(bright upbeat music) - Welcome to "At Issue".

I'm H Wayne Wilson.

Thank you so much for joining us on the program.

We quite often can't decide what we want to do in the future when we're young but there is a man in Central Illinois who knew when he was 15, what he wanted to do.

He wanted to be a sportswriter.

His name is Dave kindred.

We're gonna talk about his career, but we're gonna talk more importantly about the last 11 years of your career.

We're gonna talk about that later on, but first let me introduce to everybody, Dave Kindred's, sportswriter.

- Thank you H, it's my pleasure.

- And just for background, there might be a handful of people out there who don't know you, especially if they don't follow sports, but you started at The Pantagraph in Bloomington.

- I went to Illinois Wesleyan on a Pantagraph scholarship.

At that time, The Pantagraph was awarding scholarship every year to a person interested in journalism.

You would work at the newspaper, they'd pay half your tuition at Wesleyan Of course, the years I'm talking about tuition at Illinois Wesleyan was a more reasonable, like 3,000 a year.

You know, they paid half the tuition and you worked at the newspaper for the other half.

I did that for the four years at Wesleyan and then two years after.

- And then The Courier-Journal in Louisville said, come on down we need a copy editor?

- Well, I applied for jobs, several places.

The Courier-Journal was one of the few that answered, turned out that they were looking for two people, a copy editor and a writer.

And before they interviewed me, they hired a writer.

So I took the job as a copy editor, because at that time The Courier-Journal in Louisville was considered one of the 10 best newspapers in the country.

And I thought it'd be a great place to be.

- This was an important decision for you.

It really puts you, at least you may not have known it at the time, but it was going to put you on the map because what happened one day when they said you need to go cover a particular story?

- Well, my wife was a registered nurse working at a psychiatric hospital in Louisville.

So I was staying home with our son who was in three, four years old.

I was playing Mr.

Mom.

And my idea of taking care of our son was to take him with me to the newsroom, put him at a typewriter, give him a Coca-Cola or something.

You sit here while I go over here and try to find a story.

So those were on my days off, I'd go in hoping to find a story that I could write.

One day one of the bosses came in, at that time of course, everybody was my boss.

You know, the boss said, "Clay's in town, go find him."

This was in 1966, Cassius clay, as he was known in Louisville later, by then he had changed his name to Muhammad Ali, but the newspapers still referred to him as Cassius Clay, the Hometown Hero.

"Clay is in town go find him."

Well, I was 24 years old.

The most famous person I had ever met was an old Major League Baseball player from Elkhart, Illinois by name of Borbon.

So suddenly I've been asked to go find the most famous man in the world.

And how do you do that?

I didn't know.

I just went, I got my car, gathered up my son Jeff, and we rode around in Louisville's West End, where most of the African-American population was.

And I would roll down the window and say, "Anybody seen Cassius?"

Everybody had seen Cassius.

So it was easy to find him.

He spent the day with me, we rode around to some of his old haunts, took me to a telephone pole, said, "Joe Louis leaned against that telephone pole."

Okay.

So Cassius clay had leaned against that telephone pole and spent all of that day.

He held Jeff in his arms on a scale one time to see how much they weighed together.

And that was the first day of maybe 50 years worth of me writing about Cassius clay, Muhammad Ali.

It changed my life.

- Changed your life in what way?

- First of all, it developed my understanding of who Muhammad Ali was.

You know, he became the most reviled man in America of course, by some people, by probably most Americans, because he had said, even when I first met him, he had already said, "I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong."

Well, I wasn't brave enough, bold enough or smart enough to ask him about that.

I was scared to ask him about that.

So it was a question that went unanswered, but it was history being made in front of my eyes.

And I realized that suddenly I was at a different level of the game that I was covering, you know, Saybrook Ernie Smith's basketball games for The Pantagraph.

- You went on to the Washington Post as a columnist and then on to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

I don't want to spend time talking about those newspapers, but I want to talk about how you developed your writing style over the career in Louisville, Washington, Atlanta.

Let me read a quote.

This is from an article you wrote, and this is upon the time that Charles Barkley retired and you wrote, "When he wasn't throwing a belligerent through a window or spitting on a fan, he provided enough insults, insights and nonsense to keep a hack of sportswriters laughing all the way to their typing machine, where it was neigh impossible to decide if the quotes were born of ignorance, genius, or both."

Your style is-- - I want people to...

I do my best to try to take people with me to the story.

I want people to understand the story the way I understand it.

To see what I see, to feel what I feel.

And over the years, I've just tried to have fun with it.

I've tried to have fun with everything that I've done because Red Smith was my hero as a sportswriter.

I read that, studied it.

When I was a kid, I would set sports illustrated magazines up by my typewriter and just copy what they said, literally copy what they said because I wanted to see if I could even write those words that they had used.

I thought it was a good lesson.

I did it for a long time.

And eventually you develop your own voice.

And my voice I wanted it to be lyrical.

I wanted it to be soft.

I wanted it to be fun.

You know, I wanted people to see what I saw and it takes a while to...

I'm not sure how long it took before I was really who I am now but it took a while.

- So when you say I wanted people to see what I saw, that's how you described Pete Maravich, being exabyte crane, going down the court.

- Yes, I did this unconsciously for a long time.

Again, Red Smith said that the key to being a good sportswriter is be there.

Be there, see it happen.

And people go to games he said, to have fun.

They pick up the paper the next day to have fun again.

So I wanted people to have fun when they were reading, my words and also seeing what I saw.

- So after your career at the newspapers and for a couple of years, National Sports Daily, 2010 there was a change in your career.

- Well, 2010, my wife and I left.

We're both from Atlanta, Illinois.

We left in 1965.

We came back in 2010.

We'd been in Louisville, Washington, Atlanta, lived in Virginia and 2010, my wife had had a small stroke and it was time for me to come home, time for us to come home.

She had family here.

I had family here.

So it was an easy decision to do that.

I was finishing a book on my grandson.

I was doing freelance work for Golf Digest.

I had plenty of stuff to do, but I came here in 2010, went to a basketball game in Morton, a friend's daughter was playing.

And I discovered that after 55 years, as a sportswriter, that it was impossible to sit in the bleachers and not want to write about what I saw.

So I went to a man running a website for the Morton team.

He was the father of a player.

He was later quoted accurately I should say, saying, "This disheveled old man came out of the stands and wanted to know if he could write for me."

So he arranged a lunch with the coach, Bob Becker, the next day at Steak and Shake.

And Becker was a little apprehensive.

He didn't want to be second guessed by this hard-boiled sportswriter from the Washington Post.

I assured him that wasn't my goal.

I just enjoyed going to games and enjoyed writing.

And so I started in 2010, it's 2022 now.

I've been to every game that the Morton Lady Potters have played in the last 11, 12 years, except for one.

I was in Las Vegas once, doing a story on Jerry Tarkanian, the coach.

- The Rebels coach.

- I was doing a story on him for somebody and at the time, BlackBerries were the mode of communication.

Blackberries somewhat smaller than this cup.

And I was watching a Lady Potter's game on a Blackberry.

The screen is about like this.

It was like watching a flea circus.

I wrote about it.

So I haven't missed, in fact coach Becker missed four games this year, because he had COVID.

I haven't missed four games in 11 years.

- As a matter of fact, we had a chance to join you at a basketball game the Middle Lane IN conference.

Morton has been a powerhouse for some time, and Washington is very good program.

And so these were two top-notch teams playing each other.

And we're going to roll that video now and show you.

And we're going to hear from coach Bob Becker, about how defense played an important role in the girls' basketball team.

- Washington is a great team first of all.

I mean, they're '19 win team.

They've got some great talent.

Kids that are gonna go on and play at the next level.

They got a kid there that's gonna go to Bradley number 10, or they got another kid at number 13, it's gonna go play on at the next level.

So they're hard to guard.

Our defense was, I thought really high level and pretty phenomenal all night, but to hold them to seven, the first half was extraordinary for sure.

But I thought our girls just gave such an awesome effort.

All of them together.

It was a really good team effort.

(audience cheering) - [H] So, Dave, what was your take on that basketball game?

- I thought it was the best team victory that they'd had all year because everybody that night contributed in every way that Backer would have wanted them.

Basically defense.

He thinks that everything starts with defense and he's right.

Defense is there every night, the offense can go away.

It's a very tenuous balance there, but defensively they have to be good.

And they were at their best that night everybody.

- When you hold a team like Washington to seven points in a half.

- Washington is probably, since I've been here 11 years, Washington and Morton have been the two best programs in the Middle IN.

And he wants to beat Washington every time, just as he wants to beat Metamora every time.

They're the three best.

- But not long after the Washington game, they did play Metamora, completely different results.

Your take on what happened.

- Well, coach Becker's one of his mantras is consistent excellence.

Consistent excellence.

He wants them to be at their best every night.

They were at their best against Washington.

They were not at their best against Metamora.

It's one of the problems with this team.

It's a young team.

They only have really one Division I player, Katie Krupa will play at Harvard.

She's as good as you want, but the others vary they're up and down.

And the Metamora game was as good as they were against Washington, as efficient as they were against Washington.

They were that bad, poor, inconsistent against Metamora.

- I want to talk about how a high school girls play basketball.

You described to me at the game that girls play horizontally and males play vertically.

Can you explain that?

- Well, it's a matter of physique, matter of the female against the male body.

The men are stronger, bigger, faster, they can make up for their mistakes.

Women have to play, necessarily play on the court.

They need to be more fundamentally sound than the boys.

Boys can cover their mistakes with their speed and quickness.

They can make a shot on their own.

The girls can't.

The girls need to...

I mean, John Wooden is a good a coach that has ever lived.

He said he preferred to watch the women's game because their fundamentals are stronger, they're better and they must be better.

It'll take them maybe three passes to get to a place where a guy will get there just on his own strength or his own leaping ability.

And it's just a different game.

You can't compare the games.

And I don't.

I don't criticize in my mind even, I don't criticize a women's game because it's not as good as the men's game.

The men just play a different game.

You know, it's one game is in the air, the other games on the ground.

- I'm gonna talk a little bit about sports in general.

We now have the image and likeness ruling where college athletes can earn some money I suppose I can use that term, on their image or their likeness.

Is college basketball, college football, et cetera, changing now?

- Well, it's more acknowledging what has been true forever.

They have been professional athletes for 50 years, 60 years, 70 years, both in basketball and football because they're being paid to go to school to begin with.

Is that enough?

And right now, the way society has moved, they decided that no, that's not enough.

Now the athletes can profit from their own images, likenesses, a quarterback at the University of Georgia, can sell his pictures, can sell his autographs now where that was against the rules previously.

Now it's not, it's an acknowledgement that it's always been a professional game, except the athletes weren't being paid.

Now that's been changed.

- I want to stay on the issue of money in sports and that is we've seen a proliferation of gambling.

DraftKings, FanDuel, et cetera.

You've had half a century of looking at sports.

How has the money especially the gambling aspect of it changed athletics.

- Well, I hate it.

To be blunt, I hate it.

When I see Pete Rose, let's take Pete Rose as an example, Pete Rose was banned from the Baseball's Hall of Fame because he gambled on games.

Now major league baseball is sponsored by gambling, DraftKings, FanDuels, whatever they call it.

I mute the TV now, anytime a gambling ad comes on, because I think gambling has no place in sports.

It's inevitable.

I'm pushing against the tide.

There's no way that you can legislate against it, but I don't like it.

I think it's a darkness in sports.

- So you can remove yourself from that, by going to high school girls basketball games.

- That's a little bit of it.

You know, there's a purity to it.

There's a purity in high school sports, even below college sports because it's not a full-time job.

These are people trying to find their way in life.

If you're a division one basketball player say, basketball runs your life.

You are at the coach's beck and call all the time.

It becomes a full-time job.

It's amazing to me that any D1 athlete even ever gets through college because there's no time.

You're either playing, practicing, traveling, or the coach wants you... One of the players that I shouldn't even name the school, but the other night they lost a game.

So when they got home, the coach had a midnight practice.

I don't want my daughter practicing basketball at midnight, after she traveled somewhere, lost a game, came back and the coach is now kind of semi punishing them.

I don't want that.

- I want to go back to the Morton because that's really where...

This is a new career, I shouldn't say new, 12 years, 11 years, but coach Becker was talking about how you've developed a relationship with the girls and we'll show that video, we'll hear from coach Becker and then you can talk about your relationship, but coach Becker talks about how he is paying you this isn't the money thing.

No, it's not what you think out there, but it's Milk Duds.

And you can tell that story in just a moment after we see this video of the girls with the coach Becker talking about the girls.

They've won four championships over the time that you've been covering them.

So here's the coach Becker.

- It's been awesome.

It's been special.

I means to document what our kids have done and our programs done.

I mean, I consider him the Michael Jordan of sports writing.

And for him to be with us for over a decade now, blogging and reporting and writing, and he's done three books on some of our championships, four books on championship teams and just makes it that much more special.

And now you've mentioned how I've dropped the ball this year on payments of the Milk Duds and his tenure with us and his time with us he's just part of our Potter family.

I know everybody appreciates him, what Mr. Kindred does for our program and it's just extra special and he's covered the biggest of big.

But he's just a humble, nice guy at the same time.

He truly loves watching our teams playing.

He truly loves writing about them and he truly loves getting to know the kids and our coaches.

And I think that makes it special.

- So how special is it?

What the relationship with the girls?

- The short answer is it's life affirming.

You know, I'm no longer the 30 year old sportswriter trying to make my way.

Now I'm in the autumn of my years as Sinatra would say.

So it's life affirming just to see the young people having so much fun.

You know, that the world is there's waiting for them.

It's just, it's fun to see them.

Like after the Washington game, I mean, they were so happy and that just, it makes me feel good, just to see there and to be there and be part of it, be a tangential part of it.

- Where did the Milk Duds come into play here?

Well, several years into it, one of the fathers players' fathers ran the website and three or four years into it, we were just joking.

I said, I'm a professional sportswriter.

I ought to be getting something for this.

And he considered my talent, my experience, and my good looks and said, "How about a box of Milk Duds every game?"

I said, "Okay."

And so he started delivering the Milk Duds and I've been maybe 300 boxes of Milk Duds later.

I'm still getting Milk Duds.

- But you share the wealth.

- I share the wealth.

I try to give them away before I become a 300 pound sportswriter, - You've covered Olympics, you've covered Super Bowls, Masters Golf Tournament, World Series, many of all of those.

Is there one thing that was the most difficult thing to write about?

- In sports it's no.

The Munich Olympics where those 11 Israelis were killed, certainly changed the world.

No major sports event was ever the same after that.

So that was hard to do.

I was a kid really at the time, almost lost.

I didn't know what to write, but I wrote.

I've written about everything.

The hardest thing I've ever done of course, it was a book about my grandson, "Leave Out the Tragic Parts", it was a book about his descended alcoholism, his death.

I couldn't not write that book though.

I wanted people to understand that addiction chose him, he didn't choose addiction.

Different people's brains react different ways to the drug and he couldn't handle it.

- Jared was 25 when he passed away.

- Jared was 25.

I loved him in ways that I've never loved anyone.

I've said this many times and I can't explain it.

He was a twin, but the other boy was different from him.

I saw Jared the last time, three months before he died, really the only time I ever saw him on the road.

And that's where the title of the book comes from.

I was saying, "Look guys, I'm going to write about this someday."

He'd had a couple of buddies with him, I want you to remember everything, tell me everything and make it funny.

And my son standing there said, "And leave out the tragic parts."

And Jared said, "Yeah, no tragic."

Three months later, we got a call from my son that Jared had died.

And so I had to write that book, but sports is supposed to be an escape.

Sports is an escape.

Sports is a relief and is fun.

So it's been much easier to write sports than anything else.

- This wasn't about Jared, this wasn't an escape, but it was what for you?

- It was to honor him.

Basically it was to tell people why I loved him and why he was lovable.

It was not that I didn't count the addiction as a moral failing or as a character flaw.

It was a physical thing.

His brain reacted to alcohol in ways that most people's brains do not react to alcohol.

And it ruined his life.

- We hope to see you at many more Morton High School, girls' basketball games.

- I will be there and because I'm running low on Milk Duds.

- And with that, thank you to Dave kindred, sportswriter of unmentionable talent.

- Thank you for very much.

- Thank you.

We'll be back next time with another edition of "At Issue".

We're going to be talking about Virtue Sense and Veloxity.

No, those words don't make any sense to you, but those are new startup companies, relatively new in the Peoria area.

We'll be talking about startup companies on the next "At Issue".

Please join us then.

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