On Sunday, September 3, Mimi and I were having breakfast at the Zebra Room in Washington, which was near her apartment building. I had picked up a copy of the New York Times at a nearby drug store and brought it to the restaurant. Because she wanted to read it first, I gave her the New York Times Book Review while I scanned the front section of the newspaper.
When I saw tears welling up in her eyes, I took the Book Review from her. "How bad can it be?" I asked.
I was completely shocked after I saw the review in black and white and finished reading it for the first time. The impact of seeing it in print far exceeded the mere sting of hearing it read quickly over the telephone.
Incredulous, I told Mimi, "First, Fred Cook, then Aljean Harmetz, then Jeff Gerth, and then John Corry. This is the fifth goddamn time the New York Times has done this to me!"
By then, both Mimi and I had lost our appetites, so I walked her home and returned to my apartment. I immediately wrote an eight‑page response to the review.
Eskenazi—in his attempt to make Interference appear to be a book filled with major errors—had based his written opinion on a series of provably false statements. Incredibly, he had claimed that I stated facts I never did, or that I omitted other facts that were clearly contained in my book. Using these gross misrepresentations, he concluded that my book contained "sloppy journalism," a charge that, if true, could end a nonfiction author's career.
Immediately, I knew that I had no choice but to challenge the review, which I considered both reckless and malicious—the thresholds for libel against a public figure or even a limited public figure, assuming I was one.
In short, Eskenazi's review sounded like another Joe Browne press release, and I immediately suspected a connection.
Specifically, the five principal charges upon which Eskenazi based his conclusions about me and my book and my responses to these charges were as follows:
1. Charge: Eskenazi claimed that I did not properly identify Joe Hirsch as a writer on horse racing for the Morning Telegraph, which later became the Daily Racing Forum.
Response: This was untrue. In the second paragraph of page 139 of my book, I quoted former New York Jets quarterback Joe Namath as saying: "I met Joe [Hirsch] at his place of business, the race track. No, he doesn't book bets; at least, he's never booked any of my bets. Joe writes for the Morning Telegraph, which is read by known gamblers."
2. Charge: Eskenazi wrote that I claimed that there was something premeditated and "sinister" about a meeting in a Miami bar between Namath and Baltimore Colts placekicker Lou Michaels during the week before Super Bowl III in 1969.
Response: This was a clear misrepresentation. I never made this charge and wrote in the second paragraph on page 197: "[Lou] Michaels told me that the meeting at a Miami bar/restaurant was quite accidental and even confrontational."
3. Charge: Eskenazi wrote that I "revived the discredited notion" that former Los Angeles Rams owner Carroll Rosenbloom, who drowned in 1979, was murdered.
Response: This was untrue. In the fourth paragraph of page 360 of the book, I wrote: "The evidence appears to be clear that Rosenbloom died in a tragic accident and was not murdered."
4. Charge: Eskenazi claimed that my version of the alleged betting on the 1958 NFL championship game between the Colts and the New York Giants was based on nothing more than my own speculation.
Response: This was untrue. In paragraphs five through seven on page 91 of my book, I quoted three knowledgeable sources—oddsmaker Bobby Martin, as well as bookmakers Ed Curd and Gene Nolan—who described the betting and how it was accomplished.
5. Charge: Eskenazi wrote that I did not "state in the text that Steve Myhra was among the worst placekickers in the league."
Response: This was untrue. In the third paragraph of page 90 of the book, I quoted Colts' head coach Weeb Ewbank, who told me, in part: "We did not have a great field goal kicker." Also, in footnote #1 on page 444 of my book, which refers to the Ewbank quote, I wrote: "Baltimore, in 1958, had the second worst field goal percentage in the NFL, 35.7 percent, making five of fourteen attempts."
Also, the review noted that I had misspelled the names of three minor characters in my 512-page book—who had a combined total of four cites in my index. However, I had spelled these names just as they appeared in both the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times.[1]
Remarkably, in the credit line to Eskenazi's review of my book, he was simply identified as "a sportswriter for the New York Times, [who] is currently working with Carl Yastrzemski on his autobiography."
In other words, the Times had tried to represent Eskenazi as an impartial baseball writer, failing to mention that he had covered the NFL for nearly thirty years and, specifically, as his personal beat, the New York Jets, upon whom he depended for professional access and goodwill.
ENDNOTE
[1] I had misspelled thoroughbred‑racing breeder Wayne Lukas, "Lucas"; NFL star Howard Cassady, "Cassidy"; and New York Jets' president Steve Gutman, "Guttman." The Los Angeles Times had misspelled the names of Cassady and Lukas in its December 7, 1986, and January 3, 1988, editions, respectively. The Washington Post—which had the audacity to attack me in its August 26, 1990, editorial, specifically for the misspellings—misspelled the names of both Gutman and Lukas on October 14, 1982, and October 6, 1983, respectively.