Storeboard.com CEO David Waller expressed so much enthusiasm for my story about Joe DiMaggio yesterday that I decided to write an article about my experience, or lack thereof, with George Brett.
Ironically, he expressed enthusiasm for my Joe DiMaggio story roughly an hour before the Kansas City Royals won their first American League baseball title since 1985. I say ‘ironically’ because it was the Royals winning the American League title in 1985 that led to the climax of the “George Brett And I” story.
The story started only two months after I interviewed DiMaggio in the summer of 1985 for an article for USA Today’s All-Star Game special edition. As the article I wrote about DiMaggio emphasized, The Yankee Clipper was the first adult I interviewed in person as a professional reporter.
Two months later, I was asked to write a few articles for USA Today’s World Series special edition. The assignment was to basically ask current and ex-players what their favorite moments in past World Series were. I wrote an article about the 1970s Oakland Athletics after interviewing several of the team’s stars, including Gene Tenace, who called me collect after I left a message at his office. I also wrote an article about Yogi Berra, who didn’t utter any Yogisms when I interviewed him but was still angry about Jackie Robinson being called safe on a stolen base attempt during the 1956 World Series.
I was assigned to write articles on two current baseball players for the World Series edition — Ron Guidry and George Brett. I interviewed neither. I phoned the Royals’ media relations office several times during the last week of the 1985 baseball regular season, but the guy I talked to was so dumb that I was 100 percent convinced that my messages to Brett weren’t getting through.
As the deadline approached, I decided to ask my Kansas City correspondent, who I knew covered Royals’ games, to ask Brett the questions that I wanted to ask him. He did. My correspondent phoned in the answers and I wrote the story. I felt so guilty about not doing the most difficult part of the work that I put my correspondent’s name on the story. USA Today’s editors, though, took his name off the story and put my name on it.
A week or so later, the Royals won the 1985 American League title. On the day the World Series edition hit the streets, the Royals held a pre-World Series press conference. During the press conference, Brett saw my correspondent and said “Bill that was a great story you wrote for USA Today, but I have one question for you — “who the hell is Martin Zabell?”
To this day, Brett’s inquiry was the only time my name has been mentioned in any way, shape, or form at a televised event. I first learned about his statement when a college friend phoned me and said something to the effect that he thought he heard my name uttered while he was watching the sports news. A day or two later, one of USA Today’s baseball reporters told me that my name came up at the press conference, but he didn’t understand why. Apparently, he didn’t read his own paper. Shortly thereafter, my correspondent told me what happened.
Kansas City won the 1985 World Series and has been a horrible team, one of the worst in professional sports, since. The Royals missed the playoffs every year from 1986 to 2013 before this year’s improbable run to the World Series.
The next season I attended a Royals vs. Orioles baseball game in Baltimore with a few of my USA Today colleagues. During the game, I got a baseball used during a Major League Baseball game for the first and last time in my life. Darryl Motley, who hit a home run in Game 7 of the 1985 World Series, hit a foul ball that landed a few rows behind me. Several people fought for the baseball as if it was gold. Somehow, the ball hit my foot and I stuffed it into my pocket, afraid that someone would hit me if my action was seen.
At another point, Brett chased a foul ball near where I was sitting. A colleague yelled “hey George, you wanted to know who the hell Martin Zabell is. Here he is.” Brett stood still for a couple of seconds, looked at us quizzically, and then walked back to his third base position.
I never did talk to Brett, but I have a weird postscript to the story. About a decade after my non-interview, I read an article about Rush Limbaugh that said he worked for the Royals’ media relations office for several years and was a good friend of Brett. ‘I talked to the most obnoxious, rudest person in the world,’ I thought to myself.
I was horrified. I hadn’t interviewed Brett because I HAD talked to Limbaugh long before he was famous, I thought. I was so horrified that I researched the life of Rush Limbaugh. It turns out that he left the Royals’ media relations office about one year before I tried to interview Brett.
I know that my Joe DiMaggio story is better than my George Brett story, but the Royals’ upcoming appearance in the 2014 World Series was a good time to write about George Brett and I.
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