June 2006:

	Short Takes
	Barry Bonds and the Law.
	Desperate Sports Wives.
	Commonwealth Games Ticket Sales Exceed Torino Olympic Winter Games.
	World Cyber Games Hoping for Big Crowds.
	The Soccer Film "Goal" Does Weak Box Office. Is the "Undocumented" Central Character to Blame?
	"Hoop Dreams," the Basketball Documentary, Is Added to the National Film Registry.
	Publish or Perish
	Recent Academic Articles on 1) the NBA and Young Black Men, 2) Race, Pay and Retention of NBA Head Coaches, and 3) the Changing Nature of Major League Baseball Fans.
	Interviews
	David Maraniss, author of acclaimed biographies of Vince Lombardi and Bill Clinton, discusses his new book on Roberto Clemente, plus his next project, a book about the 1960 Rome Olympic Games.
	Jake Steinfeld, of Body by Jake fame, talks about his role as co-founder of Major League Lacrosse and the future of the sport in the U.S.
	Mascot
	Sing the "Mister Ed" theme song — of course, of course — while you greet Karli, Mascot of the 2006 World Equestrian Games.

Memo? What memo? . . . Barry Bonds is chasing Hank Aaron's career home-run mark, but discussion about "755" has been overshadowed by the debate over Bonds' alleged use of performance-enhancing drugs. The most widely publicized charges appear in the book "Game of Shadows," written by San Francisco Chronicle reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, who charge that Bonds used steroids from 1998 to 2002.

Add Bonds . . . Bonds' supporters — and such fans do exist, primarily in the Bay Area — like to point out that steroid use in Major League Baseball was not prohibited during the 1998 to 2002 period. In 2004, ESPN.com quoted Bonds' attorney, Michael Raines, as saying "that [steroids] were not banned by baseball at the time." This spring, Foxsports.com noted that "Baseball did not ban performance-enhancing drugs until 2002," and even Bonds has said as much. In 2005, according to SI.com, Bonds said, "You're talking about something that wasn't even illegal at the time. All this stuff about supplements, protein shakes, whatever. Man, it's not like this is the Olympics."

Add Bonds . . . ESPN The Magazine, however, maintains that Major League Baseball banned steroids in 1991. The evidence? A two-page memo written in 1991 by then-commissioner Fay Vincent to "All Major League Clubs" outlining "Baseball's Drug Policy and Prevention Program." The memo states: "The possession, sale or use of any illegal drug or controlled substance by Major League players and personnel is strictly prohibited . . . . This prohibition applies to all illegal drugs and controlled substances, including steroids or prescription drugs for which the individual in possession of the drug does not have a prescription."

Add Bonds . . . ESPN reports that Commissioner Bud Selig "reissued the same memo in 1997, with minor changes." ESPN's conclusion? "Baseball ignored its own rules about steroids."

Add Bonds . . . Did the commissioners' memos amount to a true ban? Marvin Miller, who served as executive director of MLBPA from 1966-1982, says it did not. Miller told SportsLetter that the memos "had no standing. You're talking about a condition of work. Introducing a new rule which is so serious that a violation could end a player's career — you can't do that without a discussion with the union. That's absurd. There's no way it would have any validity."

Add Bonds . . . MLB spokesman Rich Levin told SportsLetter that MLB issued the drug memos "every year." But he admitted that the policy, which was never a part of the collective bargaining agreement, was "unenforceable." Said Levin: "We couldn't do anything because it was a unilateral policy [issued] without the union. It had no teeth, and so we couldn't act on it." Levin noted that MLB attempted to reach agreement with the union on a drug policy beginning in 1986, but that these efforts were rebuffed. Drug testing among Minor Leaguers began in 2000; in the Majors, it started in 2003, after MLB and the players' union finally agreed on a policy.

Final Bonds . . . It is not clear what Bonds and his apologists mean when they say steroids were not "illegal." If they are referring to baseball and its rules, then they have a reasonable case. The law of the land, however, is a different matter. In 2000, when Bonds is alleged to have used steroids, the 2000 U.S. Code listed anabolic steroids as a controlled substance. Simple possession of steroids was punishable, under the Code, by up to one year in jail and a fine.

Printed matter . . . If there's a niche, a magazine will fill it. That might explain the existence of a new glossy quarterly titled Professional Sports Wives Magazine, founded by Gena James Pitts, the wife of former NFL defensive lineman Mike Pitts, now a defensive line coach at Morehouse College.

Add magazine . . . Publisher-editor Pitts describes the publication as "a cross between a sports wives version of Sports Illustrated, People, and Oprah." Her audience includes the wives of active and retired athletes, coaches, and executives, whom Pitts describes as "natural caregivers, motivators, gate-keepers, hostesses, organizers, coordinators, nurses, at-home coaches, personal assistants, 'pillow-talkers', negotiators, business managers (with keen instincts), excellent communicators, and kind-hearted volunteers who can handle a multitude of tasks (all at one time)."

Add magazine . . . On the magazine's website, Pitts notes that the PSWM is mailed to members of the Professional Sports Wives Association and distributed to team lounges. She also claims that the "targeted distribution to over 707,000 of the highest income homeowners gives [advertisers] the ability to reach prospects with the means to purchase your products and/or pay for your services." Presumably, that would include such services as automobile detailing and divorce attorneys.

R.I.P. Flash and Boxing Update . . . The always entertaining and knowledgeable newsletters for boxing aficionados took the ten-count at the beginning of the year.

R.I.P. Sportspages . . . Founded in the mid-1980s, London-based Sportspages was one of the few remaining all-sports bookstores on the planet. Unfortunately, the store shuttered earlier this year.

The sun never sets . . . The 2006 Commonwealth Games, held in March in Melbourne, sold more tickets than February's Olympic Winter Games, in Torino. Late sales helped boost Torino sales to nearly 900,000 tickets. Melbourne organizers sold over 1.6 million tickets to their event the following month. Once called the British Empire Games, the Commonwealth Games, this year, featured more than 4,000 athletes from 71 nations and territories competing in 16 sports. Next stop for the Commonwealth Games: New Delhi in 2010.

But is it a sport? . . . Meanwhile, Seattle is preparing to host the 2007 World Cyber Games. The five-year-old event was last held in Singapore, where 55,000 spectators came to watch teams compete for $2.5 million in prize money in such games as "FIFA Soccer 2005" and "Dead or Alive Ultimate." According to WCG organizers, some 1.25 million competitors participated in the World Cyber Games, which they call "the largest cyber-gaming event serving what is becoming the largest sports market in the world."

The new soccer film "Goal! The Dream Begins" has grossed all of $3.6 million since it debuted in the U.S. on May 12. The filmmakers certainly cannot blame the timing of the film's release — about a month before World Cup — for its poor box-office showing. Nor can they blame Disney's promotional clout: after all, the company owns ABC and ESPN — the two domestic television partners on the Word Cup. Which leads to the question: Could the current political controversy over immigration be part of the reason the film has flopped?

Add film . . . On the surface, "Goal!" is a typical feel-good, sports-underdog flick that chronicles the journey of a young Latino soccer player from East Los Angeles to stardom in England. But in an unexpected twist, the hero of the film [played by Kuno Becker] happens to be an undocumented immigrant, making what has become a hot-button political issue an important part of the story line. Disney officials did not return numerous phone calls from SportsLetter to comment on the film, but producer Mike Jefferies told the Los Angeles Times [May 11] that "the decision to make Santiago an undocumented immigrant was made to touch on the political issue. I have lived in L.A. for many years and am aware that [the immigrant issue] has been brewing and bubbling for some time and would be contemporary at some point.'"

Add film . . . Soccer films usually perform poorly in the U.S. The last major soccer film released domestically — 2005's "The Game of Their Lives," about the U.S. team's "Miracle on Grass" upset victory over England in the 1950 Word Cup — grossed less than $500,000 in very limited release. "Game" flopped despite its excellent sports pedigree: it was directed by David Anspaugh ("Hoosiers," "Rudy") and produced by Bristol Bay, a production company financed by Phil Anschutz, whose Anschutz Entertainment Group owns several Major League Soccer teams.

Last film . . . "Bend It Like Beckham," which grossed $32 million domestically, remains the exception to the rule. Released in the United States in 2003 prior to the 2003 Women's World Cup staged in several American cities, "Bend It Like Beckham" benefited from an unusual grassroots marketing campaign that narrowly targeted American soccer fans, players and their families.

Film dreams . . . Under the terms of the National Film Preservation Act, the Librarian of Congress annually names 25 "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant motion pictures" to the National Film Registry. This year, two sports-themed films were added. One was "Hoop Dreams" (1994), Steve James' Academy Award-nominated documentary about the trials and tribulations of two African-American high-school basketball players. The other was the notorious film of the James Jeffries-Jack Johnson heavyweight championship fight (1910). After Johnson's overwhelming victory over boxing's first "Great White Hope," the film was banned in certain states because of fear of white rioting.

Add Registry . . . The National Recording Registry, meanwhile, preserves historic recorded sound. This year, the Registry added the broadcast of the second Joe Louis-Max Schmeling fight on June 22, 1938, when an estimated radio audience of 70 million people listened to veteran announcer Clem McCarthy give the blow-by-blow broadcast on NBC.

Soccer chilled . . . Call it the wickedly cool offspring of the World Cup and the Stanley Cup playoffs. It's the newly-devised sport of ice soccer, the brain-child of Doug Taylor. Michigan-based Taylor says he invented the sport to entertain guests at a party he threw. He has since concocted a sport-specific "ball" — called the Boot'r, which he has trademarked and sells for $49.50 — and now offers tips for starting ice soccer leagues on his website. The sport recently got an on-ice test during an exhibition scrimmage at Colgate University in upstate New York, but Taylor is thinking bigger. He says he hopes to "see it played professionally in franchised leagues by the year 2015." Or, when hell freezes over.

Time out . . . France's Laure Manaudou recently broke Janet Evans' 18-year-old world record in the 400-meter freestyle, set at the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games. That caused the digital fanatics at SL headquarters scurrying to their computers to find the longest-standing world records. According to FINA, the world swimming federation, that would be Evans' 1500-meter freestyle mark of 15:52.10, set on March 26, 1988. Interestingly, among male and female swimmers, there are now only four world records on the books that were set before 2000: Evans' 1500- and 800-meter freestyle (set in 1989), Hungary's Kristina Egerszegi's 200 backstroke (set in 1991), and China's Yanyan Wu's 200-meter individual medley (set in 1997). The "earliest" men's mark was established in 2000.

The Real Color of Money: Controlling Black Bodies in the NBA. David J. Leonard. Journal of Sport & Social Issues. 30(2) 2006.

The NBA's proposed age limit that would prevent high school players from jumping directly into the league "works from the same racist logic that identifies Black bodies as threats to White hegemony and pleasure, conceiving of rules, state power, and surveillance as proper and needed methods to save both the game and community. To protect the streets thus necessitates more police and prisons whereas protecting the NBA mandates increased rules and regulations of bodies, . . . trash talking . . . and [clothing]; or in the end, restricting who can and cannot enter the league. The racial implications are as undeniable here as is the policy's intent to control Black male bodies and aesthetics."

Race, Performance, Pay, and Retention Among National Basketball Association Head Coaches. Lawrence M. Kahn. Journal of Sports Economics. 7(2) 2006.

An analysis of NBA coaches, using a "hazard function approach," found that between 1996 and 2003 there were only "small and statistically insignificant racial differences" related to "entry, pay or retention." These findings suggest that black NBA coaches are not subject to racial discrimination in these areas.

What Takes Them Out of the Ball Game? Martin B. Schmidt and David J. Berri. Journal of Sports Economics. 7(2) 2006.

The data suggest that in the early baseball "customers appeared to be less concerned with their team's winning and losing." Fans attended games out of a sense of "loyalty" to their team. "Beginning in the late 1960s, though, this perception seemed to change" and attendance became increasingly determined by a team's won-lost record. Baseball, in effect, became "but one more form of entertainment," whose "fickle" customers would quickly "move on to more satisfying forms of recreation" when their teams failed to win. As baseball owners and players have come to treat the sport as "more of a business . . . fans may have reacted by treating MLB similarly."

DAVID MARANISS

In 1993, Washington Post reporter David Maraniss won a Pulitzer Prize for his "revealing articles on the life and political record of candidate Bill Clinton." After writing "First in His Class: A Biography of Bill Clinton," Maraniss wrote an acclaimed biography of Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi, entitled "When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi," and then "They Marched Into Sunlight: War and Peace, Vietnam and America, October 1967." This spring, Maraniss has returned to sports with a new biography: "Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero" (Simon & Schuster), about the Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder. Roberto Clemente, of course, was no ordinary ballplayer. Born and raised in Puerto Rico, he was among the first wave of Latin ballplayers to reach the Majors.
		This book may be purchased at amazon.com

His four batting titles, twelve Gold Gloves, one MVP award, and two World Series rings made him a perennial National League all-star in an era that featured such outstanding outfielders as Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Curt Flood and Lou Brock.

Clemente's life ended in heroic circumstances: flying supplies to aid victims after a horrific earthquake in Nicaragua, Clemente died when the airplane crashed just after take-off. He became the second player to be enshrined at Cooperstown without the normal five-year waiting period after retirement — Lou Gehrig was the first — and the first Latino player to earn Hall of Fame honors.

Using his expert reportorial skills, Maraniss chronicles Clemente's life and career from Puerto Rico to Pittsburgh to Nicaragua. He details the challenges that Clemente faced as a Black Latino ballplayer during the turbulent 1960s, uncovers new information about the plane crash that killed Clemente and evaluates Clemente's legacy among contemporary Latino players. The result is an absorbing biography that gives this long-misunderstood and overlooked legend his due.

Recently, Maraniss came to Southern California to make an appearance at the annual Los Angeles Times Book Festival, part of the western swing of his promotional tour. He spoke with SportsLetter at the small, comfortable lobby of the Loews Beverly Hills Hotel.

— David Davis

David Maraniss: The first two books that influenced me were both Packer books: "Run to Daylight" [by Vince Lombardi and W.C. Heinz] and "Instant Replay" [by Jerry Kramer and Dick Schaap]. I loved Jim Brosnan's "The Long Season" and all of George Plimpton's and David Halberstam's books. And, I know I'm forgetting a lot.

SL: How long did the Clemente book take you to research and write?

DM: My dad died while I was doing it, and I had some other personal things to deal with, but basically three years. In 2000, I signed a two-book contract to do the book about Vietnam and the 1960s and the Clemente book. While I was doing the Vietnam book, every once in a while I'd do a little on Clemente. But I started it fulltime in about April of 2003.

SL: The Washington Post is very patient, eh?

DM: They really give me a lot of freedom. I've worked there for almost 30 years. I could leave and just do books, but they like to have some relationship with me. I do edit some projects. When 9/11 happened I was on book leave, but I came back immediately.

SL: How did you come to write about Roberto Clemente after Vince Lombardi?

DM: Essentially, because "Lombardi" sold really well, that gave me the opportunity to do "Clemente." Lombardi might be a bigger figure in American life because of [the stature of] pro football, but Clemente is more important to me personally. This book was really closer to my sensibilities. As a progression of writing about things that I care about, Clemente was always high up there.

SL: The Lombardi book was informed by a sense of place because you grew up in Wisconsin. Was it difficult to do that for Pittsburgh and Puerto Rico?

DM: In a funny way, it was trickier to do that for Pittsburgh than Puerto Rico. Pittsburgh is a very insulated, fascinating, defined place, with its own personality unlike the rest of Pennsylvania or anyplace else. It's kind of a Brigadoon almost, out there in the western mountains. It was a whole process of trying to understand a stereotypically blue-collar, white-ethnic place that was, of course, much more complicated than that.

As for Puerto Rico, my brother's a professor of Spanish, and our whole family has a Latin sensibility. About 500 years ago, we were from Spain. So I felt a soulful connection to Clemente and Puerto Rico, and I immediately loved Puerto Rico when I went there to research the book. I had to learn a lot, but that's what I try to do in every case, whether it's writing about Green Bay or Bill Clinton. When I start a book, I try to wipe away whatever earlier impressions I have and start with as clean a slate as I can.

SL: How do you do that?

DM: You pretend you know nothing and you ask the simplest, most basic questions. You have to be stupid and forget a lot and not assume anything.

I certainly want to know what material is out there. I do as much archival research as I can, even with a baseball player. There was some Clemente literature, but not much. Bruce Markusen is a good baseball guy, and I respected what he did. But it wasn't what I was trying to do. [Editor's Note: Markusen wrote "Roberto Clemente: The Great One" (Sagamore Publishing) in 1998 and recently published "The Team that Changed Baseball: Roberto Clemente and the 1971 Pittsburgh Pirates" (Westholme Publishing).]

SL: Do you speak Spanish?

DM: I do, but I'm not fluent. In the interviews I did, I understood most of what was being talked about, but I used an interpreter because of the depth of the answers. I could read some of the Spanish-language archival material, but I wanted to get it right. I had a wonderful translator. I'd get the material, and she would come to my office and work with me.

It was also very important for me to get the exact translation from the materials from Nicaragua because the whole first chapter of the book is about Clemente coming to Nicaragua and managing there right before his death. That's never been written about because no one had ever tried to research it.

SL: How did Clemente fit into black Pittsburgh?

DM: He lived in the area and he hung out around Centre Avenue, but he really was apart. There was no Latino community in Pittsburgh. He was black, yes, but he spoke a different language. So there was an unusual double barrier that he had to deal with. One of the most fun things for me to research was the Pittsburgh Courier newspaper, because I hadn't seen anybody look into the black press and how it covered Clemente. It doesn't all get into the book, but it informs the book. The Courier's coverage was fascinating. It helped me to understand Clemente, even though there was some tension in that relationship. For instance, I'd heard about what happened after Game 7 in the 1960 World Series, after [Bill] Mazeroski hits the famous home run to beat the Yankees, where the Pirates are celebrating in the clubhouse and Clemente sort of disappears. There are fleeting references to this in Markeson's book. But when I went back and read the Pittsburgh Courier, there it all is: [reporter] Bill Nunn, Jr. was with Clemente in the locker-room, and he writes his whole column about exactly what happened. That was something lost to history unless you went back to the black press.

SL: How difficult was it for Latinos to make it to the Majors at that time?

DM: I think it was very difficult. There were usually only one or two on a team, so there was that sense of cultural isolation. There were all of the stereotypes. None of the sportswriters knew Spanish, and they had this tendency to quote the Latin players in broken English, with phonetic spellings. Even someone I admire — [pitcher-turned-author] Jim Brosnan — talked about Clemente with his Latin American-style "showboating." Clemente played with flair, but he wasn't a showboat.

SL: Did he have to overcome two types of racism?

DM: He had to overcome two barriers. In different ways, each created different obstacles. I think his troubles with the sportswriters were more because of his language than his race.

SL: How was baseball changing in the 1960s and how did reflect what was happening in America?

DM: Everything changed over the course of that decade. In 1960, the players had no freedom. Everything was run by the managers and the owners. This was also before television exploded. By the end of the 1960s, there was the dawn of freedom for players. It really starts in 1969, when Curt Flood decides to fight the reserve clause. Clemente represented some of that. Without overdoing it, he was an individualist. He had his own aura, which was a 1960s-type of thing. He wasn't afraid to express himself and what he believed in.

I think that he was a very modern person. He could fit into any era. He could fit in easily today, though I don't think he would necessarily like everything about today's game.

SL: What did you discover about Clemente that most surprised you?

DM: The overwhelming thing that surprised me was not about him, but about the plane crash. I'd known that the plane was probably overloaded and that that was why it crashed. But when I got all the [Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board] documents and saw the borderline criminality of that plane ever being allowed to take off — it was revealing and depressing that he got on that plane.

SL: How much cooperation did you receive from the Clemente family?

DM: Vera [Clemente's widow] was incredibly gracious. I spent two extended stays in Puerto Rico and interviewed her both times for hours. The middle son, Luis, was very helpful, and his older brother, Matino, was wonderful.

SL: Why were the Pirates' World Series appearances, in 1960 and 1971, so crucial to understanding Clemente's legend?

DM: They helped define him because he performed so well in the clutch, in the national spotlight. . But those two teams also show the difference between two eras. The '60 Pirates were crew-cut white guys. The '71 Pirates quietly made history by fielding the first black-Latino line-up.

SL: Clemente played a lot of winter-league ball in Puerto Rico and in the Caribbean: why was that so important to him?

DM: It was always confounding to the Pittsburgh people. They thought he got tired during the season because of it. But I think it was about his pride in place — that he really felt an obligation to Puerto Rico, and so he did it. In his later years, he managed, too. That was one of the great moments of interviewing, when I was speaking with Orlando Cepeda. He was the bat-boy for the Santurce Cangrejeros [in the winter of 1954]. Before games, he'd stand near home plate and take throws from the outfield. I asked him, "Who was throwing?" He said: "Oh, two guys. Willie Mays and Roberto Clemente." Playing side-by-side on the same team!

SL: How would Clemente view the present-day "Latinization" of Major League Baseball?

DM: I think he'd be very, very proud it. Back when he played, he was constantly fighting for players like Juan Marichal to get recognition. Now, I think everybody probably agrees that Albert Pujols is the best hitter in baseball, and then there's A-Rod, and Vladimir Guerrero, and the list goes on. I think he'd be very happy for Ozzie Guillen, managing the White Sox to the World Series. I think he is the patron saint of all that. At the same time, the number of black players has really declined. The interesting thing about that from the Clemente perspective is that baseball has also declined in Puerto Rico. In some ways, it has a closer relationship to New York City than to the Caribbean. So, basketball is bigger there now.

SL: What would Clemente have thought about the inaugural World Baseball Classic?

DM: Well, he played in a lot of those — it's just that the U.S. wasn't in them. Teams from Puerto Rico were constantly playing Venezuela and the Dominican and Cuba. That was a big part of what he did. The tournament he was in Nicaragua [right before his death] had teams from Japan, Denmark and Germany. The concept wouldn't have been new to him.

SL: You write a lot about Clemente's rage. Was that a motivating force for him?

DM: I think it was. The smartest observer of Clemente on the Pittsburgh sports scene was a writer-reporter named Roy McHugh [of the Pittsburgh Press]. I interviewed Roy when he was in his 80s. When he was working, he would stand back at the edge of the crowd and watch Clemente. He saw that Clemente's anger was both real and that he was using it to fuel his own fire. Unlike some athletes who are constantly at odds with sportswriters — and he sort of reminded me of Bill Clinton in a way — Clemente would get really mad but then it would blow over. Or else he would realize he was wrong and say it. And that's pretty extraordinary for an athlete.

I don't think it was just because he died that this happened, but you can see that by the time of Clemente's final couple of years, all of the sportswriters respected him tremendously. There wasn't that attitude of, why is this guy such a jerk?

SL: How did his dramatic death affect his legacy?

DM: Oh, it defines it. His was a fascinating life, particularly his final years and what he did after the '71 World Series, when he spoke in Spanish on television. That had a huge reverberation throughout Latin America. But his mythology is totally connected to the way he died. And, not just that he died, but the way it happened and what he was doing when he died and the fact that the body was never found. It was a death of mythic proportions, so that totally affects his legacy.

There was a Puerto Rican writer who said, "On the night we lost Clemente, his immortality began." But it happened that way in Pittsburgh, too. Yesterday, at the L.A. Times Book Festival, I can't tell you how many people came up to me. And, either they were from Pittsburgh or their dad was from Pittsburgh — and they wanted to tell me that Clemente was just it for them. More than any Steeler.

SL: What about the fact that he ended his playing career with an even 3,000 hits?

DM: That only adds to the myth. He was a Hall of Famer no matter what, but it's all part of the perfection of the Clemente myth. The number he wore, "21," has a certain, similar significance: it's half of Jackie Robinson's [who wore number 42], and it adds up to three. I think it's random physics that these things happened, but sometimes poetry comes out of accidents.

SL: Was it difficult as a journalist to deal with the "Saint Roberto" image?

DM: When you go down [to Puerto Rico] and see the cenotaph with him holding a lamb, you realize what his image is. But the way I view it is this: he was a human being, and you deal with the real person. He had as many character flaws as many human beings do. He decked a kid in Philadelphia. If that happened today, he'd be on ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN News. But myth is something entirely separate. They don't have to be one and the same — in other words, the mythological Clemente can inspire millions of people. The real guy was good enough, but the myth is something else. I tried not to mix them up.

SL: Do you think his number should be permanently retired like Robinson's?

DM: You know, I really don't care. I think he should be honored. All of the Latino ballplayers want to wear that number because of him, but that number is Clemente. It doesn't matter who wears it.

SL: Your book is coming out at the same time as a Curt Flood biography [by Alex Belth] and a book about the 1966 World Series [by Tom Adelman]. Is this a happy accident?

DM: I've heard people say something like, everyone has to write their baseball book. Honestly, I just wanted to write about Clemente. He happened to play baseball, and I love baseball, but I didn't feel that I had to write a baseball book.

SL: Your next book project revolves around the 1960 Rome Olympic Games: what's so special about those Games?

DM: When I was researching the 1960 pennant race for the Clemente book, I'd read the sports section and see mentions of Cassius Clay, Rafer Johnson, Wilma Rudolph, Abebe Bikila. It was really interesting, but I thought, I don't really want to write another sports book.

The more I started thinking about it, the more it all came together in my mind. Like with Clemente and Lombardi, I want to write about the sports and the athletes, but I also want to write about something larger. And so, in my mind, the Olympic book is about the explosion of the modern world at that moment. I can use Rome and the 17 days of the Olympics as a structure that will allow me to write about a lot of things. It's about the Cold War — the U.S. versus the U.S.S.R., with a lot of spying going on and propaganda from both sides and efforts to get Russian athletes to defect. Then, it's about East and West Germany, right before the Berlin Wall goes up, competing as one team but hating each other. Taiwan and China — and this huge fight over what to call Taiwan right when Kennedy and Nixon are debating it. India and Pakistan competing in the field hockey finals at a crucial moment in their history. That summer of 1960 was also the emergence of black Africa — something like 16 countries got their independence — and Bikila is the first black African to win a gold medal. And, you can't beat his story, running barefoot. It's the first televised Olympics, with CBS but before satellites. There's also the first doping scandal, with a Danish cyclist dying there, and then there's Cassius Clay and Wilma Rudolph and the whole explosion of African-American athletes, with Rafer Johnson the first African-American to carry the U.S. flag. So, it seems to have everything — and, plus, I get to spend time doing research in Rome and Lausanne.

JAKE STEINFELD

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who love lacrosse and those who've never watched a lacrosse game. Indeed, part of the reason why North America's oldest indigenous sport remains a niche sport is that, for decades, it never managed to escape the East Coast "ghetto:" on Long Island, in upstate New York, around Baltimore. About the only thing many sports fans know about lacrosse is that Jim Brown, the great Cleveland Browns running back, was a collegiate All-American at Syracuse University. That's begun to change. According to a 2005 Sports Illustrated article, lacrosse is the "fastest-growing game in the U.S. at every level." Wrote reporter Alexander Wolff: "The number of youth-league players in the U.S. aged 15 and under is estimated to be 186,000, more than twice what it was in 2001. The explosion is similar at the high school level, where no other team sport has anything close to lacrosse's rate of growth. Two African-American midfielders, Johns Hopkins's Kyle Harrison and Ohio State's Regina Oliver, are among this season's best college players, a striking development in a sport long associated with pedigreed preppies. Equipment sales are rising by at least 10% annually, and a 2004 survey of 400 sports-industry executives identified lacrosse as the pro niche sport most likely to bust out."

In 2001, Jake Steinfeld, a former body-builder who is best known for his "Body by Jake" fitness empire, co-founded an outdoor professional league. This summer, Major League Lacrosse begins its sixth season by adding four cities located some distance from the Atlantic Ocean: Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Nearly doubling the number of MLL franchises by adding teams in unproven, Western markets is a calculated gamble, but the eternally optimistic Steinfeld believes the expansion will help define MLL's future.

Steinfeld hasn't strayed far from his fitness roots: he serves as chair of the Governor's Council on Physical Fitness in California (appointed by a former body-builder named Arnold Schwarzenegger). Recently, as the ten MLL teams began training camp, Steinfeld sat down with SportsLetter at his offices in Brentwood, Calif.

—David Davis

SportsLetter: When did you first get interested in lacrosse?

Jake Steinfeld: I grew up on Long Island, which is a hot-bed of lacrosse. I played lacrosse at Baldwin High School, and then I got into Cortland State and played there. I was a face-off guy and on the fourth mid-field. As one of our original players in the league, Casey Powell, so eloquently said, "Geez, Jake, I thought there were only three mid-field lines at Cortland." [Laughs.] I played three months and then I retired. We were scrimmaging Syracuse, at Syracuse, outdoors in March. I did the face-off, went off to the sideline and stood there like an ice-sculpture. I said, "What am I doing here? I'm going to California to become a body-builder."

SL: How did you come to start Major League Lacrosse?

JS: I've been very fortunate. The fitness business has been great to me. It's given me the opportunity to do all kinds of things in my life, one of which is to create Major League Lacrosse. In 1998, I was doing a magazine called "Body by Jake" with [publisher] Hachette Filipacchi. At the same time, John Kennedy was doing a magazine called George, and Ralph Lauren's son David was doing a magazine called Swing for Filipacchi. The three of us went to Detroit to pitch the automobile companies to buy ad pages. Going back to L.A., I was thumbing through "Swing" and I saw a picture of a guy holding a lacrosse stick. I read this article about this young guy named Dave Morrow, a hot-shot player who became an All-American at Princeton. All that was great, but what got me excited was the fact that this guy had started a company in his dorm room called Warrior and was positioning lacrosse as a lifestyle.

I picked up the phone and called him up. We had a conversation and I asked him a couple of questions: "Is there such a thing as pro outdoor lacrosse?" and "Is there a governing body for the outdoor game?" He said, "No." And I said, "There is now." That was May of 1998. He came out to L.A., and we sat down and discussed the state of the sport. I asked him, "Where is the sport growing?" And he showed me on a little map the little pockets — places like Columbus, Atlanta, Houston, San Diego, Denver — where the sport was growing. He showed me that it wasn't just an East Coast thing anymore. I immediately brought in Tim Robertson — he had founded the Family Channel, where I did a sit-com — and the three of us launched Major League Lacrosse. Dave gave us legitimacy inside the lacrosse community. To this day, there's nobody smarter about the sport of lacrosse than Dave Morrow. There's not even a number-two guy.

SL: What has been the most difficult challenge?

JS: The toughest thing is attracting the fan-base, getting people to come to a Major League Lacrosse game. It takes time to bring in the casual sports fan to come and watch a professional lacrosse game. You gotta put it out there, and if you have a good product, it will last.

Now, if you look across the landscape of start-up sports businesses that have succeeded and that have failed, the ones that succeed are the ones that have the best players and that have reasonable expectations. Case in point: XFL. That league had millions upon millions of dollars tossed at it, a national television deal. They made a bold statement that this is going to be better than the NFL. So, people checked it out for two games, and then the floor fell out. It wasn't for lack of marketing — they marketed great. But the fans looked at the product and said, "This is not better than the NFL." So, that went away. I bring up the XFL because they launched the same time as we launched. As did the WUSA. The WUSA had all the cable operators lined up. It was a very emotional time, coming off the U.S. team's victory in the World Cup. I think that the league should still be around. Unfortunately, the business plan was mired in a lot of different challenges — I think they paid the women too much, too quick. They didn't take the time to grow the product, and their expectations weren't reasonable. They got caught up in the moment.

SL: How have you tweaked the rules of lacrosse in MLL?

JS: We looked at the way the game is played at the high-school and college levels. And, as a pure fan, I thought the game was too slow. You get games that are 4-3, where teams slow down the pace and take the life from the game. Dave agreed with me. I'm a big fan of basketball. I remember when they implemented the three-point arc. The purists had heart attacks. Same with the shot-clock, though that was before my time. So, we took those two concepts and tried different things. We experimented with a 45-second shot clock. Now, we have a 60-second shot clock. Everybody loves it. It speeds up the offenses, but it gives them enough time to set up their plays.

We also implemented a two-point arc [located 15 yards from each goal]. In 2000, we put on Summer Showcase — a six-city tour. The first game was in Columbus, Ohio, at Crew Stadium. We had the two-point arc outlined on the field. Forty of the top players in the world come running out onto the field, and all they wanted to do was take a two-point shot. In the beginning, it was a novelty. But now, it gives the offenses an opportunity to spread the defense and open up the crease area — whereas in high school and college it gets bunched up in there. It adds another dimension, and the game's never over until it's over. You can be down four goals, but you can bang two two-pointers and you're back in the game.

We also re-designed the uniforms. They always talk about lacrosse being the fastest game on two feet. I agree. But it had the slowest-looking uniforms. So we've gone through a few different iterations. Tommy Hilfiger did last year's version of the uniform. We liked how that looks, so we're going to continue with that. It helps to bring the game to this new generation without angering the purists.

SL: Why do you think lacrosse is booming at the youth level?

JS: Why it's growing so rapidly is that kids are looking for something new, something fresh. Soccer's great, baseball's great, football's great. But kids are saying, "I want a sport to call my own." Lacrosse is different — it's action-packed, where a kid isn't standing out in right field, looking around at the action.

Case in point: Brentwood Middle School, around here, where I send my kids. They started a lacrosse program in the middle school this season. Forty kids came out and decimated the baseball team. We're hearing stories like that from around the country. What's exciting — at least for the first couple of seasons — is that the sidelines are so quiet because the parents don't know the rules yet. [Laughs.] It's also a sport where size doesn't matter. A small, quick guy can play attack and with some snazzy-type moves be very successful against the bigs.

SL: Last spring, Sports Illustrated did a feature story about the growth of lacrosse — how much did that help the sport?

JS: I think, honestly, it was a blessing and a curse. It was a blessing to put the sport out there so that casual sports fans can read about it. I think it was a curse in the sense that the sport has a long way to go. In some ways it's not as healthy as people crack it up to be. There's a lot of dysfunction, and people need to understand that in order for it all to work, they have to work together. I'm a big believer in being inclusive, not exclusive. Unfortunately, this is a sport where there are factions.

SL: Do you think that lacrosse will break through at the collegiate level?

JS: I know that, because of Title IX, there are more DI [Division I] women's programs exploding. That's incredible — my daughter's playing and she's pretty good. It's not there yet with the men's programs, although there are a lot of club teams, but I think it's coming. The youth movement and Major League Lacrosse and television coverage will help. As more and more kids get introduced to the sport and play it at the youth level and love it, they will bring it to the colleges. With enough push, it's a matter of time.

SL: This season, MLL is jumping to ten teams from six. Is that too much, too soon?

JS: We could have done this after season one or after season two. We decided to wait to do it because we wanted to get the best possible sports operators in the business as our owners: Pat Bowlen in Denver, Phil Anschutz in L.A., the Crown family in Chicago, and a great guy in San Francisco who prefers to go nameless.

Secondly, we wanted to make sure there was enough talent on the field. We didn't want to water the talent down. Think about it: we had six teams, 18 guys per team. Every guy — from number one to number 18 — was a one-, two-, three-, or four-time All-American. Every guy. Now, with ten teams, we still have the best players, but this spreads out the talent. And, you know, by bringing the sport to these new markets — L.A., S.F., Chicago, Denver — we're taking the sport into places where kids don't see DI lacrosse action every day.

SL: What are your plans for future expansion?

JS: We'll probably add two more teams by 2008. In 2010 or 2012, we'll add two more. We're looking at several different cities because we get inquiries from markets every day: Pittsburgh, Miami, Atlanta, Portland.

SL: Historically, the sport has been East Coast-centric. How do you change that mentality as you expand west?

JS: Well, this is why we partnered with the best possible ownership groups. Like in L.A., with AEG. In 2000, I said, "I'm going to put a team in L.A., but only when it's right. And I only want to be in business with Phil Anschutz." You gotta be with the big dogs, and Tim Leiweke and AEG are the preeminent sports operators in the L.A. market. So we become important by association.

I was driving past Staples Center [operated by AEG] after taking my kids to Dodger Stadium, and the board said, "Get Your Riptide Tickets." That's heavy. Or you go out on the 405, driving past Home Depot Center [operated by AEG], and you see the big sign saying, "The Riptide Are Coming."

And, by the way, this sport was born for the West Coast. When we have games at Palisades High, or out in Malibu, and the Pacific Ocean's right there, it's awesome, baby! [Laughs.]

SL: More than any western city, Denver has shown a keen interest in lacrosse: why has that market exploded?

JS: I don't know why, but it's just such a healthy place to live in. I mean, when you fly there you want to jump on a mountain bike and go out trail riding, and then you want to go hiking. The sport and Denver just seem to be a good match. Outside Denver they got the Vail Shootout, which is a huge event every summer, and the university [of Denver] has built a lacrosse stadium. We haven't played a game in Denver yet, but our season-tickets sales have been great.

SL: Last year, your average attendance was about 4,200. What are your projections for this year?

JS: : I hope that we hit close to the 5,000 mark. I think that would be gang-busters for us. Our business plan has always called for 5,000 fans. We've never walked in and said, "We can do 22,000 fans."

Look, we have a long road ahead us. We don't have any stars in our league yet. Not one guy in our league sells a ticket. It's not like when Michael Jordan comes to town — instant sellout. We're marketing the game. We're marketing Major League Lacrosse. If stars come out of that organically, fantastic.

SL: Has any of the franchises turned a profit yet?

JS: We've had a few teams turn a profit. I'm losing money, but that's what it is. Right now, this isn't about making dough. This is about building a good product for the future.

SL: How has your celebrity helped or hurt MLL?

JS: If I was playing, it'd be hurting it. [Laughs.] I try to use what I've got — and that's my contacts with sponsors and owners and through my experience in television. What I'm good at is getting people together, getting people fired up.

If there's a negative, it's that I'm too passionate. If you listened to our game of the week broadcasts in the first couple of seasons, I would go into the booth during the last quarter and I would get too excited and make a lot of noise. So, I took myself out of that and now I sit with my family. [Laughs.]

SL: You've attracted sponsors like Starbucks and Tommy Hilfiger: How would you define the MLL brand?

JS: American sports fans love hitting, scoring and speed. This brand of lacrosse has it all. Period. Look, we've created the pinnacle of the sport. We can safely say that we have the best players in the world playing in Major League Lacrosse.

SL: What about the indoor pro league: does that help or hurt MLL?

JS: They're winter, we're summer. I think we can co-exist nicely. I don't really follow them, but our co-owner in Rochester, Steve Donner, is also president/CEO of the indoor franchise there. That MLL team has a new outdoor stadium that was built specifically for the Rattlers and the A-League soccer team. It's the first stadium that one of our guys built.

We've been fortunate because of the new facilities built by Major League Soccer — MLS is building beautiful stadiums and [MLS commissioner] Don Garber has been truly helpful.

SL: You have a deal with ESPN, with a game a week on ESPN2, but MLL doesn't receive any rights fees. Are you happy with the deal?

JS: They don't pay us, but we don't pay them. Other leagues pay through the nose to be on television. Look, I've been in business with ESPN for many, many years. I was on ESPN for, like, eight years with the fitness program. They've been great to me, and they immediately embraced Major League Lacrosse with open arms. Right now, I don't think we deserve more than one game a week. What I'd love to see are more cameras to cover the sport, and pre- and post-game packages to really build interest in the game. But that takes time to develop, and you gotta earn your spot. I feel real confident that what you'll see next year compared to what you've seen will be a marked difference.

SL: Where do you see MLL in ten years?

JS: The one big thing is television. I think we need to solidify a strong TV partner that has a vested interest in the future of the game and in the future of the league. With that, we'll sleep well at night because if you have television exposure, sponsors come. If sponsors come and market the sport, then people come to the games.

SL: Lacrosse has been in the news because of the scandal at Duke University. How has that affected MLL?

JS: Obviously, it's an unfortunate situation. In a very demented way, it brings attention to the sport, so now at least people know what lacrosse is because it's a big news story. Other than that, I don't think it affects us in any way.

Just say "Neigh." Meet Karli, mascot of the 2006 World Equestrian Games in Aachen, Germany, to be held in September.