Radio active

As a book tour reveals, few things are more toxic than sports talk shows

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It started in Baltimore. Or was it Nashville? I am unsure because, quite frankly, my brain has morphed into a bowl of watery mashed potatoes. That's understandable because over the past six weeks I have exposed it to a toxic influence a million times more potent than crack, LSD, Twinkie goo and Menudo combined.

Ah yes! Chicago! That is where my downfall began. I no longer recall the name of the radio station but the host was surely nicknamed after an animal or a brand of beer. And, oh yeah, he was a loud-mouthed lunatic.

The Host: "With us today is Jeff Pearl, author of a new book, The Bad Boys Won! Hi, John! Thanks for joining us here on the Sports Animal Hour!"

Me: "Actually, the book's title is The Bad Guys Won."

The Host: "Sorry 'bout that, Jim! Tell me, what made you want to write about the '85 Reds! What makes them so special!"

Me: "The '86 Mets."

The Host: "That's what I said!"

Me: "Um ..."

The Host: "That Dave Winfield, he sure was something back then! Wasn't he!"

I should not complain. It was my idea to write a book, and I knew I'd have to promote the damn thing. But when the PR department at HarperCollins presented me with a list of, oh, 80 sports-talk radio interviews, the impending doom made me crank up Hall & Oates real loud. To any scribe with half a brain, sports talk radio is Satan's spawn. It's the home to people nicknamed Mad Dog and Boss and Big Boy; men who believe communication is a synonym for "Scream your head off at the guy from Urbana who thinks the Cubs could actually trade Glendon Rusch for Albert Pujols." Talk radio is generally logic-free. There is little reporting involved. Sports talk hosts usually open the morning newspaper to get their information then pass it on. And they all seem to think David Cone played for the '86 Mets.

On the circuit over the past two months here are some of the questions I've heard from sports talk-radio hosts before we went on the air:

"I didn't read the book, so what should I ask you?"

"Was writing a book hard?"

"Did you talk with any of the players?"

"So did the Mets, like, snort boatloads of coke?"

"Gary Carter was on that team, right?"

"You wrote the John Rocker story, right?"

"Didn't John Rocker beat you up pretty good?"

"I know it was five years ago, and that you've told the story 8,000 times and that you're about to jump off a cliff if I ask you this, but can you take us through the John Rocker incident again?"

I am losing my mind. It is going, going, gone. And just in time. KXEL-AM, the sports voice of Waterloo, Iowa, is on the phone. Goody. They want me to talk bout ... David Cone.

Jeff Pearlman, a former Sports Illustrated senior writer, is a staff writer for Newsday. His column on SI.com appears every other week.