Shea Serrano Talks “Expensive Basketball” (And Other Things)

DAVID GREENE, HOST: Welcome to Sports in America, everybody. I’m David Greene. And here’s my question this week: Are we okay with sports franchises buying championships? Okay. I’m not saying that always happens, but as a Pittsburgh Pirates fan in baseball, a small market team with not a lot of money, I get a little frustrated when I watch the Los Angeles Dodgers, who have the largest payroll in baseball at more than $400 million a year, win the World Series, and now are doing so well again. Actually, this week they’ve been playing the New York Mets, the team from that other big city that’s on the East Coast, also a massive payroll. And so, just so much money for these great cities, and then lowly Pittsburgh struggling to try and be relevant. I want to start the conversation there because baseball season has begun, and I’m really happy to have Katie Woo with me. She is a staff writer at The Athletic. She’s based in Los Angeles and covers that high-powered, high-paying baseball team, the LA Dodgers. Katie, thanks for being here.

KATIE WOO: Thanks so much for having me, David. And yes, I feel like 29 other fanbases really, really enjoy the grit and the kind of small-market team that is the Los Angeles Dodgers.

DG: Yeah, right?

KW: Certainly no mega deals on that staff.

DG: You know what’s funny about the Dodgers? I wanted to hate them for so long because of all the reasons I just talked about, but then I moved to LA, and I’m still a Pirates fan, and that will be my team for the rest of my life. But there is something magical about the Dodgers. I mean, a night at Dodger Stadium, I just feel like the stadium reflects the city. Like, I mean, in so many ways, the fan base, the food, the sun setting, you know, over downtown, it really is magical.

KW: It is so picturesque, and I can empathize with you as a fellow NL Central. I spent five years covering the St. Louis Cardinals.

DG: There you go.

KW: So very well rehearsed in what the Pirates are going through, so I’ll extend my sympathies.

DG: Yeah.

KW: But I think you’re right about the Dodgers, and the first time I went to Dodger Stadium as a Dodgers writer, it was opening day, fresh off two World Series back-to-back championships. They had the ring ceremony the next day. They have all these celebrities in the house, and it was just, it felt like a very expensive vibe. And that’s kind of the culture the Dodgers have created. They have an entire roster of all-stars. And they’re already off to the best record in baseball. I know it’s been just a little over two weeks, but certainly no one is surprised that the Dodgers continue to be good. So I’m enjoying the change of scenery and the change of pace. It certainly is different. But I can empathize, too, with the other fan bases. You know, it just seems like as I’m watching these Dodger games, even if they’re trailing in the seventh, eighth inning, I just think to myself, well, they’re gonna win, I’m just not sure how.

DG: Right, they’re gonna come back, yeah.

KW: And the majority of the time, right, they do.

DG: They do, they do. So it is, mean, to be fair, is it all about money? You know, people have been complaining about the lack of a salary cap in baseball compared to other sports, saying it leads to franchises like the Dodgers being able to find this just consistent success. Is that a big thing, or is that being overdramatic?

KW: Well, it’s certainly a part, right? Anytime that you’re a payroll of one of the top two in baseball, you’ve signed Shohei Otani to this mega contract that’s altered sports contracts, not just in Major League Baseball, but across the board. It would be foolish to say that money does not play into a part of the Dodgers success. But I think it is a little overblown, not too much, because Los Angeles also does an excellent job at the little things under the radar. They are a powerhouse in player development. They are very good at international scouting, both in Latin America and in Japan, obviously.

And those things with the way that the modern game and baseball is trending if you don’t have depth in their system and assets to trade, you just simply aren’t giving yourself the best shot to succeed with pitching injuries on the rise steadily each year The Dodgers have benefited from one of the deepest starting pitching depths in baseball That is because they scout well, they draft well and they develop well So yes, they have gotten themselves to a position with their ownership group that they can essentially go out and buy any player that they want

They are smart about it, strategic, but they also are continuously developing this pipeline of talent because this group here under president of baseball operations, Andrew Friedman, doesn’t want their dynasty to end when their older players kind of phase out or age out. They want to continue building this pipeline that starts in single A, double A. It starts drafting and developing, and the Dodgers, I think, how much they excel in that department gets overshadowed by how much they’re spending. And that could be my one qualm about the Dodgers not getting a fair shake. They actually do a fantastic job in the development part behind the scenes. We just as fans, tend to focus on the money

DG: Yeah. Who do you focus on as a fan? I mean, are the Dodgers your team, or do you have another favorite team on a personal level?

KW: So I grew up a Giants fan…

DG: Oh my God.

KW: And Dodgers fans did not take well to that news.

DG: Do Dodgers fans know that you’re a Giants fan when they’re talking to you?

KW: They do.

DG: I mean, Giants fans have been killed at Dodger Stadium, right? That’s a rivalry. That’s no joke.

KW: My family’s reaction when I said I was being transferred from st. Louis to Los Angeles, I think they just kind of went into shock because that was the one team that you know, we were conditioned growing up. It was always rooting against the Dodgers. But you know I’ve been reporting in baseball for around six years now, and it really is pretty easy to put the fandom aside because you are working every day It’s a hundred and sixty two plus so I went into Los Angeles knowing that this was just an opportunity to cover the biggest market, potentially in all of sports, certainly in all of baseball, and the opportunity to have a seat, front row seat to see Shohei Otani, who I think is the best baseball player we will ever see.

DG: Yeah.

KW: That was enough. And you’re not fans of the players you cover, obviously. You’re not fans of the team, but you can appreciate greatness, and seeing Shohei Otani, especially on his two-way days, takes the mound, sprints off, gets ready to hit in the on-deck circle…

DG: Crazy.

KW: Steps in the leadoff for the Los Angeles Dodgers, and he’s whacked a home run in his last two games. That kind of stuff, I think, is you’ll never see that again. And to have the opportunity to cover that and hopefully bring some of those stories to life as the Dodgers push for their third consecutive World Series championship, you’re sitting right in the middle of a dynasty moment, a historic era in Major League Baseball. And it is objectively very cool to witness every day.

DG: How much do you like this time of year as a baseball writer, April, like getting going, coming out of spring training and getting into these first few weeks?

KW: It’s actually my least favorite time because….

DG: Oh no! Why is that?

KW: And that sounds crazy. I mean, after opening day, opening day is always exciting, but we’ve just spent six weeks in Arizona or Florida with games that objectively do not matter.

DG: Right.

KW: They’re exhibition games. And baseball, it’s a grind. It’s six months. So you’re telling me that we have 15 days of games and we’re gonna draw a definitive analysis from that? We won’t be talking about any of the things we’re talking about right now, a month from now.

DG: Here I am ready to ask you for definitive analysis of the first two weeks, and you’re telling me don’t do it, don’t do it!

KW: It’s funny because, as baseball fans, that’s what we crave. Like, we can go out and talk about who’s off to a hot start and why that’s exciting, knowing that in about two weeks, we’re probably going to be talking about something else entirely different. I like to joke that baseball fans are collective sickos, and so are baseball reporters.

DG: (Laughs) I love that.

KW: Because we just get so invested in things that ultimately we’re not going to be talking about a week from now. Series change in three games and three games later, we’re talking about something completely different. So, that’s what I enjoy about the baseball collective experiences. We’re all in this together. We all know that this is ridiculous. We’re gonna do it anyway.

DG: We have a couple of middle relievers in Pittsburgh who have like literally destroyed our season so far, and I’m like waiting for them to send them down. And I mean, I’m doing the thing that you’re telling me not to do, which is drawing conclusions based on the first couple of weeks. Okay. So I’m not going to ask you for definitive analysis, but what’s a storyline that surprised you so far in these opening weeks that maybe we’re not paying enough attention to?

KW: You know, there are two things that come to mind here. I’ll go with my first reaction was the rise in the rookie and prospect extensions. And maybe this has something to do with a potential collective bargaining agreement expiring and a lockout looming, but we have seen so many teams, regardless of market size, sign either their top prospects or their top rookies to these lucrative, extensive contracts. Connor Griffin in Pittsburgh.

DG: The Pirate sign Connor Griffin, yeah.

KW: Right!

DG: $140 million, nine years, and he hadn’t even played; he hadn’t even really played much baseball yet.

KW: That’s the most un-Pirates-like thing I’ve ever heard in my life.

DG: Yeah, you got that right.

KW: And these deals usually benefit the teams. They’re like, this is a player that we think is going to really bring a lot of value to us, so let’s cut them a deal now and take a risk. I can’t remember the Pirates taking any kind of risk, but maybe that’s the Paul Skenes effect. And we’re seeing that across the board. The Brewers did that with their top prospect, Cooper Pratt. The Mariners had did that with Colt Emerson. The St. Louis Cardinals were talking to their top prospect, JJ Wetherholt, about it; those talks have stalled. But the fact that these negotiations are happening across the board with these young players, I’m all about letting the kids play. It’s a thing that we’ve heard, a slogan we’ve heard for years now, and Major League Baseball seems to really be embracing the youth movement. And another thing that they’ve done well is the implementation of the automatic ball strike system.

DG: Crazy!

KW: I’ll be the first to say it, David. I’ll be the first to say

DG: Okay.

KW: I have been so against every single proposed rule change under Rob Manfred for several years now, and unfortunately for me, every single rule change I think has actually benefited the game, and I’m enjoying it. So I was so against the pitch clock, and I was so against the ghost runner, and I was very much against ABS. We’re two weeks in, I love ABS. I think it brings such an element to the crowd. The strategy is different. You’re seeing players, coaches, umpires learn in real time, and it’s brought a different level of excitement to the game. It’s a better way for fans to stay engaged, and it’s policed a lot of the problems with umpires taking really a lot of verbal abuse and managers and players being rightfully upset about calls not really going their way. And it’s negated all of that, and it’s brought the fans into it as well. So really enjoying the effects of ABS so far, and it’s interesting to see how these young studs in MLB are jumpstarting their career with these contracts.

DG: Yeah. I mean, automate balls and strikes. It gives, should say, what is it? Each team gets two challenges on balls and strikes for per game.

KW: Yes.

DG: I think that the thing that has bothered me is it’s like we’re just dipping into it. So like when, when the Pirates exhaust their two challenges, like I’ll see what is clearly egregiously a bad call by the home plate umpire. And like, we don’t have any challenges left, so you can’t do it now. It’s like tasting something, a little bit of candy, and wanting all of it. But I also, you know, having every single bond strike called by a machine. Also, you don’t want that.

KW: Right.

DG: But I’m with you. I’m giving it like an eight out of 10, but it’s still frustrating. I’m still screaming at my television sometimes. Switching topics. Are you, are you familiar with Shea Serrano’s work?

KW: Yes!

DG: Okay. He’s, he’s our guest on the show today, which I’m really excited about. And he of course, I don’t know, he has this unique way of blending sports and pop culture to explain different dynamics. Do you ever go there in your baseball writing? I mean, do you see an intersection between pop culture and baseball?

KW: I probably should now, given the market that I’m covering, and I think that’s what makes Shea so excellent is because he does it effortlessly.

DG: (Laughs) LA likes entertainment. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

KW: Right. But it’s a good point because there is so much of a cross-cultural dynamic, and sports really are a resemblance of where we are as a society. So this is look at you giving me story ideas and a way to approach the job differently.

DG: There you go. You’re giving me hope as a Pirates fan. I’m giving you story ideas. Yeah. I mean, Shea has this book, “Expensive Basketball.” And, you know, he has these like beautiful diagrams of things like Allen Iverson’s crossover, and, you know, I think about Caitlin Clark’s famous logo pull-up in the WNBA. Is there a baseball equivalent? Like, is there a move or kind of a signature thing? I don’t know if it’s Otani or someone who just like sticks in your mind, as I guess like a, I mean, a sidearm pitcher, who’s that defining sort of move these days?

KW: It’s Otani. He’s the most marketable player in all of baseball, one of the most marketable players in all of sports. And you look at how he has single-handedly transformed the Dodgers organization. I mean, Dodger Stadium now goes by Uniqlo Field at Dodger Stadium. That is a Japanese clothing brand that’s gone global. You look around the ballpark, and there are Japanese advertisements across the board. It’s completely changed how baseball is covered. It’s now an international sport. The Dodgers are an international team, and I can’t even begin to describe just his impact on the global brand of MLB on one single player. He does things during games where you know a leadoff home run is breaking news right just because of the caliber of player that he is, or he goes out, and he throws six shutout innings, we talk about it if it’s a normal pitcher for about two minutes, for Otani, it’s several different stories. But when Otani can really capitalize is prime time, and I think back to the last playoffs in 2025, the NLCS against the Brewers Game Four. They signed him as a two-way player, but injuries prevented him from pitching for most of 24 and 25. He’s starting the potential pennant-clinching game. He throws six shutout innings, strikes out 10, and homers three times.

DG: So crazy.

KW: That is an expensive baseball moment, it feels like. In fact, I’m not sure if you can see behind me, but I have the bobblehead from that night. The Dodgers already made one right up there.

DG: Yeah, of course I did. (Laughs)

KW: Of course they did. If any organization knows how to capitalize on money, it is the Los Angeles Dodgers. So moments like that, think, stick out of the expensive moments, I think.

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DG: Yeah, you’re totally right. Expensive, a word that applies to the Dodgers in so many ways. Katie Woo is a staff writer for The Athletic. She covers baseball and is based in LA and covers the Dodgers. If I can sneak into the press box with one of my old credentials, maybe I’ll see Dodger Stadium sometime.

KW: You’ve got plenty of seats, come say hey.

DG: (Laughs) There we go. will. Big thanks to you, Katie. And coming up next on Sports in America is our conversation with Shea Serrano.

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SHEA SERRANO: When he starts riding that big old worm around, forget about it. That’s so sick. That was so dope. Oh my God. We got our report cards, and I failed almost all of the classes with the exception of like gym and art. Gym and art, I was a \[EXPLETIVE\] straight A student. But all the rest, just failing. (Laughs) Just that school was not for me. Every day, marching forward is worse than the last. Because I know that I’m on the downside. I know I’m closer to the day I’m gonna die than I am to the day I was born.

DG: Shea Serrano is really a one-of-a-kind voice in sports and culture, first as an author writing New York Times bestsellers like “Basketball (and Other Things)” and “The Rap Year Book.” He was a defining presence in the early days of The Ringer and the co-host of hit podcasts like No Skips and Six Trophies. He even wrote and produced a hit sitcom, “Primo,” which aired on Amazon Prime. His work has built a massive, deeply loyal audience and is shaping the way a new generation talks about sports, not as spectacle, but as something personal, lived in, and worth caring about. But before all of that, Shea Serrano coached middle school basketball. As with so many of his experiences, he was a sponge throughout, finding meaning and clarity in the small moments. He tells a story that would shape his outlook on why we watch sports.

SS: I had this one boy on the team, his name was Dylan. We called him 3D. He was a tiny little guy, but he was like a really good basketball player. He could just shoot it from everywhere.

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SS: He was, it was incredible. And we were playing a game one time. We were at, we were at home, you know, our little stands are full with people watching, and they throw the ball to 3D, and he catches it. And he’s, again, he’s a very tiny guy. So he’s got to like do some work to get it up from deep. It’s not like a pretty, it’s like a heave, like, ugh. From the shoulder up, get it up there, right? So they throw it out to 3D, he catches it. He takes about four steps to gather momentum, chucks the ball up, boom, the ball’s in the air. The referee blows a whistle, travel, we’re going the other way. The ball drops in, boom. The crowd, they don’t care, they go nuts. It’s kids, it’s seventh grade, kids. They’re excited to see that the ball went in. The ball went, the kids go nuts, 3D is celebrating, doing all of his stuff, going back down the court. And I’m like, “Dylan, come here.” Comes running over, “Yeah, coach?” I said, “Dylan, they called it travel. The bucket didn’t count.” And he just went, “Still went in!” And then ran off. And I was like, this is great. That’s incredible. Like they didn’t care about like a stat or anything. He just cared what it felt like when that ball dropped in, and the place went nuts, and he had his little moment, and it was wonderful.

DG: It’s true, you’re not allowed to travel with the basketball, but the violation won’t take away the ringing of the cheers in 3D’s ears, the emotional imprint that will live forever in his memory.

SS: What you take is like the feeling is what’s the most important.

DG: That feeling does a lot in explaining what’s so appealing about Shea’s voice. There are a lot of ways to get into sports media, but Shea didn’t come up through locker rooms or press credentials. He started in a classroom, teaching kids, moonlighting as a writer because he needed the side hustle. And even before that, as an action movie nut, Shea wanted to step into the shoes of the famous crime fighters he admired on the big screen. It got a little too real, a little too quickly.

I’m interested in your backstory a little bit because you’ve become such a leading voice when it comes to writing about and talking about sports and culture and the intersection. But you went to college at Sam Houston State, right? You did not study writing. I mean, you studied psychology?

SS: Correct. I got a degree in psychology.

DG: What was the plan at that point?

SS: (Laughs) My initial plan was I wanted to be in the FBI.

DG: Oh, nice. I’ve had those dreams too. That’s…

SS: Right!

DG: Yeah.

SS: And now I knew this wasn’t gonna work out for me because the whole reason I wanted to be in the FBI was because I wanted to like come home on Christmas vacation, like visit my family and take my like sports coat off, and I have the, my guns and my leather holsters on the side like they do in the movies. Like that was the only reason.

DG: (Laughs) You had to come home for the holidays as an FBI agent and be really cool.

SS: That’s it, that’s all. I didn’t want to, like, solve crimes or capture…

DG: That’s the primary motivation is probably maybe not the right career move, but I totally understand

SS: Right, but so that’s what I went to college for. And then I’ll never forget, it was like my second year. I took like an actual crime scene investigations class. And the professor, she was like walking around putting all these manila folders on everybody’s desks at the beginning of the class. She was like, don’t open these until everybody has one, blah, blah. And she handed them out, and then she got to the front of the glass and she explained that these were like, like photos of an actual crime scene. And I’m like, okay, let’s get into it. This is crazy. And we opened it up, and it was like a dead guy, like photos of a dead guy. And real photos of a real dead guy do not look like they do in the movies. Like it is, you realize in that moment that that’s a person who, that’s somebody’s kid, maybe somebody’s father or husband, who knows. Their life was ended, and like, I just knew looking at that thing, I felt it in like, I can’t, I can, I’m supposed to spend the rest of my life doing this? I got to see this in real life too?

DG: This is not for me.

SS: This is not for me. I went straight, literally straight from that class, to the counselor’s office asked for a meeting. I was like, “Hey, I can’t, I gotta change my major.”

DG: Can’t do this. Switch it up.

SS: Right, so I ended up in psychology because most of the classes that I had taken would apply to that degree. I wouldn’t like lose a year or whatever. And then the new plan became I’m going to be a like a counselor at a middle school or a high school. That was like what I started to chase down, and then I became a teacher after I graduated. And I taught for nine years. And during that time is when I started writing, but yeah, I didn’t go to school to be a writer. It wasn’t like a thing that I even knew you could do, really

DG: You did, though, also meet your wife in college, right?

SS: Mm-hmm. Yeah, my first year in college.

DG: I love that story, if you could share it because it was an act of true bravery that you’re grateful for for the rest of your life.

SS: Like the actual meeting?

DG: Yeah, yeah.

SS: So Larami is my wife. I met her in 2000 because we had a class together. We had a sociology class together, and I was sitting there, I was with my buddy John. We’re sitting in the back of the class, and she came walking in, just like beautiful, balletic, graceful woman. Like a type of woman who I’d never seen in my life is what it felt like. Like I had seen girls before. This was a woman that walked in to this classroom, and it was like, I got hit with a thunderbolt, like a lightning bolt. And so I like, if you are an attractive like woman in the world, I guess, even if you were like a regular-looking woman in the world, I don’t know, and they’re just getting hit on all of the time, it turns out, guys are horrible.

DG: Right, yeah, we suck.

SS: Just hitting on, in college especially, and so just everybody was hitting on Larami, and I didn’t want to be like that guy. I didn’t want to another one of those. So in class, I just like wrote her a note. I wrote like my best romantic-y thing that I could, and I sent it, passed it toward her. And then right when it got to her, I chickened out, and I just left the class. I was like, phew, I’m out of here, I don’t wanna see this.

DG: Okay, I left a note. I’m out of here.

SS: I don’t want to know what’s going to happen here. And then, and then, yeah, like a day later, she, I have my phone number on there. She ended up calling, and then we went on a date, and 25 years later, now here we are.

DG: But it was because you did it differently. You didn’t like, you know, say some swarmy thing to her, like ask her out in the hallway. You did something poetic. I mean, to go back to that word.

SS: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Poetic, sure. But yeah, same as if you’re like, do like a career thing, the way that you stand out is you gotta do something a little bit different than what everybody else is doing. I thought this work, this might work that way too.

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DG: What started out as a cute love story intensified with real-life constraints and considerations in a hurry. When Shea and Larami learned that they had a baby on the way, Shea knew that he would have to do more than teach to make ends meet. And so, desperate times called for wildly creative pitches to be sent out to any kind of publication requesting them.

So your transition to writing actually has something to do with Larami, and kind of a tough time that you two were going through as a couple. What happened, and how did that take you to writing?

SS: So Larami was a teacher as well. She’s a middle school teacher. I was a middle-school teacher, and we’re getting married, and we were, you know, having kids. We have three sons now, we have twins who are 18, and then, the younger, the baby is what I call him, but he’s about to be, he’ll be 13 in a couple of weeks. But she was pregnant with the twins, and four months into her pregnancy, she went into labor like while she was at work, and four months is not when you’re supposed to go into to labor. They rushed her to the hospital.

DG: That’s really scary.

SS: Yeah, it was terrifying. They rush her to hospital. They did this like emergency surgery for her, and then they told her, all right, you’re on bedrest for the rest of the pregnancy. You got to lie down. If you get up, the babies are gonna fall out. So stay flat. And so all of a sudden we went from a family of two, just me and her, on a teacher’s salary. We’re both making about $40,000 a year. So as a household, we were bringing in $80 grand for two people, it’s like, you’re doing okay. But we went from that to now we’re about to be a family of four making $40 grand a year, and the bills that we were responsible for were suddenly greater than the money I was making as a teacher. I think every two weeks, my teacher’s paycheck was like around $1,100 bucks, right? And our rent alone was like $1,500 or $1,600, and that’s not counting any of the other stuff.

DG: That’s tight.

SS: But so, so yeah, the numbers were red. I needed to get them green and try to like apply at various restaurants or Target or Walmart or whatever to have like a part-time job until she could get back to work because she was going to be down for those four or five months. Then a couple of months afterward, before the new school year started and back to it. But none of the places would hire me because I already had a full-time job. So I was like, just straight up Googling work-from-home jobs on the computer at home. And writer was one of them. And I’m reading the description, and it said you just need a computer and the internet if you want to be a writer. And I said, well, I got.

DG: Like I got that

SS: I got both of those things. So then I started researching, what does this mean? What does it even mean to be a writer? What does freelancing mean? How do I do this? And then I just started trying to chase that down, and it ended up working out, thankfully.

DG: But you were pitching like crazy, right? I mean, and getting rejections.

SS: Crazy. Yeah.

DG: What kept you going?

SS: So many times. I mean, the bills were what kept me going. It’s like, you gotta do this, or you can’t pay the bills. So, okay, well, that’s like my responsibility. She’s trying to make sure that our kids don’t die. Seemed like the least I could do is figure out how to make an extra couple hundred bucks a month. And so, yeah, you know, you read about how to like pitch publications. You read about being a freelancer or whatever. And it just, everything that I read said it was just a straight-up numbers game. You’re gonna pitch a hundred things and get turned down 98 of those times. I was okay, cool. Well, then, if I pitch 500 things, then I’m gonna get 10 things to write. And if I can get $20 or $30 bucks per thing that I wrote, then there goes my couple hundred bucks I needed for the month. And started out doing just like neighborhood sort of newspaper kind of things for $15, $20 bucks a pop. And then each time I would get a thing in a publication, I would try to take that, and then whatever the next rung on the ladder was, I would go to them. So the first thing I did was literally for a neighborhood newsletter. Newsletters back then means a different thing than today. Today, it’s like an online thing that a person does.

DG: Online. Yeah, back then, it was like a little actual physical newsletter that would be sent around the community.

SS: It was like a tiny little newspaper. In this case, this woman named Frances Allday, in Houston, she had a neighborhood newsletter called the…

DG: That’s a great last name, my God.

SS: Great last name.

DG: God, Greene is so boring, like Allday, like that’s just (Laughs)

SS: Allday, Allday. Frances Allday she’s a perfect old woman. And she had a newspaper, a neighborhood newsletter called the Near Northwest Banner. And I found a copy of it at a pizza place because I was like, just collecting every newspaper I could. And I found her email address. I pitched her, she let me write about the Houston Texans, and they paid me $15 bucks to do that. And then the next one I wrote about the Houston Astros, and they pay me $15 to do that. But then I took those, and I went to the Houston Press, which is like the alt weekly in Houston. And I said, “Hey, look, I’m a writer, like an actual writer. I’ve got these bylines.”

DG: You had clips, yeah.

SS: I had clips. Can I write for y’all? And then I talked my way into writing for them. And then when I wrote some stuff for them, then I was like, okay, well, I’m gonna go to MTV now. I got some music coverage at Houston Press. Went to MTV and I’m like, “Hey, look, I was a writer at the Houston Press, you should let me write for y’all.” And then they let me write for them, and then I went to ESPN, and I was like, look, I wrote for MTV, and you all are like one channel over, you should let me write for y’all.

DG: Such a good lesson in that.

SS: Yeah, trying to like work my way up until eventually I ended up on Bill Simmons’s radar, and he at the time had this website called Grantland, which was like this sort of sports and pop culture journalism mecca that everybody was…

DG: It was amazing. I used to interview as many authors as I could from it because it was just this incredible community of writers and thinkers and great writing.

\[MUSIC\]

DG: Yeah, for context, Bill Simmons was one of the first writers to combine pop culture and sports on a national stage, comparing Russell Crowe’s acting career to Shaquille O’Neal’s on the court, using Curb Your Enthusiasm seasons to contextualize eras of a star pitcher’s playing days. His new collective was a perfect home for Shea’s particular takes.

SS: So all of a sudden I’m like lumped in with these people who are considerably more talented than I am. I suddenly get to hang out with them, and just sort of by association. You know what I mean? Like Mario Chalmers got a championship ring too, you know what I mean, like that, like that was my, is how I felt in the thing. And started working for them, at that place with Bill. And then Bill starts up The Ringer, and I just follow him over there and getting to work like behind Bill, underneath Bill, who is the most successful sports and pop culture like journalist that has ever existed.

DG: 100% Yeah.

SS: And I get to like study under him, it’s no different than shooting practice with Steph Curry. You know what I mean? Like, I’m gonna try to learn as much as I, as much I can.

DG: Bill would love to hear the Steph Curry comparison.

SS: (Laughs) I probably should do a Celtics, like it’s like a shooting practice with Larry Bird.

DG: Larry Bird, yea he’d appreciate that more.

SS: (Laughs)

DG: Shea took to writing like Kobe to scoring. He got as many reps as he could. He developed a knack for mimicry, finding inspiration in the oddest corners. If he liked some style or turn of phrase, he made it his own, and then he ran with it.

You’re so known and loved for your style of writing that so many people say it feels like, you know, it’s a conversation. It’s like, you know, you’re not reading, you’re literally talking to you. It’s you have this style where I read, and I literally feel like I’m sitting there having a conversation with you, and I could literally give words back, and you would actually say something back to me. It’s a very interactive experience, which makes me wanna stay there. Like, how did that develop?

SS: That develops by practice. Like again, you want to be intentional with that, and I guess there’s reps. Everybody, when you first start out doing any sort of job, but writing especially, you’re terrible. You’re just sort of trying to figure out how to do it. And what ends up happening inevitably is you just become like this amalgam of stuff that you’ve read, that other people have written. You watch it with basketball players all of the time. Kobe Bryant was like, “Oh, I learned this from Michael Jordan, and I learned from Dirk Nowitzki, and I learned this from there.” And he just took all of those things, and it turned him into Kobe Bryant. Right? He’s like a combination of 25 different things. And then you watch him, and now he’s like an individual basketball player, an individual talent. And it’s the same sort of thing with writing. You have all of these influences, you have to like take some time to synthesize them, and then eventually what comes out is like your own voice is what it’s called. And then again, what kind of writer do you want to be? I always want for myself to feel very conversational, so part of my actual writing process is when I’m writing it, I also will say it out loud because I want it to sound like how I talk.

DG: Oh, you actually do that. You’re literally, you’ll write stuff down and then read it and see if it sounds like…

SS: Literally will read it and see is this how I talk, is this the cadence that I have, is there is a pause here, if there is an “or whatever “or an “and so” or you know, almost talking my way through it, trying to get that on the page. It takes a lot of a lot work to make it seem like there’s not much work. You know what I mean to make a look the way that it looks. And again, sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t, and when it works, it’s a great feeling, and when it doesn’t, you’re like this ugh, delete that and try again.

DG: But you’ve also made the point that you feel like you need to love the thing you’re writing about. You would not be able to write about sports in the way that you do if you weren’t a fan and you didn’t love sports.

SS: Yeah, I think that’s very important. I don’t think everybody operates like that. I don’t think everybody needs to operate like that, but for me to like work on a thing, it’s the most enjoyable if it’s something that I really care about. Because this book that we’re talking about here, I worked on this book for four years. And if it was like a thing that I didn’t care about, and I gotta spend four years working on it, that would suck so bad.

DG: That would suck.

SS: That would suck so bad and then also I think a person would read it and they would go like you don’t like care about this. Why do I care what you think about this if you don’t care about the thing that you’re talking about. I think that’s why if you go through my books it’s rap and it’s basketball and it movies and that’s and I just am repeating my way through those. I did I did a rap book, I did basketball book, and a movie book. That’s how it works for me.

DG: Coming up next, we’ll have more from our conversation with Shea Serrano.

This is Sports in America, I’m David Greene, and let’s get right back to our conversation with Shea Serrano.

[MUSIC\]

DG: One of the reasons Shea’s writing feels so accessible is because as he sees it, the only price of admission for being a diehard fan is a love for the game. You don’t need to prove you belong.

I guess one of the other things that I really related to, as you’ve talked about fandom through the years, like you’ve really eased the pressure on me because I think I’m such a fan. Like, I mean, you see my Terrible Towel.

SS: I see it.

DG:. I’m a Steelers fan. I love, I’m, I am a Sixers fan. I love Allen, I love Allen Iverson. But I can’t recall everything about them. And sometimes I feel like when I tell someone I’m a fan, they like feel the, like, it’s okay to be like, “Oh, you know, can you name the, you know, the entire Steel Curtain? Can you?

SS: Purity test. (Laughs)

DG: It’s the purity test, and it gets really uncomfortable. And you, as someone who is detail-oriented and focused on research, you acknowledge that you can love an athlete or love a team or be a fan and not have to know everything. You might have to go research yourself into a team that you love so much. And that just, that gave me a sigh of relief. I really appreciate it.

SS: Yeah, because those are the things. Okay, so any sports thing that you love or any sort of culture, culture-y thing that love, like you never love it for the numbers of the situation, right? You mentioned that you have your Pittsburgh Steelers towel behind you. How about this? I’m certain, I am certain we go back to the NFL playoffs. Remember this Steelers-Colts game.

DG: Are you kidding me? I nearly had a heart attack.

ANNOUNCER 1: Three timeouts here left for the Colts. They’ve got to keep them out of the end zone.

ANNOUNCER 2: Bettis fumbled the ball!

SS: Fumble on the one, on the 1-yard line, right? Boom, Jerome Bettis, boom, ball pops out. Boom, it was Bettis, right? He was a…

DG: It was Betis who was my favorite Steeler, ever

SS: The Bus. The Bus! The indestructible player. That fumble happens, the Colts pick it up, they’re going the other way, or whatever it was. Everybody who was watching that game, every Colts fan, every Steelers fan, everybody in that arena, the million people who were watching it on TV, when that guy was running down in the opposite direction, and they’re trying to figure out how to stop him, nobody was thinking like. “Wow, Jerome Bettis has run for 112 yards today.” And he’s average. And like, nobody was thinking of a number in that moment. All you were thinking was, “Holy \[EXPLETIVE\] what is happening right now? You’re filled with emotion and filled with feeling, and either, you know, a Steeler, or you know dread or joy or whatever on whatever side of it. It was for me, I’m an impartial. I just couldn’t believe what I was watching. I’m just with my hands on my head, screaming at the TV for something, anything to happen. Right? That’s what you remember. That’s what you feel.

DG: The emotions?

SS: The emotions! Like, I don’t want this to sound like this is anti-stats. I’m just saying they should be used if they’re going to be used in a discussion to like fortify a feeling. They shouldn’t be the end of the conversation. It shouldn’t arrive with you going, “And thus Michael Jordan had six championships.: Like that doesn’t matter. What matters is what did you feel when he hit that shot over Cliff Robinson and then shrugged at Magic Johnson on the side. What were you feeling when Reggie Miller hit those threes? What were your feelings in those moments? And that’s what the book is trying to capture. Let’s talk more about that part of it than the numbers part, you know what I mean?

DG: I totally know what you mean. That was maybe the scariest moment of my entire existence as a sports fan. I nearly had a heart attack.

SS: (Laughs) I couldn’t believe it!

DG: I actually went back, and I was studying that moment and writing about it. I went back, and I interviewed the widow of a guy who did have a heart attack when Jerome Bettis fumbled the ball. That was not what took his life, but he ended up, he ended being resuscitated, getting to the hospital, and he woke up and had to ask if the Steelers pulled out the game. That was the first thing he said when he came out.

SS: Yeah, did they win? (Laughs)

DG: Yeah, but no, it’s all raw emotion, and no one can take that experience away from me, whether or not I remember how many yards Bettis has had or not.

SS: Yeah, who cares about that part of it? I care about how was I feeling? Because that’s why you watch. You don’t watch to see somebody, whenever it go 12 for 15 from the field, you watch to see what it feels like when they’re doing that. I remember after the Spurs lost in 2013 to the Heat. And when my dad and I talked about it afterwards, the very first thing he mentioned, it wasn’t like what anybody shot from the field or whatever. The first thing he mentioned when we got on the phone was how sad it was after Tim Duncan has a chance to like, he has got a bunny, a layup, and it bounces off the back of the rim at the end of the game. You know, a few seconds left. The game isn’t all the way over, but this was a shot that was very important. But he misses this shot that he’s made a thousand times in his career. And then when he comes down, for the first time ever, you just seen it, he slapped the floor, like leaned down and slapped the court, cause he was so annoyed and frustrated. And seeing Tim Duncan do that is like, if like the Abraham Lincoln statue, like got up off of the chair and picked up a baby and kicked it down the street, you’d be like, what am I watching? Seeing Tim Duncan express this level of emotion. And that was the first thing that he mentioned to me. And as soon as he said it, I knew exactly what he was talking about. Cause I felt the same thing watching my favorite player go through this terrible like experience. But yeah, it was like, we can talk about the number, sure, but feeling that, oh my God, oh. Sports are the best.

DG: They’re the best.

SS: That’s only, that’s why you watch.

\[MUSIC\]

DG: The evolution and growth of Shea’s style has culminated now in his new book, “Expensive Basketball.” Each chapter features mural-worthy illustrations of a move or a moment from a player in professional men’s or women’s basketball. Shaq’s destructive post-up, Sue Bird’s cocky backpedal. One chapter is just called “Klay Thompson’s third quarter.” Shea takes reference points we all connect with and elevates them to fine art. None more so than with his favorite all-time player.

I mean, you dug right in to Tim Duncan from the very beginning, and you said that he’s your favorite basketball player like in the history of your life.

SS: Yeah, Tim Duncan is my favorite basketball player of all time. That is correct. I did start the book with a Tim Duncan chapter that is also correct. You’re two for two right now, David.

DG: There you go. I know you like statistics, so I, two for two’s not bad. (Laughs)

SS: (Laughs)

DG: Is that expensive? Am I expensive by being two for two?

SS: Not yet. You’re on your way, you’re on your way, but not yet.

DG: I mean, you get into what expensive means in basketball, what would make me expensive as a basketball player or an interviewer?

SS: As an interviewer, no, you know what, I would say, you are expensive as an interviewer, and the thing that would make that true is your voice. When you hear it, you go, “Okay, this guy knows what he’s doing.” Without having ever listened to anything or like, you could just hear somebody talk. When Mike Breen says “Bang,” that’s expensive. When Doris Burke is like lavishing praise on a player for something they did, that sounds expensive. It feels expensive. The way that you sound in my headphones, you sound expensive, yeah.

DG: I, it was nice talking to you. The interview’s over. That’s the take-home, I’m gonna go home and sleep well tonight. I appreciate that, that’s very kind of you.

SS: Of course.

DG: And you’re right about Doris Burke. I mean, she could be describing the most meaningless play on the basketball court, and it’s like, I am listening. Like I am, listening.

SS: It feels important. And that’s really what when we use expensive in the book, this is a synonym for important is another easy way to look at it or think about it. So anytime somebody has asked me to explain this, I just sort of go back to the hypothetical that I lay out in the introduction of the book. Which is, if you had never seen any basketball, watched any basketball, you didn’t know anything about it, and somebody showed you a video of Ray Allen shooting a jump shot. Which is beautiful.

DG: Beautiful.

SS: Like the most expensive violin ever if it was made out of butter and somebody was playing it. That’s what a Ray Allen jump shot looks like. They show you a video of that, and then they show you a video of Joakim Noah shooting a jump shot. Who shoots a jump like if the basketball was covered in bees, right? And they just showed you these two videos, and they said which of these, without any other explanation, which of these two looks more expensive to you. You would automatically know, again, nobody has ever explained the idea of expensive or not expensive about basketball, but you would know, looking at those two videos, that Ray Allen, that jump shot looks more expensive. It feels more expensive, and that’s really what the book is. Every chapter is a different thing that has happened on a basketball court that has felt expensive. You know what I mean?

DG: Yeah, and this is so you, I feel like, because that’s a notion that fans, non-sports fans, can get into because it’s about life, and it’s thinking about a concept like expensive. It doesn’t necessarily mean money. It means seeing something that just your gut tells you, this person doing this thing or this place, like there’s a weight to it. There’s something important here that I need to pay attention to.

SS: Yeah, that’s exactly right. My favorite ideas are always the ones where, as soon as you hear them, you hear like just a one-sentence description of them, and it activates something in your brain to make you like, ask 50 questions immediately or like offer your own sort of thoughts. So if I’d say to you, like, the book is called “Expensive Basketball,” it’s about things on a basketball court that feel expensive, like Magic Johnson in the open court. Right, that feels expensive

DG: That feels expensive.

SS: Steph Curry in the Olympics. That feels expensive, right? I can say that. And then what should happen, hopefully, is that in your head, you start thinking of your own things. Oh, what about this? What about that? What about, like, those to me are the best ideas.

DG: Well, take me to your love of Tim Duncan. What made him, for non-fans who don’t know about his Spurs years and championships and MVPs, what made him expensive? And then I wanna get to why you personally love him so much.

SS: All right, the thing that made Tim Duncan expensive was like a combination of things, right? But we distill it down to the main parts. There was this inevitability of destruction that he sort of carried around with him everywhere that he went. For 19 years, he’s in the league, for 19 of those years, every single year that he was on the Spurs, it felt like the Spurs had a chance to win the championship because that’s how good he was. Like that’s what the top-level players do. You have SGA on your team right now? You got a chance to win a championship. You’ve got the Joker? You got a chance. You got A’Ja Wilson? You got a chance. Like he was he was in that class of players right so every time like he would walk out onto a court and if you weren’t a Spurs fan, if your team was playing Tim Duncan, you were a little bit afraid. Because you knew what the guy could do right and without ceremony without celebration, he would just go out onto the basketball court and slowly kill you like erosion. The “Erosive Terror of Tim Duncan” is what the chapter is called, right? That inevitability of destruction is very, like a very expensive feeling, is a very important feeling. So you’ve got, there’s that part of it. And then if we drill down even further, we get in a little further into it, the way that he would do it, just sort of controlling all facets of the game, the way he would manipulate inches in the post, get the ball to Tim Duncan in the posts, and you give him an inch, you give them two inches, he’s going to exploit it to his benefit in some sort of way. He’s just like a master technician. So, you know, Tim Duncan, the Spurs are my favorite basketball team. Tim Duncan is my favorite basketball player of all time. I watched him play more basketball games than I have watched any other player ever in my life. And so I just knew when I was putting the book together after I’d settled on the idea, I knew, well, I want to start it with my favorite player ever.

DG: With your guy.

SS: With my guy, let me start it with my guy, let’s establish this immediately. And then I wanna have within the chapter, I wanna have like something that sort of relays this basketball dominance, I wanna have this thing that relays the like poetry with which he moved in the post, so there’s an actual like poem from the 1800s just in the middle of the chapter for no reason at all, seemingly.

DG: I love that. Yeah, I was like, ” Why am I reading?” I was, oh, this is why I’m reading that because this is, he’s poetic on the court, yeah.

SS: Boom, and then to speak to the inevitability of the destruction, I just grabbed a piece, one page from the script of The Terminator, and threw that into the chapter as well. And you’re reading through the book, and it should feel like as you’re working your way through each chapter, you should say, ” Why is this in here? Why am I reading this?” And then you get to the end, and you go, “Oh.”

DG: It all makes sense.

SS: Oh, that’s why that was in there. It all snaps together. In the best-case scenarios, that’s how it goes.

\[MUSIC\]

DG: When I asked Shea about his bucket list project, you know, the one that would signify that he was truly living the dream, he kind of shrugged. He might be there already.

What’s kind of the holy grail project that you can’t wait to work on or write about, or dig into that brings together all of your different loves, music, pop culture, sports?

SS: You know what, I don’t quite know what it is. I know, I know, for me the like professional holy grail. It’s not a specific, it’s not a specific project, but like professionally, all that I want to do is I just want to be in a position where I can like write about the stuff that I wanna write about, cover the stuff that I wanted to cover, and discuss the stuff that I want to discuss. We opened this interview talking about when I was freelancing, right? And for those first couple of years, it was like, I will write about anything that somebody will pay me to write about. And that’s a part of the process you gotta go through. But I’m closer now to, I just wanna write about the stuff that I wanna write about. I wanna spend four years working on this book, and that’s what I wanna do. And if I can continue that, if I keep that up. Then that to me would be pretty great. That’s like my holy grail that I’m always after, is just like, can I just do the stuff I wanna do and get money in exchange, and awesome.

DG: Well, Shea, this has been a total pleasure. I really appreciate it.

SS: Yeah, this was super fun.

\[MUSIC\]

DG: Next time on Sports in America.

DEMAURICE SMITH: There is a narrative that the game must go on.

DG: With the NFL draft coming up, we’re gonna sit down with DeMaurice Smith, who spent 14 years as the head of the NFL Players Association, the union for professional football players. One of the most important parts of his job was simply to ensure their safety.

DS: When a person goes down like that, when it first happened, it was just a routine tackle. What started to terrify me was just the length of time.

DG: At times, that meant going head-to-head with NFL leadership during contentious battles like the 2011 lockout and Colin Kaepernick’s 2016 protests for racial justice.

DS: Man, the thing that makes football fantastic, like all sports, is it’s still humans playing it. But the minute we lose the humanity of that, I think it ceases being sport.

DG: That’s next week on Sports in America.

This is Sports in America. I’m your host, David Greene.

This is Sports in America. I’m your host, David Greene.

Our executive producers are Joan Isabella and Tom Grahsler. Our senior producer is Michael Olcott. Our producer is Michaela Winberg, and our associate producer is Bibiana Correa.

Our engineer is Mike Villers. Our talent booker is Britt Kahn. Our tile artwork was created by Bea Walling.

Sports in America is a production of WHYY in Philadelphia and is distributed by PRX. Some of our interviews were originally created by Religion of Sports, with special thanks to Adam Schlossman. You can find Sports in America on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, the iHeartRadio app, you know, wherever you get your podcasts.

And we also want to hear from you. How about you drop us a line? You can write us at sportsinamerica@whyy.org. That’s sportsinamerica@whyy.org. Thanks everybody, and we’ll see you next time for Sports in America.

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Host: David Greene
Executive Producers: Joan Isabella, Tom Grahsler
Senior Producer: Michael Olcott
Producer: Michaela Winberg
Associate Producer: Bibiana Correa
Talent Booker: Britt Kahn
Engineer: Mike Villers
Tile Art: Bea Walling
Theme Song: Emma Munger
Sports in America is a production of WHYY, distributed by PRX, and part of the NPR podcast network.

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