'have I Got A Story!'

While he's waiting for someone in the lobby of a New York radio station, Goldstein asks the switchboard operator if there is a phone he can use. She obliges, and he smiles. "It's easy to be my friend," he says. "Just give me a phone." This phonese drives sane people bonkers. Charlie Leerhsen, a former Goldstein employee who now is a senior writer at Newsweek, says, "He'll occasionally ask you a question, but you then see his eyes glaze over as you start to talk. He's thinking of phone calls he could be making." Goldstein acknowledges this and laments, "It's an addiction and an affliction that bothers me. I'm trying to cut down."

What we are dealing with here may be the ultimate triumph of style over substance. Is Goldstein an intellectual? "I have been to Italy 41 times," he non-answers. Whether his day begins at his home in Old Westbury on Long Island, at his East Side apartment in New York or on the road, Goldstein is hopelessly overscheduled, hysterical, late and on the phone. Whence the frenzy builds. Old buddy Red Auerbach says, "He's always full of pep, know what I mean?" Yes, sir. Says Goldstein, as he darts through Manhattan's underground passageways that he knows like the back of a telephone, "I'm energized about everything I work on. I'm eager. I'm anticipating." He gets his shoes shined ("I do this every day, except if I'm wearing rubbers"); he gets a manicure ("New York is such a dirty place. Of course, I love it"); he's on the subway; he gets his blood pressure taken at a doctor's office—all the while he's checking his watch. He needs to use a VCR in somebody's office, but he won't listen to instructions how to use it—he never listens—and only wants to know one thing: "How do you get it on fast forward?" For Goldstein, a moment when he is not talking is a moment wasted.

And here is the ultimate. Joey ("It's such a sophomoric name. How can a guy post middle-age and Jewish be called Joey?") has found a newsstand where he can buy The New York Times and the New York Post by 11 p.m., which he hustles—of course—back to his apartment to read. Ergo, he has the next day's news read before the next day arrives. Fast forward, huh? And talk about getting the jump: Goldstein always works July 4, Christmas Eve, Christmas, New Year's Eve. Why? "Things are real slow. It's the best time to get things in the papers. And the guys appreciate it." Which raises the question, how many people at big p.r. agencies work on Christmas?

Too, he's a mighty sports resource, a walking, talking yellow pages. Any reporter needing an unlisted phone number can get it from Goldstein, whether the number has to do with Joey's clients or not. Need facts? Call Goldstein. Need directions? Call Goldstein. He's a kind of AAA without the membership fee. He arranges hotel reservations when all rooms are booked, makes last-minute dinner reservations for 8 p.m. on Saturday, gets tickets to hit shows at the last moment (he attends every Broadway play each season) and somehow finds a parking pass when there are no more left. "I do want to be loved," he says, "or at least regarded fondly."

Still, he can't help saying he thinks boxing's Don King and Bob Arum are "venomous fools," that former Olympic boss Avery Brundage was "the most outstanding fascist in history" and that Jimmy the Greek is "semifraudulent."

When Joey was growing up, the Goldsteins were one of only six Jewish families in Conway, which is 15 miles from Myrtle Beach and the South Carolina coast. His dad, Max, went bust in a dry-goods business during the Depression and moved his family to New York in 1940 because he finally found a job there, selling shoes for $37 a week. The Goldsteins lived on the Lower East Side, and Joey thrived at The Boys Club of New York. Today, he is thrilled to report that his old basketball coach, Ben Lieber, recently won $2 million in the state lottery, playing a series of numbers, most notably, "He remembered me and played my old number, seven."

What a story! A check with Lieber, however, reveals he won only $660,000 and while he did use number seven in his picks, it was for another youngster who wore seven. Says Lieber, "Joey was one of my lesser protégés." Goldstein is momentarily deflated.

All this is perfectly in character. Breslin says, "Joey exaggerates everything he tells you by five years." And Baker says, "He's 50 percent right about everything." However, Leerhsen comes to Goldstein's defense, saying, "It's a p.r. man's instinct to exaggerate. It's not a lie for him. He just sees things in a heightened way."

Anyway, sniffs Goldstein, he did win the spelling bee at his boys club three times—an exhaustive search could not document this, but come on, let's take his word for it. He says he won the bee one year because he could spell mellifluent. Still can. He tells a group of Mobil executives that he now has a list of 184 TV columnists; "about 100," corrects Dave Herscher, who is Goldstein's right-hand man. The Millrose Games are 90 years old, says Goldstein; about 80, says Herscher. Anyway, "Dave joined me on April 1, 1972," says Goldstein. "Actually it was on April 2," corrects Herscher.

While at Seward Park High in New York, Goldstein became the school's correspondent for the New York World-Telegram, and later the Times, too. He subsequently began doing unimportant sports stories, like the Knicks, for the New York Sun. And when the paper folded, he got a job at Madison Square Garden, doing basketball publicity. In '54 he went to work full-time at Roosevelt Raceway. In 1969, he opened his own firm.