When John Pearce, a veteran WDIY voice, asked me about contributing an essay in this time frame every week, the name of Frank Deford was understandably conjured. By the way, does something have to be conjured up, or can it just be conjured?
Anyway, Frank did a commentary for NPR's Morning Edition for an astounding 37 years. His bloviation total, as he put it, being 1,656 essays. He delivered each one with the same gracefulness and attention to detail that he brought to his writing at Sports Illustrated for over five decades.
I was his SI colleague, a lesser light, but then again, we were all lesser lights to Frank, who died in 2017. Frank was not the typical sports writer, a profession that conjures up — there it is again — a beer-loving, hotdog-gorging, tobacco-scented slob who knows little about the world except for what happens between the lines of a football field or a basketball court. Frank was tall, handsome, urbane, well versed in the arts and politics, and a dozen other fields. And when he died, the outpouring of memories came from all over the land, including from the writers at SI, all of whom had a Frank memory.
Mine was this: For my first Sports Illustrated assignment as an official writer, I had to call Frank to arrange for a press credential at an event he was also covering. It turned out I had just written a freelance piece for SI, and Frank had read it.
"Jack McCallum," he said upon answering the phone, "Great piece you wrote about baseball chatter."
I was tongue tied, had nothing to offer. Understand, this was tantamount to Robert DeNiro greeting an unknown actor by saying, "Hey, I saw you in the school play. You were terrific."
About a year after I got to SI, Frank wrote me a letter. Note: that's one of those things with one of those things called a stamp that arrives in one of those things called a mailbox. It was a tutorial in one sentence. Frank told me I was doing a fine job, but "you're a writer, not a stenographer." Meaning, "stop overusing direct quotes," which is what you do when you come from newspapers, which is where I'd come from.
Frank could write anything. Were he a baseball player, he'd be known as a five tool guy. He was best known for writing the long stories at the back of Sports Illustrated, but when I think of Frank's writing, I conjure up — there it is again — one memorable line.
Writing about a wax museum, Frank wrote, "The pieces were curiously lifelike, yet curiously wax-like." Killer line.
Frank did what few sports writers ever did; he became famous. As a journalist for a major publication such as Sports Illustrated, your name becomes "fairly well known." That is not the same thing as fame. Frank had fame. He was on a beer commercial, he played with the Harlem Globetrotters, Chrissie Evert in her prime came on to him (she offered that tidbit herself), and President Obama gave him a prize.
I know John Pearce wants me to talk exclusively about sports in these spots, which is what Frank did in his NPR essays, but I can't do that. I'm a husband, father, grandfather, surgery pawn, cancer survivor, part-time pickleballer, grocery shopper, and most of all, a Lehigh Valley resident for 55 years. So these essays will be a little all over the place, and it would make me quite happy if there's ever a moment when one of these pieces conjures up the memory of Frank Deford.
It turns out, by the way, that either 'conjures' or 'conjures up' is acceptable. Frank — he wouldn't have had to look that up.
