‘ THE 2 RICKS: UNFILTERED’
One of the greatest moments of my life occurred several years ago after a telephone conversation with Rick Telander. My fellow Sun- Times sports columnist had just told me he needed to cut short our chat because he was about to be a guest on a local radio station. I turned on the program. ‘‘ And now,’’ the host said, ‘‘ CNBC business reporter Rick Santelli joins us to talk about the downturn in the markets. Rick, are we at an ominous turning point with the economy?’’
Clearly, someone had messed up. Either the host thought he was getting a business reporter when the guest actually was a sportswriter, or the show’s producer had meant to call the business reporter and accidentally called the sportswriter.
There were two ways for Telander to handle this painfully awkward situation. The right way, though embarrassing, was to say on the air that there must have been some sort of mistake, that he was Rick Telander, the sports columnist, and that if you wanted to know about the business of the Cubs’ rotation, he was there for the station. Telander chose Way No. 2. ‘‘ We’ve gone over the financial cliff,’’ our man said without missing a beat.
And for the next five glorious minutes, Rick Telander was Rick Santelli. Tumbling stocks? Rising interest rates? Apple’s rollout of its latest product? Telander confidently opined on every business topic thrown his way. Few listeners could have known that there had been a mix- up. It’s still a blur of laughter and tears for me.
There are two morals to this story. The first is that Rick is light on his feet, and the second is that he can talk about anything with authority. Both of those attributes are perfect for ‘‘ The 2 Ricks: Unfiltered,’’ the podcast the two of us have started. Very few topics and opinions will be out of bounds. And what we don’t know, Telander will make up.
We’re pals. We weren’t thrust together in the latest shakeup at a radio station. We were friends before marriage, always a good thing. We’ve talked several times a week for years about sports, politics, writing, my years as a golf caddie and his ability to put away a prodigious number of hot dogs at one sitting.
If the idea of listening to two veteran columnists gab about everything and anything sportsrelated appeals to you, come spend some time with us. We won’t be talking about which player’s batting average on balls in play is better. That’s for someone else to do. The first ‘‘ 2 Ricks’’ episode has Telander recalling the time, as an adult columnist, he played a match against a 3- year- old golf phenom. There’ll be a lot of that and possibly some digressions.
Both of us have been sportswriters for a long time. We have stories. We have insights. We’ve been to Olympics, Super Bowls, British Opens, heavyweight title bouts and the occasional World Series- clinching victory. We can take you places you might not have been before. Smelly locker rooms, for instance.
There will be challenges. Two times in a row, Telander thought a podcast taping was scheduled for 1: 30 p. m. when it was clearly pointed out in several emails fromthe producer that we were starting a half- hour earlier. What he secretly has wanted all these years is a personal assistant. He yearns to be free of schedules, paperwork and detail. This side of him eventually will come out in the podcast, as will his aversion to artificial intelligence. I refuse to be the assistant who tells him what time to arrive for the show or the caddie who tells him what club to hit ( 1 p. m. and 7- iron, respectively).
The promotional material for the podcast describes us as ‘‘ legendary sportswriters.’’ We didn’t write that. We know that legendary means one of two things: really, really good or really, really dead. We’d prefer ‘‘ handsome’’ or, short of that, ‘‘ breathing.’’
About a half- hour after the radio interview with ‘‘ Rick Santelli,’’ one of the show’s hosts admitted on the air that a producer had hit the wrong name in her directory and dialed Telander, a sports columnist, not a business reporter.
No worries. I’m told that ratings soared and the stock market rebounded.
Envision yourself a skinny lad, perhaps 13, with an immense golf bag over your shoulder, walking for 18 holes in the sweltering midsummer heat in Chicago.
You have done this before and will do it again many times for grown men angrily whacking at little white balls, paying you a pittance for your labor.
Sometimes you’ll have two of those gargantuan crosses to carry, their straps denting your weary back like twin yokes on a burro.
Your name is Rick Morrissey, and you’re a youth caddie by trade, making money so that you can pay to go to — hold on — the high school of your dreams. That would be Fenwick in Oak Park. Why Fenwick? Well, it’s a prestigious Catholic school, it’s nickname is the Friars and you’re a devoted Catholic youth who thinks friars are cool. But the real reason? ( And I just found this out last week, after much grilling.) Because you are in love with Fenwick’s glossy black basketball floor!
Young Rick M. was a hoops nut, you see. ( As was I in my hometown of Peoria.) And he still is. ( As am I.) But now we watch and pontificate rather than play. He’s younger than I, but there’s still something about knees, backs, ankles, etc.
But the real lesson my podcast buddy learned during those hard days as a looper— if I may be so bold as to venture into that sweaty little noggin of his— was that he needed a career that didn’t entail working like a beast of burden.
Thus, sportswriting!
His caddying ( and some well disguised intellect) enabled him to become an Evans Scholar and get a 100 percent scholarship to Northwestern. Despite not knowing how to type ( sort of necessary in journalism, you know), nor caring, he graduated in four years.
Then he ventured off to write about golfers rather than carry their bags. Of course, he wrote about all the other sports, too, and when he came to the Sun- Times from the Tribune in 2009, I was the happiest man around.
Not only had we long been friends and competing columnists, but I often had broken into guffaws over a Morrissey line or simile, many of them wittily tinged with an element of the wicked. I liked that. Still do.
But more important than words was that now I had somebody near at hand to explain the arcana of technology to me, things such as deadlines and expense reports and— most monstrous of all— passwords for Internet connections in other states and even foreign countries. I knew he also could be counted on to make hotel and rental- car reservations on time and remember to call my room to rouse me for noon games.
I don’t want to say Rick M. is more dependable and businesslike than I, but do the math. Whereas I will gobble a junk- food meal or two and prefer corn liquor to weaker stuff, he eats well, goes to bed early and drinks white wine.
That he is so dismayed by the sparkly, often ridiculous costumes of male figure skaters— He once wrote of a tumbling skater: ‘‘ Down goes Errol Flynn!’’— I do not understand.
But he’s a good chap, all and all, despite a high- minded sense of ethics and near- biblical morality. He already has busted my chops for mercilessly beating a 3- yearold golfer ( who was not Tiger Woods), for example, and he thinks it’s a laugh riot that I cut my own hair. ( I read an article about it in Esquire.)
Plus, he often calls me a Luddite. I looked it up, and he’s wrong. I don’t think the NSA watches me all the time or the CIA has a bug- shaped drone outside my window. But the FBI might.
One thing we’ll do on our ‘‘ The 2 Ricks: Unfiltered’’ show is digress. Morrissey always tries to pull me back, like a school marm in disgust, but we’ll start out on, say, great Masters tournaments we’ve attended, and I know at some point we’ll bring up Stevie Williams and obnoxious caddies.
And then, bless his little soul, I’ll demand to know all the lessons Rick M. himself learned while suffering on the links to become the great scribe he has become. I might even throw him a tip.