Typewriters and Tweets: Bill Madden on beat writing and the 70s Yankees
Triumph Books
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Bill Madden has been covering Major League Baseball for over five decades, watching the rise and fall and subsequent rise and fall of the glamorous, often chaotic New York Yankees. His new memoir, Yankees, Typewriters, Scandals, and Cooperstown: A Baseball Memoir does touch on the milestones of his career - his first big gig, getting into the Hall of Fame - but it also explores big baseball stories, like the increasingly erratic antics of Yankees owner George Steinbrenner and the tragic later chapters of Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio’s lives.
The throughline of the book though, as in our conversation, is the art of baseball journalism and the changes it has seen over the decades Madden has been working. From typewriters to tweets, Madden has been through it.
Here’s our conversation.
Is it harder to write about your own life or about someone else's?
Oh, I would say definitely someone else's. I know who I am. If you're writing a book about someone else, that requires mountainous research. Whereas, writing a book about myself, it's basically a lot of memory.
How did you choose the stories that you included in your book?
I wanted to make it not so much about me. It’s an inside history of baseball over the last 50 years, in which I've been right in the middle of everything. I also wanted it to be a mini history of the newspaper business, which has been a big part of my life.
I just started from how I first got into the business, when I worked for United Press International, the wire service. This was long before the internet. We had a slogan, “Deadline every minute,” which is, of course, what the business is today, the age of Twitter and everything else.
Back then, the newspapers had their own locked-in deadlines, like six o'clock at night or whatever. Whereas, the wire services, we were responsible for covering the news 24 hours a day. You never knew when you were going to be thrust into action with a story. I wanted to show what that experience was and how, because of that, I was able to adjust fairly quickly to the newspaper business.
What do you think are people's biggest misconceptions about the work of a beat writer?
Well, I remember back in the day, they used to joke that the baseball beat writers had it great. Marge Schott, the notorious, penurious Cincinnati Reds owner who had a disdain for the press and didn't like the idea that they had to provide media lunches, she said, "Why should we provide these people lunches when all they're doing is being paid to watch baseball games?"
Yes, we were paid to watch baseball games, but we were also paid to get to know the players. You didn't just cover the game and you didn't just cover the action in the games, you covered the team. That was a yeoman task because of the fact that you had three or four other people doing the same thing. In New York, especially where I was, it was stiff competition. Most importantly, you had to develop your sources quickly within the team. You had to have go-to guys.
I was very fortunate. I got to know certain people in the organization and I had certain players that I could go to all the time. If there was something, if I sniffed something out, they would tell me, “Yes, you're right,” and I would pursue that. The hardest part of beat writing is the fact that you had to be on your toes every day and you had to really have good sources on the team or else you were going to get buried.
How would you develop your sources on the team?
In different ways, but my main, I guess, was that at the beginning of the year, I would approach the players at their lockers in spring training and just have small talk with them. You have to develop a trust. Of course, the players read the papers. If you ripped a player unfairly, well, that player wasn't going to be a source for you anymore. You had to be careful. I always felt I was fair.
Speaking of access to players, that's changed quite a bit. What are the challenges that face beat writers now regarding access to players?
It's all different now. Back in my day, we used to travel with the team on the team charters and everything. We were all big one happy family. We were on the same planes together. We drank in the same hotel bars together. It was a whole different ballgame.
Today, the players are so separated from the writers. You go into the Yankee clubhouse today, and there's nobody in there. They're all in some other part of the building. The writers have an hour before each game to get whatever they need for their early stories. That was invaluable to us back in the day. Now it's a waste of time, because the writers wind up talking to writers.
There's such a separation of player and writer today that it's almost like the writers have to just got to fend for themselves, they've got to write about the games. I don't know where they are able to really ever spend any quality time with players. It's a whole different thing now. I would hate to be a beat writer today. I don't know how I could do it, because I like to have relationships.
I had relationships with a lot of the Yankee players, and it wasn't one of these things where I just wrote puff pieces about them. Anybody who knows me will know that I was a fairly hard hitter when it came to writing on the Yankees. Today, the only time you're going to see quotes from the players are going to be the quotes they give in a group session after the game.
We'd have a game with the Yankees back in the '80s and there was something happening every night. Somebody was doing something crazy. In 1983 Doyle Alexander gave up four home runs in one game. After the game, Steinbrenner had a press release read to the writers in the press box saying that he's recalling Doyle Alexander back to New York for a physical because he's fearing for the player's safety behind him.
After the game, we went down to the clubhouse. The players were absolutely livid. They were also very funny. I went to different players and I asked them. One of them was Graig Nettles. I said, "Graig, George says he's worried about the player's safety playing behind Doyle. Are you worried about your safety?" Nettles said to me, "Oh, I'm not worried about myself's safety, but I was worried for the safety of the people in the left field stands."
That was a day you interviewed three or four different players on this whole business with George's press release. You can't do that today because everything is homogenized and organized. The players wait around after the game. They bring in the starting pitcher. He gives 20 minutes of time. In the meantime, all the other players have left the clubhouse. That's the way they work today.
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Over your years with the Yankees, which Yankees teams have stood out most to you?
My Yankees were the '70s Yankees. I was a Yankees beat writer, and I was involved in all the championship teams there. Of course, that was also the time when the team went into its long demise after George kept trading on their players and signing bad free agents. I had Ron Guidry. I had Lou Piniella. I had Catfish Hunter. These were all class people, and it was a joy being around that team.
I would say probably my favorite of all Yankees was Lou Piniella because we got to be very good friends. Lou was with them for almost 17 years. On top of that, he was both the manager twice and briefly the general manager. He was constantly involved with various foibles with George. He was George's his favorite son, but he was also his favorite whipping boy. There were so many controversies with Lou and George, and, of course, I was right in the middle of all of them.
You have these relationships with the players and the owners, managers and such. How do you walk that line between reporting on these people and also having a relationship with them?
Number one, you have to always understand what's on the record and what's off the record. The stuff that's off the record, you have to figure a way to write it so it's not a violation of confidence with the person who told it to you.
My number one thing, I felt, was trust. A lot of people I talked to, they may not have been crazy about me, but they trusted me. They knew that I would not betray them in the papers. They knew that they could be more forthright with me than they might ordinarily be with somebody they didn't know. I was around on the beat for 40 years. There was a reason I was able to survive all that time because of the fact that I never betrayed that trust.
Is there a specific story you wanted to write about for the book that ended up having to get cut?
There was a great scene, again, involving Piniella. I meant to put it in the book and I forgot. In 1990, after he'd been fired by George for the first time - George gave him his first chance as a manager, but then he didn't give him a chance to fulfill it. He fired him after two seasons - Steinbrenner had him under contract. Every good team that talked to George wouldn't get permission to talk to Lou. Lou was trapped there in the broadcasting booth.
Anyway, finally, Marge Schott, the Reds' owner, needed a manager for the Reds in 1990, and she asked George for permission. George figured Lou would go over there, and he'd be buried in Cincinnati. They were just a so-so team. He winds up going over to Cincinnati, and he wins full championship in his first year there, 1990. I'll never forget.
We were in Cincinnati. It was after the game, and Lou was just taking it all in, in his office. That night, George had been on Saturday Night Live doing some skit where he pulled his pants down. It was a crazy thing. On Saturday Night Live, George had to admit that Lou had won the world championship.
I said to Lou as I'm sitting there with him, I said, "Lou, is there anything you'd like to say to George now after it's all over and done with here?" He looked at me and he said, "Yes. George, I can manage.
Yankees, Typewriters, Scandals, and Cooperstown: A Baseball Memoir is written by Bill Madden and published by Triumph Books. It is available in bookshops and online now.
