The Quaz Q&A: Tom Verducci

I dislike Pearlman as much as most here, but this is good stuff.

On covering Steinbrenner’s Yankees:

When Martin was hired, McAlary told me, “Get ready. You’re about to spend more time drinking in bars than you ever have in your life.”

He was right, of course. With Martin as manager, a beat writer’s night only was beginning when the game ended. You had to find Martin in the bar. It was a competition issue. Martin would talk about his team and his players in brutally honest terms when he drank, and if another writer was there and you were not, well, you missed not only the information but also the standing of being a “Billy guy.” Moreover, there was the high probability that Martin just might wind up in a fight with somebody. To survive, I had to borrow a trick from Buck Showalter, who loved to learn from Martin’s baseball intellect: the only way to keep up with Martin was to occasionally dump your drink into a potted palm.

On steroids:

The issue became obvious to me in 2001—not just innuendo or rumor about a few renegade players—because clean players were coming up to me and saying, “It’s an unfair game. There are so many guys using steroids that now I am at a competitive disadvantage.” The excuse makers today don’t want to acknowledge what it was doing to the game. You either had to stick a needle loaded with illegal drugs in your butt—God knows where the drugs came from or what it would do to your testicles—or you were at an obvious competitive disadvantage when it came to your job and your earning potential.

The Quaz Q&A: Tom Verducci

Jeff Pearlman interviews Tom Verducci. Tip of the hat to HardballTalk.