WKXL - New Hampshire Talk Radio

Cail & Company LIVE with Clayton Trutor

Our in studio guest on Tuesday was award-winning author and Vermont native Clayton Trutor. In 2021, "Loserville: How Professional Sports Remade Atlanta and How Atlanta Remade Professional Sports" was published by the University of Nebraska Press and in 2023 the same publishing house released Dr. Trutor's "Boston Ball: Rick Pitino, Jim Calhoun, Gary Williams and the Forgotten Cradle of Basketball Coaches".

Duration:: 44m
Broadcast on:: 25 Jun 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

with us on this Tuesday morning, and we are proudly presented by Northeast Delta Dental. And excuse my voice this morning, it's tough to have to do a radio show and wake up with laryngitis, but that's pretty much what I did. And we're very happy to have in studio today. A gentleman who has been on my shows a couple of times in the past, always on the phone, but in studio today, making the drive from Vermont, it is Clayton Truder and Clayton Great to have you with us. Oh, thanks so much for having me on. Well, it is our pleasure. He drove about two and a half hours this morning to be here. And he has written a couple of terrific books. And the first one was Loserville, how professional sports remade Atlanta and how Atlanta remade professional sports. One of the best baseball books of 2022 was voted. And a Boston ball, his most recent book, Rick Petino, Jim Calhoun, Gary Williams, and the forgotten cradle of basketball coaches to terrific sports books. And very honored to have you in studio here today, Clayton. And so, so first of all, tell us your inspiration for for Loserville. Loserville started when I was in graduate school. I got my PhD in history from Boston College. And I wanted a topic for my dissertation that related my history, my interest in the history of cities to my interest in the history of sports in some way, interconnecting them. And Loserville came out of that. It was a 10 year process from my initially thinking of the book to the book actually being published. It took research across a number of cities and many interviews with many people from over the history of Atlanta's professional sports time since it became a pro sports town in the 1960s. Yeah. And started in 1966, I believe with the Braves and then a little bit just the same year, the Falcons, correct? They both came the same year. Correct. They both came the same year. Building Atlanta Stadium is what made it all possible. We do a great extent. The book is about just the politics of building stadiums and the way it influenced the city and also the way other cities responded to trying to draw pro sports to their communities. And then that really was quite unusual at that time for cities and municipalities to go out of their way to try and lure sports franchises into an area. Very much so. Obviously the Dodgers and the Giants among other teams that moved west during the 1950s. But those were very much one off kind of situations. In the case of Atlanta, the city of Atlanta makes it a public policy decision to try to become a major league city as their mayor Ivan Allen put it as part of his platform running for mayor in 1961. And within five years, they lure the Braves and Falcons to town by having a municipally financed stadium. They roll out the red carpet to the major pro sports leagues and create a model that many other cities adopted as they tried to become big league towns too. Varying results certainly with different cities that have tried to do this, Atlanta also built the Omni Coliseum, which became the home of the Hawks and short lived Atlanta flames as well. Yeah, hockey didn't really fly in Atlanta. Well initially it had a little bit of a boom. It was I guess a prestige kind of thing to do on a night out in Atlanta. The team very much present the flames very much presented it that way too. They had these ads that said Atlanta's ice society that it was women and furs and men in suits going to games. And that worked very well for a couple of years. But over time the the novelty wore off and then they end up leaving town in 1980, eight years after they get to town and they're still in Calgary to this day. And the Hawks came in and 72 the Atlanta Hawks of the NBA and really all of the teams had had struggles. Yes, both on the field and at the box office. I think to a great extent it was an issue of having inexperienced or absentee management in each of these cases that I think to a great extent many businessmen who are great at whatever field they're in underestimate how specific running a sports franchise is relative to other businesses. And many a great businessman had a lot of struggles trying to become a pro sports franchise owner, particularly if they tried to be hands-on. The smarter ones tended to leave it to people who were in that industry. That was certainly not the case with a lot of Atlantis teams, particularly the Atlanta Falcons. Their own their founder was a guy named Rankin Smith who was a large insurance salesman. He made his vice president who was very good at selling insurance his football general manager. In their second year in the national football league in 1967 they made 12 draft picks and none of them made the team. He just clearly had no idea what was going on in terms of drafting players and it set the Falcons franchise back many many years. Yep. And of course we all know what happened in that Super Bowl, but that was a long long time after that. But at any rate, but it was called loser real because the teams as you mentioned struggled on the field or on the ice or on the court and also at the box office. But the Braves really were the ones that started turning that around. Very much so. And it took this is under the ownership of Ted Turner. It took time under Turner as well. He was very much of the same mindset when he bought the Braves in 1976. He had a bunch of guys from his emerging cable network playing prominent roles in personnel with his major teams, both the Braves as well as the Hawks. It didn't work out well once he turned it over to the experts, particularly in the case of the Braves with John Schurholz who had built the Royals Championship team of 1985. He comes in and the Braves and builds a winter year after year after year by building a strong minor league system. Ted Turner had the mentality. He's coming in right when free agency was. He goes out and gets a bunch of big name guys, Jeff Burrows and Andy Messersmith and the like with a big free agents of the mid to late 70s. And it just doesn't work out. But ultimately, the Braves became America's team on TBS. Very much so. I mean, it took a while for that to happen. Yeah, it did. But again, that was Ted Turner's foresight. And they really during those years, I think everybody loved the fact that they could watch National League Baseball on a regular basis on their cable systems throughout the country. Oh, very much so. There's a fascinating sports illustrated feature story from 1982, just as the Braves are having their first run to a division championship. This is like when Joe Tory is coaching the team, Dale Murphy, Bob Horner, those guys are around. And it talked about how in Reno, Nevada and Bismarck, North Dakota and Anchorage, Alaska, this was the most popular team. There were people from these places who were coming down to Florida to watch Braves spring training because this had become their team through cable television. And really, there were a lot of people as well in the Boston area who enjoyed seeing the Braves on TBS because, of course, the Braves originated in Boston. Very, very much so. I mean, till the very recent past, there was a very active Boston Braves fan club still in the city. Really? Is that right? In Atlanta? No, in Boston. Oh, in Boston. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. But that's where they all started and ultimately moved to Milwaukee first and then to Atlanta. And the rest, as they say, is history. But Atlanta really was a front-runner, as you mentioned, teams trying to, cities rather, in this case being Atlanta. Now we see it all the time, especially in the Sunbelt cities, where, you know, they want their sports teams there, you know, where they'll be. Arizona and now Texas, of course, and Kansas now. Kansas, not in the Sunbelt, necessarily. But Kansas is looking to lure the Chiefs and the Kansas City Royals. Yeah, very much so. I mean, that would be quite the thing of the Chiefs end up in Kansas. Yeah. But this situation, I mean, in that state, that's happened a bunch of times. The Cardinals almost moved to Illinois at one point. They almost moved across the, across the river over there because of a stadium offer. So it's, it's certainly, certainly in that state in Missouri, that's familiar. And it's familiar throughout the country. I mean, the idea decades ago of the giants being in New Jersey must have been a remarkable thing. Yeah, right, right. And they're there to this day and probably will be forever unless they build a stadium somewhere in New York City, which I think is probably highly unlikely. I think the real estate is too expensive. Yeah, I think so. I think that would be the major stumbling block. Clayton Pruder is with us in studio. Are you a native of Vermont? Native of Vermont born in Middlebury grew up in Burlington. So you grew up in Burlington, which one time was the home of the oldest professional baseball field in the country, Centennial Field in Burlington. Oh, spent, spent many a days there. I mean, they still have a college league team there. Right. The demise of the New York Pen League was just devastating. Just such a wonderful treasure every summer in the Northeast. Tell me about it. I, I did any number of games at Centennial Field over the years when I was doing a little spinners baseball and, and really it was devastating to see what happened to minor league baseball really in general. I mean, it's still with us, but certainly not in all the, you know, relatively small cities and towns that it once was. Very much so in Burlington, the continuity of support for the lake monsters who are the New York Pen League team, but are now part of the New England College Baseball League team. They get 3,000 people a night still. People just like going and having a night out. It's a great family atmosphere. They have all kinds of great gimmicks in between inning things. It's, it's still a fun place to go, but it's sad that's no longer. Yeah, no longer affiliated. I remember the Vermont expos, you know, for, for many years up there, and then ultimately the lake monsters, as you mentioned, claking critters with us, a award-winning author in studio here today. It doesn't happen very often, Clayton. We have an award-winning author. In studio, his books are Loserville, how professional sports remade Atlanta, and how Atlanta remade professional sports, and Boston ball, Rick Petino, Jim Calhoun, Gary Williams, and the forgotten cradle of basketball coaches in a city not generally renowned for college basketball, but we'll, we'll talk about that one and other things to come right here. Kale & Company Live, WKXL, NH chockradio.com. We are presented by Northeast Delta Dental, and we'll be right back. Welcome back, Kale & Company Live, here on WKXL, NH chockradio.com. Clayton Truder in studio today, getting his first sip of Andrew Gibson's delicious coffee. There he is with oat milk. You put cinnamon in that. I, I, I take it black, so I don't know even what it's like with oat milk, but at any rate, Clayton is here, accomplished author, award-winning author, and Clayton, tell us a little bit about yourself here. You upbringing, I know you dedicated your second book to your mom who taught you everything you know about sports, right? That is certainly the case. I grew up in Burlington, Vermont, went to Catholic schools. I went to the University of Vermont, played sports in high school, was a very average performer at best. I was very interested in sports, very interested in history. After kicking around for a couple of years after college, I ended up going to graduate school at Boston College, and that's what ends up leading to Loserville. I'm an American historian by training. History of American cities is particularly my interest. I taught at Northeastern for a while, and I, I teach at Norwich University now, and on the side, I write some books, and I also do a fair amount of freelance writing for publications like the hockey news, Next Avenue PBS, which is a PBS website aimed at senior citizens. I wrote for American History magazine for quite a bit until they, they went out of business earlier this year. So I write in a lot of different venues. I guess you do and do it very, very well. And then folks, these, these books, the, the two books that we have mentioned so far are so thoroughly researched. I mean, how, from start to finish, how long does it take to, to put a book together like either Loserville or, or Boston Ball? These two were very different. I'll hopefully write a third book too, and I'll see how the process goes compared to these. Loserville was a 10-year process. Boston Ball was a one-year process. Really? Well, Loserville was a lot more archivally based. There's a lot more city records on financing and stuff that goes into this, a lot of kind of behind the scenes kind of stuff that was only available at library archives, things that were not necessarily published. And, and it's also, when I was in graduate school, I'm writing that. So I was, so I'm taking my graduate courses, I'm teaching, and I'm also writing that at the same time. In the case of Boston Ball, that's my pandemic book. I turned in Loserville, I think, in May 2020, and I felt like, okay, there's this kind of gap in time. There's, there's not a lot going on in the world. I should take advantage of this. So I had another idea for a book. I pitched it to my agent. He got in touch with a publisher. We got a book deal from the same publisher of the University of Nebraska Press, and then I just started cranking out interviews. I went and got the newspapers of the time period, read what was available in the globe and the Herald, the newspapers from the different colleges themselves, which were a great resource, just seeing what the perception on campus at Northeastern BU and BC was. And very great thanks to their librarians for helping me get a hold of all that stuff during the pandemic. But it was really built around personal interviews as much as anything. I did roughly 100 interviews in a three month period. And one thing that was helpful is a lot of this is because of LinkedIn, because most of these guys are professionals in some respect or another. They're largely in their late 50s or early 60s, certainly still in the swing of their careers. Probably half the guys I got in touch with through LinkedIn, just messaging them and telling them who I was and what I wanted to do. And then once I was in touch with one person, I ended up getting, getting a part of their networks and the degree to which these guys were still connected was remarkable too. I mean, I think particularly the BU team struck me. I got in touch with one of their players, a guy named Jay Twyman, who was the son of Jack Twyman, who's in the NBA Hall of Fame. He was a great player. Jay Twyman was a great player BU in the early 80s under Rick Petino. He just added me to a text chain with like 10 of his former teammates. So I ended up interviewing all of those guys and rapid succession just because I had Jay giving me sort of an introduction to all of his teammates. Wow, that is something. So it kind of snowballed, you know, from LinkedIn. So it can be a very handy tool as you learned and got in touch with 100 people in three months, 100 interviews in three months, which is amazing and then putting it all together in the course of a year. I mean, that is, that's pretty rapid fire. Well, I had an opening in time where there wasn't as much going on in my schedule. So I just, I figured I might as well take advantage of it. So that's when I think of that time, I think of this book, which, you know, eventually came out in last November. Yeah. And it's, if you're a basketball fan, or, you know, even if you're necessarily not a huge basketball fan, great, some great human interest stories in there as well, from Boston, which is really not renowned for its college basketball. I mean, if you listen to their sports talk shows, you very rarely hear any college basketball talked about in Boston, even back in those days, a whole lot, you know, was not discussed because it's pretty much a professional city, professional sports city. And they really don't concentrate too much. I mean, I remember Boston College was big in, in the news when, when Flootie was there. And they talk about that on the radio quite a bit. But beyond that, I remember some of the great big East matchups between Boston College and Georgetown when Patrick Ewing was there. But he was a Cambridge guy. So that was one of the, you know, lures there that Patrick Ewing was playing against B.C. because everybody was hoping that he would go to B.C. But he wound up in Georgetown. But really, you know, B.U., nobody talked about B.U. basketball virtually ever, or Northeastern, until they made their great run under the great Jim Calhoun. Very, very much so. I mean, the attendance at these games, particularly for B.U. for the, to the greatest extent, Northeastern to some extent. B.C. is a little bit different. B.U. would be drawing two or 300 people to their games when Rick Petino is coaching there, coaching a team that ends up in the NCAA tournament. It's like he has a garage band or something in this time period. He's handing out flyers on Commonwealth Avenue, trying to get kids to come to the games. Literally, right? Literally. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, but of course he wasn't really Rick Petino as we know him. No, yeah. Personality wise, very much so. He was a very cocky young man, very assured of his place in the world. I mean, for people who are familiar with the B.U. campus, Deckard Towers, are the big, big dormitories right in the middle of their campus on Commonwealth Avenue. The players would just go door to door in the dormitories, knocking on doors saying, "I hope you'll come to our game." You know, it was a very different situation. That is really something. Now, players going door to door. And of course, that's right in the vicinity of Old Braves Field as well, where the Boston Braves used to play until they moved to Milwaukee. But at any rate, college basketball has never been huge in Boston or in Massachusetts. Really, I mean, UMass made a few runs in their time under John Calipari. But in Massachusetts, there's not been a college basketball hotbed. But when you think of those three coaches, Rick Petino, Jim Calhoun, Gary Williams, all you can think about really is success that they had. Very much so. And that's the beginning point of the book. I mean, I'm a college basketball junkie. Wherever I am, I would pursue it. So when I lived in Boston, I would go to a tough game. I'd go to a Northeastern game. I'd go to a BU game. I didn't care. You were a junkie, yeah. It occurred to me at one point, though, that you had these three coaches who were there roughly at the same time with Calhoun at Northeastern, Petino at BU, and Gary Williams at Boston College, all of whom go on to Hall of Fame careers. But nobody had really ever written about it before. So I figured there was a little bit of an opening for a book on that subject. Hey, I wonder why. Why do you think that was that it took you Clayton Fruder to do this? I think I have a taste for stories where something that seems a little bit offbeat ends up having a broader influence. Like, I think the Atlanta book is sort of a similar thing. It's seemingly kind of a niche thing, but the more you peel away from it, it proves that it had a much bigger impact with the Braves and Atlanta broadly creating the method that if you're San Diego or Tampa or Phoenix, the model you're using to become a pro sports town. I think in some ways this is similar to college basketball by the 1970s to become very big man dominated, that if you want to have a successful program, that's the way you're going to do it. These guys are all up and comers in these kind of not very significant programs who end up recruiting a lot of smaller, quicker guys, playing small ball, playing aggressive defensively, driving to the rim, playing pressure defense. That this becomes an alternative path to the top of college basketball, and Boston became their collective laboratory. And that is why it's called Boston Ball, right? Well, that Michael Madden coined the phrase "globe columnist" as the guy who came up with the phrase many, many years ago. Yeah, and the terrific book, if you have not read it as yet, and it's still out there, right? It's on Amazon and where you can buy your books. Yeah, all your fine online retailers will have a copy of it. Yeah. And it is a terrific read. And you know, you can be just a, you know, a casual college basketball fan and enjoy it. But if you really enjoy college basketball, you'll really appreciate all the anecdotes, all the great stories that are involved, all the names that you bring back. I saw him mention in the book of Skip Barry, a former national high school player, yeah, who is mentioned in the book when he played at Boston College under Gary Williams. Yeah, there are several New Hampshire players who are in the book. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, no doubt about that. And Clayton Pruder is in our studio today. And we're so glad to have him here and have a chance to chat with him, find out a little bit more about his books and about his life. He's a renaissance man, I would, I would have to say. And Clayton will be here for the remainder of the program. Good luck to join in. You can give us a call 603-224-1450. 603-224-1450. Clayton Pruder in studio will be right back. We are presented by Northeast Delta Dental. Kale and Company Live here on WKXL, at agetalkradio.com. Pardon my voice this morning. Clayton Pruder's voice is good. So that makes one of us here in studio. And Andrew Gibson is trying to take care of us with his coffee and brought me some lozangers. So thank you, Andrew. I appreciate that, our executive producer. And Clayton made it all the way down here, two and a half hour drive from Vermont getting up early in the morning to come down here and be on the show. And I really appreciate it. First time we've met in person, we've communicated with emails and what have you, and he's been on my show a couple of times. And author of two great books, and if you're just tuning in, Lucerville was his first one, how professional sports remade Atlanta, and how Atlanta remade professional sports. One of the best baseball books of 2022 and Boston ball, Rick Petino, Jim Calhoun, Gary Williams, and the forgotten cradle of basketball coaches. Which was also an award winner if I'm not mistaken. It's some different New England awards I gather. It's been, it's won. You're a very modest guy, but he is an award-winning author. And so how difficult was it? I know you talked about LinkedIn and doing the 100 interviews in less than a year for Boston ball. But how difficult was it to land? Petino Calhoun and Williams? Well, I wasn't able to talk to Rick Petino. I had many people try to get in touch with him on my behalf. He was in the midst of taking his new job at St. John's at the time. So I think he was a bit occupied. And I think he's also a little, I guess, gun shy in terms of the press it seems like from some previous stops in his career. The University of Maryland, I got in contact with them one, I think, on like a Tuesday and on Wednesday, I was talking to Gary Williams. And he had a lot of time for me. He was great to chat with. I mean, he's a very intense guy. I mean, I mean, that came through certainly with him coaching, stomping up and down the court and sweating through his jacket, you know, right before the game's even started. But he was seems like a very decent guy and was great to talk to and had a fantastic memory about his players. I was amazed. He would remember what guys majored in 40 years ago. Oh, he was a communications major. Oh, he was a business administration major. So it was clear that he was directly connected with these guys' lives. That was very much true with Jim Calhoun too, which was a little bit different kind of a conversation. I think Calhoun and I spoke for two and a half to three hours and it felt more like sitting down to your butt next to your buddy at the Elks Club bar or something. He very much has the gift of Gabb and made you feel very welcome very quickly. Well, that is terrific. And you can see that. And, you know, I mean, he might be a little rough around the edges, but you know, always a great storyteller, I'm sure. And it comes through in the book. No question about that. And former coach at Northeastern obviously went on to tremendous success at UConn. And then actually took another college coaching job at what a Division III school in Connecticut, right? Yeah. University of St. Joseph's kind of put them on the map and they certainly became a power in Division III. And I think in a broader sense, it helped give the school a sense of momentum too. I mean, so many colleges have been closing in recent years and a small Catholic college like that is the very kind of school that has been closing. So I think it certainly helped boost them up quite a bit. So he gave you plenty of time. Jim Gallo. Oh, no. He said, take as long as you need any question you got. And he was happy to answer everything. That is terrific. And the book is a great read. Now, you talked to a hundred people or thereabouts in the course of a year. And you didn't talk to Rick Petino. Was there anybody else that you wanted to get that you did not? I'm trying to think who else I would have I would have loved to talk to Tom Davis, who is the predecessor to Gary Williams at BC. I think he's a bit media shy and hasn't given a lot of interviews since he retired from Iowa to to what I've what I've seen. I would have loved to have talked to Perry Moss from from Northeastern who's a great player there in the early 80s. Terry Moss is the one that's going on. Exactly. For whatever reason, we never were able to get in touch. Trying to think, well, Dana Barrows, I would have loved to have talked with. I didn't get a chance to talk with him either. But you did talk to over a hundred people for that book and just a terrific read. And so tell us what you're working on now. I do a lot of freelance writing typically feature stories for magazines. I recently did an interview and wrote a review of a book about Ben Franklin, a new book called Ben and Me by a guy named Eric Wiener for Next Avenue PBS, which is really a fascinating account of Franklin, particularly as an older man, just coming to terms with that is really what it's about. I mean, next Avenue PBS, which I write forward tends to be focused on issues of for 50 plus adults. And that's very much the issue, the focus of that book. I recently did a piece for the hockey news about about a guy named George Smith from Winnipeg, Manitoba, who decided to make his own trophy for the 1981 Canada Cup, which was an international tournament among the major hockey powers in the world. The Canadians had played the Soviets in the finals and the Soviets had crushed them in Montreal eight to one. Alan Eaglesen, the notorious head of the players union, decided they're not going to bring that trophy back with them. So he had the Montreal police go to the Soviet team's bags, confiscate the trophy from them. George Smith is just truck driver Winnipeg who decides this is poor sportsmanship. So he started a campaign to raise money to make a trophy to give from the people of Canada to the Soviet team. And eventually he ended up doing it and they brought him to Russia. It's this very elaborate wild story of just this kind of random guy in Winnipeg. He ends up raising $32,000 and becomes like this international sports figure for a very brief moment in time in the early 80s. That is really something. So Dr. Truder, PhD in US history from Boston College, what came first? Your love of sports or your love of history? I feel like they were roughly simultaneous. Probably history first. My grandfather was a lieutenant colonel in the US Army and he's buried at Arlington. And he died when I was five years old. And on the trip, we drove down from Vermont to his funeral. And I remember on the trip back, we stopped at a couple of battlefields. We stopped at Fredericksburg. We stopped at Gettysburg. And I got interested in the Civil War was my early my first love in terms of history. That got me interested in that. And then right around then is when the 86 Red Sox are happening. So the two interests end up kind of kind of marrying together very quickly. Inter-twining, huh? Because there were a lot of similarities between the, you know, passion for history and a passion for sports, really. And you certainly have that no question about that. And so I want to hear a little bit more about your mother, how she influenced you. And because actually in my family, my mother was a bigger sports fan than my father. And she was a great lover of Ted Williams. And she, she went to many Red Sox games when, when Ted was playing for the Red Sox. And I think she was the one that gave me my love for baseball. Well, your mom and my mom sound very similar. My mom was the big sports fan and my family too. From the time I'm little, that's why I'm watching games with her brothers are both very good high school athletes. And she, when she was like a little girl, kept score, they're literally games and stuff. And from that on, she's a huge, she's a huge Red Sox fan and Bruins and Celtics. She's actually a Jets fan. She, she just loved Joe Nameth as a teenager. So that became, I've actually, those are my four teams as well. I followed her with that. And every, you know, fall weekend, I'm watching, I'm a Notre Dame football fan. We watch every Notre Dame game together. We watch every Jets game together. So I very much so this is the person who I love the most watching sports with is my mom. So that's why I dedicated the book to her. Say Mike Murphy, my good friend Mike Murphy from UNH. He's also a fan of the New York Jets. There is another one in New England, Mike, right? He's right here, right here in the studio. You may be listening. But, and anyway, so never, never a Patriots fan. Well, when I was very little, I kind of like, I like their colors. I love the logo of the, the, the center with the Minuteman uniform. Yeah. Very, very quickly, I had, I had a lot of guidance towards being a Jets fan and ended up, ended up as one. And, well, you, you weren't around when I don't believe when the Jets won, they're super bowl. But, you know, they're still looking for another one. I think it'll be a while. Yeah, it could be. We'll see what happens with Mr. Rogers this year. But at an rate, it was, I obviously, your mother was a great influence. And do you remember your first trip to Fenway Park? Does it stand out to you at all? May 13th, 1989. Oh, you do remember? California Angels. Well, I'm very, I've kept every ticket from every game I've ever attended. And I have them in a book. I just can go. And, and another thing I did during the pandemic, I went down and I found what happened. And then I wrote that, you know, I had like a little, little write up in this book that I have of all the games. So I can go look through them. Yeah. Mike Witt, which pitching for the California Angels, he threw a two hitter against the Red Sox. Marty Barrett had a double for the Red Sox that day. They lost three to nothing. And, and we got my brother and I got Lou Gorman's autograph that day. We stood near where the players used to drive in. And none of the players showed up at Lou Gorman when he was she, I'm dead. So I had a ball there. Lou signed our ball. That is something. So yes, you do remember your first game at Fenway Park. Of course, you, you grew up with color TV all your life. You know, I, I grew up with, with black and white back in the, the early to the mid 60s. And I think my first game at Fenway was in 1963. And I had never seen a game on color TV. Very few people had them at that time. So then you walk out from that ramp and see all the green. I mean, it's really amazing. Absolutely quite a sight to see. Clayton Truder is with us in studio. We'll have more with Clayton coming up after these words. Kale and company live here. Yes, it is me. It is me, folks. I might sound a little different, but it is me. Right here on WKXL, nhchogradio.com. We are presented by Northeast Delta Dental. And we will be right back. [Music] Kale and Company live here on WKXL and hchogradio.com. Clayton Truder is in the house. Dr. Clayton Truder. And a couple of books that he has written are Terrific Loserville. How professional sports remade Atlanta and how Atlanta remade professional sports. And Boston ball, Rick Petino, Jim Calhoun, Gary Williams and the forgotten cradle of basketball coaches. Two outstanding books working on one now talking about, well, it's Matthew's arena, but it used to be the Boston arena where the Bruins played at one time. Yeah, I'm working on a story about Matthew's arena. It was the Boston arena starting in 1917. It's the oldest hockey arena in, I think, I don't know if it's North America, but at least in the United States. And it's the oldest college basketball gym as well that's still in operation. A couple of weeks ago, Northeastern announced they were going to be moving forward with building a new venue. I mean, Matthew's has some significant structural damage, but it's a remarkably historically significant building. Not only with Northeastern hockey having played there, but BU, Boston College, the beanpot was there. The Boston Bruins first ever game is at Matthews. It was the Boston arena at the time. The first time the Parquet floor was ever laid down in Walter Brown on the Celtics was at Boston arena. Alan Freed, the founder of the guy who coins rock and roll has one of his first rock and roll concerts outside of Cleveland there. Many presidents spoke there. It's a venue with a remarkable history. And hopefully they find a way to preserve aspects of the building moving forward. Well, I don't know if my good friend and author John Leahy found out about that and about the fact that they're going to be ultimately evacuating Matthews Arena and going elsewhere. But he always says that that is his favorite place to call a college hockey game. As a fan, it's my favorite too. It's like walking into an old movie palace. I think it's just a remarkable venue. Yeah, it really and truly is. And I remember my dad taking me there in the 60s to watch BU play and their great player back at that time was Herb Wachabayashi, a native of Japan. And I think he scored five or six goals one night in a BU route of Dartmouth at the old Boston arena. And you know, the New England whalers in their first couple of years played some of their games at the Boston Arena when the Boston Garden was full. Yes, I'd read that that great hit Gary. I can't think of the guy's name who wrote that great history of the WHA talks about that a bit. Yeah, and they played most of their games at the Garden. But at one time, there were four teams that occupied the Garden three hockey teams, the Bruins, the Boston Braves of the American Hockey League, and the New England whalers of the WHA. And of course, the Celtics, so they had a busy schedule at the Garden back in those days. Well, Gary Williams, I mean, in terms of Boston ball, talked about not liking when BC got scheduled to play at the Garden, because BC had a had the Roberts Center on campus, which was kind of like the size of a bowling alley. It was like a 4,000 seed venue. They would, for their big games, particularly against Georgetown and St. John's, among others, they would be asked, they would be told they had to play at Boston Garden as part of the league's mandate to play at the big buildings in the Northeast. He said he hated it. They'd get in there for like an hour before the game, that was it. I mean, the Celtics had trouble getting in there. They had to be at a Hellenic College all the time. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, the Bruins own the building, ran the building, and you're absolutely right. And, you know, when you only play there occasionally or never get an opportunity to practice there, you don't know where the wet spots on the floor are either. And there inevitably are. Whenever there's hockey, whenever the hockey, the ice is down, there's inevitably wet spots on the court. Celtics always knew where they were, but the opponents did not. But yeah, and I remember some of those classic match-ups at the Garden, though. And despite the fact that, you know, maybe the coaches weren't all that crazy about playing there, you know, there were some great match-ups over the years between BC and Georgetown and others. But mostly Georgetown and Patrick Ewing was there. Oh, very much so. I mean, when Georgetown came to town, half of Cambridge came over to cheer for Patrick Ewing in those games. Because Yukon wasn't Yukon at that point. No, no, certainly not. I mean, BC, many of their great players from this era are Connecticut guys, John Bagley and Jay Murphy, among others. Michael Adams, they're a bunch of guys from Connecticut who a generation later would have almost certainly been Yukon guys. Yeah. And I mean, you know, Jim Calhoun certainly turned that program around and made it what we know it is today with a number of NCAA championships. And it was his doing going from the Northeastern Huskies to the Yukon Huskies. Very much he takes the model he had at Northeastern recruiting the same kind of guys. Lots of these six, five, six, six, very powerful quick guys who may have been under recruited by other schools are the guys he ends up bringing the stores. And he also very much cultivates a chip on their shoulder too among the guys who go to Yukon that Georgetown didn't recruit you. Villanova didn't recruit you. Syracuse didn't recruit you. Come here and prove them wrong. When he was at Northeastern, he had the same mentality. All these other schools overlooked you. Let's prove them wrong. And very much what happened with Yukon creating a dynasty is much like the mid major dynasty he created at Northeastern. And I think I recall the first time that Yukon was ever in the top 20 was in either the late 70s or early 80s. And when the polls were announced on that Monday saying that Yukon was in the top 20 at it with a very good friend of mine who was a huge Yukon fan. And we drove over to Durham to see UNH host Yukon the first Monday that they were in the top 20 ever. And Yukon won that game. It was a very close game over UNH in front of about maybe 400 people, at best. But I remember when Yukon first went into the and I think it was prior to Jim Calhoun if I'm not mistaken. Yes, he comes in in 86. UNH, I mean, all of the coaches I spoke with spoke so highly of Jerry Friel, who coached there for many years. Absolutely. Even if he didn't have the same talent level as his opposition, he was a great in-game coach. And he was one of the most respected coaches in the region. He was around for a long time at UNH and had some competitive teams. But UNH still has never gone to the NCAA tournament. They've come close. A couple of times have come close. So can I ask you, I mean, it's kind of a simple question, but one that people ask me and I know what I respond. What is your favorite sport? If there was one, you know, one sport above the other. Oh, football is my favorite sport by far. No question. Yeah. Really? I mean, I can go to any high school game anywhere and just be enthralled by it, pick one team, cheer my head off for them. I'll do that on occasion. If I have nothing going on on Friday night, I'll go to a random high school game, pick a team and then just be their most vociferous fan. I just love the strategic aspects of football and it's, I mean, I probably have basketball second, baseball third, hockey fourth, but I like them all very much, but football is definitely number one for me. So is there a football book in the works someday? I think logistically a tough thing about football is there's so many guys in the team. So getting a real portrait of the guys, I'm going to have to interview a lot of people to do a football book. I'd love to do a football book at some point if the right story for me comes up. Yeah. And I'm sure it would be as terrific as the first two books you have written. And tell us about your writing on a daily basis or a weekly basis. Well, I tend to be an early morning kind of writer. I tend to get to work on whatever my project is at the time. And then also do whatever I have to do during the day, work-wise, and then come back to it in the evening. So I tend to have these two distinct sessions most most days. The morning tends to be more creative. The evening tends to be more editing, administrative stuff with writing. So you're an early morning guy? Very much. I'm a up at five o'clock kind of guy. Every morning. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Wow. That is something. And so where can people read you if they wanted to read Clayton Fruita right now? Where would they go? Well, you can go check out the books on Amazon.com, Boston Ball and Loserville. I have a website ClaytonTruder.com as well, where I compile a lot of my articles for different publications. So I mean, there are dozens of stories there as well as different times of different media appearances I've had over the years. Yeah. So what do you cover mostly on a regular basis? It really varies. I mean, I do a lot of pitching just feature stories. I'll also, I haven't mentioned I write about music sometimes. I write about old films. I'm working on a story right now about comedians who lived in Palm Springs, Florida for the Palm Springs magazine. Wow. You know, people like people like Jack Benny and Eddie Canto are people from way back. Wow. That is something. So what are you writing about musically? I've written pieces about different, different, different figures in music history, typically for regional magazines. I recently did a story for Sarasota magazine in Florida about a guy named Bones Howe whose name may not exactly be on the tip of everyone's tongue. But he's one of the major producers in the history of popular music, particularly the Southern California artists in the mid 1960s. He produces the turtles. He's the engineer on the mamas and the papa's records. He discovers the fifth dimension. He's a major figure in the history of record production and a very little known figure. But I hopefully I brought my favorite groups right there. You mentioned, especially the fifth dimension, but that is really something. You are a true Renaissance man. Thank you. No doubt about that. So when did you know that you wanted to do this as a living to write? I kind of always did. I kind of always enjoyed writing and just fooling around with that from the time I'm very young. Like when I was like in, you know, fourth grade, I'd like make my own like sports section, like myself kind of thing. I would just like write it up and then my mom would read it and be nice about it. But I've always kind of been interested in writing. I used to put out a weekly newsletter about the Celtics when I was like 13 or something like that. Never really went anywhere. It didn't lead to a writing career for me, but it was fun at the time. I used to write for my high school teams because you said you were an average athlete. At best. Yeah, I wasn't even that, you know, so you had me beaten there. No doubt about that. Clayton Pruder. I want to thank you very much for making me long drive from Vermont, but make me appear a morning guy. So that's terrific and I'm glad you could be here. It's a lot of fun. Oh, what a pleasure. Thanks for having me on. Well, my pleasure indeed and thanks to you for listening on WKXL and hchockradio.com. And don't forget if you missed any of this or want to hear it again. We will play it for you at seven o'clock tonight. Right here on WKXL and hchockradio presented by Northeast Delta Dental. And remember folks, as always, to look on the bright side of life and have a great Tuesday, everyone. [Music]