The new book by the former White House Press Secretary.

Ari Fleischer, the former White House Press Secretary under President Bush and the author of a new book, Taking Heat, faces the heat of our sports-related questions.

SI: You own your own consulting firm and a couple of years ago you addressed baseball's annual rookie career-development seminar. Let's say your client is Barry Bonds. How do advise him regarding his relationship to the press?

Fleischer: A politician's commodity is publicity. They work it, they crave it and they focus on it. An athlete's priority is the performance on the field and there are just some athletes you can't change. There's nothing you can do to get them to be better with the media because the only thing they want to think about is their game. They don't want to focus on their press coverage. Obviously, I've never met him but Barry Bonds by reputation is not media-friendly.

SI: What's your favorite memory of either watching or attending a game with the President?

Fleischer: I remember going to a Rockies game [Aug 14, 2001] in the middle of the P-3 crisis when China intercepted our aircraft. I remember we were talking in the Oval Office and there was this issue of should Bush go or not. Our military forces are basically being held hostage: Should the President leave? And the President was crystal clear. He said to the the staff: "I'm going to game. We are not going to create a hostage-like environment in this White House." He sent a signal to the nation that this is a crisis that will not get out of control and I'm going to go to the game. It was interesting because he understood what the impression would be when he would go to the baseball game. I remember at the game Dr. [Condoleezza] Rice would leave to work the classified phone line that was installed up on a suite level. We would get updates at the game about what was happening with China and our forces.

SI: Last April you signed with IMG for representation for future sports marketing consultant assignments. How did that come about?

Fleischer: It was something IMG thought of. They wrote me a letter and I met with them. It was [agent] Sandy Montag's idea. When I was at the White House, MLB asked me to address the annual rookie career-development seminar. I was talking to the players about how I do my job and I looked at the podium as if I was on the field. I was going to keep my head in the game and not make any mistakes or mental errors. I said to the rookies, "You have your head in the game in the field. Why would you ever take your head out of the game when you step off the field and in the clubhouse and make a mental mistake with what you say to the press?" Look at Randy Johnson when he came to Manhattan and shoved the cameraman. That's a mental mistake. In football, the equivalent is hitting a player out of bounds. And it occurred to me there all kind of commonalties between what I did in government and what athletes, coaches and players go through because the press is the same. The press's job is to ask the tough questions and they typically pounce on and focus on things that went wrong, which are the hardest questions to answer.