Jordan Leads Swear-Off: Who’s the Better Bowler?

Posted: April 20th, 2008 | Filed under: Interviews, Media | 19 Comments »

We will repeat the warning: The following has LOTS of swearing. Lots. Really. Swearing and some rather unappealing imagery and swearing and … really. I’m telling you. We are proudly (and somewhat bizarrely) refereeing a swear-off battle between two of America’s great writers, Scott Raab and Pat Jordan. If you are offended by profanity, notably personal insults or men hitting other men with metal folding chairs, I strongly suggest that you skip this post and all other Swear-Off posts, as they only figure to devolve from here. Mom, stop reading. Thank you.

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You would never believe, when you’re just a clueless a kid in a Cleveland bowling alley getting cursed at for bringing a guy brown coffee with a side of cream (“WHY THE $*#@%# WOULDN’T YOU #*$&%#^ BRING ME #$%*#&@* BLACK COFFEE WHEN I $#*%$#@# ASKED YOU FOR @#%#$@ CREAM?” — Well, hell, what the $*#*%$& did I know about coffee? I was $*#&%$* 8 years old) that someday you would be in the big leagues, and you would find yourself mediating a mild disagreement of blasphemy between the two greatest swearers in American letters today.

At this juncture, Pat Jordan has a commanding lead in the Swear-Off popular vote and also in delegates. This isn’t all that surprising; Pat is legend of expletive. He’s an old ballplayer — he began as a young pitcher with a better fastball than Tom Seaver if you believe Patty, which I always do — and the last batter he faced was Pete Rose, a great swearer in his own right. Later, Pat wrote a ferocious and remarkable story about Rose.

I have a long interview with Pat that I was supposed to post on this site, that is until this honorable contest began. We’ll get to it. In the meantime, let me post a couple of my favorite Pat Jordan answers:

Question: Has it surprised you the way Roger Clemens has acted with this whole steroid mess?

Pat: No. That’s the only way Roger knows how to deal with things. Dig in like a pit bull. That’s they way he pitched. No change ups just throw harder and harder.

Question: One of my favorite stories of yours was about Meg Ryan, who is the daughter of your wife Susan. They have, over the years, had a strained relationship. How difficult was it for you to write that piece?

Pat: Easy. Meg was trashing my wife, her mother, in the press every week. This was after she had become “America’s Sweeheart.” She and her mother had a falling out because her mother was concerned that Meg’s fiancé at the time was a coke head, which he was. Meg, who was in high school when her parents split, went on and on to the media about how her mother had abandoned her. It became so painful for my wife that I wrote the story to stop Meg, to let her know that her mother, through me, could fight back.

Question: Was it hard to let go of your baseball career?

Pat: It was hard at 21. Now, it’s not so hard. What was hard was discovering I fucked up my own career, God’s gift. I hope God isn’t still mad at me for that.

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The first Scott Raab story I read, I believe, was about the old Cleveland State coach Kevin Mackey. That was 1993 in GQ, Asphalt Jungle, and it was, uh, what’s the word I’m looking for here? Jarring? Well, yes, that’s a word, but not the right word. Home. Yes, that’s it.

I did not grow up on the hard streets of Cleveland — I grew up in a pretty tame working-class neighborhood of butchers, factory workers and bowling league teammates, a street lined by telephone wires and stamped with tiny front lawns that owners would treat like the 10th green at Augusta. I did get my bicycle stolen there, and I had rocks thrown at me a time or two, and I once got robbed of my newspaper delivery change by some bigger and older kids who seemed impossibly tougher and more worldly. Still. I did not go anywhere near the crackhouse on Edmonton Avenue where Mackey passed out; the closest I ever got to that world was the day my father took a wrong turn in the rain on the way back from our family vacation to Cedar Point (the Amazement Park!) and we ended up on the very wrong side of town. He drove our rusted Chevy Nova over a puddle, and this somehow triggered the “Fasten Your Seatbelt” buzzer, and it buzzed loudly while I watched two men beat up a third out the rain-streaked window.

In any case, I can only tell you there’s something indefinable about the place where you grow up, something familiar beyond words, something I feel every time I get back to Cleveland. And it’s something I read in everything Scott writes. It’s funny (and ironic) that because of the excerpt I posted on the last Swear-Off, that people got the impression that Scott is from New Jersey. He’s Cleveland, entirely, completely, something I just felt to my core when I read that Mackey piece, and especially this paragraph about Mackey foiling the cops after his crack bust:

At Sixth District headquarters, Mackey fakes two puffs into the Breathalyzer, reaches into his pocket and fires a hit of Binaca into his mouth, ruining any accurate breath analysis. Perfect. The defining moment, the sum and essence of Kevin Mackey, distilled into one Homeric act — Mackey the Gamin from Boston’s Summerville, Mackey the Spewer of Blarney, the Comber of Projects and Savior of Ghetto Youth, Mackey the bottom-line, ninety-four foot, balls-out, how-many-fucking-games-have-YOU-won Motherfucker.

I can’t tell you WHY that reads like Cleveland to me, but it always did. There’s a beautiful Cleveland rhythm to the words. Scott became my hero that day and forever after, especially when he wrote his own incredible piece about Pete Rose (“that brick-bodied motherfucker would haunt me forever”) that probably is a big reason why I am writing a book about the 1975 Reds in the first place.

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Link to Pat’s book: The Best Sports Writing of Pat Jordan.
Link to Scott’s book: Real Hollywood Stories.

So, as you can see here: We have two titans. Two of the best writers around, two of the most honest writers around — I really think Patty (he has encouraged me to call him Patty!) hit it perfectly when I asked him if he prefers to write about athletes or Hollywood figures. He wrote “Neither.” And then he said this: “It’s more about whether or not the subject is an authentic person. Because I can admire someone even if I don’t share their same values, so long as they aren’t a phony. I can’t tolerate phonies.”

Yes, two writers who expose phonies and seek what’s real. I love it. And now they are bashing each other relentlessly with curse words. Thanks to me! Oh my mother would be proud (I sincerely hope Mom took my advice and isn’t reading).

Pat, as mentioned, has a commanding lead in the Swear-Off. But he’s not resting. In 1984, Ronald Reagan apparently spent his last day of campaigning in Minnesota, the home state of his impossibly overmatched opponent Walter Mondale.*

*To give you an idea what that election meant, “Reagan” does not show up as a misspelled word in spell-check. “Mondale” does. That’s the will of the people.

Why was Reagan in Minnesota? The guy wanted the clean sweep. Now that’s ballsy. And that’s what Pat is going for based on the email he sent:

Polski, I trust the controversy between myself and this Mr. Raab has been settled to your readers’ satisfaction. I will not deign to lower myself in commenting further on Mr. Raab’s use of profanity (in his diatribe against me), in comparison to my own more nuanced use of profanity, other than to say that I heard through the grapevine that the editor of Mr. Raab’s esteemed publication, Esquire, one Mr. David Granger, is in the habit of referring to his writers as “my bitches”. No wonder then that Mr. Raab, when not quaking with fear in Mr. Granger’s presence, must resort to profanity away from the office to blow off frustrations he can’t release in Mr. Granger’s presence. i have no such inhibitions, however, which is why, I’m sure, Mr. Granger doesn’t dare let me write for his esteemed magazine. If he did, and he referred to me as one of “my bitches, I’d tear his fucking, bald head off his sloped shoulders.

Respectfully,
Your red-assed Guinea

PS. Dear Scottie. You made a big mistake, huge, HUGE, as Julia Roberts would say, in trying to mix it up with Patty. You’re in the big leagues now, son, and you’re ill-equipped. Stop spluttering invective like Uriah Heap and try to write something clever. Even i’m rooting for you now, dear boy.

Scott has not had a chance to respond directly to these ferocious body blows. But he did manage write a comment where he came back at both disapproving readers and Pat — it’s tough to fight a two-front war, but people should never underestimate a Cleveland guy like Scott.

Let me begin by clearing up an apparent misunderstanding: I’m not from New Jersey. I was born and raised in Posnanski country — Cleveland, Ohio.

Not that it makes any fucking difference — because you asslicking buffoons wouldn’t last ten minutes in either place.

(Oh, and Chuck D: Spelling ‘douchebag’ as two words is a sure sign you need to yank the strap-on out of your crack and go fix yourself another estrogen smoothie.)

As for Jordan, I’m a fan. Pat Jordan can write, and Pat Jordan can swear — and he also gets full credit for the seven decades he has spent milking his stunted minor-league career. The pride he takes in having learned to swear before, during, and after showering with other men is well-earned, and I have no doubt that, despite the homoerotic yearning at the heart of his oeuvre, his own sphincter, like the rest of his muscles, is still as supple as his prose.

You know, a wise person would — at this point — put an end to this because, well, I believe we passed “nasty” about three bus stops ago. But … I kind of want to see how this turns out.

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