{"id":194722,"date":"2026-06-22T10:49:45","date_gmt":"2026-06-22T18:49:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=194722"},"modified":"2026-06-22T11:56:38","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T19:56:38","slug":"gloves-off-by-lowell-cohn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=194722","title":{"rendered":"Gloves Off by Lowell Cohn"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cohn is the best sportswriter of the San Francisco Bay Area in the last 50 years.
\nHe published a memoir in 2020 called Gloves Off<\/a>. It’s great.
\nLowell writes: <\/p>\n

* I wrote why white guys and black guys had trouble performing smooth handshakes. I had never learned the maneuvers African Americans used with each other, and when I shook
\nhands with a black player our hands collided. We were speaking two different languages\u2014or shaking hands in different grammars.<\/p>\n

* Walsh never liked people being angry at him. Had a horror of direct confrontation. Held Northwestern against me.
\nWhen my book came out, Walsh went on national television and, with a grief-stricken face, said, \u201cThis book that\u2019s been written I had nothing to do with.\u201d An interesting statement considering we had signed a contract giving him a healthy part of my advance from HarperCollins. Sure seemed like he had something to do with the book. He had said he would donate his share of the advance to Stanford athletics. I believe he did, although I never checked. If he wanted nothing to do with the advance, I sure could have used the money. I reminded him he had signed a contract. I told him not to deny it again. He said he understood. I could not give up my anger. He made me look bad on television and he bad-mouthed me to his coaches. We did not speak for years after that. I didn’t want to.<\/p>\n

* Walsh and I had been close before the book appeared. He was an endearing man with a warm, lovely smile. He was brilliant and funny, had mastered irony, had great comic timing.
\nAnd he was capable of acts of kindness.<\/p>\n

* Walsh always could relate to an underdog. His father had been abusive to him, and Walsh felt an endless need for encouragement and psychological hand-holding.<\/p>\n

* Walsh was a confessional man, needed to get things off his chest, an endless list of things.<\/p>\n

* Walsh defined friendship a certain way. A friend was someone who listened to him. He was not interested in listening to you or me.<\/p>\n

* He was always looking to feel better. He started every day of his life with a deficit. I never understood why.<\/p>\n

* Walsh always would bring up Raiders defensive coordinator Rob Ryan, whom he called a fat fuck. Ryan\u2019s gut preceded him by a half foot and hung over his belt like a water bag. His gray hair was long and uncombed and, all in all, he looked like he had crawled out of the hamper. Walsh had disdain for fat people. He was trim, worked hard to look good, and he insisted his coaches keep fit, cut an athletic image. Walsh constantly phoned Davis about Ryan and said, \u201cYou\u2019ve got to fire that fat motherfucker.\u201d<\/p>\n

* BARRY BONDS WAS THE SADDEST ATHLETE I EVER COVERED.<\/p>\n

* WHEN MARK JACKSON COACHED the Golden State Warriors for three seasons starting in 2011, he presented himself as a holy man. In news conferences, he lectured the media about God and once even said his team was touched by the hand of the Creator.
\nNot that I cared about Jackson\u2019s religious beliefs or if the Warriors were touched by Jehovah. I was there to cover hoops, not Jackson\u2019s theology. I would attend Jackson news conferences and wonder what was so special about the Warriors in a metaphysical sense. Why weren\u2019t the Celtics or the Knicks or the Cavaliers touched by God? Or the Lakers. I\u2019ve always worried that these God spielers suffer from the sin of pride. But I could have lived with Jackson\u2019s spiel and his pride. It was his hypocrisy that was the living end.
\nAllow me to be more specific. The living end with Mark Jackson was his penis, his schlong, his dick, his dingus, his ding-dong, joystick, peter, chub bie, boner, hard-on, Mr. Winky, pickle, one-eyed monster, pee-pee, putz, lizard, wanker, and, of course, his schvantz.
\nJackson may be a very holy man. He preached at True Love Worship Center International in Van Nuys, California, along with his wife Desiree. But his trouser snake, python, cobra, not to mention his Chairman Mao, once got him in trouble, a fate visited on many unsuspecting men.<\/p>\n

* My professors at Stanford who thought I was a middle-of-the-road literary scholar\u2014I was\u2014phoned me for all sorts of favors. Would I guest teach a class in Jane Austen? Like she played second base for the Oakland A\u2019s. Would I meet job-seeking undergraduates and preach the benefits of majoring in English? You bet, I would. You study English, you learn to write and think. Would I have lunch with the full professors in English at the faculty club\u2014it would make them so happy? Sign me up.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cohn is the best sportswriter of the San Francisco Bay Area in the last 50 years. He published a memoir in 2020 called Gloves Off. It’s great. Lowell writes: * I wrote why white guys and black guys had trouble … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-194722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t