Mahopac Alumnus Writes Roger Clemens Biography

Jeff Pearlman, a 1990 alumnus of Mahopac High School, is the author of four books, including The Bad Guys Won, about the 1986 Mets; Boys will Be Boys, about the Dallas Cowboys in the early 1990s; and Love Me, Hate Me about Barry Bonds. His latest is The Rocket that Fell to Earth, a biography of Roger Clemens. He recently sat for an interview with the Courier. Incidentally, Jeff Pearlman is of no relation to Courier Sports Editor Skip Pearlman.

PCC: You grew up as a fan of the 1986 Mets. What was it like writing about them for your first book? Was it fun? Or was it frightening to confront such a wild team?

Jeff Pearlman: The only thing that was scary about it was that it was my first book, so I didn't know what I was doing. It was actually really joyful. I'm a huge nostalgia guy. I love nostalgia more than anything; it's my favorite thing about sports. There is probably no team I'm more nostalgic about than the '86 Mets. To go back and interview these guys, and relive it, it was like going back in time to a really pleasurable experience for me. You're 14 and you're watching Gary Carter on TV, then you're 31 and picking his brain for all the details.

Jeff Pearlman PCC: You say that nostalgia drives you, but your books look at these badboy figures in sports. How did that become your beat? Is that driven by your interest, or the reader's interest?

Pearlman: It's accidental, in a way. I don't consider the Mets bad boys. I just found them really entertaining. I'm a fan of characters. I'm a fan of the bizarre. The 90s Cowboys, I don't view them as bad guys. I see them as high flying, unique, and weird. I wouldn't want to write a book about Derek Jeter—as great as he is—because he doesn't strike me as a character.

PCC: Do these athletes still want to be high-flyers?

Pearlman: The Cowboys are a great example. The final scene of my Cowboys book, I snuck into Michael Irvin's Hall of Fame Party. All the Cowboys are there, and they were pretty much gone by 10:30 to their hotel. It showed how things have changed. Michael Irvin is dancing with his wife, and completely sober. Unless you are Darryl Strawberry or Dwight Gooden and really have demons to battle, over time you move away from that lifestyle.

PCC: How did you go from graduating from Mahopac, to being a wellknown sportswriter?

Pearlman: The thing that really got me going was that I was editor of the high school sports paper, my senior year. It was called the Chieftain. I was drawn to sports-writing when I was a kid. I would pore over the New York Times sports section. Then [when] I went to the University of Delaware, I was sports editor for the paper there, and I had lots of internships. One of the internships I had was at the Nashville Tennessean. When I graduated from Delaware, I had two job offers. One was a newspaper in Idaho, covering crops. The other was at the Tennessean being a food and fashion writer. I knew nothing about food or fashion. I was completely unqualified, but it was the job they had open. And eventually I became the high school wrestling writer. My dream was to write for Sports Illustrated as a kid. So I applied, and applied, and applied, and they finally hired me as a reporter, a fact-checking position. I did that and worked my way up at SI. I was there for six and a half years. Then I got tired of covering sports, and went to Newsday as a features writer. That's when my first book came out, while I was writing for Newsday.

PCC: What sportswriters did you like growing up?

Pearlman: I really liked Dave Anderson from the New York Times. I read the Times religiously because that was the paper we got at my house. I didn't even subscribe to SI as a kid. It was kind of expensive. But we had a neighbor, John Daly down the street. He used to put out bushels of old Sports Illustrateds. So I would steal them from his garbage when he wasn't looking. That's how I started absorbing these stories. So I'd be two years behind the times. I'd be reading about Vince Ferragamo, two years after he last quarterbacked the Rams. And then I'd go to the Mahopac Library. There was a librarian there, who knew me, and she'd hold all the sports books for me. If Bo Jackson's autobiography came out, she would call me and let me know. I'm not a big public speaker guy, but I always do the Mahopac Library because I'm so loyal to them.

PCC: You seem like one of the last writers to take the traditional route, from high school wrestling writer, to junior staff and up.

Pearlman: It's a different world now I get e-mails, "Dear Mr. Pearlman, I'm a 20 year old. What was your path?" It doesn't make any sense to tell the story because it doesn't work anymore. The journalism world has changed so drastically. There are no high-school wrestling beats anymore. I'm 37, I feel like 107. E-mail was archaic when I was in college. Multi-media? What the heck is multi-media? It didn't exist.

PCC: Is there a decline in appetite for great sports feature writing?

Pearlman: I'm always looking for the great long feature. I want to write them, and I want to read them. They exist but you have to struggle to find them. Even in Sports Illustrated, which used to be known for that, you don't see it as often. To me, the decline of newspapers and magazines, its not because people don't want to read long stuff, it's because these morons in suits are misreading what people want. The thing that magazines can do that the internet can't is the 5,000 word feature. Opening up Sports Illustrated and reading 8,000 words on Albert Pujols, or some cowboy with one arm in Oklahoma, I think that is what newspapers and magazines should be providing. And if they did there would be a lot more hunger for them. No one is going to buy a stupid magazine if they can get the same exact thing online.

PCC: Roger Clemens, the subject of your new book, The Rocket the Fell to Earth, is very compelling as an athlete. But what drew you to his character?

Pearlman: It had nothing to do with his baseball ability, actually. And it had little to do with steroids. You have this guy who is iconic, who is a super duper-duper star and I knew very little about him. His late hey-day was during my time covering baseball at SI, and you heard so little about him, except the basics they've been feeding you. But Clemens had this childhood in Dayton, Ohio, that almost no one knew about. It was just two pages in his autobiography. Here is a guy in the news, he's everywhere. Even my mother knows who he is. And yet we know nothing about him.

PCC: Did he make himself available to you?

Pearlman: Zero. I knew he wouldn't. You do this enough, you figure it out. Not only is he sort of guarded to begin with, but he's under investigation. I can't blame him for not talking to me. So you interview 400 people, and try to talk to everyone who has ever dealt with him. He sees himself in a warped way, so you try to talk to people who can give you truthful analysis of what he's like.

PCC: What was the timing like on releasing that book? He was all over the news.

Pearlman: The timing was terrible actually. I think if it came out two years ago it would have done better. But people are sick of hearing about steroids. I'm two for four on bestsellers and my two non-best sellers are steroids guys.

PCC: What's next for you?

Pearlman: I just started researching a Walter Payton biography. He's actually a nice guy. I've yet to write about a saintly-type figure. Hopefully I won't find anything. I'm hoping this guy is the real deal.