Speaker 1: Hi, This is Nick Bramlock from Starbaroth, Pennsylvania. I played
Jaxson Golf Court Golf Smarter episode seventy four. I know
a story about John Matten that really isn't being told
very much. I was reading all these obituaries about the
Ace hardware ads and the light beer ads and meeting
the Raiders sidelines after ten years, and every big moment
in John Madden's life. But nowhere in any of these
obituaries do I see word one about the longest single
career of his life, which was morning radio in the
Bay Area. And I thought, well, somebody has to tell
that story. I look around, I go, well, Gene Nelson's
been kind of out of the picture for years. Frank
Dale's not going to write a piece al Heart's dead.
I guess it's me. What I didn't know really well
was the aya Geene Nelson part. As I was kind
of scraping around looking for information, I ran across your
podcast episode where you talked about meeting John at the
radio station, about your conversations, where you played one of
the answering machine messages the record for you and Joanne shamelessly, dude,
I scraped some of that put it in the article
and quoted you because you know, I knew you'd be
okay with it. It hit me that I had a
trusted friend, somebody I could come to who didn't know
some of the origin myths of John Madden. On morning radio.
Speaker 2: Mornings with Madden, our radio lives with an American Legend,
featuring the author, my friend Stan Bunger.
Speaker 1: This is Golf Smarter, sharing stories, tips and insights from
great golf minds to help you lower your score and
raise your golf IQ.
Speaker 3: Here's your host, Fred Green. Welcome to the Golf Smarter Podcast.
Speaker 1: Dan, Fred, great to be here. I mean, I'm I'm honored.
I know you've done something like seven five hundred episodes and.
Speaker 3: You're seven five hundred and one.
Speaker 1: I'm glad.
Speaker 2: Well, it's it's kind of weird that we're doing this,
but I have to do it. Let's establish right from
the beginning that we've been friends for fifty years. Are
we really going on fifty years?
Speaker 1: Darn close to it? And I'm not sure that we've
actually appeared broadcasts together since we were appearing on the
same broadcast together as students at San Francisco State University.
Speaker 2: Well, don't even call it a broadcast because it was
it was only over a cable to the dorms. I
was the morning DJ at San Francisco State's radio station.
This is nineteen seventy five, seventy six, seventy seven, and.
Speaker 3: You were my morning news guy.
Speaker 2: So we were there at six in the morning and
you were doing news and I was doing records.
Speaker 1: And we thought we were that. We thought we were
all that. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we were so impressed with ourselves. And here we
are and a long time later, and we have one
other thing in common. That is why you're here today,
and that is John Madden. And I've told stories about
my relationship with Madden on the show.
Speaker 3: Episode eight hundred.
Speaker 2: I think I told a lot of stories, and then
when John passed away, I probably did some more. But
you have just published a book called Mornings with Madden,
My Radio life with an American Legend. Let me do
the golf part real quick, and we'll get into more
golf later. You and I were out on the golf course, what.
Speaker 3: Two years ago, three years ago, yeah, yeah, a couple.
Speaker 2: Of years ago, post COVID. We were playing one of
my favorite courses, Corika Park in Alameda near your home,
and you said, I'm thinking of doing a book about
my time with Madden, and I'm like, what.
Speaker 3: Y got there?
Speaker 1: Okay, I will. And the backstory, of course, is that I,
in my forty plus year radio career, spent most of
the last twenty working with John Madden. Now I didn't
in the booth of them. In fact, I never actually
sat next to him for a broadcast, but he was
an integral part of a morning radio show on KCBS
in San Francisco, which happened to be the third station
that he did this on. The first one was one
that you worked that way back in the nineteen eighties,
and for whatever reason, John kept doing a five to
ten to fifteen minute every single weekday morning radio hit
at a time when he didn't need the money, he
really didn't need anything else taking up his life. He
was John Mann, you know, I mean, the on air
television personality, the ad pitch man, the guy behind the
video game. All those things were going on concurrently. And
when his time on radio ended in twenty eighteen, and
I then retired in twenty twenty one, he died at
the end of twenty twenty one, and it occurred to
me that we had these thousands of recordings, and locked
up in those recordings must be some gemstones, you know,
some real wisdom, some wit, some teachable moments, whatever you
want to call him, all of it in there. And
then the question became, how do we get to that?
And is there really a book at that? And I
think you know, you and a lot of other friends.
I wasn't sure as I got halfway through the process
of writing the book whether you were my friends or
my enemies. When you said, oh, yeah, you should write
a book.
Speaker 3: I listened. My wife wrote a book.
Speaker 2: I went through five years of that and that was
published a year ago. So yeah, I get it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And you know, really was what was crucial to
the process. Of course, it was having these recordings, But
I was trying to answer a question that actually, it
turned out you had one of the keys to and
that was to be able to tell the story of
this eighty two nineteen eighty two to twenty eighteen span
of John Madden's life thirty six years during which he
appeared faithfully every morning, a little brief time out for
some medical crises, but not much on day area radio.
And he started with Gene Nelson, who was your colleague
at KYA Radio in San Francisco and K and KO.
I mean it was a look. I have never been
able to unravel those two statements. Kept swapping call letters,
but another old book not mine. When Gene retires twelve
years later, you'd think that'd be enough. Madden's had a
great time. He's hung out with this legendary DJ Gen Nelson.
They meshed, they were amazing together, and that should have
been enough by then. Nineteen ninety four, John Madden somewhere
in there. John had a couple of years where he
made more money from CBS Sports than any single player
in the NFL. I mean, imagine's been that big Wow. Yeah,
still calling in every morning to Geen Nelson to talk.
Gene retires, John doesn't quit. He moves over to join
another Bay Area broadcast legend, Frank Dill, who happens to
be an avid golfer. So there are a lot of
Frank Dill John Madden golf stories. Frank retires three years later.
There's a brief interlude where a guy replaces Frank that
John doesn't get along with, and yet he stills it.
Speaker 2: You keep saying that, and you're staying in the book,
Come on, who is it? Steve McPartland never heard him, Okay.
Speaker 1: History and you know, but apparently he ticked John off
enough that John's like, I'm not doing this with this guy.
And so my boss for many years at KCBS said,
Kevin Arrow, who was a real, you know, inside the
box kind of guy, thought outside the box and said,
you know what, he would be awesome. He would give
us an appointment listening moment at fifteen every morning where
people will have to tune in.
Speaker 2: And radio, you know, especially a news talk station and
it was mostly news.
Speaker 3: It wasn't even news talk.
Speaker 1: It was just news, traffic, weather together every ten minutes,
bang bang bang bang.
Speaker 3: Twenty four to seven. Appointment radio.
Speaker 1: Explain that, Yeah, I should explain the term. I mean
in broadcasting, if you have something that people feel they
have to tune into, they must tune into, and radio
doesn't allow you to time shift it really, I mean,
not like a DVR and television all start the Super
Bowl a half hour late, skip the commercials. In radio,
you got to be there when it happens. And so
eight fifteen, I mean, we have a story after a
story of people saying I was late to work routinely
because I was supposed to be in the office at
eight fifteen, but I couldn't go in until I heard
what Madden said. And it immediately like this, I mean,
our ratings during that time slot skyrocketed. We ended up
beating our longtime Nemesiskgo in the morning ratings battle as
a result of that hour. And another shout out has
to be given to a guy, nam Frank Oxerart, who
was the station manager at KCBS. It was willing to
go to New York to the suits at Corpora then
say hey, this guy's worth it, you know, pay John
Madden whatever it takes. I don't know what it was.
I never have none, to be honest with you, to
get him on our station because it will change everything.
And it did, and so that was the beginning. I
came back. So now he's working with Al Hart, another
aread broadcast legend, starting in nineteen ninety seven on KCBS,
and they hit it off right away. They were amazing together.
But Al retires in two thousand. I mean, I had
previously worked at KCBS for ten years, was off to
another stuff. I get a call one day saying, hey,
would you consider coming back. And you know, you remember
that scene in the movie A Major League where they
call Lou Brown he's run at a tire shot, and
you say would you like to manage the Cleveland Indians
And he goes, ah, I got a guy. I asked
me about a set of white walls. I'll get back
to you. You know that was kind of my response.
I had other stuff going on. I wasn't sure I
wanted to go back to everyday radio, but I did
say yes. And I know that management must have been
terrified that I would be the next Steve Apartment, that
I would screw this thing with Madden up by not
getting how to play the game with John Madden. So
the day before I'm sorry, I go ahead.
Speaker 2: No, I was going to say it wasn't he was
already on KCBS with a different morning.
Speaker 3: Person that right, with AlOH al Hart.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, And they hear impression in the book. I'm
listening to the audiobook. Your impression of al Hart.
Speaker 3: You nailed it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's He's the sweetest, kindest, gentlest, funniest man anybody
ever met. There's never been anybody who met Albarne. Well,
what a jerk?
Speaker 2: No, No, no, never, but I'm saying the voice and
you do your impression of him on the audiobook.
Speaker 3: You nailed it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like, wait, that was a no. Well, I mean
I learned a lot from him, and so yeah, the
day before they're gonna put me on the air for
the first time. I come back in the summer of
two thousand and they said, you really need to talk
to coach. We got to get a call. And I
know that management is thinking, jeez, this is this has
got to work, this has got to work, this has
gotta work. So I get on the call, and you know,
I'm a little nervous. This is John freaking Madden right before.
In fact, I didn't really like the Raiders. I used
to root against him, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, you grew up on the Peninsula or happened
to be at.
Speaker 1: Or in San Francisco. Mom and dad courted at Keysar Stadium.
So yeah, I was a forty nine er fan. And
I get on the phone and I just start dabbling.
I'm like, oh, man, coach, I just want you to
know I'm a I'm a big fan of you, know
of you and you work on television. And my dad
was a football coach and his dad was a football coach,
and I love sports, any kind of sports, and Fred
I must have talked for three minutes without stopping. I've
breath and there's this at the other end, John Madden going, Steah,
that's great, talk to you tomorrow. So you know, I
hope I passed the audition at that point. And the
next morning it's time for the first one. So I
get the call from the newsroom, you know, in the intercom,
saying okay, Madden's ready on line seven four, and I thought, okay,
So I hit the talk back bay and I said,
what's the topic. And there's this long silence, and I
see people in the newsroom looking back and forth to
each other. Finally somebody has the guts to lean in
and go whatever you want. It's Madden. And that's when
it all hit me. This isn't an interview. This is
a conversation. That's a different animal.
Speaker 3: Huge.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Okay, before we get to your first conversation with
Madden on the air, let's get let's back up a
little because I have to say I'm listening to the audiobook.
I love listening to the audiobook because I've always loved
your voice. But you were incredibly generous to me in
this book. I was amazed, and I'm honest with you,
I was like tearing up, going, he's still talking about me?
Speaker 3: What is going on here?
Speaker 2: And then at least two more times I'm only on
chapter ten in the audio book, and at least two
more times I.
Speaker 3: Heard my name. I'm like, why are you doing this?
Why do you keep throwing my.
Speaker 1: Name in there? Well, you know, I'm going to cycle
back to your podcast, right because when Coach passed away,
my initial thought was, I know a story about John
Madden that really isn't being told very much. I was
reading all these obituaries about the Ace hardware ads and
the light beer ads and leaving the Radar sidelines after
ten years, and I mean every big moment in John
Madden's life. But nowhere in any of these obituaries do
I see word one about the longest single career of
his life, which was morning radio in the Bay Area.
And I thought, well, somebody has to tell that story.
I look around, I go, well, Geene Nelson's been you know,
kind of out of the picture for years. Frank Gale's
not going to write a piece. Al Heart's dead, I
guess it's me. And what I didn't know really well
was the origin part, the KYA Gene Nelson part. And
as I was kind of scraping around looking for information,
I ran across your podcast episode where you talked about
meeting John at the radio station, about your conversations, where
you played one of the answering machine messages the record
for you and Joanne, and that I mean shameless the dude.
I scraped some of that, put it in the article
and quoted you because you know, I knew you'd be
okay with it. But it hit me that I had
trusted friend, somebody I could come to who didn't know
some of the origin myth of John Madden on Morning Radio.
Much later, actually, as the manuscript had already been submitted
and gone to the almost to the printer, a third
party reached out to me. He said, would you like
to be in touch with Gene Nelson? And I said, well,
nobody talks to Gen Nelson. He's kind of, you know,
checked himself out of out of the radio game. And
and in my contact said I'll give you a mailing address.
So I said, well that's a start. I'll do something
I haven't done in years. I will write an actual
letter and put a stamp on it, put it in
the mail, and I included my email address, thinking I
don't know Gen Nelson does email. He's, you know, in
his eighties. I guess uh, and my phone number. And
two days later, Fred I got three missed calls from
Gene Nelson in voicemails, and I'm thinking, I missed. You know,
I have the big the big fish on the line,
and I missed him. I finally was able to get
back to him a couple of days later, and I
told him I just wanted to talk to him a
bit to get because I already finished the story. I
just want to make sure that everything you told me
about the beginning, you know, sort of jibe, and that
maybe I could make this into a little bit of
a preamble to the book. And Jeane talked to me
for about twenty minutes. I was scrambling to record it all,
and told some hilariously funny stories and stories that mapped
to the same experience that Frank Dill and I had
with Coach Matt and tied the whole thing together for me.
Now I knew how it started. I had talked to
the guy who started with him, who had the same
feelings about working with John Mann that I did. And
by the way, it heard some of the same stories
which were as funny in nineteen eighty two as they
were in twenty sixteen, which is kind of Madden's genius too, right,
I mean he never failed to hang on to a
good story if he figured he could recycled and use
it again.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I always had the night if gone.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And so just briefly, John was on the RKO Radio
network and he was recording these two minute pieces for
RKO Radio that were sent on a national basis to
the r KO stations. And the director of sports at
RKO at the time.
Speaker 3: Was Charlie Steiner.
Speaker 1: Charlie Steiner who.
Speaker 2: Went to ESPN and is now the radio voice took
over for Vince Gully and is a radio voice for
the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Speaker 1: Ray, he's about to call a world series as we
record this, I.
Speaker 3: Think, well, fingers, are you know?
Speaker 2: I mean that the network sure want to see that,
of course, right, two biggest names and the Dodgers and
the Yankees. And the Dodgers and the Yankees are the
two biggest names anyway, So Charlie and I.
Speaker 3: So, you know, I would I would record.
Speaker 2: John would come into the studio and we record two
or three pieces that were each two minutes long. And
we got very good at punch editing, you know, like
he would read and just pick it up and I
didn't have to edit anything.
Speaker 3: We just did it live. And he was great at that,
and he loved it. It was fun. And then we
would talk for two hours.
Speaker 2: About all these different things, including my goofy ideas, and
he loved it, you know, he just loved that kind
of stuff. And I actually my boss came in to
me one day after John left and he said, you
can't spend that much time talking to John.
Speaker 3: You've got work to do. And I said, you want
to tell him to leave?
Speaker 1: Well, And you know, Fred that story and you told
me that many years earlier. And I didn't really make
all the dot connections until later. And just the other night,
a neighbor of mine told me a story about him
delivering industrial gases to a hospital here in the East Bay.
He's waiting these canisters of oxygen or whatever in there
and he sees John madd So he says, what can
I meet it? And somebody says, yeah, sure, come out over.
He's a nice guy. He'll talk to you. So my
neighbor goes over. Madden says, how are you doing, man,
what are you doing here? You know? And my old
my neighbor says, well, you know, I delivering cryogenic gases
to the hospital. And maddens, Oh, what's you know? Is
that dangerous? I mean, as Most telling me the story,
I stopped him. I go so he's asking you about you,
and Most going yeah, okay. Fast forward a couple of
years later, my neighbor runs into Madden again, I think
a charity event, and he gets his moment at the
end of the line. He shakes his hand. He goes,
you know, we've actually met before, coach, and Madden looks
at him and he goes, cryogenic gases, right, whoah right.
But he was present in any if he was having
a conversation with you. He wasn't looking over your shoulder
to see who was bigger in the corner of the room.
He was having a conversation with you any care And
he remembered, which is a crazy part.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, and he So we did this. I was
with him for like almost four years. I even at
one point Charlie hired me.
Speaker 2: He says, hey, You're going to have to go out
to Madden's house recording this time.
Speaker 3: I'm like, what.
Speaker 2: He goes, just rent some equipment and just go out
to his house and record these pieces he's doing about
the nineteen eighty four Olympics, which will be in Los Angeles,
and and just get those and send them back down.
It's like, okay, So I rent some gear. I drive
out to Pleasanton, I pull into the into the cul
de Sac and there are his two sons, Joe.
Speaker 3: And and Mike.
Speaker 2: Mike, Yeah, playing basketball in the cul de Sac. Hi, guys,
there was no exchange. I walk in the house. I've
got this gear over my shoulders, you know, and bags.
Those days you had to carry a lot of.
Speaker 3: Gear to do it and recording, not like today.
Speaker 2: And I walk in and John's sitting on the big
lazy boy chair watching TV and his wife is standing
on the kitchen counter. He's like, hey, hey, coach. He
goes fred up forg She needs some help putting some
stuff away. It's like, no problem, coach.
Speaker 1: So that's so mad.
Speaker 3: It's so mad.
Speaker 2: And then and then I help her out and she's like,
thank you. She's reaching down and thank you. And then
he goes, all right, she's going to show you what bedroom.
Just go in the bedroom and we'll work in there.
And I was there for maybe an hour. We recorded
some stuff, and I left and never never, you know,
like never back at their house again. But in eighty
four when I went to the Olympics, it was on
my birthday and my brother bought us tickets and we
went down there. He was there and he said, well,
stop by the truck. You know, he was in the
production truck, and we went in and said hello. And
you know, I left the radio station in eighty six,
and so that was pretty much it. I never never
had a chance to talk to him again, except once
when after all those times where he was telling me,
you got to turn that into it, that into a business,
that idea, that's a great idea, you got to turn
that into a business.
Speaker 3: And I had multiple.
Speaker 2: Things going on that I was popping out of my mouth,
and so one of them was starting to work, and
it was the radio Baseball Cards, which I later turned
into a podcast that we did. So nineteen eighty seven
we did one hundred and sixty two episodes of Radio
Baseball cards with Don Drysdale as the host, and John
was gracious enough to give me over the phone a
testimonial about it, and that was the lead in my
demo that I would be sending out to radio stations.
Speaker 1: Wow, Fred, the world it's out full of But there's
quite a tribe of people who once John identified somebody
as trustworthy, honest, loyal and also talented, because you couldn't
just be a a hacker with John. In order to
get in this inner circle, you had to deliver. But
if you could and all of those things, John would
go to the wall for you. He'd make sure that
you got that meet He'd make sure that somebody read
your proposal, whatever it was, because that's the way he operated.
He I don't think he was out to save the world.
I don't think he was trying to you know, be
the center of a Kretzu you know, or the Madden
World thing. But he was just loyal to people who
he thought deserved, yeah, the opportunity to move on some better,
and Mandiham did. There were production assistants over the years
who became you know, network executives, largely because John would
tell people this one's smart pay attention to him or her.
Speaker 2: Well, this is a golf podcast, and there are people
tuning into hear about golf. So the one thing I remember,
and this was at least at least a decade before
I started playing golf, that I was with him, but
I do remember him talking about, if I had to
choose between golf and tennis, I would much rather be
a tennis player, because when you're a bad tennis player,
you're done in a half hour, and if you're a
bad golfer, you're out there all day long.
Speaker 1: This encapsulates the general overarching Madden golf philosophy in the book,
and there were many many other episodes over on the
Oarther that didn't make it into the book. He would
often talk about exactly that. You know, first of all,
none of us are really very good. And I'm speaking
to you as a guy with as of this moment,
a twenty four point four a GHI N index, So
that puts me right there.
Speaker 3: No, you don't, come on, we play a lot closer
than that.
Speaker 1: I've richly earned it, friend now. But the point being,
I'm not a great golfer. I'm not thirty index, but
also not in eighteen and I have my moments when
you know you pure one and you think I love
this game. Man, you fought it out, I cut a
little draw, you know all of that. And then have
moments where you wormburg a fairway wood and you think
what am I doing out here?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Well we've played a half dozen times together. I
love playing with you. I never thought like, oh my god,
here we go again.
Speaker 1: Well, I enjoyed playing with anybody, right, Anybody who you
know doesn't doesn't follow. I don't care about the actual
rules of the game. I care about the coreum of
the game. You're free to play and count whatever you want.
I don't care about that, Nor.
Speaker 3: Have I ever asked you, Okay, what are we playing
for in this game?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: But how much you want to play for it?
Speaker 1: It's like, oh no, I don't gamble, but you know,
for me, anybody who wants to go out and have
a good time, be able to laugh at our own foibles.
I think I took some of that from John over
the years because I quit the game for a long time.
I wasn't getting better. It was taken too long to play,
and I'm thinking, you know, like a lot of people
in midlife, you get busy, the kids, the job, and
all of a sudden, golf five hours of it or
six hours of it just doesn't seem like a really
wise investment. And John probably had more time, but he
didn't see it as a wise use of his time.
So among the other things, he'd says, I don't understand
why it's got to be eighteen holes. Why can't it
be like eleven or thirteen? Well, guess what, Why can't it?
Why can't we have courses that are built in three
whole modules so you can play twelve or fifty.
Speaker 2: I've had I've had architects on We've talked about doing
it instead of two nines due to three sixes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, why not? Why not? Why don't courses eighteen a
whole tracks do a better job of figuring out how
to manage starting times so people can play the front
nine or the background, not just at dawn, you know,
before everybody comes around the turn, but I mean all
day long? Why not? And these were kinds of things
that John, you know, we would talk about all the
time because I think he loved, well, I know what,
he also loved that golf is a great way to
get out there and make fun of your buddies, right, yea, yeah,
that's what he did, even his buddy Dominic Mercurio, who
is always just referred to an ear as Dominic. Dominic's
a restaurant owner in Monterey. And apparently Dominic, you're not
a big guy, but apparently he hits it a ton
off the tee. Apparently I never played with Dominic or
John Dominic doesn't have much of a game. After the driver, Dominic,
you know, it up and hell, it's a hell out
of it. And then he goes up and he pulls that
tea out of the ground like that, like take that
and you know that sword coming out of the sheet,
unplugging the tea from the earth. You know. But then
after that everything goes south, and all Dominic wants to
talk about, you know, back in the clubhouse, you see
if I drive on seven and John said, yeah, but
after that and everything was horrible. I mean, he scalded
your three wood into the barker, then took you three
to get out of there, and then you know, so
you know, he he approached the game I think with
an attitude that was it's not going to get great.
You're not going to be great. Why would you get
upset at yourself if this is who you are.
Speaker 2: Right, right, And this is this book is not a biography, right,
this is not like the life of John Madden. This
is you telling stories of maddenisms. I don't know what
else to call him. It just like how things that
he said on the air and where it would go
and with direction is And as you stated earlier, it
was like, this is a conversation.
Speaker 3: It's not an interview.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and like you know the kind of conversation you know,
I know there's a phrase talking story, you know, talking
story where you're just hanging out with people. You're sharing
your live story, their live story. It's the funny thing
you saw, the thing you couldn't understand, you know, it's
it's it's what I love. It's just hanging out and talking.
John loved that too. He was an incredible observer, you know,
of everything, you know, the world around, in the human condition,
all of it, and so he loved to talk about that.
So some ofod he just was baffled by. Some of
it he flat out and said, I don't get that,
you know, I don't get Grits was one that he
told me one time, and I shared that with Peyton Manning,
who I was able to get to write the forward
for the post. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I wanted to talk about that, Like.
Speaker 1: What do you mean he doesn't like Grits? I said,
I don't know, man, I mean he's not around to
ask anymore. And Peyton's going, now, I'm not down with that, man,
I love Grits, not going. Yeah, me too. And I'm
not even from New Orleans and didn't play at the
University of Tennessee. You.
Speaker 2: So the forward in the book is by Peyton Manning. Yeah,
congratulations on that. That is quite a coup.
Speaker 1: Well, I have to thank Steve Mariucci for that. Fred,
here's a quick backstory. I'd never written a book before.
I know that no freaking clue of what it meant
to write a book. I pitched one very well known
agent and her response was, I don't know. John Madden's dead,
isn't he? And I said yeah. But I apparently wasn't
able to explain what it was I was trying to
do with the.
Speaker 3: Bo You didn't have the good elevator pitch going right,
We'll think.
Speaker 1: I did, or it was a pitch that didn't fit
a narrow box. It wasn't about It wasn't an oral history.
It wasn't you know whatever. It was just my story
about my life of John Madden and why he did radio,
and the funny stuff and why stuff he said. And
so during the pitch meeting, it's a zoom call with
these editors from Triumph Books, and I can tell her interested,
or else they wouldn't have scheduled the call. And I
know they're interested because the publisher is on the call,
not just the younger editors. And the questions I'd been anticipating,
I'm answering. And then they say, well, who do you
think you can get to write the forward? I was
so naive about this whole process. I thought they went
and got somebody to write the forward. I didn't know
that was my job as the author. Just oh wow,
the time is that dumb? So I said, I'm well,
maybe Tony LaRussa, because he's a friend of John Madden's. Well,
saying that to a group of book people in Chicago,
where Tony had recently flamed out as the manager of
the White Sox. And by the way, they're North Siders,
not a good move. I can see their faces.
Speaker 3: All drops are white SOX twice.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, right.
Speaker 3: Right, And it was a competitor in Saint Louis.
Speaker 1: Yeah not yet, not a Chicago win, not a good
good name, right, So okay, now I'm now I'm scrambling.
I'm thinking, uh, well maybe al Michael's. Uh you know,
because worked with John and I had a couple of
possible entrees to Al. I thought, wow, okay, and then
I just threw Peyton's day Man. I said, or Peyton Manning.
Man They all lit up. You can get Peyton Manning.
I'm going I'll try it. I got off that call
and I immediately text Steve Mariucci and I said, Mooch,
do you think you could get me to either Al
Michaels or Peyton Manning to write it forward for the book?
And much knew about the book in general. And all
I got back was I'll try. And then I didn't
hear from him for like three months, and I'll try.
As the shortest communication I've ever had with Mooch.
Speaker 2: So wait, give a little backstory on Mooch, because again
golf audience may not know, may not follow the NFL.
Speaker 1: So Steve Mariucci from Iron Mountain, Michigan, where His boyhood
friend was Tom Izzo, who became the basketball coach at
Michigan State and won national championships. So you've got a
parallel story there, these two boyhood buddies and John Madden
and his boyhood friend John Robinson, who won a national
championship coaching USC is in the College Football Hall of Fame. Remarkable, right,
two different hairs from two different parts of the country.
Madden and Mariucci need a I think Mariucci was the
offensive coordinator of quarterbacks coach with the Packers at the time.
John was still doing national broadcasts and he was just
taken by Steve Marriuchi. They famously got on the bus
one day, the Madden Cruiser to tour Green Bay and
Mariuchi is going to sho him where everybody lived. Allow,
that's where That's where McCarthy lives over there, Brett Farr
lives in that house. And then you know they're pulling
the Madden Cruiser up like in Culda Sacks in Green
Bay and having to back out.
Speaker 2: Or if you've ever been to Green Bay, have you
ever been spent time there? Yeah, she's not what you
call a big city.
Speaker 1: No, take any suburban neighborhood anywhere and put a football
stadium in the middle of that's green.
Speaker 2: It's bizarre because it's I worked there twice. At the stadium,
they did fan festival, and I worked there twice. And
you like, you get out of the airport and to
go to the hotel, you cross the street from the airport.
Speaker 3: Okay, that's not a big deal.
Speaker 2: And then to get to the stadium, you come out
of the parking lot of the hotel. You turn left,
You go down about a quarter mile. You turn left
at the first signal, you go down another half mile.
There's another signal, you turn right, you go a half
mile again, and you're at this stadium.
Speaker 1: There is an entire three five thousand seat stadium.
Speaker 2: Right it's an eighty thousand seat stadium with one hundred
and three thousand people in the entire town. So I
always figured the best job to have is to break
into houses on Sunday because.
Speaker 3: Nobody's the only no one's going to be home because
they're either at the game or working at the game.
Speaker 1: There just a few out of town guests who didn't
like football or was right. So anyway, madd and Steve
Berriouchia and Mariucci that day has brought with him a
bag full of pasties, Cornish pasties, which are meat pies
that were brought over to America by the Cornish miners
who populated the Upper penninsul Love, Michigan and Iron Mountain.
Mariucci's hometown has got a lot of that heritage. Mariucci said,
heritage is Italian. Madd needs one of these, and he's smit.
He's a freight mooch. You know, he probably ate three
or four or eight of them, to be honest. There
begins a bond which then begins to include Bacci, which
Steve Mariucci is into. He gets Madden engaged, and Madden
now starts to play Boggi. What they came up with
was the world's greatest fundraiser, with all due difference to
every way too long golf scramble fundraiser anybody ever suffered
through a day at the BACI tournament is better because
guess what, You're not out all day. Your matches last
thirty minutes in between eating, drinking and hanging out. It
would be as if after every shot on the scramble
you could eat, drink and hang out instead of back
to the clubhouse for the auction, right, and so they
turned this thing into a multimillion dollar fundraiser and of
course engage people who Bachi's kind of easy to learn,
a lot easier to learn than golf, and so you know,
that became the nucleus of the of their relationship and friendship.
And Steve Mariucci coach. He was the head coach at
University of California, then for the San Francisco forty nine ers.
Then he had a job with the Detroit Lions and
I'm forgetting whether he was head coach or general manager
or whether. And then he's now working on the NFL
network as an analysts and he's really one of the
best because he's enthusiastic and smart and doesn't take himself
too seriously.
Speaker 3: Right, And so he led you to Peyton Manning that
he came through.
Speaker 1: Well, he finally did mnth's go by months. Thanks for
keeping me on track, by the way, I can tell
you're a professional. Let's go by. And I've not heard
from him, and I thought, I'm screwed. You know, now
I'm trying to reach out to my third level sources
on al Michael's and that isn't working. And one day
I get like three texts and three missed calls from
Marucci Peyton. O'll look, you gotta get a hold of
right away. And so I reached out to the number
for Peyton's assistant that mooch gate me. She was awesome.
She said, here's how it's going to work. Peyton will
give you about twenty minutes on the phone. Then you'll
write it up and you'll send it over for approval,
and he'll approve it whatever changes need to be made,
and then you go, Well, I kind of cheated because
I kind of wrote it a little bit in advance,
just trying to pull in a few of the threads
that were in the book. And also, you know, kind
of do I wanted to make sure, you know, and
things like that were in there, right, So I did,
and then I had to call with Peyton and he
told me a few more things that I had weren't
out there in the public sphere, including talking about a
photo that he keeps on his desk at his office
outside of Denver, of him and that and the two
of them. I might be able to well, anyway, it's
in the book, and when it turns out I thought, well,
that's a personal photo and I'm the seeking permission from
Peyton to use it. Oh yeah, you can use it.
My editor at Triumph Books does some digging. He says, well, actually,
that's a crop out of a foreshot of John and
Peyton and Philip Rivers of the Chargers and whoever else
was on the brocass in Indianapolis. Peyton's like skinny back
when he was still with the Colts, looking at John
like puppy dog. And anyway, I right up the forward.
I send it to Peyton. Honest to Godfred it's like
five minutes. I get a response from Emila, the assistant, saying,
Peyton says it's great. There are a couple of things.
He thinks you didn't get quite right, can you? So okay,
I send it right back. Five more minutes. Peyton says
it's good, he loves it. And and then for our
worldwide launch event, I thought, man, it would be great
if we got Peyton' start going to be there. But
what if we'll just get Peyton to record a video
same thing. Five minutes Peyton says, he'll do it, you know,
just send him.
Speaker 2: Her outgoing answering machine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, just send him a script, and you know
I did, and you know you were at the event.
Peyton nailed it, brought down the house.
Speaker 3: Nailed it.
Speaker 1: And he's an important figure in this whole John Madden's
story because I think he is the heir to John's
mantle as sort of the soul and conscience of pro football.
He loves the game dearly. He's also a new generation version.
You know. But if there had been an opportunity to
do a you know, a Peyton Manning cast back when
John Madden was starting, John Madden would have done the
Madden cast that he would have killed, right. You imagine
you or me or anybody just sitting with John doing
what Peyton and Eli do you know, on the sidelines
of a of a broadcast. John would have been great
at it. But John was great at all the other
stuff he did do. Peyton's just a new version.
Speaker 2: I think, you know, I kind of you know, I
listened Troy Aikman to me. When I'm listening to him,
I'm like, I hear.
Speaker 3: Madden in him.
Speaker 1: Well, there are two guys, tro John loved Troy Aikman
during the years when Troy was playing. I know he
helped Troy. With the beginnings of his broadcast career, John
had a kind of a short list of these people.
He just identified them. Troy, Peyton, Brett Farr, you know
who I know is following out a favorite a lot
of way. But John and Brett Farve really got along
quite well. Andy Reid and John are like this where
I'm sorry. You know, there's a list of them. Rod Rivera,
the former cal Line banker coach in the NFL. I mean,
these are people that John just identified as good people.
He would always say about somebody, he's one of the
good ones, and it that's high praise, you know, one
of the good ones.
Speaker 3: I mentioned that.
Speaker 2: I've been listening to the audio book and listening to
your voice, and you break into Madden all through the book,
and you really get good at it. You know, as
the book progresses, you're getting better and better through it.
Speaker 1: I've started out at zero because I didn't think I
was going to have to read the maddened parts. I
thought they would surely hire somebody else with a different voice.
Speaker 2: So, you know, is it okay for me to ask
you why in the audio book? You know, you've got
hours and hours, hundreds of hours of audio of you
and John that it's not in the audiobook is yeah.
Speaker 1: No. When I started the project, I assumed that were
there to be a book contracted all in an audiobook
in particular, that we would just port the audio that
I had over into the book. You know, I used
the transcriptions of the audio to write the book book.
But what it turned out was that there had been
an arrangement between the Maddeness State and Hollywood basically for
the rights to all things John Madden to be licensed.
And you know, there are at least a couple of
movie projects, one for sure, big one, and then some
documentary stuff underway. Now I don't know that the radio
stuff will ever appear in these things, but it might. Write.
So it was made clear to me that the audio
would be off limits. You know, we're not here and
there for personal appearances, but that to commercialize it in
that way wasn't going to happen, so kind of not
my problem. At that point, I thought, Okay, you know,
I'm not a big audiobook consumer. I don't mean any
disrespect to those who are. I just like to hold
a book and maybe I listened to too much audio
over my years radio. Actually myself and so fast forward
to this past July. The book is only three months
away from from publication, and I get an email I'm
in France at the time, from my publisher's office and saying, oh,
we've just about wrapped up negotiations with the audiobook publisher
Recorded Books, and they would like you to read the book.
I thought, oh, kind of hoping it would be Tom Hanks,
Matthew McConaughey.
Speaker 3: Or you know, no, no, no, you're better.
Speaker 1: Anyway, So I said, Okay. The day comes and I
and I and I reached out to the producer of
the audiobook saying, can you find somebody else to read
the Mad part? I recommended our mutual friend Mike Sugarman,
who has a little bit different voice from out I thought,
could read the mad part without trying to do a
mad impression, just read them in a voice and tone
that were a little different from my No, I think
probably that just out only do it. Maybe a budget thing,
I don't know. So I get into the recording studio
and I'm thinking, well, surely there'll be a director here
or producer to kind of, you know, say try this
a little more of that. I want you to feel
this no.
Speaker 3: I've done a couple.
Speaker 2: I've produced a couple of audio books, my wife's and
another one. And the other one was I had a
producer here and I had to build out my studio
and you know, like to make sure it worked right.
And this bridge like goes over every single word to
make sure you get it right, because people there's a
lot of people who listen to audiobooks and read along
the book.
Speaker 3: Oh no, so you can't.
Speaker 2: You can't diverge from what's on the printed page. You've
got to be exact on what's on the printed page.
Speaker 1: This is amazing. Well, you know, when I got there,
there was a twenty twenty four version of Fred Green
in the nineteen eighties. I've got a recording engineer. He
was a terrific young guy, and he's very, very diligent.
You know, he catches my mistakes. And I'm just trying
to kind of channel my grandpa reading to the grand
kid's style because I've never done this. And then, i mean,
without really thinking about it, I hit the first Madden
quote and all I can do is kind of try
to maybe be a little different and get back to
meeting reading the story. So I kind of thought I
figured there took two and a half days to record
eight and a half hours. Eh.
Speaker 3: It hard work, hard freaking work, even for a broadcast
veteran like you. Hard work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean for had a long stretch. For me,
would be thirty seconds of speaking in a time. It's
not like a podcast where you got to talk all
this time. Right, So I assume they're going to send
it off to recorded books and so many back there
is going to go oh no, no, no, no, no
no no, go back to square one. As it turned out,
they asked me to come in and do like five
little pickups, you know where I obviously got the wrong word,
and now I realized because it was going to be
the word that somebody was reading in the book, and
that was it. And I haven't heard it yet. All
some people who have been listening, they've been enjoying it.
And I'm telling you.
Speaker 2: Well, first of all, I'm really enjoying the audiobook. I
do like audiobooks, but I'm a podcast guy. So early
on in Golf Smarter's life, I had Audible as a sponsor,
and the research started coming out that people who listen
to audiobooks don't listen to podcasts. And people who listen
to podcasts don't have time to listen to audiobooks. They're
very time consuming and they and they just you find yourself,
like when you're in an audiobook or even in a
podcast series, you find yourself doing things where you can
stretch out time to be able to listen for long
periods of time.
Speaker 1: I saw one of my neighbors driving around the block
three times the other day.
Speaker 3: Listen to that was a podcast.
Speaker 1: It I had to be I'm sure it's all smarter,
but no, it was not say it was.
Speaker 2: But let me just say in the book book, the
hardcover book, it's hardcover only at this.
Speaker 1: Point so far. Yeah, yeah, it works. I guess downstream
if it does well enough, then you know, a softcover paper.
Speaker 3: That would be a beautiful thing.
Speaker 2: And it's really awesome to see on the side the
side cover here and just to see your name with Madden.
Speaker 3: It's like, so cool, man.
Speaker 2: But I can't tell you how flattered I am because
in the section that has in the middle of the book,
there's a section of photos and the first photo is
the one of me and John. I was so flattered
and I.
Speaker 1: Was like, I am said that they lead well here's
another interesting point about about writing a book. Again, something
I didn't know. You know, I got to supply my
own photos. Now yeah, what yeah, there it is, I
mean photo it says so much. And the first of all,
back the thread of the story that we told early
in the book about your relationship with John and the
radio station. But here's big Goofy Madden and I.
Speaker 3: In my hebro.
Speaker 2: Or as a friend said to me recently, whoa, you
had dark hair? Like, go to your room, what do
you mean? I had dark hair on both of.
Speaker 1: Us in the zeros and somebody wrote into the show
one time, I said the guy with the white hair,
and I'm going, whoa.
Speaker 3: I know it's like, oh, yeah, that's me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But yeah, I learned that you got to supply
your own photos. And so fortunately I had two different
friends who shot a lot of mad events, and one
of them, you know, wanted some compensation, which I don't
blame him for the other one was flying with it,
you know, not being compensated. They were willing to go
on and license a couple of photos. So I know
that there was a higher budget for this book than
many of the other books that friends have come across.
Have written where they literally had to go pay their own,
you know, licensing fees for photos if they was in
the book. So I mean, I feel really fortunate about that.
This publisher, you know, Tryump Books. They do a lot
of titles around sports. They've been really great to work
with and you know everybody, I haven't heard a bad
word about them from other authors who've worked for them.
So you know, got a great book wayed to be
written about sports, you know, pitch them.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, there is an entire chapter in the book
dedicated to golf.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and you know Fredick too. As I was
sorting out all of these thousands of recordings and they're
all transcribed, So now I've got this massive database of
text separated by each air date. So I knew when
given the show had aired because we'd recorded or we'd
saved them under a file name that had the air date.
But now where do you start? This is a big haystack.
You know, we're all the needles. So I began to
kind of organize themes that I remembered him talking about,
and golf was right at the top of that list.
Wow talked about golf a lot, and he he loved
a H the at and t H you know, Pebble
Beach pro am. He became very good friends with Davis
Love the third, who he loved not just as a golfer,
but as a guy to hang out with because d
L three apparently really really liked to eat, and if
you really really like to eat, your friends with John
Madden in John Madden's corner. And so you know these stories.
There were stories about him, you know, fighting his way
around the course down at Pebble Beach. He had all
of his secret hide the ways you can to remember
he was doing that back in the eighties, so things
weren't hadn't quite as exploded, you know on the PGAH
or the way they have now. The money was it
was still pretty good money, but it was a different world,
you know, like everything was, I guess in the eighties.
And so there are stories about him, you know, gawking
at guys at the driving range and thinking equipment is
the answer, This will fix everything, and then realizing no,
it's not the answer. But the first cell a lot
of the equipment, don't they Those are observations that anybody
who's been afflicted by golf, you know, I think all
of us who play the game, whatever level we play
it at. I mean, I guess there might be some
people way up at the top who don't get the
inherent weirdness of golf. But if you play the game
the way most of us play, you know, golf's weird.
I mean, who goes out there with a stick and
tries to hit a round thing all the way down there,
and then the miracle of being able to do it
even in five strokes on a power four, to go
from here to all the way there into a little cup.
It's insane. Who you know? Who embedded this thing? Why
do we do it? It's all okay, And John just
laughed about all that.
Speaker 2: I've just come really, and I've said this for years.
Speaker 3: It's like the ball.
Speaker 2: You know, it's the hardest sport I've ever played, and
the ball's just sitting there.
Speaker 3: Yeah right, it's not even moving.
Speaker 2: But I just realized recently, if it moves, you're completely
freaked out.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, well, John. One of John's favorite things was
to say, you know, in golf, they tell you got
to be perfectly still and stand up. That's the opposite
of every other sport I've ever played, where you got
to get down low and be moving right.
Speaker 2: And you and many people could go on and on
and on about John.
Speaker 3: But there's two things that I want to bring up.
Speaker 2: One you kind of under your breath listening to you,
you know, read the book, but it's your voice. You
mentioned that you and your wife did this eleven thousand
mile road trip. I don't know about this.
Speaker 1: What did you?
Speaker 3: When did this happen? And how did that?
Speaker 1: Now?
Speaker 2: Let me just say that going to this the book
launch event the other night, which was fantastic and I
loved it and great seeing people that I hadn't seen
in many years. One of them, which was your wife, Well,
I haven't seen since college.
Speaker 1: Is that right?
Speaker 2: I don't think i've seen her since college. And I
walked up to her and she looks at me and
she goes, I recognize you.
Speaker 3: And I said Fred Green. She screamed, she burned out.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, I can't but you know, and then
we joked about how when I knew her, when you know,
when we were in our early twenties, that you know,
we kind of looked alike. And I'm like, oh no, no, no, no.
The pictures that I've seen of your son as a
teenager looks exactly like I did as a teenager.
Speaker 1: But true, it's very weird. I don't even want to
get that deeply into genealogy, so I'm afraid I'm going
to find out that I'm related to you. Yeah, which
we threw it everything.
Speaker 3: Actually, my brother and Ali last name is bunker.
Speaker 1: Well. You know, so as I was nearing retirement and
this was now in COVID. You know, my last was
in June of twenty twenty one, so everything was kind
of weird. We'd gone through a year and a half
a weird at that. Yeah, And John always had a phrase.
John always would say, if you say you're going to retire,
you've already retired. He didn't understand a farewell tour of
an athlete saying this will be my last season and
then you know, getting the keys to the corvette and
the fishing boat and all that at every ballpark around
the league. In John's mind, you you ran through the
finish line every year, and then you took stock and
if that stock taking legend to decide that's it, then
you walked away. And he did that with the Raiders,
and he did it again with NBC at the end
of his television career. So that was always kind of
a back of my mind joke. If you say you're
going to retire, you've already done it. Well, I sent
word to him that I was going to retire. By then,
he'd already stopped doing radio. So we were just I'd
see him once in a while, but I'd got to
watch football games. We texted from time to time. I'd
get a message out of nowhere from John and you know,
it was it was, And so I told it my
wife and I had decided, and I think, you know,
June of twenty one, COVID had drove a lot of
the decision. Let's just get in the car and drive
around the country and catch up with friends and family
we haven't seen in some cases in many years. Seat
places we've never seen, like the Deep South and and
the Blues Trail and Memphis. And you know, our friend
Ted Robinson, the great Emmy Award winning sports announcer. His
wife Mary grew up on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan
and still has a home there, and they would retire
to that home every summer, retreat to it, I guess.
And so we said we're going to we talked about
it for your let's to spend some time with Ted
Mary up but you know, Michigan. Anyway, we did all
this Stopton Green Bay, took a photo outs in the stadium,
Send it to John, send it to mooch and eleven
thousand miles later. But along the way before I left,
John texted me and said, uh, before you go on
the trip, read Travels with Charlie by John Steinbeck. And
that had all he had always said, that, that book
and the notion of seeing America in Steinbeck's case with
his poodle Charlie, with his camper pickup camper while he
was already I think he might have already had the
Nobel Prize. By that, I mean this was a you know,
John Sidebeck wasn't to beg or when he did this
helped John Madden see a way of seeing America, you know,
get out and walk the real people and Virginia. Turns
out John's widow was either an English or creative writing
major at cal Poly, and Steinbick was her specialty. She said,
collective I picked books, So I wrote back to Coach.
I said, well, I read Travels with Charlie a long
time ago. Coach and he wrote right back, read it again.
So I thought I bought a copy. And my deal
was every night on the trip, I would read a
chapter or some of a chapter before going to bed,
and often I have a text coach. My wife did
all the driving. By the way, also important to note, wow,
she prefers to do the driving. I'm all right with it.
I like to drive, but I'm good with having the
iPad and the navigation in my lap, and you know,
on the roadside, I can look it up and tell
her what it was. So fast forward to you know,
nearly in the end of the trip, we're coming into
New Orleans, and I just was finishing the book, and
what I had forgotten about the end of Travels with
char is the last chapter, I think is the story
of and I believe it's Ruby Bridges, the young black
girl who you know, was desegregating a lily white school,
and the vicious racism that was going on in New
Orleans and in the South at that time. Steinbeck writes
about vividly I'd forgotten that from my earlier reading of
the book. I'd kept the gauzy, hazy memories of you know,
roadside America. And then it all snapped together because what
Coach was telling me was there's an important message in
this book beyond Roadside of America. And you know that
that speaks of who John was. I mean John, you know,
he didn't care what were, what gender, you or any
of them. Now if you, if you fit John's model
of what a good human being is, you were in
and you know the Raiders.
Speaker 3: Who was a teacher. He started out as a teacher.
Speaker 1: Yeah, It's possible to see a version of John Madden's
story in Virginia's story that ends at you know, Nipomo
Middle School down there in the central coast in California,
with a long career as the pe coach, and Virginia
becomes the principal. I think in that version of the story,
I don't think the principal, or maybe Virginia's the superintendent.
But you know, that could easily have been the way
this thing came out, you know, because that was there
was ever any attention to become everything he became.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you know, I hate wrapping up on something
that's not part of the book, but because I really want,
I really want people to read this book. I hope
you have a great success with this again. It's called
Mornings with Madden, My Radio life with an American Legend
by Stan Bunger.
Speaker 3: What didn't you you you briefly mentioned this earlier. What
didn't make it into the book?
Speaker 1: Well, you know, there are probably one hundred iterations of
other uh stories that fit within the silos. You know,
the golf chapter, the dog's chapter, the eating chapter that
that didn't make it in. You know what got left out?
A lot of what got left out Fred, to be honest,
was just the day to day's stuff that at the
time seemed kind of important. Oh, you know, a new
contract for or somebody got traded, or you know, who's
going to start its news sports news, right, but you
know what, the fact that that sport snooze, sports snooze, right,
even if it had been news news. A lot of
it was stuff that, you know, guess what a month
or there's a lesson there, right, this is just today's stuff.
It's going to go away. What sticks? What matters, what's eternal?
I guess the literal answer to what didn't make it
into the book would be John's appearance with us in
the morning of nine to eleven, where he was in
New York City at the Dakota where he had an apartment,
and you know, we're at our wall to wall coverage
of this incredible real time tragedy. I'm doing this myself
at the radio station, pulling in feeds from here and there,
trying to keep an eye on live video feeds, and
eight fifteen comes up, and I probably didn't even know
what it had come up. And at some point somebody
in the newsroom said, you know, assume we're not doing
mad today because you know, and I think my might
at first said yeah, yeah, yeah, we're too busy, and
then I think I don't know whether somebody reminded me
he was in New York or if I said, wait,
he's in New York and he can do this, and
they said, yeah, yeah, he's ready. So we put him on.
And what he had done, of course, was gone down
the street and walked around on the Upper West Side
and seen people covered with soot and ashes, fleeing with
horror on their I mean, and he told that story
on the radio in a way that you know, not again,
not a train journalist, just the world's greatest storyteller. And
you know the reason it's not The book is it
never got saved. The recording system we had at the
time would record at eight fifteen for about fifteen minutes,
and since we didn't do it right at eight fifteen,
it didn't get recorded. Everybody was running around easy that
day and nobody thought to hit record anywhere. I keep
living with the hope that somewhere there's some radio junkie
who somehow recorded this, or maybe like in that movie Contact,
you know, where the message coming to the broadcast comes
back from space one hundred years later or whatever. You
know that this John Madden, which to me, You know,
it's the most unlike John Madden thing of all the
things John madd never did, but the most John Madden
thing John Madden never did. Tell a story in real
time with empathy and with precision. Doesn't get any better. Wow.
Speaker 2: Wow, And you said something in the book I need
to I need to slap your wrist on this one.
You said you were jealous of me. You said you
were jealous of me out of college. Oh yeah, Like
here we are fifty years later, dude, and you became
the star. You were a Bay Area legend and in
the in the Radio Hall of Fame here in the
Bay Area they don't recognize production.
Speaker 3: Guys were only there for a decade. I was gone out.
I left radio after a decade, but still you became
the star, so you wan't to talk about jealous Well.
Speaker 1: Fred, thank you. I mean the truth is I was
a kid who read everything, hed get his hands on,
asked too many questions and never shut up. And you know,
guess what they'll pay you to do that, it turns out. So,
I mean, I was super lucky to see where I
came from. But I was quite jealous of you early on,
because you know, we left college in nineteen seventy seven
and I set out into all these small towns where
I was making literally four to fifty dollars a month
I think, at one of my first jobs, and you
were working in San Francisco, and I'm thinking, God, if
I could just get to sacker matter, because you know,
the radio game was played by market size. I ever thought, Oh,
I'll stay here in South Lake Tahoe. Great place to live,
but I mean they didn't pay much in radio. Meanwhile,
my friend Fred and my other friend Jim, you know,
while our other running mate from college and occasional golf buddy,
you know, we're working in San Francisco, and I just
thought these guys have got it. I screwed up, you know,
so I was a little sealless.
Speaker 2: No man like when people tell me, oh, my son's
graduating college and you got a job at Google, It's like, no, no, no, no, no,
no no no.
Speaker 3: You want to end up at Google. You don't want
it to be your first job.
Speaker 1: No, Fred, There's something to that. And that's why it's
so much fun to do this with you, because what
I do order about your career is, you know, going
back to bed, let's circle back. You know, never work
a day in your life if you can help it, right,
but more importantly, find your passion and then let that follow.
And you've done this, you know, through all of your
various endeavors. I mean, the fantasy play by play one
was my whole time favorite. You know, I do radio
booth and pretend you're the broadcaster and walk away with
the tape. Oh, by the way, Fred gets paid when
you do it. This was just genius stuff. And the
fact that you're still passionate about communicating and the podcast
is awesome. I mean, I love the fact that you
ranged over all of the ask everything that's golf adjacent, right,
and you know if you love golf, well, okay, let's
spin from that anyway. Kudos to you for sticking with it,
and in this twenty eight thousandth episode, all.
Speaker 3: Right again the book Mornings. Please buy it, please help
my friend out.
Speaker 1: The great news is I didn't set out to make
any money, and every author I met recently said, don't expect.
Speaker 3: Don't expect.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I tell people all the time, do you
want to do a podcast, don't do it for the money.
So the book is called Mornings with Madden, My Radio
life with an American Legend, by my old friend and
golf buddy, Stan Bonger.
Speaker 3: Stan, thanks so much, and congratulations Fred.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for having me continue to get success
to you.
Speaker 2: Of course, I'll leave a link to the book on
Amazon and the show notes, and don't forget the audio book,
which I listened to and is also very entertaining. Thanks
go out this week to Nick from Lack from starvor Pa,
who received all three gifts for recording this week's episode intro.
You too can become a Golf Smarter Ambassador just like
Nick and receive all three free gifts by either opening
a future episode, or leaving an honest review from wherever
you follow golf Smarter. As you probably know from your
own experience, listen to reviews are the single greatest way
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Speaker 3: If you write a view, make.
Speaker 2: Sure you send me an email telling me where I
can find it and what you said, and once we
confirm that, I'll get back to you with all of
your gift details. Some great questions are coming in about
our upcoming golf Smarter adventure to the Robert Trent Jones
Trail next March. Really hope you can join me for
three beautiful rounds of golf between March twenty six to
the thirtieth, twenty twenty five, just outside of Birmingham, Alabama.
Of all of the work that Tara and Allen of
TMI Golf did to research and book this trip, one
of the most compelling elements is that during the entire stay,
we're only in one location, the alluring renaissance Birmingham ross
Bridge Golf Resort and Spa. Please check out all the
details pricing an itinerary at TMI golf dot com slash
Golf Smarter. That's TMI golf dot com slash Golf Smarter
and get back to me with any other questions that
you may have, or make sure that you put in
your reservation. Have you ever heard of the ain Point
putting system? Sure you have, because it's been so successful
on the tour and with all of us recreational golfers too.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 2: This Friday on Golf Smarter Mulligans, we go back into
our archives for the first of a two part conversation
from January of twenty thirteen with the creator of aim Point,
Mark Sweeney. In part one, we'll get the full orientation
and learn that it's introduction was not an obvious slam dunk.
Speaker 4: Golf Channel picked up aime Point in January of seven,
and you know, I told my wife in December of six,
I said, if they don't pick this up, I'm done.
I'm out, because I'd already kind of been through CBS
and NBC and they were really the last network. The
problem with TV is there's only really three people to
choose from. You have three customers, and if they all
say no, then you're done. You're in business. And I
was literally within days of just giving up and moving on.
Speaker 3: Could you have really walked away from it.
Speaker 1: At that point.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Well at that point, I mean, I loved it,
but if there's no business for it, you know, you're
start to death. If I couldn't prove a legitimate business,
it was time to move on, like it or not.
Came down to really really a couple of days and
around Christmas of six and Golf Channel didn't say, Hey, great,
we know we'll do this three year deal. They said,
we'll do it one tournament.
Speaker 2: That's Part one with Mark Sweeney this Friday, arriving right
here on the same feed you get each week for
Golf Smarter. We're doing some heavy lifting on our website
right now. It's a mishmash of things, and my web
developer has just like hat it with me. So what
I'm gonna do now is I'm going to redirect you
to our distributors page that provides the complete list of
all of our available episodes. It's at golfsmarterpodcast dot com.
But if you have any questions about our adventure, updates
on how your game is going, or suggestions for an
upcoming episode, please write to Golf Smarter Podcast at gmail
dot com.