A conversation with Newsday’s Erik Boland
Erik Boland, a Cleveland native and current New York Yankees beat writer for Newsday, joined Dude and a Dog blog to talk Browns (of course), journalism, baseball, Jomboy, his memories of Joe Tait and an unexpected rant on Skip Bayless.
Editor’s Note: I’ve known Erik, a fellow John Carroll University alum, since I first interviewed him in early 2012 while sports editor of my college newspaper, The Carroll News, and he was in year four of covering the Yankees for Newsday. Check out page 8 here for the full nostalgia.
ON THE CHANGING WORLDS OF JOURNALISM & BASEBALL
In terms of the skills you need to be successful, you’re shooting video now, you’re doing podcasts, you’re thinking Internet-first. To me, with the printed product, I’m still old school that way … but I realize I’m a dying breed and you adjust or die.
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The number one uphill battle that Major League Baseball has is attracting new fans and, frankly, they don’t have any idea how to do it.
You’ve been in journalism for 24 or 25 years now. As you know, the entire industry has undergone a massive change during that time. What’s that transition been like from your perspective with the introduction of social media and all those kinds of things?
It’s been a sea change. I started in May 1996 as an aspiring radio broadcaster doing play-by-play of high school sporting events in Warren, Ohio. Then I started doing freelance work for the local paper, The Warren Tribune, in probably 1997. The emphasis [at that time] definitely was on the printed word. The Internet was in its early stages, and the concept of writing something that was going to appear somewhere other than the paper being the most important thing was just a completely foreign concept. That, obviously, has changed.
A lot of people will fib a little bit and say ‘oh I knew all along the Internet was going to be this big and this life-changing’ — no. I fought it in my early days at Newsday when I was covering high schools. They would talk about Newsday.com, which was one of the early newspaper websites that really embraced the change that was going on, and I still think we have one of the better newspaper websites in the country because we were forward-thinking as a company about it.
I was not forward-thinking. I remember fighting some of our dot-com people and some of the editors when they’re like ‘we need stuff filed immediately, we need content right away.’ Fortunately before I started covering the Yankees and even before I started covering the Jets, I caught on that number one, [the Internet] is not going anywhere and number two, it’s a way to actually expand your brand as a company or an organization and that is a net positive. There’s obviously negatives that come along with the Internet, which is a different subject altogether, but yeah the business is so different than when I got into it — in some ways good, in some ways not so good.
In terms of the skills you need to be successful, you’re shooting video now, you’re doing podcasts, you’re thinking Internet-first. To me, with the printed product, I’m still old school that way. I still like to read the newspaper and have it in my hand, but I realize I’m a dying breed and you adjust or die, to be blunt about it. The business is certainly not where I would’ve envisioned it when I started in 1996, but I don’t think that that’s necessarily a bad thing.
You were an old fogey against the advent of Internet? You were in your 20s at the time.
Well I pushed backed on the immediacy element of it, and the fact that if you were covering an event, your first priority when the event was over was the have something to be posted online almost instantaneously. My backwards way of thinking was ‘no, the most important thing is to give myself time what I’d just seen and to go down to the locker room or clubhouse and get quotes and get something filed by deadline for print edition.’ That was my number one priority.
You can do both. What I was slow to adapt to was the fact you can get something up online right away, but that doesn’t mean you can’t then re-work it and put something together for the print product but also for the Internet as well. What you submit after a game or an event ends, you’re still allowed to change that — the Internet is great that way. What I pushed back on was the immediacy aspect of it, and I certainly came full circle to that many years ago — certainly in my time covering the Yankees, and I’m in now my 13th year.
Like I said, I just didn’t embrace it right off the bat the way a lot of people did. And yes, I was in my 20s in the time. I loved the Internet — I was never anti-Internet — I just didn’t see the importance of it for this business as early as I should have.
I’d also prefer to hold the newspaper as opposed to having 14 tabs open on my phone or laptop, but unfortunately, as you said, we have to adapt because you’d be insane to think the clock is going back any time soon.
Yeah, definitely not going in reverse. And again, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
You talk about needing that immediate post online now. Do you think that kind of attitude spurred this reactionary culture we live in where everyone has to have a take immediately — whether that’s on ESPN, whether that’s on Twitter, your blog, etc? Do you think the advent of the Internet and getting something online now-now-now spurred that reactionary culture amongst media?
That’s really a good question, and I’m not sure I’m qualified to answer that, but I do think that what the Internet did was bring in a lot more voices — and I don’t think that’s a bad thing either.
What it did was, you don’t have to go to an established newspaper website to read news about the Yankees or sports news or news about anything. Anybody can have a voice on something. Most people don’t have much of an audience, but obviously we’ve seen plenty of people that have had start-up blogs and were not in traditional media that have then become part of the mainstream media.
Yeah, look at Jomboy.
That’s a perfect example of somebody who, 30 years ago, would have had no chance of getting into the business. I don’t know his background from a schooling standpoint, but I don’t think without the Internet he would’ve developed into the star he’s become — and deservedly so.
It’s an important voice. What he does should be embraced by baseball because he has the potential to bring in new fans to the game — which baseball desperately needs — and to present it in a different way than I might present it or other people in the ‘mainstream media’ might present it. That’s an important voice, and there are a lot of important voices like his that the Internet has allowed to develop and grow and bring in fresh perspectives, which are desperately needed. So that’s a positive.
The downside is there are plenty of people who become stars that you never see them, they never talk to anybody, they’re never in the clubhouse, but because they offer their opinions in a certain way that they go viral and there’s nothing behind them.
But here’s the corollary of that — the best example of a blowhard that continues, much to my amazement, to get paid millions and millions of dollars without absolutely no substance behind him is Skip Bayless. And Skip Bayless is over 60 years old. And he came up and was at one time a very well-respected — well, maybe not — newspaper journalist. My point is he’s an example of a complete blowhard that doesn’t know anything — I’ve never seen him in a clubhouse, locker room talking to anybody, etc — pontificating as if he knows everything about everything and continues to get paid millions of dollars with absolutely no substance behind it whatsoever. So my pushback is against those type of stars that have been created — I’m not even sure how you categorize somebody like that.
I love to see — you mentioned Jomboy, I absolutely love seeing voices like that, particularly in the sport I cover. As we know, baseball is hemorrhaging viewership and fans because it’s an older demographic and you need young, hip voices to give a different perspective. So I love seeing Jomboy, Cut4, Cespedes Family BBQ and you can go down the list of 20-somethings or at least early 30-somethings that have become Internet stars, for a lack of a better phrase. I think it’s good for the sport and the coverage of the sport.
It doesn’t mean what the George King’s of the world do is not important. There are just a lot more cooks in the kitchen, there’s a lot of ways to cover this sport, and all of them can be valuable.
The end goal is still getting people to watch the sport and support the sport, right?
Yeah, and to get them talking about it and interested in it. The number one uphill battle that Major League Baseball has is attracting new fans and, frankly, they don’t have any idea how to do it. They don’t. It’s a sport that’s still run exclusively by older white males and they give lip service to all sorts of things — including diversity, but that’s another topic — but when rubber hits the road it’s same-old, same-old for the most part.
If you’re counting on Major League Baseball to figure out a way to market its players and attract younger fans, you’re going to be waiting a really long time for that type of success to take hold. So it’s going to depend on some of those younger creative voices like I mentioned that are going to end up doing it, probably, for the sport. God love ’em for it, because it’s needed.
ON JOE TAIT
A lot of those games I would go to with my dad, and a big moment would happen, and if I didn’t say it, he would say it to me, and we’d say ‘Oh, I can’t wait to hear Joe’s call of that.’
One of your biggest influences, [Cleveland Cavaliers radio broadcaster] Joe Tait, a Cleveland legend, recently passed away. You’re a Cleveland guy through-and-through, so growing up as someone who listened to Joe Tait, what did he mean to you and what was it like hearing the news of his passing?
He was my number one broadcasting hero. He’s the reason why I wanted to do radio play-by-play. That was my number one aspiration. I love the career I’ve had and I love the career I’m having, I don’t want to do anything else and I’ve been very lucky every step of the way. But from the time I was 10 years old, I would sit in my basement watching sporting events and I would mumble play-by-play to myself because of listening to Joe Tait call Cavaliers games.
I’m sure you read on Twitter and other sources online, a slew of broadcasters, particularly those from Northeast Ohio, talking about the influence Joe Tait had on them and they would describe falling asleep in their bedroom listening to West Coast games. I was very much in that category, and I was one of those aspiring broadcasters that wrote Tait a letter and asked him to listen to one of my tapes and, as he did with anyone that did that, he would get back to you. He must’ve gotten thousands of them over the years and I’ve never heard of anybody who didn’t get a return letter from him, and it just speaks to who he was as a person.
What was it like when you got that tape back from him? Were you in a state of awe?
I had heard he did that sort of thing. I met him because he did Mount Union football games for 30 years and Mount Union is in the same conference as the school you and I went to, John Carroll.
When I was doing John Carroll radio, Tait was at Shula Stadium to do a Mount Union-John Carroll game. At halftime, I very nervously went up and introduced myself to ‘Mr. Tait’ and he immediately said ‘Mr. Tait? Call me Joe.’ And I said, ‘very good, Mr. Joe.’ I said I work for the student radio station, would you mind doing some bumpers for our shows — you know, like ‘this is Joe Tait and your listening to Blue Streaks basketball, etc.’ He goes, ‘young man, you type up what you want me to read for you, I’ll read them and I’ll send them back.’
I said I’d also like to do play-by-play, can I send you one of my tapes? He said ‘young man, you send me one of your tapes, I’ll listen to it and I’ll send you some critiques.’ I did just that, and within a month I had both the bumpers — with the full Joe Tait treatment — and he also critiqued my play-by-play as well. Unfortunately, time has taught me well and I no longer have either of those things, sadly — the letter or the recordings. I’m sure they live somewhere.
He was just an amazing person from that respect. And then his ability to call a game is nonparallel. There’s nobody that’s ever done it better. Everybody has their local broadcaster that they think is the best, and I certainly would not criticize anybody for their opinions of people they grew up with, but nobody ever did radio play-by-play basketball better than Joe Tait did it.
I did this before he died, and I do it now, I search on YouTube to see if there are any snippets of his calls and fortunately there are. You just listen to it and close your eyes and it transports you. The ‘painting of the picture’ — nobody did it better than him.
A quick story: When I covered local golf at Newsday, a PR person that I knew asked me to play golf at this club on Long Island — Woodcrest Country Club, which doesn’t mean anything. We had a third with us, Dave Sims — the voice of the Seattle Mariners and a terrific play-by-play guy. He goes ‘I can tell you’re not a native New Yorker, you sound like you’re from the Midwest.’ I said ‘you’re right, Cleveland.’ He goes, ‘Cleveland? That means you grew up listening to Joe Tait. Let me tell you — nobody calls a basketball game like Joe Tait.’ Now this is a network broadcaster who’s been doing this for 25–30 years and telling me how much he reveres Joe Tait’s basketball play-by-play.
I’ve heard Bob Costas talk about him, Marv Albert talk about him, these guys that are these huge network stars, and a lot of them have stories about listening to Joe Tait call NBA games. And for a lot of those years the Cavs were terrible, so he must’ve been really good.
What’s the one highlight or Joe Tait call you’ll hear in your head for the rest of time?
They all give me chills, but the two Miracle at Richfield calls.
At the end of Game 5, the Cavs were down one, five seconds left, Bingo Smith came down the lane, shot an airball, Jim Cleamons grabbed the rebound and put it in at the buzzer to give the Cavs a one-point win. His call of that is magical.
And then at the end of Game 7, Dick Snyder’s driving layup off the glass with seven seconds left, and then the Bullets get one final shot off and it doesn’t go in. Those calls will live forever in Cleveland sports history, as they should.
I’ll give you another one. The Cavs on their website used to have — I don’t know why they would have gotten rid of them, but it’s not on me to criticize professional organizations and what they do with their website — an archive of great Joe Tait calls. It had anything from the 70s, 80s, 90s. For some reason, they got rid of it a number of years ago.
But Steve Kerr in a playoff series against the Celtics, I think at the end of the third quarter of Game 2 (Editor’s Note: It was Game 1. Close, Erik!) at the Coliseum, hit a half-court shot at the buzzer and [Tait’s] call of it is just…
“Kerr, behind the center line, fires at the buzzer …”
And also there’s a great call of when Larry Nance blocked Manute Bol — who you remember was 7’7” — and he was in the lane and went to shoot a sky hook and Larry Nance — who was 6’10” — blocked it, and Tait’s call of that is perfect.
That’s what so many of his calls were; they weren’t overdone; they weren’t overdramatized, it wasn’t about me-me-me — which is what a lot of broadcasting has become — it was just a perfect description in terms of word choice and enthusiasm level.
A lot of those games I would go to with my dad, and a big moment would happen, and if I didn’t say it, he would say it to me, and we’d say ‘Oh, I can’t wait to hear Joe’s call of that.’ When Kerr hit that shot in a playoff game against the Celtics, that’s one of the loudest reactions I’ve ever heard. The ball was no sooner through the hoop and in my head, I kept thinking ‘I can’t wait to hear Joe Tait’s call of that.’
And I’m far from the only person in Cleveland with moments like that. I had this thought, as well as many millions of people — as great as the Cavs winning the championship was in 2016, there’s a small part of me that’s disappointed Tait had [already] retired and not been able to call that.
ON THE BROWNS
They came away from [last season] like this was an ascendent team, and you haven’t been able to say that about the Browns in a really long time.
On another Cleveland topic, your Browns seem to no longer be the punchline of the NFL. Have you gotten used to that? Are you certain we’re living in reality when you look up Super Bowl odds and the Browns are near the top? I mean, what the hell is going on?
Yeah, what the hell is going on is a good way to describe it. Yes, it takes some getting used to.
I’ve been lucky enough a handful of times to go on Bruce Drennan’s show, who is another Cleveland broadcasting icon, so yet another privilege of having this job (covering the Yankees) is getting to know one of my childhood broadcasting icons a little bit. But one of my opening lines on his show was ‘Bruce, before we start, you gotta tell me, how are we going to fix those Browns?’ After all, we know what their record has been since 1999 when Art Modell stole the team out of Cleveland — not that I’m still bitter about that.
So it’s very shocking to me because [the Browns] have been so bad and so inept and so dysfunctional. You can keep going on and on with the adjectives to describe how bad the franchise has been on and off the field since coming back as an expansion team. So to see them — knock on wood — seem to be on some track, finally, to some prolonged success with the right people in charge — most importantly, drafting players, which has been an issue they’ve had since ’99 — it takes some getting used to. You constantly wait for the other shoe to drop in a negative sense, but it looks like they at last have their quarterback and coach and have built through the draft the right way.
There’s a number of reasons why 2020 sucked across the board for everything, and I’m not equating sports with the real tragedies of the last year, but the only downside of the Browns having the season they had last year was [limited] fans in the stands to enjoy it. I was at ‘The Drive’ John Elway game, I was at the double overtime Jets game that preceded it. And then in ’87 the Colts Divisional game, and then of course ‘The Fumble’ in Denver a week later. But what those weeks were like when the Browns were good and had a legitimate shot at the Super Bowl, people have no idea.
I’d always laugh when LeBron was there and some national reporter would parachute in and say ‘Oh, it’s a Cavs town now.’ And I’d be like, you have no clue what you’re talking about. Even the Browns, as bad as they were during the height of LeBron mania, they were number one and it’s not even close. And I haven’t lived in Cleveland since I went to John Carroll, but you just know that. It’s the Browns, the Browns, the Browns, the Browns, then Ohio State football. Then the Cavs and Indians kind of fight it out from there.
But the fact the Browns had this breakout season and fans weren’t able to enjoy it the way they were in the 80s, the last time they were good and looked like a contender, certainly was sad. But it appears they’re on the right footing and next season, hopefully, everyone’s vaccinated and it’s close to back to normal — probably not completely, but at least close — and the Browns can have that season and the city can really enjoy it the way they were meant to.
Them beating the Steelers in the playoffs was complete gravy, for me. Making the playoffs, I was good with that. And the fact they had a chance in the Kansas City game, I was glad it was a competitive game and they didn’t get buried 30–0. They came away from it like this was an ascendent team, and you haven’t been able to say that about the Browns in a really long time.
OFF THE CUFF
FAVORITE BACKUP CATCHER OF ALL-TIME? Chris Bando. One of the first Indians teams I remember in 1985.
WOULD YOU RATHER SEE A GHOST OR AN ALIEN? An alien. I feel I’d be more scared by the ghost, if that makes sense. It really doesn’t make sense, but I’m giving you my inclination. I feel the alien would engender more curiosity in me, as a reporter, than the ghost would. Even though I’d have plenty of questions for the ghost as well, but I’d feel with the alien there’s more to do. But I’m also assuming he/she speaks English, which is probably not the right assumption.
WHAT’S A SONG YOU’VE BEEN LISTENING TO RECENTLY? Cool Change by the Little River Band
FAVORITE PLACE YOU’VE TRAVELED TO? A Japan/China trip a couple off-seasons ago that was pretty amazing.
IF YOU COULD HAVE DINNER WITH THREE HISTORICAL PEOPLE, DEAD OR ALIVE, WHO WOULD YOU INVITE? Robert Caro. Benjamin Franklin. Tiger Woods.
My obsession with Robert Caro and his Lyndon B. Johnson series, he spent basically the past 50 years of his life writing about him. He’s written four of a planned five volumes on the 36th President of the United States, and the level of research he does for his books is so off-the-charts absurd. It can take him anywhere from 8–12 years to write each book. His last one came out in 2012, and his readers are anxiously awaiting volume five, but he’s 87 years old. People like myself are on pins and needles for the next volume.
Not only was [Benjamin Franklin] a founding father but he also was an inventor. He invented swimming flippers. A lot of people think of him as the almanac guy with a bunch of witticisms, but he invented the Franklin stove, swimming flippers, a variety of other inventions that I think would be interesting.
And if he was going to be completely honest and bear his soul, maybe Tiger Woods. I think his life from the time he was 3 years old, with the father he grew up with and things have come out he was not the greatest father in the world, and his life led to this point. The caveat, again, is you can guarantee me he’d be 100 percent honest — which he has not done and probably never will, and that’s his right. He’s obviously a super smart person, and I would just be interested in the life and times of [Tiger] because he’s had some experiences, that’s for sure.
Follow @ErikBoland on Twitter and his work for Newsday covering the New York Yankees.
