Rushing between shows in Cleveland, I called Greg Mowery, my publicist at William Morrow, who had just received an early copy of the September 3 edition of the New York Times Book Review. Mowery said that a Times sportswriter, Gerald Eskenazi, had given me a bad review.
After Mowery quickly read brief portions of the review over the phone, I really wasn’t too upset, telling him that there were a lot of mistakes in it, and that it could not be defended. Undaunted, I went on with my busy day.
The following morning, Thursday, August 31, after my last radio show, I arrived at Cleveland Hopkins Airport. While waiting to return to Washington, I had some time, so I called my editor, Lisa Drew, and asked her what she thought about the New York Times review. She said that she wasn't too concerned, because she never expected the sports media to be anything but hostile toward us—just as I had predicted in my book.
That same day, sportswriter Desiree Ward of the Milwaukee Journal wrote her own review of Interference, stating in her first paragraph:
Don't buy this book. Don't borrow this book. Don't swap anything for this book. If it's too late and one of the above has already taken place, put the book down and don't read it. It's not that Dan Moldea hasn't done his homework on gambling within the National Football League. He has. In fact, he has done so much homework that it takes 52 chapters, plus a prolog and epilog, to present it. And that's part of the problem with this book: There is simply too much information. . . .[1]
Back in Washington, on Friday, September 1, I took a cab to ABC News where I was interviewed by correspondent Dave Marash for the filmed portion of an upcoming Nightline program.
During the pre‑interview, Marash told me that my friend, sports arbitrageur Lem Banker of Las Vegas, had said that gamblers had tampered with two Minnesota Vikings' games in 1988—against Green Bay Packers and Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Banker hinted at this during our August 12 appearance together on Bill Moran's radio show on KFI in Los Angeles and mentioned it again while we were having dinner together at Binion’s Horseshoe Club while I was in Las Vegas.
According to Banker, eight to ten players with the Vikings had been poisoned during a locker-room meal by syndicate‑connected gamblers in an attempt to influence the outcomes of the games. Minnesota did not cover the spread in either contest.
Marash was in the process of tracking down the story. He also told me that the NFL was not giving Nightline anyone to refute my charges—although Joe Browne said that he might agree to a taped interview.
I begged Marash to convince Browne to go on the air because I verbally wanted to take him apart on national television.
I also notified Marash about the Gerald Eskenazi's review in the New York Times Book Review. I told him that I would send him my written response after I actually saw the review.
That afternoon, I did the Mark Scott Show on WRC Talk Radio in Washington. He had notes about the New York Times review in front of him, but he didn't have an actual copy of the review. He did not quote any of the negative parts, only Eskenazi's statement that there was "hot stuff" in the book.
Although everyone was talking about it, I still could not get a copy of this review that was already bedeviling me.
All I knew about Eskenazi was that he was a respected sportswriter who had been on staff at the New York Times for many years. In fact, I had an endnote in my book which cited his work.
That night, I did The Winner's Circle, a sports show run by Brad Segall in Princeton, New Jersey. Once again, the New York Times review was brought up. This time, I attacked Eskenazi during the program for the mistakes I remembered that he had made. I also accused him of trying to protect his friends and sources at the NFL by attempting to knock me out with one punch.
On September 1, Howard Schwartz, the manager of the Gambler Book Club in Las Vegas, sent a letter to a salesperson at William Morrow, which stated:
[Interference] is selling well here—200 copies in less than 2 weeks. I don't care what the reviews said in the NY Times Book Review section by Eskenazi or Football News's Yarbro. I like the book. . . . We can hardly keep the book in stock.
This was the first time I had even heard about the Yarbro review.
ENDNOTE
[1] Desiree Ward, Milwaukee Journal, “Don’t let this interfere,” August 31, 1989.