In 1998, I had just graduated from the University of Missouri and didn’t have a job yet. Frankly, it was a kind of aimless year in my life where I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. That summer, I spent a lot of time at Busch Stadium in St. Louis, which pretty much anyone who was living in St. Louis did because there’s really not that much else going on there, ever. Oh course, this turned out to be the year Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa embarked on a then magical, now controversial home run chase that had never been seen before or, really, since.
On Labor Day, 1998, I was seated in left field when McGwire came up to bat, sitting on 60 home runs. He belts one high and deep, over my head. I’m sitting in an aisle seat and I instinctively start running up the steps. The ball ricochets off the Stadium Club glass and careens back down, right where my seat was. I’m not 100 percent sure I would have caught it. I had a glove. It would have probably been 50-50. But that day has haunted me for 22 years. Now, in A.J. Schnack’s new documentary, Long Gone Summer (which airs Sunday on ESPN), I got to relive the whole anguishing experience, as there’s footage of the whole thing.
What’s funny is, that week in Sports Illustrated, there’s a shot of the crowd and it caught me right when I realized I had made a terrible mistake. That’s me in the hat and bad shirt.
But what I liked most about Schnack’s film is that it really recaptures what that summer was like. Yes, there was a price to pay later. It wasn’t quite as “real” as we all hoped, and the film gets into the fallout from the steroid era. But, mostly, it concentrates on just how fun that summer really was. I’ve had conflicted feelings about the whole thing, but this film really helped me realize that summer was a great experience and, regardless of what came of it, it was still magic.
I spent a lot of time at Busch Stadium that summer. So, as I’m watching this, I see archive footage of myself from 1998…
Oh, that’s amazing. Which footage? Do you know?
Oh, yeah, I know. I almost caught 61.
Oh, wow!
I’m in that shot of the crowd diving for the ball. It’s kind of haunted me my whole life, and then I got to see it again right there in your film.
Memorialized now.
What’s interesting about your film is that, yes, you dive into the PED scandal, but the focus is on the home run chase itself. It reminded me just how fun that summer was.
Yeah, I really just want to put everybody back in that moment and feel the way people felt. I grew up outside St. Louis, also went to Mizzou. I was a Cardinal fan. That summer really reconnected me with my childhood experience of enjoying sports and enjoying baseball, driving around with my dad, listening to Jack Buck and Mike Shannon on the radio. And when that summer happened, I’d moved to L.A. I was starting to work in film, and it just reconnected me with all of those feelings and the emotions and the excitement that I felt about baseball. So I felt like, yes, we now know that that summer took place in baseball’s steroid era. But, first, especially for people younger than us, I want to just say this is what that felt like, to be in the middle of that summer.
I remember back then if someone called the local St. Louis sports radio station and even mentioned steroids, they were cut off and the subject was dropped.
The fact that Major League Baseball and the Player’s Association put out a joint statement that speculated about McGwire’s use of something was inappropriate? I think people forget that not only was the era, now we know, steroids, but the whole culture of this kind of gym culture took over baseball. The fact that you have Biggio and Brady Anderson and those clips in the film where they’re talking so openly about their use of creatine. And then, when it starts to become real with the whole BALCO investigation, it’s almost as if maybe people felt let down because they had willingly subscribed to the disbelief, but a lot of it was there if you wanted to see it.
Yeah, Brady Anderson. He was the first one where I remember even I was thinking, “That’s weird.” Out of the blue he went from 16 home runs to 50. And it’s just like, “Oh yeah, I guess he’s just having a really good season.”
I think my first time of thinking anything was going on was, in the midst of it, or right after, then I saw some highlights from the ’80s Cardinals, the Whitey Herzog Cardinals. Looking at those teams and being like they’re all like the size of toothpicks. They’re just so tiny.
I saw highlights of Jack Clark recently and he’s this skinny guy. At the time I remember him being huge.
Yeah, he was our slugger. Yeah, they were all so skinny. They could all fit in a Volkswagen together.
What was your approach to interviewing both McGwire and Sosa? Because McGwire has been pretty open about things and Sosa hasn’t really as much.
For both of them, I sat down with them without cameras. McGwire a few times, just to make sure they knew what I wanted to do and to get them comfortable with me and asking questions and talking about the season. So, by the time we sat down with Mark, I don’t think he’s done a long-form interview in 20 years…
He did the one where he kind of admitted what he did. Right? I think that’s only one.
Right. Yeah. That hour with Costas. When he started telling me stuff that I’d never heard before, I was really excited. I was like, oh, he’s serious about having this conversation with me, which was very exciting.
What’s an example of that, something you were really surprised he said?
I mean, I think him talking about being in therapy is something that he’s never talked about publicly before, certainly to the extent that he does in the film, so that was pretty early on in our first conversation. And then I was like, oh, so that’s what this is going to be. Great. We can really talk about everything.
How did that compare to Sosa?
Getting to Mark, once you’re with Mark, you’re only communicating with Mark. With Sammy, you’re going through a few people. And so, some of the opportunities I had to talk with Mark in advance, I didn’t have with Sammy aside from our sit-downs before. I think with him, I wanted to know if he was going to still be the guy from ’98 who was like, “Everything is great and I’m just happy to be here. This is wonderful.” So, I was happy with him, because he seemed to be more purposeful in wanting to claim his legacy as somebody who didn’t just have one or two good years. He wanted to make sure that he spoke to the fact that he was the first Cub to be a 30-30 player. And he did that more than one. He was a top home run hitter in the National League for many years, even before ’98. And that he was a big reason why people came to Wrigley for a good half-decade. I was happy and excited to see him kind of take ownership of those things and not just be like someone who’s just talking about how happy he is in his situation.
McGwire is in the Cardinals Hall of Fame. He was the hitting coach of the 2011 World Series-winning Cardinals team. I think we, as fans, were disappointed at first, but I think we still pretty much love that guy. But then Sosa hasn’t been back to Wrigley. What do you make of that dichotomy between these two players and their relationship with their team today?
I mean, I wish we even had more time to sort of dig into all of that. And Mark has had an almost decade-long run as a coach and everybody has nothing but positive things to say about him as a coach and his relationship to players. And players like Albert Pujols and David Freese and others have certainly talked to the influence they feel that McGwire has had over them. The positive influence, so that’s great. And, yeah, you’re right, he’s been welcome back to the Cardinals. Not just as a coach, but as a member of the team’s Hall of Tame, a member of their family. And it doesn’t mean that some people still don’t have some conflicted feelings about that summer, but they have welcomed Mark back. The Giants have welcomed Bonds back. And the Reds have put a statue of Pete Rose right outside their stadium. I don’t know why the Cubs have decided to make this harder than it needs to be.
That’s a great way to put it.
I do understand that Sammy, there were some complicated years at the end of his career with them. And hard feelings. I get it, but I don’t know of another situation in baseball where a superstar legacy player for a team has not been welcomed back, particularly now that we’re getting into more than 15 years since he left. And I really think it’s on them. A lot of people said like, well, Sammy has to say the magic words, whatever magic words they want them to say. I kind of feel like it’s on the organization to figure out how to get one of their legendary players back as part of their family.
You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.
Friday is a big day for Bill Burr. The comedian and actor has two things hitting Netflix: the Pete Davidson vehicle The King of Staten Island, in which he has a plum role, and his new comedy special, F is For Family. And last week his wife had a baby! Everything’s coming up Bill Burr, including a pretty decent anecdote, supplied to Variety, about what it’s like to fake-beat up the young SNL star.
Directed by Judd Apatow (who co-wrote it with Davidson and Dave Sirus), The King of Staten Island stars the star as a Davidson-like twentysomething, albeit one minus an SNL gig. Burr plays a firefighter who starts dating Davidson’s character’s mom (played by Marisa Tomei), and at one point they get into it in, of all places, a kiddie pool.
Fight scene, even ones with Pete Davidson for Judd Apatow, aren’t easy to stage. But just because Davidson is a scrawny guy doesn’t mean you should underestimate him. Here’s what Burr told Variety:
Because it was a fight scene, you really have to work out who’s gonna do what so you don’t get hit. Pete was pretty amped up, and also young, so there were a couple of times we clashed heads. I can’t even tell you how light he was. I have a bad shoulder and I was worried, but he felt like he weighed, like, 130 pounds. He’s like 6-foot-2 or 6-foot-3. But he has heavy hands. They’ll knock you out.
You can see the results of their tussle on Friday, when the film drops on Netflix. Meanwhile, Burr was also asked about whether or not it’s too soon to be making Covid-19 jokes, even if we’re still very much in the middle of a seismic pandemic. “No, nothing is too soon,” he replied. He added:
It’s all how you go about it, it’s all how you carve the turkey. You’re not going to make fun of the fact that somebody’s grandparents died, but you can make fun of the person who thinks they’re too good to wear a mask. Or the person with no medical degree that’s talking to you as though they do have one. Or somehow the CDC hasn’t figured out this virus, but this guy here, somehow he knows about it. I was in New York right after 9/11, and we were doing 9/11 jokes right out of the gate. You weren’t making fun of the people that died, but you made fun of the fear, the paranoia — and being in New York and actually having to be nice to people.
You can read our own interview with Burr right here.
(Via Variety)
Vic Mensa chopped it up with Talib Kweli last night in a live episode of People’s Party where the host, Mensa, and co-host Jasmin Leigh delved deeply into what has become a pretty hot topic nationwide: defunding the police. Following the veto-proof decision by the city of Minneapolis to disband their police force, the idea of diverting budget from law enforcement into other community-based initiatives is quickly catching fire.
As a Chicago native, Mensa knows the issue of police overreach well and took some time to expand on the idea of “defund the police” while on People’s Party.
“Police, by and large, have one function in our society and it’s primarily brutality,” begins Mensa, 39 minutes into the interview. “When we talk about ‘defunding the police,’ what we’re saying is ‘fund alternatives solutions to the issues that we face.’ In Chicago, the police are 40% of our city’s budget, so you can only imagine what percent of our city’s budget education is, you can only imagine what percent of our city’s budget housing is, you can only imagine the resources that are not being put into employment opportunities for the youth who are being weaponized as this symbol of black criminality… why don’t we put 10% of that into our education, put 10% of that into affordable housing, into the community point-blank? Statistically, more policing doesn’t equal less crime, but what is the opposite of crime? It’s education and employment.”
The police conversation actually starts around the 35-minute mark of the video, when Kweli asks Mensa about the lasting impact of his song “16 shots” — which detailed the police killing of Laquan McDonald.
“It can get fatiguing when you see a new name every day when you’ve got a new rallying cry every week because another person has been killed by the police,” Mensa says. “I mean, man, Emmett Till is Laquan McDonald and Emmett Till is Breonna Taylor — those brothers and sisters that rode down on the capitalist white supremacist imperialist society, with its foot on their neck, in the name of that man, they were able to change the world so that we do have a different existence than them, and it still ain’t perfect, and it still ain’t right and we still can’t condone it. But the fact that they rode for that man, made our lives differently, and gave us an opportunity to take things further.”
Check out the full chat above where Kweli and Mensa go deep on the verses of Black Star’s “Thieves in the Night,” looting in America, and Vic’s come up with fellow Chicagoan Chance the Rapper.
Sony’s PlayStation 5 event took place on Thursday and featured a number of big announcements, from a first look at the new console to a number of new game announcements.
From the new Spiderman: Miles Morales to Hitman III and Resident Evil 8, there were a number of games that had people fired up, but Sony chose to open their presentation with the announcement that an old game would be “enhanced and expanded” for the PS5. While fans were hoping for a Grand Theft Auto 6 announcement, they were instead offered a look at what GTA V will look like on the next generation console, with promises of expansion of the GTA world and more online opportunities.
Sony also announced those that play GTA Online on their PlayStation 4 will get $1 million GTA dollars put in their bank account each month leading up to the release of GTA Online on the PS5.
“And starting today, all PlayStation Plus members on PlayStation 4 will get Grand Theft Auto $1,000,000 deposited within 72 hours into their in-game Maze Bank account each month they play Grand Theft Auto O Online until the launch of Grand Theft Auto Online on PlayStation 5.”
Given all the new games they showed off on Thursday, it was a bit of a curious choice to lead with a revamped GTA V, but Sony clearly wanted to promote their partnership with Rockstar and felt it was worthy of top-billing.
HBO Max only launched a few weeks ago, but already the streaming service has renewed one of its top performing original series.
The HBO Max Original Love Life has been officially picked up for a second season, and the news couldn’t have arrived at a better time. The show’s final four episodes were made available for streaming on Thursday, and now, viewers won’t have to wonder in suspense if there’s more of the series to come. However, there is some good and bad news for fans of the show who fell in love with Anna Kendrick’s Darby.
From HBO Max:
Season two will remain set in New York City but will focus on a new character’s journey – one which explores what happens when you’ve lived your whole life knowing who your soulmate is, only to find out years into a marriage that it’s not the right fit at all. The new season will also cleverly key off characters in season one, and ‘Darby’ (Anna Kendrick) will appear occasionally.
Originally, Love Life was supposed to be an anthology series, but it sounds like Kendrick, who also executive produces the show, couldn’t resist coming back for more despite where Darby’s story ended in the first season. “It’s been a labor of love working with everyone on Love Life and all who helped shaped Darby and brought her story to life,” Kendrick said in a statement. “I am excited to be able to collaborate again with the team on a new character and their journey.”
The first season of Love Life is currently available to stream on HBO Max.
Sony’s long-awaited PlayStation 5 event took place Thursday afternoon and they seemed to learn a lesson from Xbox’s previous gameplay event that featured lots of trailers, but little in the way of actual gameplay. Sony offered up a combination of trailers and actual gameplay footage for a number of games, making some big announcements along the way — including finally revealing the first look at the new console, which has a digital only edition as well.
Among the new games announced was the sequel to their wildly popular Spiderman title from 2018, Spiderman: Miles Morales, which will feature the titular character from Spiderman: Into The Spiderverse and looks pretty incredible. There will also be an “expanded and enhanced” release of Grand Theft Auto V for the PS5 launch this fall, as well as the release of Hitman III, the third (and final, as noted by the developer in the trailer) installment of the most recent reboot of the Agent 47 saga.
The gameplay reveal showed Agent 47 slinking around the tallest building in the world in Dubai, in what the developers promise to be “the most personal” of his missions. It will be the eighth overall game in the Hitman series that dates back to 2000 and will come out in January 2021. The series remains ever popular because it has a pretty foolproof premise: being an assassin in a video game is very fun.
Sony put the PlayStation 5 at the center of attention on Thursday afternoon. The event, titled “The Future of Gaming Show,” gave gamers a look at some of 2020 and 2021’s most highly-anticipated releases for the console, which is slated to some out sometime later this year. We’ve already seen the console’s “DualSense” controller, and at the end of the event, Sony unveiled its latest entry into the console wars.
The company put out its full slate of PS5 hardware, including a pair of consoles. One of them includes a slot for gamers who want to get their hands on physical releases, while the other lacks that feature, instead opting for a digital-only approach.
The two biggest questions for the PS5 — how much will it cost, and when will folks be able to get their hands on the new console — are still up in the air, and it’s unclear whether or not the console will be able to lay horizontally, as both of these stand upright. Having said that, we had not seen the console before this, and it’s an interesting twist that Sony will have a digital game-only option. Aside from the console itself, handful of games were unveiled on Thursday, including Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales and Hitman 3, while NBA fans got their first look at NBA 2K21.
