Jeff Williams has been a lead editor and sports writer for Newsday since April 17, 1973.
He also happens to be my friend so what better way to continue my series on writers than to interview the globetrotting journalist. Jeff has interviewed every major sports star of the last 40 years and all I needed to do was to turn on the tape recorder and ask him to begin.
I met him at the Golden Coach Diner in Huntington on Sunday where we had a leisurely breakfast of eggs and bacon and talked sports writing.
Jeff was born and raised in Groton, N.Y., and attended the University of Missouri, which has what most consider to be the nation’s best journalism school. He said that during his last two years as an undergraduate, he worked on The Missourian newspaper as part of his education and it is where he learned the value of good reporting.
He told me, “Everything you do as a writer whether you’re a journalist or a novelist, is based upon reporting. You must first gather facts and opinions and with that the story unfolds. Tom Wolfe is one of our finest writers and that’s mostly because he was such a good reporter and observer of people.”
When I asked him, “How much time does it take you to write a story,” he said, “I’m a deadline journalist. I watch the game, get some interviews and if I do my reporting job well the story writes itself. I usually have no more than 40 minutes to complete it”.
When it comes to feature articles or celebrity interviews he said, “I first identify the story and figure out how to approach the person. I get my questions in order, do my research and when I ask questions I listen to the answers so that I can go deeper. However, I write about sports so I try my best to keep things light”.
He told me about his interview with Roger Clemens as an example. Clemens was pitching for the Boston Red Sox at the time and was at the height of his career. Newsday gave Jeff the assignment to go to Boston and get an in-depth interview with him.
Clemens was known to be notoriously resistant to talk to journalists. The Boston Red Sox PR department was not helpful and Jeff decided to go up the day before and take his chances.
He told me, “I knew I could get interviews with his catcher and manager, but face time with Roger was going to be a problem. As luck would have it, I was waiting around the side door outside the clubhouse the day before and ran into a fellow sportswriter Dick Schaap. At that moment, Roger Clemens appears and Schaap introduces me. I right away ask for an interview and Roger says meet me at 3:30 in the locker room in two days and you will get your interview. So I do just that and when I arrive I see that Roger is a golf nut, we strike up a conversation about golf and then I get my interview, an uninterrupted hour with Roger Clemens.”
So I could see that sports writing is about perseverance, boldness, planning, friendship and even a little luck.
I wanted to ask Jeff about the ongoing attack on the Fourth Estate in our day and he said, “It is very ironic that our president was elected based upon having garnered more free publicity from the media than any other president in history.
In a sense, the media got him elected, but now he says journalism is fake news and fraudulent. Television has always sought out these flamboyant and fiery things. I watched a CNN report the other day about a big building fire in Texas. That is what you might call fake news. It makes for good viewing but was utterly meaningless in content.”
As for the stars, he has spent time with Mohammed Ali, who he said was “very sharp and very funny,” Roger Federer was “extremely gracious, he ought to run for president,” Jack Nicklaus was “smart and always looking for the next big project” and Tiger Woods “tended to be scripted, kind of like talking to Teflon.”
I asked him to sum up his impressions of the superstars of today. He said, “They are all basically generous and it has been very positive to be with them but I realize that they all had to learn to say no and to be brief or else they would soon be exhausted. By far the most interesting athletes are the tennis players. All the European players speak at least three languages and their press interviews tend to be open and enlightening.”
He remarked that one of the most fascinating athletes he has ever met was Wayne Gretsky who once told him, “My greatest talent is my ability to slow down things as I play hockey so that I am able to predict what is about to happen next. It is a knack I seem to have naturally.”
And when I asked Jeff to summarize his writing career for me, he quickly said, “It has been a blast reporting on these big events, meeting these superstars and seeing special places. For sure I have been blessed.”
So there you have it, the life of a famous sports writer who has traveled the world, seen all of its beauty and grandeur and comes home to tell us all about what he saw. And he does all that with as little as 1,000 words. Not bad.
