Out of His Mind
Press columnist Dave Hollander is clearly out of his mind, which is what makes his new book of 52 interviews with sports figures so fascinating. Hollander almost makes you cringe as he asks the question that you would like to hear the answer to but wouldn't have the courage-or lack of common sense-to ask yourself.
Hollander knows sports well enough that even the most rabid fan will be impressed with his chops. He will ask John Riggins a question about a fourth-and-one play from 1983 and follow-up with Riggins' views on Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor being the swing vote on sodomy laws.
His unrelenting inquiries get him threatened by former heavyweight champ Larry Holmes. Kellen Winslow gets uptight at his stream-of-consciousness line of questioning. Chuck Wepner accuses Hollander of stealing his wife's perfume. But he takes it all in and manages to turn the anger into good questions and answers. And even when Earl Campbell refuses to answer any questions not pertaining to meat, Hollander manages to engage his subject. First he gets Campbell's secret recipe for brown-sugar smoked ribs and opinions on the best place to eat barbecue in Texas. (I'd rather have that info than Campbell's view on a run from 1978.) It doesn't stop there. Hollander then gets Campbell into an ethical discussion of mad-cow disease and meat consumption via the bestseller Fast Food Nation.
For all of Hollander's daftness, he has a soft and spiritual side. His interview with former pitcher J.R. Richard, who went from baseball superstar to homeless man, is riveting. Richard explains how the only way to understand what the homeless go through is to go through it yourself-which he managed to do and then pull himself out of. The interview is a portrait of the American dream going horribly wrong and then being redeemed by a man's faith in God and himself.
But it's the book's zany turns that will keep you reading. Hollander gets Lawrence Taylor to name the current NFL player who would be a good jail-cell leader. He then tells Peter Nedved he is a Sagittarius and informs the hockey boy his birthday is the same as Donny Osmond and John Malkovich. He asks Aaron Garcia to ponder Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet and the fact that he was born in the Year of the Dog.
I wouldn't have wanted to be in Hollander's shoes as he asked some of these questions, but as a reader, I was certainly glad he did. Hollander makes two-dimensional athletes grow before our eyes until we see the person behind the uniform. In today's climate, that's no small feat.
52 Weeks: Interviews with Champions!By Dave HollanderLyons Press, 392 pages, $16.95