Ruminating with IRA BERKOW

About his favorite sports moments, Sandy Koufax and why baseball is not dying.

Ira Berkow

I met Ira Berkow through my friend Steve Greenberg, former deputy commissioner of baseball and the son of Detroit Tigers slugger Hank Greenberg, one of the two (the other being Sandy Koufax) greatest Jewish baseball players of all time. Ira, now 82, who edited Greenberg’s memoir and wrote a kids’ book about him–as well as a couple of dozen other books about sports, including a new one out this July — has had a career I once dreamed of for myself. He grew up on the West Side of Chicago and started covering sports for the Miami University student newspaper before attending Northwestern Medill Graduate School of Journalism. After writing for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, he worked for 26 years as a sports reporter and columnist for The New York Times, where he shared a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting and was a Pulitzer finalist for Distinguished Commentary.

JONATHAN ALTER:

Let's start with Chicago. You lived a few subway stops away from Wrigley Field - did you go to a lot of Cubs games growing up?

IRA BERKOW: 

I certainly did. When I was a kid I would sneak into Wrigley for Cubs and Bears games. 

JON:

How did you manage that?

IRA BERKOW:

There were three ways you could get in. You could go early through the entrance where all the vendors come through. No one questions you and then you hide someplace. The second way was to disguise yourself with the people who had disabilities who just walked through the gate. If you get in with those disabled people and drag your leg, pretty soon you're in the ballpark. The last method, which I don’t recommend, is finding the little railings into the ballpark that beer cases would be slid down. But instead of being a beer case, you're a kid.  

One time, my friend Jerry and I snuck into the ballpark before the gates were open. Jerry suggested that we go down to the dugout when the Cubs were having batting practice. Hank Sauer, the star left fielder, goes to take batting practice and tosses his glove right next to us. Now remember, we were from the West Side. The West Side had its criminal element, of which at times we were a part of. So Jerry sticks the glove under his sweater and says, “Let’s get out of here!” 

Thirty-seven years later, I’m covering the World Series in San Francisco for The New York Times. There was an earthquake, so everyone had to get out of the ballpark. As I’m evacuating I see an unmistakable face: Hank Sauer. All those years later, I still felt guilty about his glove. So in the middle of all that commotion, I tell him I have something important to tell him in confidence. I confess to him what happened with Jerry, how he stole the glove in 1952. Sauer puts his big hands on my throat and says, “You stole my glove!” Then he takes them off and tells me that he’s glad I got it off my chest. Two years later he collapsed and died, and I wrote this story in a Times column, admitting that I was an accessory to the crime. 

JON:

I remember watching that earthquake on TV in 1989 when the World Series was about to start and thinking it was one of the most dramatic things I’ve seen. 

IRA BERKOW:

I was in the auxiliary press box when we learned that it was an earthquake. I wanted to call my wife in New York, but all the phones were going out. Finally, I got one phone that was working. And I called my wife and she said “I'm going out for a jog. Can you call me back later?” I said you're not going to hear from me for a week. It was actually ten days before we could get in contact again. 

JON:

To go back a bit, it's a little bit surprising to me that you had to sneak in because when I was being raised by Bleacher Bums 15 years later, admission to the bleachers was only $1 and box seats were $4. We didn't have to sneak in because it was so cheap. By contrast, 10 days ago I was in Chicago for the Joanne Alter Lecture and I went to the Cubs-Dodgers game. Do you have any idea what a box seat at Wrigley costs now?

IRA BERKOW:

No

JON:

$160. That’s a long way from $4. 

IRA BERKOW:

We never thought about paying. The other guys were all from working class families and $1 in 1952 was probably significant.

JON:

You wrote a book about Red Smith, who when asked if it was hard for him to write, famously answered, “No, I just sit down and open a vein.” Do you feel that way when you write or does writing come easily to you?

IRA BERKOW:

Depends on the deadline. If I have a couple of hours, it will take me a couple of hours. But I’ve written sports columns in 25 minutes on deadline, ringside at a fight or at the baseline of a basketball game. 

JON:

Besides Red Smith, who are sports journalists or authors a young writer should look to for tips on how to write?

IRA BERKOW:

As far as sports, A.J. Liebling and Jimmy Cannon. For non sports, E.B. White, Dylan Thomas, and Ernest Hemingway. If you can learn from those five, you’d be a hell of a writer.

JON:

I saw the piece you wrote about Rod Carew [a Black Hall of Famer] after George Floyd. He told you that even after he was a star, he was afraid to jog in Minneapolis because somebody might try to shoot him.

IRA BERKOW:

When he was an all-star for the Twins, he lived in a suburb of Minneapolis and it was primarily white. He’d get into his very nice car and drive to the ballpark. He said that invariably a cop would pull me over, asking, “What's this Black guy doing here driving this real nice car?” This happened numerous times, and of course when the policeman realized it was Rod Carew, they would ask for his autograph. 

JON:

Did you know him before he converted to Judaism? 

IRA BERKOW:

He never converted to Judaism. He married a Jewish woman and had three daughters, and each of them had a bat mitzvah. At one point, when he was a coach with the California Angels, I did a story on him.  And he said, “Ira, I want to show you something. Come back into the locker room.” So I go back, and he shows me an album of photographs from his third daughter's bat mitzvah. He said they were costly, but this was the last one. 

JON:

Didn’t he wear a Star of David at one point? 

IRA BERKOW:

He may have, but he did not convert.

JON:

If Rod Carew doesn’t count, does that make Hank Greenberg the best Jewish baseball player of all time?

IRA BERKOW:

You might want to add Koufax.

JON:

I guess it's apples and oranges, because Koufax was a pitcher. 

IRA BERKOW:

The greatest Jewish hitter was probably Greenberg, and the best Jewish pitcher was probably Koufax. They are, as most people believe, the only two Jewish players in the Baseball Hall of Fame. 

However, I read somewhere that Lou Boudreau’s mother was Jewish. Boudreau is in the Hall of Fame as a great shortstop and also as the manager of the historic 1948 Indians World Series champions. There’s a man named Larry Ruttman, who made Jewish baseball cards. He sent them over to me, but there was no Lou Boudreau. Ruttman told me that Boudreau was Catholic. Later on, I was assigned to write his advance obituary for The New York Times. I called up Boudreau to get my facts right, and he told me that his mother was Jewish, but he lived with his dad and became Catholic. Still, he remembered going to seders at his Jewish grandparents’ house. So I tell Larry Ruttman that Lou Boudreau told The New York Times that his mother was Jewish. Now in the second edition of the Jewish baseball cards, there is Lou Boudreau. I consider this my contribution to Jewish heritage. There are three Jewish players in the Hall of Fame: Greenberg, Koufax and Boudreau.

JON:

In your film about Jewish baseball players, [the film makers] interviewed Koufax, which is so rare. He hardly gives any interviews. Have you interviewed him yourself?

IRA BERKOW:

I actually have a relationship with Sandy. It began when we tried to get him for that film, “Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story”, which I was a writer for. No one could get him to do it, so I called him and left a message. One evening, I got a phone call. The guy on the other line said “this is Sandy.” At the time I worked under Sandy Padwe, the Times deputy sports editor. So I say, “Sandy, what do you want?” He says, “This is Sandy Koufax.” Uhhh. So I tell him that we can’t do a movie about Jews in baseball without him, and he agrees. 

James Thurber wrote that the majority of American males go to bed dreaming of striking out the Yankee batting order. Koufax actually did it. One day on set, I asked Sandy what he dreamed about. He pointed to his wife, and said, “Her.”

JON:

That's a nice story. Why do you think he's so reclusive? 

IRA BERKOW:

He doesn't feel that he's reclusive. He still goes to the ball games at Dodger Stadium but I guess he wants his privacy.

JON:

Let's talk about what's happening with baseball right now: is baseball dying?

IRA BERKOW:

I don't think so. There's so many other sports to follow these days, of course, but as you get later in the season, the playoffs come and it's all very exciting.

The game has changed dramatically. Take, for example, Clayton Kershaw getting pulled while throwing a no-hitter. Compare that to the 1940s, when Bob Feller pitched an opening day no-hitter on a very cold afternoon. Nobody thought about taking him out even in really inclement weather. I was really interested in why they would take Kershaw out, and why he acceded to it. 

There’s a great book by Jim Kaplan, The Greatest Game Ever Pitched, which relates to this. It’s about the time Juan Marichal and Warren Spahn pitched 16 innings against each other. They both threw 200 pitches. And they both only took off one day after that 16 inning game. 

JON:

I once had a conversation with [former Cubs ace] Ferguson Jenkins about this. He would often go 20-19 with 20 complete games. I asked him why he could throw all those pitches when modern day pitchers can’t. Jenkins said that the idea that there is a specific science to how many pitches a human arm can throw is just foolish. Is this an example of the sabermetric approach to baseball running amok?

IRA BERKOW:

The feeling is that once you go through a batting order once or twice, the hitters will catch on. You also don’t have the same stuff you had in the first five innings. If you look at a box score today, each team has six or seven relief pitchers. I don’t think that’s fun for the fans. 

JON:

Are they going to have to limit the number of pitchers on a roster?

IRA BERKOW:

Well, they’ve already changed the rules so that each pitcher has to face at least three batters. 

JON:

Thoughts on other rule changes?

IRA BERKOW:

The league made it so you put a guy on second base to start the tenth inning. They have to change that back. That’s terrible. 

JON:

I agree with you because one of the greatest games I ever saw was Game 6 of the 1975 World Series, which is sometimes called “The Game that Saved Baseball,” because the game was declining at the time. Carlton Fisk hit a home run to win it in the 12th inning. There’s nothing like late extra inning excitement, so it seems like a really dumb move. 

IRA BERKOW:

One of the stories in my new book, Baseball’s Best Ever, is about Game 7 of the 1991 World Series. This was maybe the most extraordinary game ever because both teams had finished in last place the year before. And now they're playing to win the World Series. In extra innings, the Twins were able to win via a bloop single. 

JON:

And if there had been a thumb on the scale with an automatic runner on second base, it would have ruined the whole thing.

IRA BERKOW:

Exactly. Another one is that the umpires make a lot of mistakes. I support using technology to fix those mistakes. At first I was opposed, because it slowed down the game. But I’ve gotten used to it so I’ve kind of changed my mind on it. But if they went back I wouldn’t be bothered by it.

JON:

What about extending the DH [designated hitter] to the National League?

IRA BERKOW:

I’ve never liked the DH. I didn’t grow up with it. I like the idea of pitchers going up to bat. Maybe because I was a pitcher in high school. 

JON:

That’s the problem. If you have a pitcher switching from the AL to the NL, all of a sudden the guy is hitting for the first time since high school. 

IRA BERKOW:

Exactly. Look at Koufax. I think he went something like 0 for 200 at the plate. He was the world’s worst hitter. 

JON:

You seem not to think baseball is in trouble. 

IRA BERKOW:

In 1969, I went to spring training, with the idea of doing a three part series on whether baseball was doomed. It looked like pitching was totally dominating and making baseball boring. I spoke with Ted Williams, the manager of the Washington Senators. Williams was a very intelligent guy, and he said, “Everything goes in cycles. Baseball will return.” 

Baseball is beautiful. There is nothing more gorgeous in sports than a shortstop fielding a ball, making the long throw to first base and invariably getting the runner by half a step. I think baseball is a gorgeous game and it has longevity.

JON:

Tell us a couple of your favorite stories from the new book.

IRA BERKOW:

An old professor of mine at Miami of Ohio, Milton White, once went to a Yale vs. Harvard football game in 1932. It was pouring rain, and a heavyset man invited White to sit next to him, away from the torrential rain. The heavy set guy brings out jugs of whiskey sours. White was lonely, but he also sensed that the heavy set guy was lonely, too. Somehow or another, they seemed to bond. The heavy-set guy was Babe Ruth. 

JON:

1932, that was the year of Babe Ruth’s “called shot.” I was at a World Series game in 2016, and I heard John Paul Stevens, the Supreme Court justice, was there. I knew Stevens had been at the 1932 World Series, so I asked him about it. He pointed down to the seat he and his father sat in and said that Babe Ruth had pointed. It was true eyewitness testimony, and he didn’t have a doubt in his mind.

IRA BERKOW:

Pretty good witness.

JON:

Back to Juan Marichal. Marichal was a good hitter, and I was just thinking about him after Will Smith slapped Chris Rock at the Oscars. He famously hit Johnny Roseboro with a bat. That was a huge deal when it happened.

IRA BERKOW:

After that game when he threw 200 pitches, he still went on to play into his 40s. 

JON:

You wrote about Satchel Paige. He was pitching well into his 40s.

IRA BERKOW:

His first season he was listed as 42 years old, but no one knows how old he really was. He won the World Series that year. I ran into him at West Palm Beach later in life, and he was lamenting the poor pitching of those days. 

JON:

How about Bill Veeck? What do you remember about him?

IRA BERKOW:

He could be a spellbinding speaker. And of course, he brought in Eddie Gaedel, the midget at 3 foot 7 inches. Veeck told Gaedel, “When you go up to bat, don’t swing - crouch.” When he crouches, there’s no strike zone! Veeck said, “I’m going to be in the stands with a rifle. If you swing, I’ll shoot you.” The commissioner kicked Gaedel out of the league after one at-bat. Somehow they said you can’t have a midget on the roster. Later on, his former [St Louis Browns] teammate Frank Saucier actually ran into Gaedel working in a circus. He asked him how the circus was. “It’s okay, but it ain’t baseball”, said Gaedel. 

JON:

What are the most memorable games you've ever witnessed?

IRA BERKOW:

Well, for football, it was the [1965] game when Gale Sayers scored six touchdowns as a rookie [against the 49ers]. That record still stands, and I was there in person. 

JON:

I remember watching that on TV and it was so exciting.

IRA BERKOW:

He was just so elusive. Everytime he got the ball, you had the feeling he was going to score again. And he did. 

I once interviewed Edward Villella, the principal dancer of the New York City Ballet, and asked him of all the athletes he’d seen, who would have been a great ballet dancer. He said Gale Sayers. A few years later I ran into Sayers and his wife, and I told them that story. His wife started laughing and told me, “Gale can’t dance.” He responded, “Yes, I can … a little.”

JON:

He was a hero of mine growing up. When he died, with dementia, they thought it may have been related to his football career. There is now so much evidence about how football is a dangerous sport.

IRA BERKOW:

But they’re still playing it, and they’re still giving out scholarships for colleges. There are underprivileged athletes who get a free ride to college, and they're going to take their chances. Very rarely do players leave the game on their own when they are still intact. 

JON:

It’s almost like gladiators. They’re risking their lives for our amusement and their temporary gain. 

IRA BERKOW:

Yes, but there are scholarships to be gotten and big contracts to be won. Many of these athletes feel that they’re indestructible. They’re treated like celebrities. 

JON: How about basketball? 

IRA BERKOW:

Well I’ve been following the NBA playoffs very closely. Exciting season.  

JON:

On that topic, I want to tell you about the podcast that my son, Tommy Alter, does with JJ Redick. It's called The Old Man & The Three, and they have all the top NBA players on and they let their hair down in ways that they don't with reporters. It's a really good podcast.

IRA BERKOW:

He may be interested in a brief JJ Redick anecdote.

JON:

Of course. He's his business partner. 

IRA BERKOW:

I went to Louisville to interview their basketball coach, Rick Pitino. Pitino tells me that Steve Novak is the best outside shooter in college basketball. A few days later, I’m with Larry Bird, and I told him what Pitino told me. Larry Bird says that JJ Redick is the best outside shooter in college basketball. I said, “Larry, I'm just telling you what Pitino said.” And Bird said to me, “Who are you going to believe? Pitino or me?”

JON:

JJ would love that story. He’s a key reason that it’s one of the top NBA podcasts. JJ has turned into a first-rate journalist. If you listen to the podcast, the way that JJ conducts an interview, it's much better than the one I'm doing with you right now. He has a natural curiosity and he knows how to get things out of people that other interviewers don't. So does Tommy. They make news almost every week. 

IRA BERKOW:

Sounds great.

JON:

What’s your favorite basketball game that you’ve covered?

IRA BERKOW:

The most remarkable basketball game I ever saw was Game 6 of the 1981 NBA Finals between the 76ers and the Lakers. Kareem Abdul Jabbar was out, so Magic Johnson had to play center, even though he was a point guard. I love Johnson, especially his competitiveness. Magic scored 42 points, playing all five positions. I believe he’s the only rookie to win the Finals MVP.

JON:

I just watched this in the HBO series Winning Times. Have you seen any of the episodes?

IRA BERKOW:

I started it, but when they treated Jerry West so poorly I turned it off because it was fiction. I knew Jerry and he was terrific. He had humility and was a great player. 

JON:

Jerry West is apparently going to sue. 

IRA BERKOW:

I know he asked for a retraction and they told him that some of it was fictionalized. West would sometimes just shrug his shoulders at things. I remember I did a story on him when he was president of the Memphis Grizzlies. He was a great free throw shooter in his day, so I asked him why he didn’t show the Grizzlies players how to shoot. He said, “I tried. They won’t listen.”

JON:

Larry Bird also comes across poorly on that show. Magic fares better.

IRA BERKOW:

I adored both those guys. Whenever the Celtics or the Lakers would win, Bird and Magic would go into the trainer’s room after the game. The reporters couldn’t go in there, so they would have to talk to the other players. But when they lost, Bird or Magic would be sitting in the front of the locker room, ready to take the loss on their shoulders. This is what you need to know about the mentality of both Bird and Magic.

JON:

What is your favorite moment covering sports?

IRA BERKOW:

The first Mohamed Ali vs. Joe Frazier fight [which Frazier won]. Every reporter who covered it, including me, agreed it was the most exciting sports event we had ever covered. The hype was fantastic - it was two undefeated heavyweight champions. And it outdid the hype. Fifteen brutal rounds. Ali was so charismatic, he was a natural showman. All the eyes were on him in his white high top boxing shoes. After five rounds, I turned to the reporter next to me and said I had Ali four rounds to one. He said he had Frazier four rounds to one. That’s when I realized I was only watching Ali!

JON: 

What athletes, over the years, have you formed a really meaningful relationship with?

Greg Maddux was as intelligent an athlete as I ever ran across. Near the end of his career, I covered him with the Cubs during spring training. Joe Torre told me that whenever you swung on a Maddux pitch, it was a ball, and whenever you didn’t, it was a [called] strike. That was the height of brilliance for a pitcher. 

GEORGE TOGMAN [Old Goats intern]:

I have to ask: can the Yankees get anything going this fall?

IRA BERKOW:

They certainly have the players to do it. They have very good hitting and very good pitching. What’s to stop them from reaching the World Series? I think they’ll play the Dodgers. 

GEORGE TOGMAN:

How about in the Super Bowl?

IRA BERKOW:

It won’t be the Giants or the Jets. And after leaving Chicago some 55 years ago, I’m still a Bears fan.

JON:

Me too. I can't get any of these Chicago teams out of my bloodstream but it really hurts. They have never, since Sid Luckman, been able to come up with a quarterback.

IRA BERKOW:

Sid Luckman used to have his name on an automobile agency in Chicago. I went once with my friend Jerry, the same one who stole Hank Sauer’s glove, to get Sid Luckman’s autograph. Luckman wasn’t there, so we had to settle for an autograph from a rubber stamp. Some 45 years later, I ran into Sid Luckman at a press event and told him how I was robbed of an autograph. As a professional sports writer, I do not ask athletes for their autographs. But in this case, it’s just fine. And finally, I got it, after all these years. 

JON:

My version of this was after the Cubs won the World Series in 2016. I got into the dugout and David Ross, the Cubs player, was sitting there. I told him my story about how I grew up next to Wrigley and how I was raised by Bleacher Bums - I was babbling. And he stands up and gives me a bear hug and says, “You deserve a hug too. You long-suffering Cubs fan, you deserve a hug.”

IRA BERKOW:

To conclude, I got tickets to Bleacher Bums, the Off-Broadway show about the Cubs. Before the ticket booth, there was a curtain. I said, “Look, I’ve never paid to see a Cubs game. I went from sneaking in to being a sports reporter. I don’t feel comfortable handing in these tickets.” The curtain separated the seating from the lobby, and I took my wife, Dolly, with me and slipped through a far opening of the curtain and found our seats. I never pay to see the Cubs.

JON:

That's perfect. It brings our conversation full circle. Thanks, Ira.