals overall. And so
now they play that show back every year. But that
was the last show that Ali ever did. And in
the final segment of the show, we had these torches
flown in. Ali had lit the torch obviously in Atlanta.
We had the torches flown in from Athens, and Ali
got up and said, and these were the last words
(25:56):
he ever uttered in public on television. He said, I'm
the greatest, You're the latest. Go win all those medals.
It's up to you. And he handed the torch to
Michael Phelps.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
Great story.
Speaker 4 (26:10):
So it was a great life with Ali from the
start in nineteen seventy seven up until his passing, obviously,
but a great public life with him as well, having
been able to do all those interviews and have such
close proximity and to just learn so much from him,
see how he treated people, have so much fun with
all the magic tricks that he did, and just a
(26:31):
lifetime of experiences. And I love him. I'm grateful to him.
I'll never forget him. I love Lonnie and it just
always be a special thing in my heart that it
was like hitting the lottery, but literally was like hitting
the lottery one and one hundred million chants of the
circumstance and the confluence of events that would take place
(26:53):
to intertwine this web was just the luckiest thing ever.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
I'm surrounded with memorabilia for these past sixty some years,
and you know, like behind me, I treasured this picture
with Bobby Hull Gretzky or right behind it all signed right,
and I've got all over there, some big hockey nut.
You must have all kinds of stuff. What's the most precious,
what's the most meaningful piece of memorability? Because we live
(27:29):
in that world today from baseball cards, I mean, it's
such a big business today, and I'm always curious who
the collectors are. What do you have that means a
lot to you?
Speaker 4 (27:39):
Well, I have so much, believe it or not. Last
time I saw you was at the Fountain Blue Hotel.
That's right. And when Jeffrey and Donnie Sofer opened it
up in Las Vegas, beautiful, beautiful facility, and Tom Brady
and myself for opening up a museum called the Hall
of Excellence. Going to open up just after the first
of the year, and it's going to have all the
great sports memorabilia in our country's history, in the world's history,
(28:01):
all of Tom's rings and jerseys, all the stuff that
I've collected over the years, gloves that Ali gave me
from his fight, his last Rowe Jordan's shoes from his
first championship, and it's all going into the Fountain Blue
Hotel called the Hall of Excellence, the gim and fran
Gray tom Brady Family Collection Hall of Excellence, and really
really proud of this. But what we've done, Tom calls
(28:22):
it the Smithsonian of Sports Memorabilia. What we've done is
get all of this stuff out of people's safe deposit boxes,
out of people's warehouses, all the stuff that people you know,
are selling at auction, and we're going to display in
the hotel. Kids will be free and we're going to
try and inspire the next generation. So we have some
(28:45):
things for everybody. We have Simone Biles first Gold Medal Leotard.
We have a trophy from everything that is competed for
in life, Paul, everything that you can think of is
competed for in life. We have Clint Eastwood's Academy Award,
Oprah Winfrey's Medal of Freedom. We have Ernie els Claric Jug,
Tom Weiskoff's Claret Jug. We have Jack Nicholas's Master's Trophy.
(29:09):
We have Adam Silver gave us the O'Brien Trophy, Bill
Belichick's Lombardi Trophy, you name it, we have it in their.
Pete Sampras has given us as Wimbledon Trophy, his US
Open Trophy, the Wimbledon dish from Steffi Graff and Andre Agassi,
the Aces Championship trophy from Las Vegas. You name it,
(29:29):
we've got it in here. And justin Timberlake's first Grammy.
So what we're trying to do is allow everybody to
come in. We have the Triple Crown horse Racing from
Augie Phipps and from the Churchill Downs winning colors. So
if you come in here, you're gonna see something and
you're going to be inspired by somebody. Jordan's shoes from
(29:52):
his first championship Jordan's first pair of air Jordan's Babe
roots bat from his calt shot. So we have the
first all from Tiger Woods winning the Masters. So when
you say what do I have, that's a favorite. All
of these things were given to me over the course
of years, and then we have on loan from many
of these athletes to participate. We have the torch. We
(30:14):
just got the torch from Janet Evans who lit all
these torch that very famous scene. Janet Evans one of
the great great swimmers in history of the swimming gold
medalist obviously in Atlanta and Barcelona, and she has agreed
to loan it to us. We have something for everybody.
(30:35):
Katie Lidnecki, Katie Lidecki sent us when she just broke
the championship, but the World World Championships. She sent us
her goggle and cap, the USA cap and the whole thing.
So it's really got to be something. And obviously Tom
has seven rings and all of his jerseys.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
And did Peter Arnell have anything to do with putting.
Speaker 5 (30:54):
It all together?
Speaker 4 (30:55):
Oh yes, Peter. Peter been spectacular. Peter just been great.
Peter designed building and in charge of our design for
the Hall of excellence. He is, you know, found you
know all the folks with the bulletproof glass and beautiful
marble that you know decorates the entire fountain blue. So
Peter's been great, Jeffrey Sulfer has been terrific in everything,
(31:18):
and we're just really looking forward to it. And you know,
there's fifty million view or fifty million visitors that come
to Las Vegas, and a lot of them come to
that convention center. You know, we're going to give somebody
something to come and see and it's a shared experience,
whether you're a grandfather with a son, or whether you're
just a fan of a team, or whether we're gonna
have rotating exhibits. We're going to have. The Basketball Hall
(31:38):
of Fame is helping us. Obviously, the Pro Football Hall
of Fame in Canton, Ohio has been great and giving
us the stuff that we'll be able to rotate in
to keep things fresh. FIFA out of Switzerland, the World
Cup coming, we'll have a lot of great soccer items
and what they call football obviously. The golf, the World
Golf Hall of Fame, which just moved to Pinehurst in
(32:01):
the USGA will also have the US Open trophy from
the USGA. So we're going to have just things that rotate.
And and Peter has been, Peter's been just Peter's a genius.
There's nobody like Peter Arnell.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
No, he is unbelievable what he's done now.
Speaker 4 (32:19):
He set this whole thing up in motion. He works
with Tom, he works with with me, and he's been
with the hotel. And I love Peter and I can't
They can't tell you how great the folks over at
the Fountain Blue have been. Jeffrey Sofer, Maurice, all the
folks over there, Jessica, they're just terrific. Mike Pappus, well, we.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
Wish him well.
Speaker 4 (32:35):
And I know you Starles there, you opened the hotel
and you've had a long association with them as well.
Speaker 5 (32:39):
Well.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
I've known the family for a long time and I
opened it with Justin and I wish him well. You know,
it's a tough racket and I'm putting a casino in
a casino hotel, and I think it's going to do
very well. It's a nice property and Arnail's doing a
great job with it.
Speaker 7 (32:54):
In nineteen eighty four, Gary Hallberg and I won the
Greater Hertford Open golf tournament. I have the trophy, but
something tells me it won't make the cut if I
were to send that over.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
That's very funny.
Speaker 7 (33:06):
Totally true, but pivoting back to all ages for a second.
So he was also a prankster, right, he used to
Did he ever prank you ever?
Speaker 2 (33:13):
Oh?
Speaker 4 (33:14):
My god, yeah, yep, one time. Do you guys remember
a little Joe? And he used to have law Familia
on Cannon, Yes, And it was a great Italian restaurant
and it was pretty notable for its food because the
food was great, but it was also known because every
night Dean Martin would be in there basically many times
by himself, and you sit by himself and very friendly
(33:37):
to everybody, but he'd be in there. So anyway, so
he'd been sitting by himself. Then he had a cocktail
in front of him obviously, and so anyway, So my
dad would come to Los Angeles quite frequently, and so
we were going to Law Familiar and Ali was in
town and I said, Mom, would please come buy it
and have dinner with us. I want you to spend
(33:57):
some time and meet my dad after all these years,
and so he said sure, Great, he was willing to
do it. So we went to dinner and we ate,
and Ali didn't show up, and nobody had cell phones
or anything back then, so that he didn't call the
restaurantor anything. He got busy and my dad was disappointed.
But we finally decided where we're going to go. So
we went out and left. I went to hand the
(34:19):
guy the valet thing, and I gave him a ten
dollar bill. Ten dollar bill at nineteen eighty three was
pretty good thing to hand the guy. You know, it
was probably three dollars to part the cars I gave
you got ten bucks. A black guy with a hat
on a mustache. You can do better than that, Tim
Gray that looked up.
Speaker 2 (34:39):
I was just standing on.
Speaker 4 (34:40):
My name was would you to do better than that?
How was the man going to make a living? It
was Ali. Ali had been the late, so he was
waiting for us outside. He had a fake mustache. He
always had to fake mustache, I don't want to say always,
but he'd have one dash and he had a pair
of glasses on that were his. And he took the
valet's hat and so anyway, he cranked me and my
(35:02):
dad and so we ended up standing out there for
about twenty or thirty minutes, and all Lee, to his credit,
everybody who came out, he went and got their car,
and every time he got there or when it was done,
he would take off the hat and take off the mustache.
He said, why you want to treat the champ like that?
Why you want to do why do you want to
(35:23):
do a man like that? Every one of them just
about fell down. It really, it just kind of spoke
to just the human that he was. One time we
were riding after I had done the interview, he asked
me to go on a part of his barnt storming
with him. And he was driving from Atlanta to Columbia,
(35:44):
South Carolina, And so we did the press conference in Atlanta,
and we got into a car and we went through
Augusta and we stopped and he did a press conference
there and Augusta, and we kept riding in the car
and I was good BUNDEENI was Ali was in the
front seat and this was a big Cadillac with the
(36:05):
top down, and in the back seat was Howard Bigham
and then me and Howard. They had taught how to
run a film camera, but he was basically a folk
You know he was a great photographer. So we're riding
by right along the border of Georgia and Carolina, and
we have to get off to get some gas, and
(36:26):
we get off and as we get off, we look
down off the side of the road there's a bunch
of kids playing basketball on dirt, not on pavement, on dirt.
And actually the basket, guys, the basket was a peach
barrel nailed to a tree and they were shooting a
basketball into no backboard. So alisis to Bandini, Jim Gray
(36:50):
watched this. Let's drive down here. So we drive down
there in this big white, big Cadillac with the thing
down wooded area in the middle of nowhere. I mean,
there's no buildings around, no anything, nothing, but there's maybe
fifteen kids, shirts and skins playing basketball, all black kids.
We drive down, nobody pays any attention. Ali gets out
(37:11):
of the car. Howard turn on that camera, and Howard
turns on the camera. The ball a few minutes later
rolls out to Ali and he picks it up. It
only hadn't noticed him up until that time. They just
kept playing. Picks up the ball and one of the
kids without his shirt on, comes running over looks at
Oli holding his ball, and you ever seen those You
ever seen those cartoons where the eye is like with
(37:32):
the toothpicks and it goes straight up and the eye
is just getting wider and wider and wider and wider
and wider, and he reaches out and he touches them
kind of light. Jesuys Ali. It's Ali. And all these
kids came running over fifteen kids when we started Skippy.
Fifteen kids, fifteen in the middle of nowhere, Ali shooting
(37:54):
baskets with them. Nobody has any pens, nobody has any cameras,
can't get any autograshket. But he'shooting baskets with them, and
Howard's recording it, and all this fifteen kids turns into
twenty twenty, turns into fifty, fifty, turns into one hundred.
Now you can hear the mountains literally moving. This is
in the middle of nowhere. You can hear they're coming down.
(38:17):
Almost unimaginable how many people showed up pretty soon. There
were chickens out on the court. People were coming and
their dogs. Turns into about five literally five six hundred
people in the middle of nowhere. Ali finally says, and
they had pens, and he signed the autographs, and he
tapped every kid on the head, and he shook every hand,
and he hugged every grandma and he did everything. And
(38:38):
you're wondering, where are all these people? Anyway, that's the
magnetism that he had. And he was great with him.
At about two hours there, we were late to Columbia.
By the time we left, it was like one of
those helicopters leaving Saigon. You know, you literally there were
people hanging on the trunk, on the hood. The whole
thing was a little scary because you didn't want somebody
to get hurt. That's how like they didn't want him
(39:00):
to leave. And how much adulation and love and and
just the magnetism and the graciousness and the gregariousness of him,
and he loved it and we all loved it, and
it was just it was just an amazing thing to see.
So we drive away and he's soaking wet, you know,
it's hot and everything. It says, you know, he you know,
(39:21):
he's in a nice clothes because he's doing press conferences,
so you know, they had to get some clothes out
and he changed and so forth. He says, who else
do you think can do that, Jim Gray, you think
that'll make your program?
Speaker 2 (39:32):
I called you by your first and last name always
right then? As always?
Speaker 1 (39:36):
You know, I defy to disagree with this, but if
he walked down the street with Elvis Presley and Paul McCartney,
he would still get the number one position. That's how
loved this guy was. How did you Brady hook up
on a podcast?
Speaker 4 (39:51):
How did that happen?
Speaker 3 (39:52):
So?
Speaker 4 (39:52):
I been doing the Monday night football on Westwood One
for a long time. My partner at that time was
Don Shula, and we had Mike Ditka was my other partner,
and so we would do the pregame and halftime segments.
So Don wanted to retire, and so I was at Riviera,
a golf course, and when I finished hitting golf balls,
(40:14):
they said, hey, your buddy Tom Brady is over with
his son. He was with his two or three year
old son Jack, over on the tennis court. So I
walked over and just said hi. I had interviewed Tom
numerous times, covered his games, worked at NBC, and broadcast
his Super Bowls on the radio. So we just started
(40:35):
talking for a few minutes. And he was still a
month or two away from going to training camp, and
he said, are you're going to be doing the show
this year? I said yeah. I said, matter of fact,
coach Schula wants to retire. Would you be interested in
picking up his spot? And he says, what does it entail?
And I said, well, it's every Monday night. I'm going
(40:56):
to have to do it eight or nine minutes in
the pre game and seven or eight minutes, ten minutes,
fifteen minutes at the halftime. He said, let me think
about that, and I had had his numbers, so he
said to get in touch with me. So he got
back in touch with me a few days later and
he said, Tuck to Steve Dubit, my agent, and so
I talked to Dubit and we hooked up and that
(41:18):
was about two thousand and nine ten, maybe two thousand
and nine or ten, and so we've just continued to
do it.
Speaker 7 (41:26):
When did the actual podcast start.
Speaker 4 (41:28):
Well, it was a radio show and then we moved.
When we moved from Westwood One to Serious XM, we
went to an hour show instead of doing the pregame
and a halftime, and that showed to this day still
kind of acts as a sort of a pregame it's
on Mad Dog Sports Radio at six o'clock. Then it
goes over to NFL Radio at six thirty, and it
goes from six thirty to seven thirty before the national
(41:51):
coverage on Westwood One picks up with the game. So
we moved over there. This is our this is be
four years ago. We moved. And so when we we're
a radio show, you guys, and the radio show converts,
the content converts to a podcast, and so it's the
same content that goes out over NFL Radio and matt
(42:13):
Dog Sports Radio. It's just that there's the ability to
download it on Apple and Pandora and Spotify and everything else.
And you know, Tom Tom is so popular and you know,
he's quoted like the president. So everything that he says,
you know, people pick up and people here, and he
has a tremendous following. So the podcast, even though the
material comes out on Monday night, you know, people downloaded
(42:36):
for the rest of the week. And so, you know,
it's been been a lot of fun. And he's he's
a better human being than he ever was a quarterback.
And he's just been a pleasure to be with and
to work with and to have in our lives and
as a friend and truly truly love it. I really
love him. And Larry's been fantastic Larry Fitzgerald, So we
we've all been together for a long time.
Speaker 7 (42:56):
You and Paul have so many different all these stories,
but what about the public persona of a guy like
Mike Tyson versus who he really is? Like I know
him a little bit, you know, you know him intimately,
But any similarities with Ali in terms of personality and
the way in terms of the way, you know, the
way they are in their private lives versus I remember,
(43:19):
I'll just throw out one thing. When I was in
Las Vegas and you know, working with Steve when and
went to a number of the Tyson fights, there was
always a you know, big party afterwards.
Speaker 2 (43:30):
He was so menacing.
Speaker 7 (43:31):
I mean, he was so different than than Ali.
Speaker 2 (43:33):
Ali was just you know, beautiful.
Speaker 7 (43:36):
Oddser you know, Tisse would come come charging out of
the corner right just like an animal, I mean literally
like an animal, and he was so fierce and after
he'd have his posse with him and he coded the
after party. He was the only guy I ever saw
in that kind of an environment where it was just
scary to even see him. He was just a frightening
(43:56):
kind of person. But I'm just curious in his real
in his personal life, where you also, you know, interacted
with him.
Speaker 2 (44:04):
How did you find him?
Speaker 4 (44:05):
You know, I love Mike and know Mike since he
was a very very young man, and been all over
the world with him in countless instances. And his life
has been a roller coaster. I mean, it's uh and
it you know, you just there's been a volatility to it.
And he's the most honest athlete I've ever been involved with.
(44:26):
He's dear friends. He takes his own medicine. Paul takes
his own medicine. He doesn't blame anybody for any of
his errors, for any of his vaults, for any of
the things that he's done wrong. He doesn't hide behind
the trainer, doesn't hide behind the promoter, doesn't blame anybody
(44:49):
for what he does wrong. And that's he takes accountability
and responsibility. Who does that? Which one named them? Where
are they? Where in public life do we have that?
Speaker 2 (45:01):
Now?
Speaker 4 (45:02):
You cannot condone a lot of the hideous behavior and
bad acts that he's done by the same token, he
is truly trying to be better tomorrow than he was yesterday,
and he truly thousands of acts of kindness that he
does not want publicity for and is not looking to
(45:23):
be pat on his head and told good man, good job.
That's not how he runs his life. And you know,
I just have tremendous admiration for him. I respect him.
You know, it's an interesting thing. I just have this here.
This is not meant to be a plug toward me
(45:44):
or anything. But I interviewed this man after he bit
another man's ear off. Every instance you can have, every
instance you can have, I've seen him. And so I
let two people read their chapters when I wrote my book,
because I wanted to make sure that what I was
saying they were okay with and that it didn't overstep
(46:06):
something personal, something personal. Mike Tyson wrote me a letter
when he was in jail. A five page letter came
to my house when he was in the Indiana State
Youth Peditentiary. I don't know how he had my address,
because we were not socially acquainted. We were professionally acquainted.
So I got this letter handwritten, and I still have
(46:28):
it to this day. And I got to page three
and he said, and it says and I'm quoting it,
mister Gray. They will kill my number tomorrow. Kill my
number is prison jargon for saying they'll let me out
of jail and kill the number of days that I
have left and my number as an inmate. Cool will
kill my number tomorrow if I will admit to this rape.
(46:49):
But I will never admit to something I didn't do.
I did not rape this woman, so I will stay
here in jail rather than admit it. Next paragraph, however,
there are four or five other things that I've done
throughout the course of my life that are worse than
what I'm accused. So therefore I feel I'm at the
right place at this time.
Speaker 1 (47:08):
Good good stuff.
Speaker 4 (47:10):
Fast forward now and he gets out of jail, and
I show up outside the penitentiary. Don King's walking him
out a little spera coron. All kinds of people are
around waiting for him, and they have the big black
jacket hang up over and I said, Don, we gonna
do this interview. Dodd says, Mike, we're talking to Jim. Yep,
(47:33):
we're talking to Jim. So we sit down and we
do the interview. Mike has his lawyer and I say, Mike,
I got this letter from you is live on the
Today Show. Okay, live on the Today Show, and then
I'm going to be on Dayline on NBC. I'm worth
NBC at the time. And I say, Mike, you sent
me this letter. Is this a private letter or is
this a public letter? If it's private, I won't mention it.
(47:55):
It's public, I'd like to mention it. If you're okay
with go ahead, mister de graying anything is fine, not
a problem. So I've read that portion. I say this
live on TV. Said Mike, what are the four or
five other things that you've done that were worse than
what you were accused? What were they? He looks at me,
(48:16):
looks over at his lawyer, looks back at me, with
no warning that this was coming, and he says, it's
probably best not to discuss this on national television because
I don't know the statue of limitations. However, what I
wrote you was true, powerful, powerful. I've been with him.
I've been with him for a long time, and on
the back of the book he wrote this, Jim interviewed me.
(48:36):
After my prolific fights, we were a sensational duo. Out
of the ring. Jim became my most trusted friend. He's
there no matter what and never afraid to give it
to me straight, as he does in this book, Jim
talks to goats because it takes a goat to noa goat.
So if you want the truth, ask Mike Eisen. Mike
Heyson will tell you the truth, even when it's at
(48:59):
his own peril. And that's just a very very rare
and so I would do anything I could try and
help Mike. And I think Kiki's wife has just been
sensational for him, and I wish him well. That doesn't
mean that he won't have another bad moment, because he's
capable of it at any time, and he recognizes that.
But it's really he's been you know, the guy who
read a thousand books. You know anybody who's read a
(49:19):
thousand books? You know anybody, right, Jackman Mao. And they's
race all in the same breath, as well as the
tenants of the Red Book. I don't know many people.
I don't know any other people like that.
Speaker 1 (49:29):
But on that note, a lot of people that I've
met that are a great man, they were all readers.
I defy you think of all the great smart people
you've met and ultimately you'll find they were all great readers.
Speaker 4 (49:45):
They read, read, read, and read knowledge.
Speaker 7 (49:47):
Oh, I was going to call you actually ask you
this question. So it's funny that I get a chance
to do it with my best buddy over here. This
exhibition that's something I can call it, that he's about
to have with one of the Paul brothers. How do
you first of all, how do you feel about that?
And you know, people think these are totally rigged, you know,
they're totally staged. What do you think about this upcoming fight?
Speaker 4 (50:10):
I think it's entertainment. And I think Mike's fifty eight
years old. And I did his fight against Roy Jones
Junior during COVID and there were like six people allowed
in the Staples Center and we did that broadcast and
I did it with Marl Ronalo did the play by play,
and Snoop Dogg was one of the commentators, and you know,
and that I believe that had like two point five
(50:30):
million buys, which is so far ahead and the way
of anything that anybody does in the pay per view business.
And Mike Tyson at the time, so this is whenever
COVID was twenty twenty one, I guess three or four
years ago, and nobody comes near. Nobody comes near those numbers.
So the public has a fascination with him. They want
(50:52):
to see it, They want to tell their kids about it,
they want to bring their kids. The kids want to
come and Jake Paul, for whatever the reason, has captured
the public's fancy in some fashion, whether he's you know,
whether they hate him or they love him. He's got, however,
many twenty five thirty billion I don't know how many
millions of followers on YouTube. He has dedicated himself in
a lot of ways to becoming a fighter. Now he
(51:13):
hasn't fought the competition that people would like to see
him fight, but he's become representative of somebody who at
least is putting in the work and attempting to do
this in a fashion that kind uphold his name and
be competitive. So I don't have any problem with this.
I don't like people who make judgments on people. You know,
we live in Los Angeles, all of us. If we're
(51:34):
going to start making judgments on people, we're not going
to have anybody to talk to. So as long as
what you're doing conformance with the law, like, I'm happy
Mike can go out and make millions and millions of
dollars at this age fighting, I don't want him to
get hurt. I hope he doesn't get hurt, but I
don't think at any point in anybody's life, being fifty
eight years old or when he was sixteen years old,
(51:56):
I don't think you will want to be hit by
Mike Tyson. So I believe he can defend himself and
he can protect himself. So I'm happy he can make
the money. And you know they're going to sell out
this at and T Stadium. Jerry Jones didn't put this
in there because he didn't think anybody was coming Netflix
with However, several hundreds of millions of viewers around the
world isn't paying for this because they don't think anybody's
going to watch it. It'll be the most viewed fight,
(52:17):
It'll be one of the most viewed events. And Michael
be in good shape. He's training and I've been to
see him training and he's you know that he had
the problem with his ulcer. He's getting back in shape
and he's in great chairs.
Speaker 7 (52:29):
So you had to pick a winner, would you make
a prediction.
Speaker 4 (52:32):
I'm picking Mike Tyson. I'm not betting against Mike Tyson.
Let me ask you a question. Did they tell Michaelidgelo
not to pain anymore? Did they tell Frank sin to
don't show up at the arena when he couldn't remember
all the words all the time, but everybody wanted to
see him and his voice was still magnificent. You know,
they tell all these people what to do with their lives.
They're so busy telling everybody what to do, how to
do it, why to do it, what they should be doing.
(52:53):
But it's not their lives. So what's the You know,
this is what he was to do, and he got
a license to do it. The State of Texts said, okay,
come fight.
Speaker 7 (53:11):
From my friend Paul's benefit, you know herb Simon, our
wonderful friend. I told him that you were going to
be on our podcast that Paul and Eric said about
having you on, and he said, you have to be
sure that you get him to tell the Hank Aaron story.
So ifpe don't mind, hippete indulgus.
Speaker 4 (53:30):
Can I plug the book again? Even though Ary was
talking to go Hank was a dear friend. And Ike
put something on the back of his cover here too.
If I can find it. I know Jim Gray the man.
He stood up for me with tremendous integrity and principle.
He suffered the consequences for doing what was right on
my behalf and for others, for a just cause. Integrity
is what matters. And I will never forget his honor
(53:52):
and honesty. So here's what happened. It's a sad state
of affairs that this happens. I was with my wife
and my in laws and we went to a restaurant
on the river down in New York, on the Hudson River.
And it's one of those fool food places, you know,
where the guy's standing there with the towel over his
(54:13):
arm and you know, he's got a bow tie on
and the you know, tuxedo and all this nonsense. And
we walk into this place and we sit down, you know,
my in laws and everybody's happy. It's a famous place.
Pretty empty, but it's a famous place. So you know,
we get to go and you know, you see all
the lights across the river and so forth.
Speaker 2 (54:33):
Go in there.
Speaker 4 (54:33):
And when we walk in, there's Billy and Hank Aaron
sitting on a bench. And so why did interview Hank
before new hike. So I walked over and said, helloone.
My father in law big baseball fan and mother in
law love love baseball, you know, baseball was was the
America's pastime. And SO introduced him and we spoke for
four or five minutes and everybody was happy, and we
(54:56):
go sit down. About twenty or thirty minutes later, I
started looking around. Where's Hank sitting? You know, it's just
kind of naturally, you know, you're gazing around, and where's Hank.
Where he is We'll send him a drink or something,
still sitting on the bench. So I walk over to Hank.
I say, you guys waiting for something? She said, no,
we're just we're just waiting to be seated. You're not
waiting for you to No, we're just waiting to be seated.
(55:18):
I walk over to this made or d and then
the guy with the towel and all the bullshit, you know,
like important guy. I say to him, Mom, Joe Namath
been to the restaurant. Oh yeah, Joe comes in all
the time. I says, it's the table right away, no
wherever he wants. Said now about Joe Demajia, Oh Joe Joe, Yeah, absolutely,
and I go through a couple others and I said, huh,
(55:41):
forget about who he is. He happens to be the
home run King. But why is this man sitting over
here waiting for a table in a fucking empty restaurant?
In an empty restaurant? Why are these two people sitting
there waiting for a table? But we're going to get
to that. You're going to get to him, I said,
the restaurant's empty. Where when are you going to get
to that? Give him a table, let's go. So they
(56:01):
walk him in, they sit him down, and they don't
sit him in the front road. They said him liking
rows four, not on the river, and they got like
nine empty tables. I said, what's wrong with this table?
So it was just a despicable thing. I said, Hank Coola,
we should go, you know this, let's let's let's let's
get out of this. Well, he didn't want to make
(56:22):
a scene and everything, and I told my family, I said,
let's go. We're bad enough, We've paid whatever it was.
We all got out of there. So I went and
I told my bosses at CBS what had gone on.
I was working at CBS Sports at the time, and
I said, you know, I'd like to do an interview
(56:44):
with Hank on how he suffered over the years because
Hank was not permitted in baseball at the time. He
wasn't a manager, he didn't have a front office job
permitted the row word, but nobody found a job for him.
We went and did the story and put this on
the air, and Hank said the baseball in effect had
blackballdom because he was black, and it was racist. And
(57:06):
these were all Hags words based on what I'd seen
in the restaurant. The story was not about the restaurant.
The story was about why he couldn't get a job.
And you know, this is an affable, amiable gentleman, Hey,
gar Like, if you have a problem with Hagaron, you
better look at yourself. So there's you know, nothing in
his character would indicate that this man should not be
(57:29):
doing whatever he wants in baseball. And he's the home
run King. And this is now sixteen seventeen years after
the exploits of what he had done by breaking vap
roots record. CBS had just taken over baseball from NBC,
and I was scheduled to do the World Series. Jack Buckin,
Tim McCarver. We ran the story on the air, and
(57:52):
he criticized baseball, and he spoke about racism and baseball.
And my boss at the time was man named Ted Shaker,
who ran the executive producer of CBS Sports. Story runs
and then on Monday, I get a call. Story runs
on Saturday. Monday, I get a call, called me into
the office. He sits me down. He says, why did
(58:13):
we put this story on the air. This is a
horrible story about baseball. Should have never gone on the air.
Fay Vincent and the Commissioner's office and not screaming hollering
at us. How could we treat them as partners like that,
calling baseball racist. I said, we don't call baseball races.
Hank Aaron related his story. We told Hank Aaron's story,
and you approved the story. You watched it before it
went on the air. So now you're calling me in
after went on the air, and you're mad at me,
(58:36):
mad at me for putting something that you approved going
on the air. Was a good story on Saturday. It
was a good story when we shot it. And now
because baseball's upset somehow, this isn't a good story. This
isn't an accurate this isn't a truthful story. I said,
I said, what are you mad at me? He says,
because you led a horse to water and you made
him drink. I said, I didn't live, need him anywhere.
This is the life he lives. Make a long story short.
(58:57):
They took me off the World series. They benched me
for doing and reassigned and replaced me for telling Hank
Aaron's story that was a truthful story about how he
had been disparaged and disregarded and not treated with the
proper respect, and that race was at it at the
core of it. And so Hank and I became very
(59:19):
good friends ever since then. And you know, it was
another very just fortunate out of a very unfortunate circumstance
at a restaurant, and in telling his story became a
very fortunate thing for me that I was able to
know him in the way that I got to know
him and spend time with him, in the amount of
(59:41):
time that I got to spend with him, and truly
loved hankin so to think that that was going on
in nineteen ninety one, you never know. And the tremendous,
tremendous onslaught of hatred that he experienced for breaking Baby
Brutes record was just really it was sad. It was sad,
(01:00:04):
but he handled himself so so beautifully, and so you know,
I know it had to hurt, and I know he suffered,
So it was it was it was to see the
dignity that he had been stripped of and be maintained
by him internally and to face what he had to
face externally was was remarkable.
Speaker 1 (01:00:26):
The lack of respect of which we all want, you.
Speaker 4 (01:00:28):
Know, decency, respect, common courtesy. So and he never forgot it,
and that heartened me because you know, you just try
and we all just try and do what's what's right.
This was, this was wrong that he was being treated
like that. So why would you want to see anybody
treated like that, let alone a national international treasure and hero.
What is going on here?
Speaker 2 (01:00:48):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (01:00:48):
It's so eclectic and you've had such a meaningful life.
I mean you look at everybody from Nelson Mandela and
Neil Armstrong, on and on, all the sports figures, all
kinds of amazing people. Is there anyone left done your
bucket list that I like to interview? Yeah, it's not
over for you. You're still doing it.
Speaker 4 (01:01:04):
Really, I don't sit here and say I've missed any
you know, so I don't. But there is one guy
i'd like to talk to, and we got to meet him, Brandon.
I'd like to meet the pope and interview the Pope.
Here's a man who spends his entire existence if you
take the religion out of it, because I'm not religious
(01:01:25):
and I don't follow any of those tenets and so forth,
but who really wants what's best for the world, what's
best for his following, for humankind, men, women, black, white, Asian, Muslim, Jewish, everything,
and who else dedicates themselves to that? And the institution
(01:01:46):
I understand, has a lot of issues. There's a lot
of controversies. There's all kinds of things that go on
with a variety of very important things. But I think
he'd be just an interesting person too. But I would
want to interview him about sports and the importance of sports.
Speaker 1 (01:02:00):
Had a lot of soccer out of them.
Speaker 4 (01:02:02):
What's the most important sport around the world to use?
Speaker 1 (01:02:04):
Well, I think soccer is coming on. I think football's
probably lost its luster. I think baseball we love it,
we know where it sits. But I don't think it's
the sexiest sport anymore.
Speaker 4 (01:02:14):
Far and away soccer, and it's side away. Argentina is
on top of the world now with pulling the world up.
But I don't but if it was just you know, no,
I really don't sit here and say, boy, I wish
I could, you know, I have a one on one
with with whoever.
Speaker 1 (01:02:28):
Yeah, so theoretically you would have loved to admit any
of the popes.
Speaker 4 (01:02:31):
No, I didn't want to meet the last one.
Speaker 2 (01:02:32):
I didn't.
Speaker 4 (01:02:33):
I didn't he didn't think he Pope Benedict didn't interest me.
Pope John Paul came to Philadelphia. I thought you would
have been really interesting. I'm not a I don't know
anything about the history of popes. I'm not, but I
mean just I just like the fact that they ded it.
I'd also like to I'd like to interview President she
because because I'd like to know what those folks think
(01:02:54):
about sports and the systemic doping and what they've done
and you know, just all kinds of issues. How the
two thousand and eight Olympics catapulted that country into the world,
and you know, then they've had them back there again
for the Winter Olympics, which really didn't fit, but they've
had it, so he'd be interesting too. And it's not
(01:03:15):
because these people with political figures. It's because I think
that sports can be used for good, for parent times
and for future generations. I've made a great, great living
interviewing all these people who've had all these tremendous achievements,
who have inspired people across the world to go out
and have greater performances than the ones that they've had.
(01:03:38):
So I think that sports can be used for good.
And I worked with a man named Bud Greenspan. You
were probably friends with him, Paul.
Speaker 2 (01:03:44):
Yeah, Bud was.
Speaker 4 (01:03:45):
A brilliant man and he was one of my first jobs.
And you know, we always thought that leaving of his films,
would you know, Jesse Owen's Returns to Berlin, the Last
African Runner, the Will M rout Alph Story, all those
incredible Billy Fist first to Pilot. You know, it was
a Bob s Letler in Aleesia and he was shut
down in World War But he always felt that if
(01:04:08):
he could leave these films, people across the world would
see them with wonderment of how those folks achieved all
of this, and that they could go out and do
it themselves or do it better. So I always kind
of thought, you know, that was really noble and really good.
And I've had that life in sports. No, I've got
to talk to Ali and Phelps and Brady and Lebron
(01:04:30):
and Jordan and all these folks over and over and
over and over again, and just seeing the dedication of
Tiger and the myopicness of Floyd Mayweather and Mike Tyson
and how you know, it just didn't matter to Serena Williams.
She was going to figure out a way to win,
you know, and to be able to do that. So
I think that there's benefit in glorifying those who have
(01:04:55):
had this commitment to excellence. Perhaps those two people, those
two people could help with the closure. And obviously I'm
never going to talk to president She and I would
say it's probably a long shot to get to the Pope.
Speaker 1 (01:05:05):
But in keeping Umi ask a question, what was your
takeaway from the current Olympics, which was amazing to walked
away from it saying, I think these athletes, with everything
they put into it, how amazing they are in their dedication.
I think they should be paid for what they're doing.
I think there's so much money made anyway, because we're
(01:05:27):
living in a world of where it's all about the money.
There seems to be a lot of money made from
the Olympics for businessmen, and I think these kids should
be paid.
Speaker 4 (01:05:37):
What's your take on that, Well, I think they're all
professionals now anyway. But I look at it differently. I'm
more idealistic. I think the money is available for Siman Bios.
I don't think she's going to do very well for
the rest of her life. And for you know, all
the others, Katie Ldecki, the American basketball team. Obviously, they're
all mull time millionaires as it is. But I look
(01:06:00):
at it in a different way. I think that these
Olympics brought the world closer in the world together for sure,
and I think that Paris and the French did an
amazing job. It was almost perfect. I was there, my wife,
friend and I we were there for twelve days. There
was not one thing that you could find fault with.
The traffic was gone, the venues were beautiful, the performances
(01:06:23):
were fantastic, the organization and security was off the charts great.
And I just think that when you can have whatever
it was one hundred and eighty or two hundred and
six countries come together in peace and coexistence and inspire
the youth around the world and old people who can't
get out of their chairs for seventeen days, sixteen days
of glory. And yes there's going to be cheaters, and
(01:06:46):
yes there's going to be controversy, and yes this judge
didn't get it right and screwed up the whole thing
with gymnastics. Okay, those things do occur, and those things
are really unfortunate human they're human errors. But I just
think that the Olympics, and yes, the IOC, and maybe
all of these folks are profiteering and so forth, and
the cities are left behind with all these venues and
(01:07:08):
many of them have gone broke in the past, and
you know, and so forth. But I just look at
it in the fashion, Paul is when I hear and
I see everybody having a good time, and they loved
being at beach volleyball. Nobody watches beach volleyball, and they
love being at the pool, and you can't name four
people in that pool tomorrow, and all these other sports.
(01:07:31):
I went to ping pong, and it's fascinating to see
these folks from China, in North Korea and all these
places playing this thing, and they're bad in this thing.
Why you can't even keep your eye on it fast enough?
Let alone think how they react. And you go see
Rafa Nadal, who's gotten literally hundreds of millions of dollars
going back out to Roland Garrams to play Djokovic, who's crying.
(01:07:53):
Who's crying because he won a gold medal after four
or five attempts of not that means something. So it's
not I don't want to be disagreeing with you. It's
but that's to me, not about money. It's not. It's
got nothing to do with money. It's got everything to
do with There for the grace of God, go iy
and here we are showing the world the glory of
(01:08:15):
our times. And there's something that that that no amount
can take the place of that.
Speaker 2 (01:08:21):
I saw.
Speaker 4 (01:08:22):
I saw Scottie Scheffler with a gold medal. He's crying.
He didn't cry when he won in the US Open. Yeah,
I don't think he cried when fred Ridley and these
folks put the green jacket on it. Now they'll want
that honor and that tradition for the rest of their lives.
He wasn't crying. So there's meaning behind this, no matter
whether you're the last African runner to finish the marathon
(01:08:43):
three hours after everybody's gone home with a broken kneecap,
because your country saw fit to send you there, not
to start the race, but to finish the race. So
I think there's I think there's a there's just tremendous
merit to all of this that we all benefit from
enjoy watching. And I was sorry to see the Olympics end.
(01:09:06):
And the world needs this going on with all the
strife and conflict everywhere and everybody addling each other, be
it you know, overseas, or political nature here or whatever.
It's just I just think it's good. So let the
institutions profiteer, let it stay alive, let it keep going,
because this is good for all of us.
Speaker 1 (01:09:27):
Did you miss Russia?
Speaker 4 (01:09:28):
I miss their athletes, except for the people who are
in the systemic doping. No, we don't miss that. We
don't miss any of that. But do I miss the
next Olga Corbett?
Speaker 2 (01:09:38):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (01:09:39):
Of course, because I want to see her and I
want to see who that next man is who can
do something great. Do I miss the people who are cheating? No,
I don't miss that at all. Do I think that
something that somebody over there who has nothing to do
with the Ukrainian War being punished because that's where he
was born. And now, just like when President Carter said,
(01:10:02):
we're not going to Moscow for the Olympics because you
think that's going to stop them from going into Afghanistan. Yeah,
I felt sorry for Carl Lewis. Yeah, I felt sorry
for all those athletes. Forget about Carl Lewis, that's a
bad example, because he went on and participated in four Olympics. More,
I feel sorry for the ones who only had nineteen eighty. So, yeah,
do I miss I'm not sitting here crying about it,
(01:10:25):
But I would have missed seeing somebody who would have
come on to a world stage, who might have given
us a performance and who might have introduced themselves to
us that we would never forget.
Speaker 7 (01:10:34):
So we've kept you for more than an hour. We
told you it was going to be an hour.
Speaker 4 (01:10:37):
I'm happy that you joined this podcast. I'm honored that
you asked me to come on. I obviously love you
Skipper and Paul. You've been just tremendous in the little
time that we spent together. I've enjoyed over the years,
and you've just been tremended.
Speaker 8 (01:10:51):
And by the way, nobody, I'm going to sound like
Bill Walt, nobody ever wrote a better song than My Way.
That was long of the world, so much so that
they sang that and I don't know who sang it
at the end of the Olympics, and she was fantastic.
Speaker 4 (01:11:05):
But of you, And every time I hear that, I
think of you. And it's not what somebody does one time,
it's what sustains. And that has sustained. I don't know
how long that's been, around sixty or seventy years. And
they play it every day, all day everywhere, with your voice,
with Frank's voice, with the lady in France's voice. Everybody's
taking a crack at it. Olgos Presley, somebody sent me
(01:11:26):
a tape of him the other day. It was unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (01:11:28):
And one other thing we met also again because we
it's always been in the strangest of timing. On the
streets of San Francisco. We were going down to a
shopping center. I ran right into you in San Francisco.
Do you remember that I do?
Speaker 4 (01:11:44):
That was a long time ago. It sure was? That
was it twenty five years ago?
Speaker 2 (01:11:49):
I remember Joy?
Speaker 1 (01:11:51):
Okay, there you go.
Speaker 4 (01:11:52):
Well I loved I loved being on here and thanks.
You know Skip, Skip some miracle. You know there is
a personal the planet that Skip broughtson does it?
Speaker 1 (01:12:01):
No, he doesn't know the pope, but he'll get there.
Speaker 2 (01:12:06):
You do. The Pope, Well, I don't know him yet.
Let's put it down.
Speaker 1 (01:12:12):
It's always yet with Skip.
Speaker 4 (01:12:13):
Tell him that story about somebody said you were a
name dropper. This is one of the funniest things I
ever heard.
Speaker 1 (01:12:17):
Yip a name dropper?
Speaker 2 (01:12:18):
Are you kidding? Like Frank Sinatra Tolby, don't be a
name dropper? Right?
Speaker 1 (01:12:24):
Everybody knows Skip and everybody loves Skip.
Speaker 4 (01:12:27):
Thank you, He's amazing. Do you guys know You guys
know Rudy Durant, don't you? Oh sure, Rudy's Rudy's beautiful guy.
I think Rudy's ninety three or ninety four years old.
And Rudy coined a phrase that's really really interesting. He said,
friendship is a serious business.
Speaker 2 (01:12:40):
I've learned a lot about friendship from Paul.
Speaker 7 (01:12:43):
To tell you the truth, I mean that sincerely, because
you know, there are acquaintances and then they're friends. It's
wonderful to be acquainted with so many people, but they
have good friends like you guys, means a lot to me,
I can.
Speaker 2 (01:12:55):
Tell you that. So thanks thanks to both of you
for that, Thanks for having me see around.
Speaker 4 (01:13:01):
All right here, Reggie Jackson's calling right here, Hey, Reggie, Reggie,
I'm good. You know the great all Aika he's on.
I'm dis finished his podcast. Say hello, Paul, that's Reggie Jackson.
Speaker 1 (01:13:13):
Reggie, Oh, how you doing?
Speaker 4 (01:13:15):
You know, you know I leave?
Speaker 1 (01:13:17):
I know, yeah, you live like two doors. Well that
was about twenty acres of trees. There were no streets.
I was up on one yell and you were around
the corner, right, Jack speaking Carmel.
Speaker 4 (01:13:30):
I used to go for little walks and walk by
your house.
Speaker 7 (01:13:32):
I don't walk by that your old house every other day.
Oh where do you live now?
Speaker 1 (01:13:38):
I'm down I'm down in Los Angeles? Okay, you're still
up there, obviously, right, Reggie. But great property. I loved
living up there. You know, all my kids left and
went to college and I was left with you know,
my wife and I and you know, it was a
huge property, twenty acres and we had our last child
and we moved down to La But I loved it
up there. I'm glad you're still up there because it's
(01:13:59):
really a beautiful place to bring kids up and to enjoys.
Speaker 7 (01:14:03):
It is yonder full, the weather is so green, and
then you can you can hide, you know, you can
be a celebrity and red there comfortably.
Speaker 1 (01:14:11):
Yeah. And I went up there like in the early
eighties and I looked at Pebble Beach and I just went, nah,
just not for me. And I said, anything available, And
the realtor said, there's an empty piece, but there's no road.
And we went up this dirt road for about a
few miles and I got to the top and it
was just trees, nothing, And I said how much And
(01:14:33):
she told me. I said, I'll take it. So for
the next two years, I was just blowing up everything.
And I put a road in and you know the area.
I don't think there's more than six homes up there,
is there?
Speaker 2 (01:14:42):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (01:14:43):
No, the errors at least home every five to ten acres.
Speaker 2 (01:14:49):
Yeah, her wealth, he can shie old.
Speaker 1 (01:14:52):
Great memories up there, a great memories.
Speaker 4 (01:14:54):
All right, skipping, skipping, Paul, Thank you guys. Thanks second,
just hanging us on, Thank You, Ray, Thanks Skipping, Thanks.
Speaker 1 (01:15:02):
To Our Away with Paul Anka and Skip Bronson is
a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (01:15:17):
The show's executive producer is Jordan Runtog, with supervising producer
and editor Marcy Depina.
Speaker 1 (01:15:25):
It was engineered by Todd Carlin and Graham Gibson, mixed
and mastered by the wonderful Mary Do.
Speaker 2 (01:15:32):
If you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave
us a review.
Speaker 1 (01:15:36):
For more podcasts on iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 8 (01:16:00):
Supp
Our Way with yours truly Paul Anka and my buddy
Skip Bronson, is a production of iHeartRadio. Hi, folks, this
is Paul Anka.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
And my name is Skip Bronson.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
We've been friends for decades and we've decided to let
you in on our late night phone calls by starting
a new podcast, and.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Welcome to Our Way. We'd like you to meet some
real good friends of ours.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Your leaders in entertainment and.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Sports, innovators in business and technology, and even a sitting
president or two.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
Join us as we ask the questions they've not been
asked before, tell it like it is, and even sing
a song or two.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
This is our podcast and we'll be doing it our way.
Speaker 4 (00:46):
Well, it was a great life with Holly from the
start in nineteen seventy seven up until his passing, obviously,
but a great public life with him as well, having
been able to do all those interviews and have such
close proximity and to just learned so much from him,
see how he treated people, have so much fun with
all the magic tricks that he did, and just a
(01:07):
lifetime of experiences. And I love him, I'm grateful to him.
I'll never forget him. You'd just always being a special
thing in my heart that you know. It was like
hitting the lottery.
Speaker 5 (01:26):
How was dinner? Dinner was great?
Speaker 6 (01:28):
And thanks for calling me just before I decided to
close my eyes.
Speaker 5 (01:32):
You closing your eyes. That could have it at any
moment in twenty four hours, your early bird. You know what.
Speaker 6 (01:37):
I can never nap. You know, I always admire people
who can nap. They can take a power nap and
they wake up and they're refreshed. I literally can never nap,
can't sleep on a plane, can't nap.
Speaker 5 (01:48):
I'm there, I'm there with you. But you will as
you get older. Watch you hate you, don't haties. I
want to get older. That's part of the layer. You
know what I realized my last birthday. I didn't think
that getting older came so fast, very pissed off. How
you like it? Football man, we're getting there, aren't we? Yeah?
Speaker 6 (02:08):
I know, getting getting ready. We had before his preseason
in the works, and you and I are gonna talk
to getting our pits from James Carville on one end,
and then your guys in Vegas on the other end,
and we're gonna figure out what to do and we're
gonna bust them.
Speaker 5 (02:23):
There's our guests coming up, mister sportsman Jim Gray.
Speaker 6 (02:28):
How excited he's interviewed everybody. I mean, he's had a
long career in his mid sixties. We not only football
and sports and all of that look good and deella,
he said Armstrong John Glenn Garba Chev. I mean he's
mixed the pot up. I can't wait because you have
so many stories, you know, with Ali, and he has
(02:49):
some rather amazing Ali stories. So to be fun for
the two of you to sort of banter a little
bit about the great Muhammad Ali Andy and then Mike Tyson. Yeah,
and Tyson fifty eight years old and still going at it.
He has that big exhibition fight coming up with Jake Paul.
Speaker 5 (03:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (03:07):
They think that's going to set records in terms of
you know, the number one's watch it. So, you know,
I want to get his take on what they're like
away from sports. It's I mean, we know what Ali accomplished,
we know what Tyson did, and the irony of it
is they're two totally different people, but there are I
believe some similarities as well. So I think to talk
(03:30):
to him about the human side of these guys will
be fun. And he just came back from the Olympics,
so he'll be able to talk, like to hear his
take on how he thinks they did in pair is
in terms of staging it and everything house and talk
about that.
Speaker 5 (03:43):
Yeah, he is absolutely everywhere. So I'm looking forward to it.
I think would be very informal. He's a smart guy
and he's he's an icon and what he does.
Speaker 6 (03:53):
He wrote a best selling book, Talking to Goats, Yeah,
and Tyson's all over the first chapter. And then of
course he and Tom Brady have this podcast that's that's
done very well, so he certainly knows this business. There's
so much to talk to him about from one end
of the spectrum to the other, so that it'd be
an interesting interview. It'd be hard to hard to hold
him to an hour, because we've been able to keep
(04:14):
everybody to an hour.
Speaker 5 (04:15):
But you know, it never happens with us, very rarely, doesn't.
We have more than enough good stuff, good problem to have.
But I'm looking forward to it. So, were you itching
to get back on the road. Yeah, you know, busy.
We're doing the dock promotion. Now, where is that gonna
burst appear in the Toronto Film Festival. Yeah, we're premiering
in there at a big theater. When is that September? Oh,
(04:38):
that's so oh wow. Yeah, that's right around the corner.
So I'm looking forward to that. And then I start.
I had to road October, November and January and then
Florida and februarymast. You know, I love getting out there.
I just it's my rest period. When I'm on that stage.
Nothing bothers you on, no phone calls, nothing. He's doing
what you love. I know you love it. And then
getting back to the dock because you know you showed
(05:01):
it to me. You know, I've seen segments of it. Jesus,
it's really good. I have to say, it's really a good documentary.
Thank you a lot of it. Since I said that
you it's going to work in progress, morphing it. You know,
it's the first time I'm sick of looking at myself
and those things. But well, we're gonna finish it up
and you know, we'll see what happens. It was good.
It was a lot of fun, good people working with it,
(05:22):
and it was cathartic to say the least. Right right,
all right, my boy, all right, brother, all my boy,
get some sleep and dianks talk and I lived Eadie
and we'll see you next week have our usual break
bread session. Talk to you.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
So there's the man right there, there he is. Man.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
Are you doing, Jim?
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Oh?
Speaker 4 (05:53):
Great, good to see you, Paul Skipper? How hard you pal?
Speaker 2 (05:56):
I'm all right.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Well we got you on the other side of the fence. Man,
you and Brak you're usually wrapping it up pretty good.
Now you're gonna get nailed today.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
Nicely.
Speaker 4 (06:05):
How you doing, I'm doing great? Thank you. Where are
you today?
Speaker 1 (06:08):
I'm in Los Angeles. Skippy is about twelve miles away.
Speaker 4 (06:11):
And where are you in the palace?
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Eight? Oh?
Speaker 1 (06:13):
So you're a neighbor to all of us.
Speaker 4 (06:16):
Local local, Yes, sir, Do.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
You remember the first time we met? Because I do.
I mean, you've had such an amazing.
Speaker 4 (06:20):
Career and you've I met you.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
You've went, that's right, Steve Win's office next time. Do
you remember Yellowstone?
Speaker 4 (06:26):
Yep?
Speaker 2 (06:27):
Sure.
Speaker 4 (06:27):
Do they look like I'm not paying attention, mister Eka.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
No, No, You're always paying attention. I've seen you on
both sides of the battle and the ring with some
of those animals.
Speaker 7 (06:36):
Well, Jim and I have known each other forty years.
Sorry to hear that The thing that's funny is our
producer Jordan, who's not on today but whenever we have
a guest, of course, and you've got your own podcast,
so you know, talking to you about how to run
a podcast sort of funny. But he, you know, always
sends us some questions like these are topics that you
(06:57):
should talk about whatever. And I'm lait of myself because
this is one of the only podcasts that we've done
so far where I don't even have to look at
the questions because I've got so much history with you.
It's just so many funny things. But I think at
one thing out of the way quickly. My daughter Bella
wanted me to remind you that you took us to
the Floyd Mayweather birthday party and they had tigers and
(07:22):
the giant ice carvings and the whole and what an
extravagnswer that was.
Speaker 4 (07:26):
You're the Staples Center in that in that hotel.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Hilarious she saw.
Speaker 7 (07:29):
She said, yeah, they have tigers here walking around, and.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Bella, without a doubt, not even in the.
Speaker 4 (07:39):
Entire building I'm talking about.
Speaker 7 (07:40):
There were thousands of people, really something. It was a
hell of a party, a lot of fun I.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Hear this guy's a prankster just like us.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
Skip.
Speaker 4 (07:48):
He is not like you. I've heard about you.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
Oh yeah, all True told.
Speaker 4 (07:52):
Me something the ones that you did it. Steve told
me of one you did too.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Steve, one of twelve. But I want to hear about Jim,
so I want to hear what he does. I want
to see if he's up on my Did you ever
pull anything on Skip?
Speaker 2 (08:02):
I don't think so.
Speaker 7 (08:02):
But one thing he did pull which wasn't a prank,
and it's one of our favorite stories that we have together.
As our mutual friend, the late Mel Simon was very
important in both of our lives. And of course Jim
and I we wrestle over who's closer to herb Simon
between the two of us. But Mel was such a kook,
and he was such a golf fanatic. And you know, Paul,
(08:24):
some billionaires they'd build their own nine hole golf course
at their home. Others built an eighteen whole golf course. Well,
Mel built a twenty seven whole golf course his property
in Indianapolis, and Jim and I went there to play it.
And we went in the garage and Jim said, seen
anything like this? I said, never in my life, and
(08:45):
I've been a golfer all my life.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
I've never seen it like this.
Speaker 7 (08:48):
He had more sets of clubs, Paul in this garage
than they have at the Roger Dunn Golf Superstory. You've
never seen anything like it. And two days after we
played mel what there?
Speaker 2 (09:00):
You know? Went out to play golf and he calls
me up and goes.
Speaker 4 (09:04):
Yeah, your trench and right, what about?
Speaker 7 (09:06):
He stalled like clubs? I said, what what are you
talking like? He's stalled like clubs?
Speaker 4 (09:11):
My clubs.
Speaker 7 (09:11):
I had a set of Yanak sirns, and they're gone.
He must have taken him. I said, what are you crazy?
The last he's got his own golf clubs. What does
he need your clubs for? And by the way, you've
got thousands of golf clubs. How would you even know?
He was just one of the great characters.
Speaker 4 (09:31):
There must have been seven hundred golf clubs in there.
And by the way, Skip had given me a set
of Yannis, but I don't travel with them to Indianapolis.
During the NBA Finals, out there and Larry walked through
the fence, he had the same fence line playing with
this golf. Skip calls me, he says, did you take
those golf clubs back to Los Angeles? I said, Skip,
I have not checked a bag for the last twenty
(09:53):
two years on the airlines, and the last one I
checked they're still looking for. So no, without without question,
I do not have this man's golf clubs, and I think.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
They're on the golf cart.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
I just left Dennis Washington. He's got an island up
in British Columbia called Stuart Island, and I've known him
in Phyllis for years. So we go up to the
island and he's got a nine hole golf course. Trent Jones,
I said, Dennis, how the hell did you do this?
He said, I just blasted my way through everything. He
(10:29):
blasted this island. It's unbelievable what he's done with this
ninety acres and in the middle of it, he's got
this nine hold. It's just amazing, amazing. I think Callaway
helped them with it, and they did some kind of
a documentary, but I've never seen anything like it. Well,
you know, Dennis, he does it right, Skip, He's a
good guy. You must know, Kevin, right, Jim.
Speaker 4 (10:50):
Yeah, sure, I've been to Dennis's house a couple times.
And Kevin. Kevin's so much fun. He's truly that guy's
had everything that can happen in life. He's experienced nine times.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
I was there with him from the age eight on
when I met that family. I almost raised those two kids.
I got him into Sherwood out here, which was a task.
Speaker 4 (11:09):
But the question is have you been able to keep
him in?
Speaker 2 (11:11):
Sure?
Speaker 1 (11:12):
I didn't even want to go there, but there were
something those two they're great, they're great kids.
Speaker 4 (11:16):
He lives on Riviera, and we got him in Riviera
on the condition, on the condition that he overlooks let
me see what is that. I think it's the seventh
hole or the eighth hole, one of those two. I'm
not sure. Seventh hole. And he last this music and
they said to him, you know, we can hear the
music in the clubhouse, so you might want to consider
(11:36):
turning that down at least, you know, maybe seven hours
of the day. So Kevin turned off music and he's
a member.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Now Lee's up to some good stuff. Now you do
it very well. You know, you've you've you've interviewed so
many people. Man, you've got an amazing career. But this
guy behind me, I don't know if you can see
the picture of Ali up there, I mean you and
I know he's probably the most recognizable human on the
planet at one point. And he used to come to
(12:03):
my dressing room at Caesar's, and the side of him
that I saw on I know that you saw was
just amazing to be in his company. Forget about how
smart he was. And you know, I'd go to dinner
parties and he'd be sitting there and somebody'd be blabbing
on for about twenty thirty minutes. He lift his head up,
go yeah, right, Japan was out of line, and we
(12:24):
did the right thing. I mean, he'd make one comment, right, Jim,
and then go back into listening. But he'd come into
my dressing rooms gift, and you know he loved music.
He loved music. And you can imagine listen all of
us in life, and Jim, you can attest to this.
You meet that one person and it's like you can't
even open your mouth. And it's happened to me a
(12:45):
couple of times, and he was one of them. But
he'd come in the dressing room at Caesar's and he said, hey, Polly,
you know I love that lonely boy. I'm just a
lonely boy. And I had to listen to three minutes
of lonely boy and I could never tell him it
wasn't the best version. But what a guy. But give
me some stuff on him, because you probably have more
(13:07):
than I did. You ever know when he was with
the there's a company out of Australia, Jim that really
looked after him. They made boxes and he did a
lot of work for them. Yeah, they made the Pratt family.
Is that ring a bell?
Speaker 2 (13:21):
No?
Speaker 4 (13:21):
No, But I knew him quite well and got to travel.
But you know, you just kind of stopped me in
my tracks with that. You know, I've been lucky to,
you know, do all these interviews and meet all these
people and last ten presidents of the United States, and
Ali was my first interview. And I'll tell you that
in a second. But only one time in my life
did I meet somebody where I got goosebumps. I couldn't
(13:45):
talk and I was just so so amazed. I was
with the late Gary Shandling, who was a dear friend,
and we were in a restaurant Tuscano, and we were
eating dinner and I still get chills telling this. Carol
Burnett and Carol Burnett came in and came over to
the table, and there was my whole childhood right there
(14:06):
in front of me. And I watched her. Obviously, we
watched the Jackie Gleeson Show, and there were some other
big stars, but like Carol Burnett was Saturday night to me.
My parents would go out, I'd have a babysitter, and
my brothers would be there. We looked forward to seeing
her and Tim Conway and just all those folks come on.
And there she was right in front of me. And
about two minutes into it, Gary said, Jim, this is
(14:29):
the first time I've seen you can't say anything. And
my wife friend was with me and Skip and Paul
I said, you know what, I'm speechless because that's just
how great you are. And she was so nice. She
put her arm around me. She sat there and talked.
That was it. It wasn't you know. Sounds silly to say,
(14:49):
but it wasn't President Bush or Nelson Mandela or Muhammad Ali.
I literally could not talk when I saw cal Burnett.
And so when I wrote my book Talking to Goats,
I had several people do some voiceovers. So I called
her on a whim having just met her that one
time I got her number and she was in Santa
barber and I said, would you read this last chapter?
(15:10):
It's about you. The final portion of my book is
about you and meeting you. And she did it, and
she sang, I'm so glad we had this time together.
And I just thought, Wow. And you just never know
who's going to impact you in that way. And Skip,
I'm sure you've had it. And Paul, you've met everybody
in your life, but Carol Burnett and I just would
have never ever thought that, you know, having interviewed Borbachoufsen
(15:34):
so many of these folks, this is the one where
I was going to be so stupefied. I was just
so enamored. And guess what she lived up to it all.
Speaker 7 (15:42):
She exceeded what was in my head. I had that
happen to me because of you. I had that experience
because Jim had arranged for Steve Whinn and his great
friend Julie is serving and I had to go to
the Masters to watch the tournament one year, and he
arranged for us to be up in the tower right
by the fifteenth Green that overlooks the fifteenth Green. Paul
(16:05):
the par five and the sixteenth team the par three,
and Jim was, you know, of course, working the tournament,
and we were up, way up in the air in
this tower, and Steve Wynn, who as we know, you know,
had challenges with his eyes, was having difficulty, you know,
really seeing what we were seeing, of course, but he
(16:27):
would say to me once in a while, he'd say,
who's coming up now? And I'd say Ray Floyd, and
Steve would yell out, Raymond, Hey, Ray, it's Steve Wynn
in the middle of the masters, right, And everybody is like,
oh my god, what's going on with this?
Speaker 2 (16:42):
Are you kidding me?
Speaker 7 (16:43):
I mean, you know, this is hallowed ground, and he's
yelling out the names of these people. So make a
long story short, the next day, Jim arranged for us
to watch the tournament inside the broadcast truck, whereas you
both know, they have like forty monitors and you're in
this very dark space and the only light is coming
from the monitors. And as we're looking at the at
(17:07):
the monitors and we're sitting there and it's surreal for
me that I'm with doctor j Right, He's on one
side of me, and there's a person sitting to my right.
But it's so dark in here you can't make out
anybody's face or anything. And I figured I want to
be in here for the next four hours. So she
just introduced myself. So I just took my hand and
I put it over and stuck it out, and I
(17:29):
put my hand down and said, Hi, I'm Skip Bronson,
and the guy said, Hi, Mickey Mantle. I just literally understand.
I grew up in Hertford, Connecticut, big Yankees fan. Mickey
Mantle was my idol. I had Mickey Mantle plastered in
my pictures of him in my room, and everything was
about my old essence was about Mickey Mantle. And now
(17:49):
all of a sudden, I mean, I to your point, Paul,
I was you know, Ahamed Ahamad Ahameda.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
It was just.
Speaker 7 (17:56):
Unbelievable and he was great. And then you know, when
when it was over. Of course we have time later
we'll tell the story about Steve trying to direct the
Master's golf tournament.
Speaker 4 (18:07):
Like, oh, I want to ask you a question. I
know it's my nature. I want to ask you a question.
Has that ever happened to you when somebody has met
you and they just became in such awe that they
couldn't they didn't know what to do.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
Vice versus all I'd remember, you know, I don't. I
can't really recall anyone with that kind of posturing. To me,
it happened also with Sophia Lauren and Elizabeth Taylor. But no, no,
I've done it. I mean recently a couple of years
ago with Putin. But you know, as much as he
was only in awe in the way that Jim. You know,
(18:44):
these guys are on a whole political vibe, and they
treat businessmen and politicians with a certain kind of restraint.
But when they meet celebrity, and a lot of guys,
you know, a lot of the guys with money that
I've met, because they're only interested in me because of celebrity,
but they act differently. And to see Putin, who had
heard so much about open up and have this great
(19:06):
smile and gracious output to you one. You know, all
most of these guys love my way. You know, we're
all narcissistic in one way or egotistical, but my way,
for somehow has blessed me with a neclectic rat of fans.
And my way to him was like everything, And when
I sang it to him. You could see the kind
of unusual glow in his face. And then we went
(19:26):
to the Ermitage Museum and in Russia, and he was
treating me very much like I was with you know,
a coach at the great football team, like Eddie de Bartolo,
you know, our dear friend Eddie. We all love Eddie.
The only instance where I saw it was with him.
I was and you know, he sat down and he
played Fats Domino's Blueberry Hill at the piano. I couldn't
fuck and believe it put singer Bloberry Hill almost is English.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
Not good.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
But I didn't tell him that. He had a few
people around him and it would be what you assume
it would be in terms of the atmosphere. It wasn't good,
and we all got through it, but it was just
an experience with everyone I've met all over the world too. Finally,
and I've been over there a few times to really
(20:11):
get the vibe of what's going on there, and you
walk away understanding a lot of things. But as I
said to me, it was Sophia Lauren and Elizabeth Taylor.
And that's a whole other story, but let's talk about
you can you tap into Ali a little more. I
loved him. I mean, I just thought he was an amazing,
amazing human being, and I'm a big fan of his.
Speaker 4 (20:32):
So I was seventeen years old and nineteen seventy seven,
and I was a sports interned for the ABC Bureau
ABC station in Denver, and I was a freshman in college,
and they were converting Skip and Paul from film to
video tape. So all of the union guys took the buyout.
(20:53):
They didn't want to learn a new craft. So I
became a videotape editor at seventeen years of age, graduated
from an internship very quickly, and they were paying me
fifteen thousand dollars. Fifteen thousand dollars to me in nineteen
seventy seven was more money than I thought I'd have
the rest of my life, because I bought a car
for two thousand dollars, a gold Toyota Corolla, and then
(21:14):
I would buy a keg of beer for everybody in
the dorm on my haull on Friday nights. And I
still had and I still would have twelve eight hundred
dollars left at the end of the year. This was
a lot of money. So I was a videotape editor.
What happened was I would come into the station early
to edit the sports videotape. And I was there at
seven am one morning and in come running the bureau
(21:38):
assignment editor station assignment editor. Her name was Sue Two's
and she said, you know something about sports? She were
the sports intern. I said yeah. She said, Muhammad Ali's
at two hours early at Stapleton International Airport, go interview. Well,
I was dressed worse than this. I had jeans and
a T shirt on. You know, it wasn't dressed very well.
I was in a cubicle edited booth. Cubicles were very
very small, and so I was in there and I
(22:01):
was getting ready for the Broncos draft and I was
editing something with Their coach at the time was a
man named Red Miller. He took him to their first
Super Bowl. So she came running in. He said, Stapleton
International Airport, go interview. I'd never done an interview before
in my life. I never thought about doing an interview
before in my life. I'd watch Howard Cosell and I'd
watch all of these guys. But you know, so now,
(22:23):
back then there's no cell phones, there's no beepers if
the reporter wasn't available at seven am, if they're in
the shower, if they're eating breakfast, if they're out for
a run. There was nobody there, so I was the
only one in the station. So I went out there
and there was Ali. There was about twenty people in
the room, and I asked my first question and he said,
you're doing this interview you don't even shape and everybody
(22:45):
started to laugh. Well that really relaxed me, and you know,
it was funny. By the third or fourth question, he said,
you sound like the local Howard Cosell, and that was
the nicest compliment I'd added in my life. So he
gave me forty five minutes, forty five.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
Minute, forty five minutes wow.
Speaker 4 (23:02):
Getting ready to fight Leon Spinks in their first fight,
and that he was upset. Then after that he was
going to fight a man named Lyle l Alzado in
Denver who was at Denver Bronco in an exhibition. Well
that's why he had come through Denver and he was early.
So we did forty five minutes and we talked about
everything and it went great, and I came back to
the station to edit myself out because they're not going
to put me on the news. I'm seventeen years old.
(23:22):
I've never done it. So I was just editing myself out.
The head of the bureau, the head of the station,
a man named Roger Ogden, came into the booths, and
Roger didn't even know my name. And he looked at
this tape for forty five minutes and he said, play
that again. So we looked at it for an hour
and a half and he got up and he said, Jim,
you and this videotape are going on the air. It's
(23:44):
barely adequate. Barely adequate. So somehow, some way, Paul and
Skip when I got into the Boxing Hall of Fame
forty years later and then into the Basketball Hall of
Fame forty two years later, I said, somehow barely ended
up here. So they took that tape and put it
on the air. And back in the days, ABC stations
(24:07):
were all connected by cable, by cabling AT and T
and so forth, and they put this on ABC and
then they had df ABC daily electronic feed where the
stations would connect and send their best in. Well, there
was a man by the name you remember, Frank Reynolds,
he anchored World News Tonight, and Frank Reynolds saw Ali
(24:29):
having fun with a seventeen year old young kid, so
he put it on World News Tonight. Ali saw that
when he got to Houston, his next stop, and saw
how much fun had got in the reaction that had
got and so then he had me come interview and
before and after each of his remaining fights for the
rest of his career. Don King saw it, Bob Aaron
saw it. So they hired me as a very young man,
(24:51):
and that was the start of my career. It was
all because of Ali. And make a long story short,
Ali let me do his last interview ever on television.
The last time he ever spoke to the public was
in two thousand and four. Was his last television interview.
I called Lannie and Muhammad, and we took Muhammad with
Mary Lourettin, who revolutionized women's sports with her nineteen eighty
four performance, Ray Leonard, who pattered his whole life sugar
(25:14):
Ray Leonard, after Ali, and Carl Lewis, who to this
day is still the most decorated track and field athlete
in the history of the Olympics, and the four of
us went up to the Stanford Pool four nights before
Michael Phelps left for Athens Grease. He had not won
a medal yet and he didn't feel that he belonged
on the show. He is now the most decorated athlete
(25:35):
in the history of the Olympics with I believe twenty
three gold medals and twenty nine medals overall. And so
now they play that show back every year. But that
was the last show that Ali ever did. And in
the final segment of the show, we had these torches
flown in. Ali had lit the torch obviously in Atlanta.
We had the torches flown in from Athens, and Ali
got up and said, and these were the last words
(25:56):
he ever uttered in public on television. He said, I'm
the greatest, You're the latest. Go win all those medals.
It's up to you. And he handed the torch to
Michael Phelps.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
Great story.
Speaker 4 (26:10):
So it was a great life with Ali from the
start in nineteen seventy seven up until his passing, obviously,
but a great public life with him as well, having
been able to do all those interviews and have such
close proximity and to just learn so much from him,
see how he treated people, have so much fun with
all the magic tricks that he did, and just a
(26:31):
lifetime of experiences. And I love him. I'm grateful to him.
I'll never forget him. I love Lonnie and it just
always be a special thing in my heart that it
was like hitting the lottery, but literally was like hitting
the lottery one and one hundred million chants of the
circumstance and the confluence of events that would take place
(26:53):
to intertwine this web was just the luckiest thing ever.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
I'm surrounded with memorabilia for these past sixty some years,
and you know, like behind me, I treasured this picture
with Bobby Hull Gretzky or right behind it all signed right,
and I've got all over there, some big hockey nut.
You must have all kinds of stuff. What's the most precious,
what's the most meaningful piece of memorability? Because we live
(27:29):
in that world today from baseball cards, I mean, it's
such a big business today, and I'm always curious who
the collectors are. What do you have that means a
lot to you?
Speaker 4 (27:39):
Well, I have so much, believe it or not. Last
time I saw you was at the Fountain Blue Hotel.
That's right. And when Jeffrey and Donnie Sofer opened it
up in Las Vegas, beautiful, beautiful facility, and Tom Brady
and myself for opening up a museum called the Hall
of Excellence. Going to open up just after the first
of the year, and it's going to have all the
great sports memorabilia in our country's history, in the world's history,
(28:01):
all of Tom's rings and jerseys, all the stuff that
I've collected over the years, gloves that Ali gave me
from his fight, his last Rowe Jordan's shoes from his
first championship, and it's all going into the Fountain Blue
Hotel called the Hall of Excellence, the gim and fran
Gray tom Brady Family Collection Hall of Excellence, and really
really proud of this. But what we've done, Tom calls
(28:22):
it the Smithsonian of Sports Memorabilia. What we've done is
get all of this stuff out of people's safe deposit boxes,
out of people's warehouses, all the stuff that people you know,
are selling at auction, and we're going to display in
the hotel. Kids will be free and we're going to
try and inspire the next generation. So we have some
(28:45):
things for everybody. We have Simone Biles first Gold Medal Leotard.
We have a trophy from everything that is competed for
in life, Paul, everything that you can think of is
competed for in life. We have Clint Eastwood's Academy Award,
Oprah Winfrey's Medal of Freedom. We have Ernie els Claric Jug,
Tom Weiskoff's Claret Jug. We have Jack Nicholas's Master's Trophy.
(29:09):
We have Adam Silver gave us the O'Brien Trophy, Bill
Belichick's Lombardi Trophy, you name it, we have it in their.
Pete Sampras has given us as Wimbledon Trophy, his US
Open Trophy, the Wimbledon dish from Steffi Graff and Andre Agassi,
the Aces Championship trophy from Las Vegas. You name it,
(29:29):
we've got it in here. And justin Timberlake's first Grammy.
So what we're trying to do is allow everybody to
come in. We have the Triple Crown horse Racing from
Augie Phipps and from the Churchill Downs winning colors. So
if you come in here, you're gonna see something and
you're going to be inspired by somebody. Jordan's shoes from
(29:52):
his first championship Jordan's first pair of air Jordan's Babe
roots bat from his calt shot. So we have the
first all from Tiger Woods winning the Masters. So when
you say what do I have, that's a favorite. All
of these things were given to me over the course
of years, and then we have on loan from many
of these athletes to participate. We have the torch. We
(30:14):
just got the torch from Janet Evans who lit all
these torch that very famous scene. Janet Evans one of
the great great swimmers in history of the swimming gold
medalist obviously in Atlanta and Barcelona, and she has agreed
to loan it to us. We have something for everybody.
(30:35):
Katie Lidnecki, Katie Lidecki sent us when she just broke
the championship, but the World World Championships. She sent us
her goggle and cap, the USA cap and the whole thing.
So it's really got to be something. And obviously Tom
has seven rings and all of his jerseys.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
And did Peter Arnell have anything to do with putting.
Speaker 5 (30:54):
It all together?
Speaker 4 (30:55):
Oh yes, Peter. Peter been spectacular. Peter just been great.
Peter designed building and in charge of our design for
the Hall of excellence. He is, you know, found you
know all the folks with the bulletproof glass and beautiful
marble that you know decorates the entire fountain blue. So
Peter's been great, Jeffrey Sulfer has been terrific in everything,
(31:18):
and we're just really looking forward to it. And you know,
there's fifty million view or fifty million visitors that come
to Las Vegas, and a lot of them come to
that convention center. You know, we're going to give somebody
something to come and see and it's a shared experience,
whether you're a grandfather with a son, or whether you're
just a fan of a team, or whether we're gonna
have rotating exhibits. We're going to have. The Basketball Hall
(31:38):
of Fame is helping us. Obviously, the Pro Football Hall
of Fame in Canton, Ohio has been great and giving
us the stuff that we'll be able to rotate in
to keep things fresh. FIFA out of Switzerland, the World
Cup coming, we'll have a lot of great soccer items
and what they call football obviously. The golf, the World
Golf Hall of Fame, which just moved to Pinehurst in
(32:01):
the USGA will also have the US Open trophy from
the USGA. So we're going to have just things that rotate.
And and Peter has been, Peter's been just Peter's a genius.
There's nobody like Peter Arnell.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
No, he is unbelievable what he's done now.
Speaker 4 (32:19):
He set this whole thing up in motion. He works
with Tom, he works with with me, and he's been
with the hotel. And I love Peter and I can't
They can't tell you how great the folks over at
the Fountain Blue have been. Jeffrey Sofer, Maurice, all the
folks over there, Jessica, they're just terrific. Mike Pappus, well, we.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
Wish him well.
Speaker 4 (32:35):
And I know you Starles there, you opened the hotel
and you've had a long association with them as well.
Speaker 5 (32:39):
Well.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
I've known the family for a long time and I
opened it with Justin and I wish him well. You know,
it's a tough racket and I'm putting a casino in
a casino hotel, and I think it's going to do
very well. It's a nice property and Arnail's doing a
great job with it.
Speaker 7 (32:54):
In nineteen eighty four, Gary Hallberg and I won the
Greater Hertford Open golf tournament. I have the trophy, but
something tells me it won't make the cut if I
were to send that over.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
That's very funny.
Speaker 7 (33:06):
Totally true, but pivoting back to all ages for a second.
So he was also a prankster, right, he used to
Did he ever prank you ever?
Speaker 2 (33:13):
Oh?
Speaker 4 (33:14):
My god, yeah, yep, one time. Do you guys remember
a little Joe? And he used to have law Familia
on Cannon, Yes, And it was a great Italian restaurant
and it was pretty notable for its food because the
food was great, but it was also known because every
night Dean Martin would be in there basically many times
by himself, and you sit by himself and very friendly
(33:37):
to everybody, but he'd be in there. So anyway, so
he'd been sitting by himself. Then he had a cocktail
in front of him obviously, and so anyway, So my
dad would come to Los Angeles quite frequently, and so
we were going to Law Familiar and Ali was in
town and I said, Mom, would please come buy it
and have dinner with us. I want you to spend
(33:57):
some time and meet my dad after all these years,
and so he said sure, Great, he was willing to
do it. So we went to dinner and we ate,
and Ali didn't show up, and nobody had cell phones
or anything back then, so that he didn't call the
restaurantor anything. He got busy and my dad was disappointed.
But we finally decided where we're going to go. So
we went out and left. I went to hand the
(34:19):
guy the valet thing, and I gave him a ten
dollar bill. Ten dollar bill at nineteen eighty three was
pretty good thing to hand the guy. You know, it
was probably three dollars to part the cars I gave
you got ten bucks. A black guy with a hat
on a mustache. You can do better than that, Tim
Gray that looked up.
Speaker 2 (34:39):
I was just standing on.
Speaker 4 (34:40):
My name was would you to do better than that?
How was the man going to make a living? It
was Ali. Ali had been the late, so he was
waiting for us outside. He had a fake mustache. He
always had to fake mustache, I don't want to say always,
but he'd have one dash and he had a pair
of glasses on that were his. And he took the
valet's hat and so anyway, he cranked me and my
(35:02):
dad and so we ended up standing out there for
about twenty or thirty minutes, and all Lee, to his credit,
everybody who came out, he went and got their car,
and every time he got there or when it was done,
he would take off the hat and take off the mustache.
He said, why you want to treat the champ like that?
Why you want to do why do you want to
(35:23):
do a man like that? Every one of them just
about fell down. It really, it just kind of spoke
to just the human that he was. One time we
were riding after I had done the interview, he asked
me to go on a part of his barnt storming
with him. And he was driving from Atlanta to Columbia,
(35:44):
South Carolina, And so we did the press conference in Atlanta,
and we got into a car and we went through
Augusta and we stopped and he did a press conference
there and Augusta, and we kept riding in the car
and I was good BUNDEENI was Ali was in the
front seat and this was a big Cadillac with the
(36:05):
top down, and in the back seat was Howard Bigham
and then me and Howard. They had taught how to
run a film camera, but he was basically a folk
You know he was a great photographer. So we're riding
by right along the border of Georgia and Carolina, and
we have to get off to get some gas, and
(36:26):
we get off and as we get off, we look
down off the side of the road there's a bunch
of kids playing basketball on dirt, not on pavement, on dirt.
And actually the basket, guys, the basket was a peach
barrel nailed to a tree and they were shooting a
basketball into no backboard. So alisis to Bandini, Jim Gray
(36:50):
watched this. Let's drive down here. So we drive down
there in this big white, big Cadillac with the thing
down wooded area in the middle of nowhere. I mean,
there's no buildings around, no anything, nothing, but there's maybe
fifteen kids, shirts and skins playing basketball, all black kids.
We drive down, nobody pays any attention. Ali gets out
(37:11):
of the car. Howard turn on that camera, and Howard
turns on the camera. The ball a few minutes later
rolls out to Ali and he picks it up. It
only hadn't noticed him up until that time. They just
kept playing. Picks up the ball and one of the
kids without his shirt on, comes running over looks at
Oli holding his ball, and you ever seen those You
ever seen those cartoons where the eye is like with
(37:32):
the toothpicks and it goes straight up and the eye
is just getting wider and wider and wider and wider
and wider, and he reaches out and he touches them
kind of light. Jesuys Ali. It's Ali. And all these
kids came running over fifteen kids when we started Skippy.
Fifteen kids, fifteen in the middle of nowhere, Ali shooting
(37:54):
baskets with them. Nobody has any pens, nobody has any cameras,
can't get any autograshket. But he'shooting baskets with them, and
Howard's recording it, and all this fifteen kids turns into
twenty twenty, turns into fifty, fifty, turns into one hundred.
Now you can hear the mountains literally moving. This is
in the middle of nowhere. You can hear they're coming down.
(38:17):
Almost unimaginable how many people showed up pretty soon. There
were chickens out on the court. People were coming and
their dogs. Turns into about five literally five six hundred
people in the middle of nowhere. Ali finally says, and
they had pens, and he signed the autographs, and he
tapped every kid on the head, and he shook every hand,
and he hugged every grandma and he did everything. And
(38:38):
you're wondering, where are all these people? Anyway, that's the
magnetism that he had. And he was great with him.
At about two hours there, we were late to Columbia.
By the time we left, it was like one of
those helicopters leaving Saigon. You know, you literally there were
people hanging on the trunk, on the hood. The whole
thing was a little scary because you didn't want somebody
to get hurt. That's how like they didn't want him
(39:00):
to leave. And how much adulation and love and and
just the magnetism and the graciousness and the gregariousness of him,
and he loved it and we all loved it, and
it was just it was just an amazing thing to see.
So we drive away and he's soaking wet, you know,
it's hot and everything. It says, you know, he you know,
(39:21):
he's in a nice clothes because he's doing press conferences,
so you know, they had to get some clothes out
and he changed and so forth. He says, who else
do you think can do that, Jim Gray, you think
that'll make your program?
Speaker 2 (39:32):
I called you by your first and last name always
right then? As always?
Speaker 1 (39:36):
You know, I defy to disagree with this, but if
he walked down the street with Elvis Presley and Paul McCartney,
he would still get the number one position. That's how
loved this guy was. How did you Brady hook up
on a podcast?
Speaker 4 (39:51):
How did that happen?
Speaker 3 (39:52):
So?
Speaker 4 (39:52):
I been doing the Monday night football on Westwood One
for a long time. My partner at that time was
Don Shula, and we had Mike Ditka was my other partner,
and so we would do the pregame and halftime segments.
So Don wanted to retire, and so I was at Riviera,
a golf course, and when I finished hitting golf balls,
(40:14):
they said, hey, your buddy Tom Brady is over with
his son. He was with his two or three year
old son Jack, over on the tennis court. So I
walked over and just said hi. I had interviewed Tom
numerous times, covered his games, worked at NBC, and broadcast
his Super Bowls on the radio. So we just started
(40:35):
talking for a few minutes. And he was still a
month or two away from going to training camp, and
he said, are you're going to be doing the show
this year? I said yeah. I said, matter of fact,
coach Schula wants to retire. Would you be interested in
picking up his spot? And he says, what does it entail?
And I said, well, it's every Monday night. I'm going
(40:56):
to have to do it eight or nine minutes in
the pre game and seven or eight minutes, ten minutes,
fifteen minutes at the halftime. He said, let me think
about that, and I had had his numbers, so he
said to get in touch with me. So he got
back in touch with me a few days later and
he said, Tuck to Steve Dubit, my agent, and so
I talked to Dubit and we hooked up and that
(41:18):
was about two thousand and nine ten, maybe two thousand
and nine or ten, and so we've just continued to
do it.
Speaker 7 (41:26):
When did the actual podcast start.
Speaker 4 (41:28):
Well, it was a radio show and then we moved.
When we moved from Westwood One to Serious XM, we
went to an hour show instead of doing the pregame
and a halftime, and that showed to this day still
kind of acts as a sort of a pregame it's
on Mad Dog Sports Radio at six o'clock. Then it
goes over to NFL Radio at six thirty, and it
goes from six thirty to seven thirty before the national
(41:51):
coverage on Westwood One picks up with the game. So
we moved over there. This is our this is be
four years ago. We moved. And so when we we're
a radio show, you guys, and the radio show converts,
the content converts to a podcast, and so it's the
same content that goes out over NFL Radio and matt
(42:13):
Dog Sports Radio. It's just that there's the ability to
download it on Apple and Pandora and Spotify and everything else.
And you know, Tom Tom is so popular and you know,
he's quoted like the president. So everything that he says,
you know, people pick up and people here, and he
has a tremendous following. So the podcast, even though the
material comes out on Monday night, you know, people downloaded
(42:36):
for the rest of the week. And so, you know,
it's been been a lot of fun. And he's he's
a better human being than he ever was a quarterback.
And he's just been a pleasure to be with and
to work with and to have in our lives and
as a friend and truly truly love it. I really
love him. And Larry's been fantastic Larry Fitzgerald, So we
we've all been together for a long time.
Speaker 7 (42:56):
You and Paul have so many different all these stories,
but what about the public persona of a guy like
Mike Tyson versus who he really is? Like I know
him a little bit, you know, you know him intimately,
But any similarities with Ali in terms of personality and
the way in terms of the way, you know, the
way they are in their private lives versus I remember,
(43:19):
I'll just throw out one thing. When I was in
Las Vegas and you know, working with Steve when and
went to a number of the Tyson fights, there was
always a you know, big party afterwards.
Speaker 2 (43:30):
He was so menacing.
Speaker 7 (43:31):
I mean, he was so different than than Ali.
Speaker 2 (43:33):
Ali was just you know, beautiful.
Speaker 7 (43:36):
Oddser you know, Tisse would come come charging out of
the corner right just like an animal, I mean literally
like an animal, and he was so fierce and after
he'd have his posse with him and he coded the
after party. He was the only guy I ever saw
in that kind of an environment where it was just
scary to even see him. He was just a frightening
(43:56):
kind of person. But I'm just curious in his real
in his personal life, where you also, you know, interacted
with him.
Speaker 2 (44:04):
How did you find him?
Speaker 4 (44:05):
You know, I love Mike and know Mike since he
was a very very young man, and been all over
the world with him in countless instances. And his life
has been a roller coaster. I mean, it's uh and
it you know, you just there's been a volatility to it.
And he's the most honest athlete I've ever been involved with.
(44:26):
He's dear friends. He takes his own medicine. Paul takes
his own medicine. He doesn't blame anybody for any of
his errors, for any of his vaults, for any of
the things that he's done wrong. He doesn't hide behind
the trainer, doesn't hide behind the promoter, doesn't blame anybody
(44:49):
for what he does wrong. And that's he takes accountability
and responsibility. Who does that? Which one named them? Where
are they? Where in public life do we have that?
Speaker 2 (45:01):
Now?
Speaker 4 (45:02):
You cannot condone a lot of the hideous behavior and
bad acts that he's done by the same token, he
is truly trying to be better tomorrow than he was yesterday,
and he truly thousands of acts of kindness that he
does not want publicity for and is not looking to
(45:23):
be pat on his head and told good man, good job.
That's not how he runs his life. And you know,
I just have tremendous admiration for him. I respect him.
You know, it's an interesting thing. I just have this here.
This is not meant to be a plug toward me
(45:44):
or anything. But I interviewed this man after he bit
another man's ear off. Every instance you can have, every
instance you can have, I've seen him. And so I
let two people read their chapters when I wrote my book,
because I wanted to make sure that what I was
saying they were okay with and that it didn't overstep
(46:06):
something personal, something personal. Mike Tyson wrote me a letter
when he was in jail. A five page letter came
to my house when he was in the Indiana State
Youth Peditentiary. I don't know how he had my address,
because we were not socially acquainted. We were professionally acquainted.
So I got this letter handwritten, and I still have
(46:28):
it to this day. And I got to page three
and he said, and it says and I'm quoting it,
mister Gray. They will kill my number tomorrow. Kill my
number is prison jargon for saying they'll let me out
of jail and kill the number of days that I
have left and my number as an inmate. Cool will
kill my number tomorrow if I will admit to this rape.
(46:49):
But I will never admit to something I didn't do.
I did not rape this woman, so I will stay
here in jail rather than admit it. Next paragraph, however,
there are four or five other things that I've done
throughout the course of my life that are worse than
what I'm accused. So therefore I feel I'm at the
right place at this time.
Speaker 1 (47:08):
Good good stuff.
Speaker 4 (47:10):
Fast forward now and he gets out of jail, and
I show up outside the penitentiary. Don King's walking him
out a little spera coron. All kinds of people are
around waiting for him, and they have the big black
jacket hang up over and I said, Don, we gonna
do this interview. Dodd says, Mike, we're talking to Jim. Yep,
(47:33):
we're talking to Jim. So we sit down and we
do the interview. Mike has his lawyer and I say, Mike,
I got this letter from you is live on the
Today Show. Okay, live on the Today Show, and then
I'm going to be on Dayline on NBC. I'm worth
NBC at the time. And I say, Mike, you sent
me this letter. Is this a private letter or is
this a public letter? If it's private, I won't mention it.
(47:55):
It's public, I'd like to mention it. If you're okay
with go ahead, mister de graying anything is fine, not
a problem. So I've read that portion. I say this
live on TV. Said Mike, what are the four or
five other things that you've done that were worse than
what you were accused? What were they? He looks at me,
(48:16):
looks over at his lawyer, looks back at me, with
no warning that this was coming, and he says, it's
probably best not to discuss this on national television because
I don't know the statue of limitations. However, what I
wrote you was true, powerful, powerful. I've been with him.
I've been with him for a long time, and on
the back of the book he wrote this, Jim interviewed me.
(48:36):
After my prolific fights, we were a sensational duo. Out
of the ring. Jim became my most trusted friend. He's
there no matter what and never afraid to give it
to me straight, as he does in this book, Jim
talks to goats because it takes a goat to noa goat.
So if you want the truth, ask Mike Eisen. Mike
Heyson will tell you the truth, even when it's at
(48:59):
his own peril. And that's just a very very rare
and so I would do anything I could try and
help Mike. And I think Kiki's wife has just been
sensational for him, and I wish him well. That doesn't
mean that he won't have another bad moment, because he's
capable of it at any time, and he recognizes that.
But it's really he's been you know, the guy who
read a thousand books. You know anybody who's read a
(49:19):
thousand books? You know anybody, right, Jackman Mao. And they's
race all in the same breath, as well as the
tenants of the Red Book. I don't know many people.
I don't know any other people like that.
Speaker 1 (49:29):
But on that note, a lot of people that I've
met that are a great man, they were all readers.
I defy you think of all the great smart people
you've met and ultimately you'll find they were all great readers.
Speaker 4 (49:45):
They read, read, read, and read knowledge.
Speaker 7 (49:47):
Oh, I was going to call you actually ask you
this question. So it's funny that I get a chance
to do it with my best buddy over here. This
exhibition that's something I can call it, that he's about
to have with one of the Paul brothers. How do
you first of all, how do you feel about that?
And you know, people think these are totally rigged, you know,
they're totally staged. What do you think about this upcoming fight?
Speaker 4 (50:10):
I think it's entertainment. And I think Mike's fifty eight
years old. And I did his fight against Roy Jones
Junior during COVID and there were like six people allowed
in the Staples Center and we did that broadcast and
I did it with Marl Ronalo did the play by play,
and Snoop Dogg was one of the commentators, and you know,
and that I believe that had like two point five
(50:30):
million buys, which is so far ahead and the way
of anything that anybody does in the pay per view business.
And Mike Tyson at the time, so this is whenever
COVID was twenty twenty one, I guess three or four
years ago, and nobody comes near. Nobody comes near those numbers.
So the public has a fascination with him. They want
(50:52):
to see it, They want to tell their kids about it,
they want to bring their kids. The kids want to
come and Jake Paul, for whatever the reason, has captured
the public's fancy in some fashion, whether he's you know,
whether they hate him or they love him. He's got, however,
many twenty five thirty billion I don't know how many
millions of followers on YouTube. He has dedicated himself in
a lot of ways to becoming a fighter. Now he
(51:13):
hasn't fought the competition that people would like to see
him fight, but he's become representative of somebody who at
least is putting in the work and attempting to do
this in a fashion that kind uphold his name and
be competitive. So I don't have any problem with this.
I don't like people who make judgments on people. You know,
we live in Los Angeles, all of us. If we're
(51:34):
going to start making judgments on people, we're not going
to have anybody to talk to. So as long as
what you're doing conformance with the law, like, I'm happy
Mike can go out and make millions and millions of
dollars at this age fighting, I don't want him to
get hurt. I hope he doesn't get hurt, but I
don't think at any point in anybody's life, being fifty
eight years old or when he was sixteen years old,
(51:56):
I don't think you will want to be hit by
Mike Tyson. So I believe he can defend himself and
he can protect himself. So I'm happy he can make
the money. And you know they're going to sell out
this at and T Stadium. Jerry Jones didn't put this
in there because he didn't think anybody was coming Netflix
with However, several hundreds of millions of viewers around the
world isn't paying for this because they don't think anybody's
going to watch it. It'll be the most viewed fight,
(52:17):
It'll be one of the most viewed events. And Michael
be in good shape. He's training and I've been to
see him training and he's you know that he had
the problem with his ulcer. He's getting back in shape
and he's in great chairs.
Speaker 7 (52:29):
So you had to pick a winner, would you make
a prediction.
Speaker 4 (52:32):
I'm picking Mike Tyson. I'm not betting against Mike Tyson.
Let me ask you a question. Did they tell Michaelidgelo
not to pain anymore? Did they tell Frank sin to
don't show up at the arena when he couldn't remember
all the words all the time, but everybody wanted to
see him and his voice was still magnificent. You know,
they tell all these people what to do with their lives.
They're so busy telling everybody what to do, how to
do it, why to do it, what they should be doing.
(52:53):
But it's not their lives. So what's the You know,
this is what he was to do, and he got
a license to do it. The State of Texts said, okay,
come fight.
Speaker 7 (53:11):
From my friend Paul's benefit, you know herb Simon, our
wonderful friend. I told him that you were going to
be on our podcast that Paul and Eric said about
having you on, and he said, you have to be
sure that you get him to tell the Hank Aaron story.
So ifpe don't mind, hippete indulgus.
Speaker 4 (53:30):
Can I plug the book again? Even though Ary was
talking to go Hank was a dear friend. And Ike
put something on the back of his cover here too.
If I can find it. I know Jim Gray the man.
He stood up for me with tremendous integrity and principle.
He suffered the consequences for doing what was right on
my behalf and for others, for a just cause. Integrity
is what matters. And I will never forget his honor
(53:52):
and honesty. So here's what happened. It's a sad state
of affairs that this happens. I was with my wife
and my in laws and we went to a restaurant
on the river down in New York, on the Hudson River.
And it's one of those fool food places, you know,
where the guy's standing there with the towel over his
(54:13):
arm and you know, he's got a bow tie on
and the you know, tuxedo and all this nonsense. And
we walk into this place and we sit down, you know,
my in laws and everybody's happy. It's a famous place.
Pretty empty, but it's a famous place. So you know,
we get to go and you know, you see all
the lights across the river and so forth.
Speaker 2 (54:33):
Go in there.
Speaker 4 (54:33):
And when we walk in, there's Billy and Hank Aaron
sitting on a bench. And so why did interview Hank
before new hike. So I walked over and said, helloone.
My father in law big baseball fan and mother in
law love love baseball, you know, baseball was was the
America's pastime. And SO introduced him and we spoke for
four or five minutes and everybody was happy, and we
(54:56):
go sit down. About twenty or thirty minutes later, I
started looking around. Where's Hank sitting? You know, it's just
kind of naturally, you know, you're gazing around, and where's Hank.
Where he is We'll send him a drink or something,
still sitting on the bench. So I walk over to Hank.
I say, you guys waiting for something? She said, no,
we're just we're just waiting to be seated. You're not
waiting for you to No, we're just waiting to be seated.
(55:18):
I walk over to this made or d and then
the guy with the towel and all the bullshit, you know,
like important guy. I say to him, Mom, Joe Namath
been to the restaurant. Oh yeah, Joe comes in all
the time. I says, it's the table right away, no
wherever he wants. Said now about Joe Demajia, Oh Joe Joe, Yeah, absolutely,
and I go through a couple others and I said, huh,
(55:41):
forget about who he is. He happens to be the
home run King. But why is this man sitting over
here waiting for a table in a fucking empty restaurant?
In an empty restaurant? Why are these two people sitting
there waiting for a table? But we're going to get
to that. You're going to get to him, I said,
the restaurant's empty. Where when are you going to get
to that? Give him a table, let's go. So they
(56:01):
walk him in, they sit him down, and they don't
sit him in the front road. They said him liking
rows four, not on the river, and they got like
nine empty tables. I said, what's wrong with this table?
So it was just a despicable thing. I said, Hank Coola,
we should go, you know this, let's let's let's let's
get out of this. Well, he didn't want to make
(56:22):
a scene and everything, and I told my family, I said,
let's go. We're bad enough, We've paid whatever it was.
We all got out of there. So I went and
I told my bosses at CBS what had gone on.
I was working at CBS Sports at the time, and
I said, you know, I'd like to do an interview
(56:44):
with Hank on how he suffered over the years because
Hank was not permitted in baseball at the time. He
wasn't a manager, he didn't have a front office job
permitted the row word, but nobody found a job for him.
We went and did the story and put this on
the air, and Hank said the baseball in effect had
blackballdom because he was black, and it was racist. And
(57:06):
these were all Hags words based on what I'd seen
in the restaurant. The story was not about the restaurant.
The story was about why he couldn't get a job.
And you know, this is an affable, amiable gentleman, Hey,
gar Like, if you have a problem with Hagaron, you
better look at yourself. So there's you know, nothing in
his character would indicate that this man should not be
(57:29):
doing whatever he wants in baseball. And he's the home
run King. And this is now sixteen seventeen years after
the exploits of what he had done by breaking vap
roots record. CBS had just taken over baseball from NBC,
and I was scheduled to do the World Series. Jack Buckin,
Tim McCarver. We ran the story on the air, and
(57:52):
he criticized baseball, and he spoke about racism and baseball.
And my boss at the time was man named Ted Shaker,
who ran the executive producer of CBS Sports. Story runs
and then on Monday, I get a call. Story runs
on Saturday. Monday, I get a call, called me into
the office. He sits me down. He says, why did
(58:13):
we put this story on the air. This is a
horrible story about baseball. Should have never gone on the air.
Fay Vincent and the Commissioner's office and not screaming hollering
at us. How could we treat them as partners like that,
calling baseball racist. I said, we don't call baseball races.
Hank Aaron related his story. We told Hank Aaron's story,
and you approved the story. You watched it before it
went on the air. So now you're calling me in
after went on the air, and you're mad at me,
(58:36):
mad at me for putting something that you approved going
on the air. Was a good story on Saturday. It
was a good story when we shot it. And now
because baseball's upset somehow, this isn't a good story. This
isn't an accurate this isn't a truthful story. I said,
I said, what are you mad at me? He says,
because you led a horse to water and you made
him drink. I said, I didn't live, need him anywhere.
This is the life he lives. Make a long story short.
(58:57):
They took me off the World series. They benched me
for doing and reassigned and replaced me for telling Hank
Aaron's story that was a truthful story about how he
had been disparaged and disregarded and not treated with the
proper respect, and that race was at it at the
core of it. And so Hank and I became very
(59:19):
good friends ever since then. And you know, it was
another very just fortunate out of a very unfortunate circumstance
at a restaurant, and in telling his story became a
very fortunate thing for me that I was able to
know him in the way that I got to know
him and spend time with him, in the amount of
(59:41):
time that I got to spend with him, and truly
loved hankin so to think that that was going on
in nineteen ninety one, you never know. And the tremendous,
tremendous onslaught of hatred that he experienced for breaking Baby
Brutes record was just really it was sad. It was sad,
(01:00:04):
but he handled himself so so beautifully, and so you know,
I know it had to hurt, and I know he suffered,
So it was it was it was to see the
dignity that he had been stripped of and be maintained
by him internally and to face what he had to
face externally was was remarkable.
Speaker 1 (01:00:26):
The lack of respect of which we all want, you.
Speaker 4 (01:00:28):
Know, decency, respect, common courtesy. So and he never forgot it,
and that heartened me because you know, you just try
and we all just try and do what's what's right.
This was, this was wrong that he was being treated
like that. So why would you want to see anybody
treated like that, let alone a national international treasure and hero.
What is going on here?
Speaker 2 (01:00:48):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (01:00:48):
It's so eclectic and you've had such a meaningful life.
I mean you look at everybody from Nelson Mandela and
Neil Armstrong, on and on, all the sports figures, all
kinds of amazing people. Is there anyone left done your
bucket list that I like to interview? Yeah, it's not
over for you. You're still doing it.
Speaker 4 (01:01:04):
Really, I don't sit here and say I've missed any
you know, so I don't. But there is one guy
i'd like to talk to, and we got to meet him, Brandon.
I'd like to meet the pope and interview the Pope.
Here's a man who spends his entire existence if you
take the religion out of it, because I'm not religious
(01:01:25):
and I don't follow any of those tenets and so forth,
but who really wants what's best for the world, what's
best for his following, for humankind, men, women, black, white, Asian, Muslim, Jewish, everything,
and who else dedicates themselves to that? And the institution
(01:01:46):
I understand, has a lot of issues. There's a lot
of controversies. There's all kinds of things that go on
with a variety of very important things. But I think
he'd be just an interesting person too. But I would
want to interview him about sports and the importance of sports.
Speaker 1 (01:02:00):
Had a lot of soccer out of them.
Speaker 4 (01:02:02):
What's the most important sport around the world to use?
Speaker 1 (01:02:04):
Well, I think soccer is coming on. I think football's
probably lost its luster. I think baseball we love it,
we know where it sits. But I don't think it's
the sexiest sport anymore.
Speaker 4 (01:02:14):
Far and away soccer, and it's side away. Argentina is
on top of the world now with pulling the world up.
But I don't but if it was just you know, no,
I really don't sit here and say, boy, I wish
I could, you know, I have a one on one
with with whoever.
Speaker 1 (01:02:28):
Yeah, so theoretically you would have loved to admit any
of the popes.
Speaker 4 (01:02:31):
No, I didn't want to meet the last one.
Speaker 2 (01:02:32):
I didn't.
Speaker 4 (01:02:33):
I didn't he didn't think he Pope Benedict didn't interest me.
Pope John Paul came to Philadelphia. I thought you would
have been really interesting. I'm not a I don't know
anything about the history of popes. I'm not, but I
mean just I just like the fact that they ded it.
I'd also like to I'd like to interview President she
because because I'd like to know what those folks think
(01:02:54):
about sports and the systemic doping and what they've done
and you know, just all kinds of issues. How the
two thousand and eight Olympics catapulted that country into the world,
and you know, then they've had them back there again
for the Winter Olympics, which really didn't fit, but they've
had it, so he'd be interesting too. And it's not
(01:03:15):
because these people with political figures. It's because I think
that sports can be used for good, for parent times
and for future generations. I've made a great, great living
interviewing all these people who've had all these tremendous achievements,
who have inspired people across the world to go out
and have greater performances than the ones that they've had.
(01:03:38):
So I think that sports can be used for good.
And I worked with a man named Bud Greenspan. You
were probably friends with him, Paul.
Speaker 2 (01:03:44):
Yeah, Bud was.
Speaker 4 (01:03:45):
A brilliant man and he was one of my first jobs.
And you know, we always thought that leaving of his films,
would you know, Jesse Owen's Returns to Berlin, the Last
African Runner, the Will M rout Alph Story, all those
incredible Billy Fist first to Pilot. You know, it was
a Bob s Letler in Aleesia and he was shut
down in World War But he always felt that if
(01:04:08):
he could leave these films, people across the world would
see them with wonderment of how those folks achieved all
of this, and that they could go out and do
it themselves or do it better. So I always kind
of thought, you know, that was really noble and really good.
And I've had that life in sports. No, I've got
to talk to Ali and Phelps and Brady and Lebron
(01:04:30):
and Jordan and all these folks over and over and
over and over again, and just seeing the dedication of
Tiger and the myopicness of Floyd Mayweather and Mike Tyson
and how you know, it just didn't matter to Serena Williams.
She was going to figure out a way to win,
you know, and to be able to do that. So
I think that there's benefit in glorifying those who have
(01:04:55):
had this commitment to excellence. Perhaps those two people, those
two people could help with the closure. And obviously I'm
never going to talk to president She and I would
say it's probably a long shot to get to the Pope.
Speaker 1 (01:05:05):
But in keeping Umi ask a question, what was your
takeaway from the current Olympics, which was amazing to walked
away from it saying, I think these athletes, with everything
they put into it, how amazing they are in their dedication.
I think they should be paid for what they're doing.
I think there's so much money made anyway, because we're
(01:05:27):
living in a world of where it's all about the money.
There seems to be a lot of money made from
the Olympics for businessmen, and I think these kids should
be paid.
Speaker 4 (01:05:37):
What's your take on that, Well, I think they're all
professionals now anyway. But I look at it differently. I'm
more idealistic. I think the money is available for Siman Bios.
I don't think she's going to do very well for
the rest of her life. And for you know, all
the others, Katie Ldecki, the American basketball team. Obviously, they're
all mull time millionaires as it is. But I look
(01:06:00):
at it in a different way. I think that these
Olympics brought the world closer in the world together for sure,
and I think that Paris and the French did an
amazing job. It was almost perfect. I was there, my wife,
friend and I we were there for twelve days. There
was not one thing that you could find fault with.
The traffic was gone, the venues were beautiful, the performances
(01:06:23):
were fantastic, the organization and security was off the charts great.
And I just think that when you can have whatever
it was one hundred and eighty or two hundred and
six countries come together in peace and coexistence and inspire
the youth around the world and old people who can't
get out of their chairs for seventeen days, sixteen days
of glory. And yes there's going to be cheaters, and
(01:06:46):
yes there's going to be controversy, and yes this judge
didn't get it right and screwed up the whole thing
with gymnastics. Okay, those things do occur, and those things
are really unfortunate human they're human errors. But I just
think that the Olympics, and yes, the IOC, and maybe
all of these folks are profiteering and so forth, and
the cities are left behind with all these venues and
(01:07:08):
many of them have gone broke in the past, and
you know, and so forth. But I just look at
it in the fashion, Paul is when I hear and
I see everybody having a good time, and they loved
being at beach volleyball. Nobody watches beach volleyball, and they
love being at the pool, and you can't name four
people in that pool tomorrow, and all these other sports.
(01:07:31):
I went to ping pong, and it's fascinating to see
these folks from China, in North Korea and all these
places playing this thing, and they're bad in this thing.
Why you can't even keep your eye on it fast enough?
Let alone think how they react. And you go see
Rafa Nadal, who's gotten literally hundreds of millions of dollars
going back out to Roland Garrams to play Djokovic, who's crying.
(01:07:53):
Who's crying because he won a gold medal after four
or five attempts of not that means something. So it's
not I don't want to be disagreeing with you. It's
but that's to me, not about money. It's not. It's
got nothing to do with money. It's got everything to
do with There for the grace of God, go iy
and here we are showing the world the glory of
(01:08:15):
our times. And there's something that that that no amount
can take the place of that.
Speaker 2 (01:08:21):
I saw.
Speaker 4 (01:08:22):
I saw Scottie Scheffler with a gold medal. He's crying.
He didn't cry when he won in the US Open. Yeah,
I don't think he cried when fred Ridley and these
folks put the green jacket on it. Now they'll want
that honor and that tradition for the rest of their lives.
He wasn't crying. So there's meaning behind this, no matter
whether you're the last African runner to finish the marathon
(01:08:43):
three hours after everybody's gone home with a broken kneecap,
because your country saw fit to send you there, not
to start the race, but to finish the race. So
I think there's I think there's a there's just tremendous
merit to all of this that we all benefit from
enjoy watching. And I was sorry to see the Olympics end.
(01:09:06):
And the world needs this going on with all the
strife and conflict everywhere and everybody addling each other, be
it you know, overseas, or political nature here or whatever.
It's just I just think it's good. So let the
institutions profiteer, let it stay alive, let it keep going,
because this is good for all of us.
Speaker 1 (01:09:27):
Did you miss Russia?
Speaker 4 (01:09:28):
I miss their athletes, except for the people who are
in the systemic doping. No, we don't miss that. We
don't miss any of that. But do I miss the
next Olga Corbett?
Speaker 2 (01:09:38):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (01:09:39):
Of course, because I want to see her and I
want to see who that next man is who can
do something great. Do I miss the people who are cheating? No,
I don't miss that at all. Do I think that
something that somebody over there who has nothing to do
with the Ukrainian War being punished because that's where he
was born. And now, just like when President Carter said,
(01:10:02):
we're not going to Moscow for the Olympics because you
think that's going to stop them from going into Afghanistan. Yeah,
I felt sorry for Carl Lewis. Yeah, I felt sorry
for all those athletes. Forget about Carl Lewis, that's a
bad example, because he went on and participated in four Olympics. More,
I feel sorry for the ones who only had nineteen eighty. So, yeah,
do I miss I'm not sitting here crying about it,
(01:10:25):
But I would have missed seeing somebody who would have
come on to a world stage, who might have given
us a performance and who might have introduced themselves to
us that we would never forget.
Speaker 7 (01:10:34):
So we've kept you for more than an hour. We
told you it was going to be an hour.
Speaker 4 (01:10:37):
I'm happy that you joined this podcast. I'm honored that
you asked me to come on. I obviously love you
Skipper and Paul. You've been just tremendous in the little
time that we spent together. I've enjoyed over the years,
and you've just been tremended.
Speaker 8 (01:10:51):
And by the way, nobody, I'm going to sound like
Bill Walt, nobody ever wrote a better song than My Way.
That was long of the world, so much so that
they sang that and I don't know who sang it
at the end of the Olympics, and she was fantastic.
Speaker 4 (01:11:05):
But of you, And every time I hear that, I
think of you. And it's not what somebody does one time,
it's what sustains. And that has sustained. I don't know
how long that's been, around sixty or seventy years. And
they play it every day, all day everywhere, with your voice,
with Frank's voice, with the lady in France's voice. Everybody's
taking a crack at it. Olgos Presley, somebody sent me
(01:11:26):
a tape of him the other day. It was unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (01:11:28):
And one other thing we met also again because we
it's always been in the strangest of timing. On the
streets of San Francisco. We were going down to a
shopping center. I ran right into you in San Francisco.
Do you remember that I do?
Speaker 4 (01:11:44):
That was a long time ago. It sure was? That
was it twenty five years ago?
Speaker 2 (01:11:49):
I remember Joy?
Speaker 1 (01:11:51):
Okay, there you go.
Speaker 4 (01:11:52):
Well I loved I loved being on here and thanks.
You know Skip, Skip some miracle. You know there is
a personal the planet that Skip broughtson does it?
Speaker 1 (01:12:01):
No, he doesn't know the pope, but he'll get there.
Speaker 2 (01:12:06):
You do. The Pope, Well, I don't know him yet.
Let's put it down.
Speaker 1 (01:12:12):
It's always yet with Skip.
Speaker 4 (01:12:13):
Tell him that story about somebody said you were a
name dropper. This is one of the funniest things I
ever heard.
Speaker 1 (01:12:17):
Yip a name dropper?
Speaker 2 (01:12:18):
Are you kidding? Like Frank Sinatra Tolby, don't be a
name dropper? Right?
Speaker 1 (01:12:24):
Everybody knows Skip and everybody loves Skip.
Speaker 4 (01:12:27):
Thank you, He's amazing. Do you guys know You guys
know Rudy Durant, don't you? Oh sure, Rudy's Rudy's beautiful guy.
I think Rudy's ninety three or ninety four years old.
And Rudy coined a phrase that's really really interesting. He said,
friendship is a serious business.
Speaker 2 (01:12:40):
I've learned a lot about friendship from Paul.
Speaker 7 (01:12:43):
To tell you the truth, I mean that sincerely, because
you know, there are acquaintances and then they're friends. It's
wonderful to be acquainted with so many people, but they
have good friends like you guys, means a lot to me,
I can.
Speaker 2 (01:12:55):
Tell you that. So thanks thanks to both of you
for that, Thanks for having me see around.
Speaker 4 (01:13:01):
All right here, Reggie Jackson's calling right here, Hey, Reggie, Reggie,
I'm good. You know the great all Aika he's on.
I'm dis finished his podcast. Say hello, Paul, that's Reggie Jackson.
Speaker 1 (01:13:13):
Reggie, Oh, how you doing?
Speaker 4 (01:13:15):
You know, you know I leave?
Speaker 1 (01:13:17):
I know, yeah, you live like two doors. Well that
was about twenty acres of trees. There were no streets.
I was up on one yell and you were around
the corner, right, Jack speaking Carmel.
Speaker 4 (01:13:30):
I used to go for little walks and walk by
your house.
Speaker 7 (01:13:32):
I don't walk by that your old house every other day.
Oh where do you live now?
Speaker 1 (01:13:38):
I'm down I'm down in Los Angeles? Okay, you're still
up there, obviously, right, Reggie. But great property. I loved
living up there. You know, all my kids left and
went to college and I was left with you know,
my wife and I and you know, it was a
huge property, twenty acres and we had our last child
and we moved down to La But I loved it
up there. I'm glad you're still up there because it's
(01:13:59):
really a beautiful place to bring kids up and to enjoys.
Speaker 7 (01:14:03):
It is yonder full, the weather is so green, and
then you can you can hide, you know, you can
be a celebrity and red there comfortably.
Speaker 1 (01:14:11):
Yeah. And I went up there like in the early
eighties and I looked at Pebble Beach and I just went, nah,
just not for me. And I said, anything available, And
the realtor said, there's an empty piece, but there's no road.
And we went up this dirt road for about a
few miles and I got to the top and it
was just trees, nothing, And I said how much And
(01:14:33):
she told me. I said, I'll take it. So for
the next two years, I was just blowing up everything.
And I put a road in and you know the area.
I don't think there's more than six homes up there,
is there?
Speaker 2 (01:14:42):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (01:14:43):
No, the errors at least home every five to ten acres.
Speaker 2 (01:14:49):
Yeah, her wealth, he can shie old.
Speaker 1 (01:14:52):
Great memories up there, a great memories.
Speaker 4 (01:14:54):
All right, skipping, skipping, Paul, Thank you guys. Thanks second,
just hanging us on, Thank You, Ray, Thanks Skipping, Thanks.
Speaker 1 (01:15:02):
To Our Away with Paul Anka and Skip Bronson is
a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (01:15:17):
The show's executive producer is Jordan Runtog, with supervising producer
and editor Marcy Depina.
Speaker 1 (01:15:25):
It was engineered by Todd Carlin and Graham Gibson, mixed
and mastered by the wonderful Mary Do.
Speaker 2 (01:15:32):
If you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave
us a review.
Speaker 1 (01:15:36):
For more podcasts on iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 8 (01:16:00):
Supp
Host
Paul Anka
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