Feinstein strolls down memory lane and adds more perspective

Posted Dec 18, 2011 by Bob D'Angelo

Updated Dec 18, 2011 at 11:04 PM

If there is such a thing as a “fly on the wall” in sports, then John Feinstein fits the bill.

I mean that in a good way. With a keen eye, a precise writing style and an in-your-face (when necessary) nose for news, the bestselling author has made blending into the background a fine art. His “you are there” books have helped readers connect with their sports heroes

Name the sport, and Feinstein has brought readers into locker rooms, clubhouses and behind the scenes with some of sport’s most intriguing personalities. His richly detailed books on basketball (“A Season on the Brink”), football (“Next Man Up”), baseball (“Living on the Black”), tennis (“Hard Courts”), golf (“A Good Walk Spoiled,” “Tales From Q School,” “The Majors”) and rivalries (“A Civil War”) have set the standard.

In his 28th and newest book “One on One: Behind the Scenes with the Greats in the Game,” (Little, Brown and Company; $27.99, hardback, 533 pages), Feinstein tells the reader how he did it. And it’s a fascinating, exciting trip as Feinstein relives his adventures researching and writing his books. He calls it his “professional memoir,” and the book coincides with the 25th anniversary of his first work, “A Season on the Brink.”

Critics and cynics might call this effort self-indulgent — “here is a book about the famous sports people I’ve talked to through the years” — but that’s a shallow, narrow view. I want to know how Feinstein convinced Bob Knight to give him total access to his Indiana program for a year, and to have him tell it in greater detail than he could in “A Season on the Brink.” I want to read more about how Feinstein nearly was arrested in Czechoslovakia for interviewing the mother of a hockey player who had defected.

I want details about Feinstein’s uneasy dinner conversation with Tiger Woods and his more pleasant talks with Arnold Palmer and (after a slow start) Jack Nicklaus. I want the inside information about Dean Smith, Mike Krzyzewski and Jim Valvano, and I want to know why “A Civil War,” a look at the Army-Navy football rivalry, was Feinstein’s favorite book project.

And Feinstein delivers, with funny, snarky and poignant stories. Early in “One on One,” the focus is on Knight, “the man who built my house.” While some publishers thought following a basketball coach in the Midwest was a dubious exercise that might generate regional interest, Feinstein knew he had a winner. And willingly or not, Knight proved to be an excellent subject. He dominates the first seven chapters and makes cameo appearances throughout, right down to his clipped final encounter with Feinstein as the book ends.

There are plenty of run-ins, too, as Feinstein seemed to be at odds many times with tournament or game officials who didn’t buy into his “total access” privileges. Some of them are hilarious, too. But Feinstein allows one of the book’s funniest lines to come from his editor at the Washington Post, George Solomon.
When Feinstein was leaving Czechoslovakia after running afoul of that country’s authorities, he offered to cover the final stage of the Tour de France cycling race.

“John, don’t do that,” Solomon told him. “We still have diplomatic relations with France.” 

There is a fun anecdote about Feinstein in the Wimbledon press box, showing the Duke of Kent how he transmitted a story back to Washington through his portable Radio Shack computer. And some great stories about Ted Tinling, the giant, bald-headed tennis historian who once designed Gussie Moran’s lace-panties dress that created a furor at Wimbledon in 1949.

Tinling, by the way, was indeed a piece of work. In addition to reminding me of Peter Garrett, the lead singer of the Australian group Midnight Oil, Tinling had some clever introductions for players. At a news conference for the Murjani Cup in South Florida in 1983, he once referred to 16-year-old pro Kathy Rinaldi as “the Bambi of the tour.”

The quotes come fast and furious in “One on One,” and two of them really stuck with me. The first came from Knight, who was rebuking Feinstein the night after he won a bet in front of the coach’s peers.

“You don’t have to prove you are the smartest guy in every room you walk into. Not everyone needs to know that about you,” Knight told him. “Let them figure it out by reading what you write.”

The second one is from Smith, embarrassed that Feinstein had learned how, as a North Carolina assistant in 1958, he had helped integrate the Pines Restaurant in Chapel Hill.

“You should never be proud of doing the right thing,” Smith said. “You should just do it.”

Feinstein’s admiration for Smith is clear, even when he had to write critical things. Feinstein wanted to write a biography of him in 1982 — which would have been his first book — but was rebuffed. Then, a 2009 project was scrapped due to the former coach’s health.

Feinstein wrote that “I truly believed (Smith) was the most important person in college basketball in the last fifty years, not because of the games he’d won but because of the lives he had touched. More than touched — influenced.”

That’s pretty heady stuff. I wondered how fans of UCLA’s John Wooden might feel about that analysis, but that’s an east-west debate I won’t touch.

The only real glitch I saw was when Feinstein referred to Joe Torre as a one-time MVP in 1969; the future manager was the National League MVP in 1971 with the St. Louis Cardinals, while Willie McCovey was the 1969 winner.

The reader also gets a peek into Feinstein’s personal life, as he talks about growing up in New York. His parents worked in the performing arts, and it was not unusual for celebrities to attend parties at the Feinstein residence.

I’ve always enjoyed Feinstein’s books on golf, particularly “Tales From Q School,” a work that truly captured the sport’s agony and ecstasy. “Next Man Up” completely changed my perception of then-Ravens coach Brian Billick (I liked him after reading it — well, sort of). “Living on the Black” was a yearlong pitching clinic presented by Feinstein through the eyes of Mike Mussina and Tom Glavine.

“One on One” follows the same pattern: a richly written, highly personal and exclusive look at how his books were shaped and molded.