I hate the South." Do you think those things can coexist?

I think they have to coexist.

Modern politics, like, only reward purity, and nothing about having a conversation about how anyone feels about anything in the South is pure.

We're still trying to figure out how to be a people when we have lost our central reason for being here in the first place.

To make sure that those things just don't disappear.

'Cause they will disappear.

This is real.

This was being taught in a Mississippi high school a year ago in the Mississippi state history book.

Dremna,

yeah.

The neighboring communities of Crumlin and Dremna make up the heart of the Dublin 12 postcode, separated only by the Crumlin Road, which runs on an east and west diagonal.

Back then, Sutcliffe fought his way into safe passage across the road to the gym.

Once I handled the people who were trying to stop me, he said, not on me own, with my brothers.

And so like all of that, was gone in the one that ran and so it just looked like like look i i fucked up like i accepted the edits i went along with it like it's your name on the story you're responsible for it and you know like some of that shit fentanyl tool said was true as devastating as that was to read by the way thank god i didn't see the fenton thing in the immediate aftermath Cause like, I would have like, like, I only saw it, like somebody sent it to me years later because they knew how much I liked it.

And they're like, hey, do you see your hero ripping your ass? And I'm like, what are you fucking talking about? And so I went and found it and I was like, oh, oh.

Yeah,

Even Tiger?

Loves the craft, and you assume for Tiger that the craft is golf, and it isn't.

It's probably, it's probably mastery of yourself, you know? I mean, what they're after is a religious state, you know? Uh, I think they all like it.

I mean, like, everybody who loves something resents it some of the time, you know? Uh, I've got the single greatest job, I think, in sports journalism, certainly one of them.

I mean, it's me and Seth Wickersham, and, like, there're f- there're five...

You know, Miriam Feder, uh, Don Vadnatta, Tom Juno, Tim Kuhn.

I mean, I'm trying...

No way.

No doubt.

And I mean, you're right, it, it's interesting how, uh, you know, it feels like the go- the club has segued in recent years from being sort of a club of the most powerful people in America who sort of begrudgingly let everybody in one week a year to see their golf course and then wanted everybody out to sort of feeling like it's, you know ...

I, I don't mean to diminish them by saying this, but like an American RNA.

You know, like a, like a group of people who are dedicated to growing the game, whether that's the, you know, Latin American tournament, the Asian tournament, the Women's Amateur, or The Patch.

So The Patch is beautiful.

It, it's a really incredible thing.

And, you know, Augusta, Georgia, it's, you know, it's the clubhouse at Augusta National, but it's also the lifesaver.

I mean, h- how do you kind of compare or contrast those two worlds you live in when you're working in golf?

So what did he reflect on to really decide to keep going?

Well, uh, you know, I certainly didn't realize this until I started reading about him and talking to him, but you know, the person we know, we think of as Steve Kerr, uh, really came into the world on January 20th, 1984, when it was two days after his father had been assassinated.

His father, it's well-known, was the, uh, president of the American University of Beirut.

Steve was a basically unrecruited bench warmer, averaging less than six points a game.

Lute Olson admitted later that he was planning to recruit somebody else for Steve's spot, and they put him in that game sort of midway through the first half, and he just went off.

And he started making all these shots, and it was his career high to the point, and, to that point.

And you know, the basketball team became one of, if not the most important thing in his life.

There's so much nuance to his story, right? Uh, going forward, what are his realistic goals for these final two seasons as the head coach of the Warriors?

Yeah

... really admire that.

Like, you know, snowboards, and he's a g- great dad, and, like, some people figure it out, that the thing that the culture tells you matters is not the thing that matters.

You know, the most impressive thing about LeBron James is not all of his rings or his points.

The most impressive thing about LeBron James is he grew up with no example of what a father was and is an incredibly sort of doting, involved dad.

He had to teach himself how to do that.

Like, that's the triumph of LeBron James, breaking patterns and sort of, you know, uh, escaping the gravitational pull of inheritance.

And I'm, I'm just curious, what is it that we're looking for as fans, uh, that intensity, w- w, you know, that's unique to sports? What, what is that a gratification of? What longing or desire or drive is that an expression of?

So, so talk about why you did it like that and the conceit of the book.

In 1785, Thomas Jefferson came up with this thing called the Land Ordinance Act, and it sounds simple now, but it dropped a grid over all of America, and it basically turned this sort of wild American frontier essentially into government-backed securities.

It was this huge gold rush.

People were buying this land on maps, and they'd never seen any of it, and so the grid numbers became very important.

So the grid number where, uh, Emmett Till was killed is Township Twenty-Two North, Range Four West, measured from the Choctaw Meridian.

And when you start looking at all of the people in and out of that square of land, and al- especially all of the money in and out of that square of land, you understand, first of all, that Mississippi has never really been governed for the benefit of Mississippians.

I mean, it was a colony of Manchester, Liverpool, and London for a very, very long time until the price of cotton collapsed, and since then, it's essentially been a ward of the United States government.

[chuckles]

Wow.

And so, uh, and so they go to town.

Emmett and his cousins go to Greenwood for Saturday night to go to the movie.

Uh, they stopped at a plantation on the way home at a party.

Both Wheeler and Emmett had their first ever sips of alcohol, uh, little sip of moonshine.

They didn't like it.

But like, they're that age.

(laughs)

It's the best."

Well, i- i- you know, (sighs) it's so interesting.

You go read Bill Russell talking about being a star, and it could be a modern guy talking, and he talks about the loneliness.

Uh, you know, i- i- it's...

I'm in New York right now doing Yankee stuff.

I was, I was the, uh, one of the last people in the old Yankee stadium.

Uh, like to the point that Major League Baseball put one of those holograms on my notebook the night they closed it.

Yeah.