Vice on Lisa Saxon, one of the women who changed sportswriting

Shit. I might have to go buy his jersey.

 

I believe you're right. He just didn't want to talk to the media, but he wasn't hostile about it. You could chat with him. I approached him one time and he tried to beg off, then I told him I was doing a story on his son, who was a basketball star at Cal. We talked for a few minutes.
I remember once that after he had a good game for the Cardinals in the postseason, he was asked to do the media room and he did it. Nothing earth shattering, but he did it.

 

I have always confused Alex Johnson and George Hendrick. Both had similar career path in teams they played for and both had reputations as being malcontents.

 

http://www.si.com/longform/donnie-moore/index.html

Apparently the only person who did something about the bruises that began appearing on Tonya in the 1980s was towering Angels outfielder George Hendrick, who currently coaches first for the Rays and gives as many interviews these days as he did as a player, which was none. Hendrick did, however, recently confirm the accounts of two other former Angels players who remember Hendrick’s Fu Manchu hovering over Moore’s one-inch afro. "You wanna hit somebody?"

 

I remember in the late 80s, there was a book called "Baseball Confidential" in which players were polled on various issues and quoted on it, some anonymously, some not.

Hendricks, some players said, was as nice as could be towards reporters, as long as they weren't trying to interview him.

 

A good read, reminded me of a juxtaposed story from, maybe, New York magazine 30 years ago. It was about the first male students at Vassar. The expected setup -- a couple of dudes in guy heaven, surrounded by available women. Or so they thought. There was a quote from one, he was in the cafeteria and one of his 'conquests' was with her friends at the next table, talking about him sotto voce. Paraphrasing his quote of what she said: "Oh, he's nice enough, I guess. But the best thing is, I can have him anytime I want."

 

I'm sure this makes sense and is completely relevant in your head.

 

I went there for a year, seven years after it went coed, when the ratio of women to men was 2:1. First, many women assumed you were gay because lots of the men were, or they assumed you enrolled because you couldn't get laid if you went to a regular brainy school like Williams or Oberlin or Swarthmore. Second, it was a heavy academic environment, so on a Saturday night you would find 20 times as many people in the library as you would in the on-campus bar, Matthew's Mug. Now I had spent the previous four years on scholarship at a good prep school that had twice as many boys as girls, so the reverse ratio seemed appealing, and the school wanted more men, so I correctly figured I'd get a great financial aid package. But the place was hardly like an orgy, even for a friend across the hall who was good-looking and the son of a foreign diplomat.

The place did inform a lot of my thoughts about women (although I always dug smart chicks even as a sixth-grader) and I got some sense of what it's like to be in a minority and not always a welcome one. Bottom line for me, though, was that I'd already worked part time on a newspaper, knew I could write and landed a full-time job covering preps 10 months after saying adios to Vassar. The late novelist John Gardner visited campus for a few days to critique students' work, and my freshman English teacher pushed me to go for it. Gardner said, "You can make a living at this," but I don't think he meant I should quit school and cover prep basketball.

There were some oddities, though, such as the time when the school paper's managing editor spotted me sitting in an easy chair in a lounge, walked over and sat on my lap while nonchalantly discussing a story I'd just written. You know, even in the less politically correct 1970s, it would have been inappropriate if the roles were reversed, and thank Christ I was too nervous to get a boner.

The idea of sports for men there was certainly an afterthought. The cross country team had no coach, and another freshman assumed the role unofficially (last I heard from him, he was in a mental institution). My roomie had turned down an athletic scholarship to Syracuse and because of injuries there were not enough runners to field a team against Albany College of Pharmacy, so he goaded me into running, although I had taken up smoking and had not run since being the fifth-best runner on a cross country team that went 1-11 my junior year (our coach was so disgusted with us that he quit to go coach girls, very successfully). Roommate says he doesn't care if I finish dead last as long as I manage to drag myself across the finish line. About 100 yards from the finish, I had to stop to vomit while runners from both teams applauded the straggler. Ah, sports as they were meant to be!

 

2:1?!!

The school I went to ... 4:1 ... Girls to guys.

 

Same here.

Huggy Jr. knows nothing about Hendrick other than he is the first base coach of the Rays. One day we were watching them play the Jays and the camera panned to Hendrick talking to a runner. Huggy jr. said, "I don't know how old that guy is but he looks like he could kick the crap out of every guy playing in the big leagues."