My Remarkable Journey (31 page)

I never forgot that. Could I live the way the Swami suggested? No.

I’ve done so many interviews about money—with Suze Orman, with Treasury secretaries. I do know that money makes money, and
that the only rich people are the ones who don’t have to go to work. That means, even if you’re a retired bus driver, you’re
rich.

One of the things that I miss is talking about sports on the air. I used to be able to do it on my Mutual radio show a lot.
We don’t do it much on CNN. It’s so fun. The Yankees stink. The Dodgers are good. Tampa Bay is lucky. Doesn’t matter what
you think about sports. Because sports are play and you can have any opinion on a player. “I think Rafael Furcal has a better
arm than Derek Jeter! Pete Rose belongs in the Hall of Fame!” Screw it, what can they do to me?

There’s that great story about when the columnist Dick Young wrote a column about a player and really blasted him. He called
him the worst example of a human being that’s ever walked the earth. Then he ran into him the next night and said, “Don’t
take it personally.”

Tommy Lasorda of the Dodgers told me a story. He was twelve years old. He was waiting outside the Polo Grounds with his father.

A player came out.

“Can I have your autograph?” Lasorda asked.

“Screw you, kid.”

Eight years later, Lasorda was pitching in the minor leagues and this same guy was on the way down.

First time up, Lasorda hit him in the shoulder.

Next time up, he hit him in the leg.

Next time the guy came to the plate, the guy yelled, “Hey, kid!”

Lasorda yelled, “Duck!”

Lasorda met him afterward and said, “Give autographs.”

The day Bob Woolf died was one of the saddest days of my life. His daughter called, and I was feeling frisky when I picked
up the phone.

“Hey, how are you?”

She said, “Daddy died.” And I just slumped on my bed.

Wendy, my producer, knew how upset I was and wanted to send some people over from CNN. I’m really not a funeral person, but
I was going to be delivering one of the eulogies. I was looking for a way to get some humor into my speech. Self-deprecating
humor is always welcome.

It was a great funeral. Bob was so popular that they had speakers outside the synagogue so people could listen out in the
street. Bob was Larry Bird’s agent. But Larry was too shy to speak. I was the last speaker.

I got up and said, “When the phone rang in Bob’s office and Larry Bird was on one line and I was on the other, who do you
think got put on hold?”

Of course, it’s easier to be funny when you don’t like the person being buried.

“Wow, what a crowd,” someone remarked at the funeral of the entertainer Al Jolson. I think it was the commedian George Jessel
who responded: “Yeah, they came to make sure.”

And when a massive throng showed up at the funeral of Hollywood impresario Harry Cohen, it might have been Jessel who said:
“Give the people what they want and they’ll turn out every time.”

But my favorite joke about laughter and funerals is the one in which the rabbi finishes his eulogy and asks if anyone would
like to come forward to say a few kind words.

Nobody in the crowd stands.

“Doesn’t anyone want to say something?” the rabbi asks.

Nobody even stirs.

“Isn’t there something nice,” the rabbi says, “that can be said about the deceased?”

One guy stands up and says, “His brother was worse!”

After more than twenty years of doing the show on CNN, we had a guest walk off in 2007. It was the doctor who performed plastic
surgery on Kanye West’s mother the day before she died. Dr. Jan Adams. Adams agreed to do the interview. But the West family
wrote him a letter asking him not to go on. When the surgeon arrived in the studio, his attorney advised him not to speak.

So he came on and said he would honor the family’s wishes and not say anything. Then he removed his microphone and walked
off. I didn’t get upset. I go nuts if someone in my family is late for dinner. But a situation like that doesn’t faze me even
though it’s live on national television. I just said, Okay, we’ll take a commercial break.

When we came back, we had a panel assembled and we went on with the show.

The other time someone walked off was during radio days. I’ll never forget the woman’s name. Micki Dahne. She’s a psychic.
Before we went on the air, I said to her, “Explain something to me. You say you can tap into the mind of Jackie Kennedy. We’re
in Miami. She’s in Hyannis Port. There are about forty million women along the way. How do you get to Jackie without bumping
into the other forty million?”

She wouldn’t answer me when I asked her, “How do you do what you do?”

Finally, she walked out.

I found Putin very genial. I was most surprised when the subject turned to his favorite place to visit. He was in New York.
I asked him if he liked New York. He said it was all right, but not his favorite place.

So I said, “What is your favorite place?”

He said, “Jerusalem.” That shocked me. He used to go there when he was with the KGB.

He surprised me more than once. Remember when that Russian submarine went down? “What’s happened with the submarine?” I asked.

I expected a long, detailed answer. He could be an elaborative guy.

He said, “It sank.”

That was it. It sank.

“OK, it sank.”

They’ve got the Larry King matzo brie on page eight of the menu. But when I walk into Nate ’n Al I never get the feeling that
I’m “Larry King.” When I sit down, I’m just a regular guy with my friends.

There’s Sid. Sid has more friends than anyone I’ve ever met. He worries about me. If I’ve got a problem, he loses sleep. Sid’s
the guy who says no for me, because I can’t. The thing about Sid is, he can lose every bet on football Sunday—except one.
The one to me. And you should see the smile on his face when I pay up. As if all those other losses didn’t matter.

Sid has known Asher since they were in kindergarten. Even now that he’s got arthritis, Asher looks at the good side. He’s
glad that he can tell us when it’s going to rain two days in advance. Asher’s got a bad back now, too, so he doesn’t come
every day. When he came in on Election Day, he got an ovation.

The conversation is a potpourri. Within a half hour we might discuss asthma inhalers, the origin of the Goose Step, Sarah
Palin, Bill Maher’s new movie, the sexual benefits of vitamin E, Willie Sutton’s bank robberies, who’s pitching for the Dodgers,
the steaks at Dan Tana’s, gun laws, and how girls in Las Vegas can steal your chips. Between all of us, we have an answer
to any problem. It may be wrong, but it’ll be an answer.

We’re also on the lookout for Irwinisms. Irwinisms are things that nobody else in the world but Irwin would ever say. Irwin
is an incredibly successful businessman who started out in pharmacy, but he’ll say things like, “Hey, Larry, is CNN going
to cover the inauguration?” After Rod Blagojevich, the Illinois governor, got caught trying to auction off Barack Obama’s
vacant Senate seat, Irwin said, “Do you think this will harm the governor’s political career?”

Which always gives George the opening to joke, “And they let
you
fill prescriptions?”

George used to produce the show
Laugh In
. He’s a Democrat who watches Fox. I can’t believe it. “Just because I watch a traffic accident,” he’ll say, “doesn’t mean
I like it.”

It’s good to have Dwight, a solid Republican, nearby for balance. Dwight bought a house in move-in condition. After “a little”
touch-up work, twelve months later, he’s still waiting to move in.

Then you’ve got Budd. Budd never says anything. He keeps his hand on his chin. Never eats.

One thing’s for sure. If Gloria the waitress brought burnt toast, Budd would never yell. If we get Vicki, the great thing
is she tells us what not to eat.

Sometimes Sam comes by. Sam has taken the Dale Carnegie class ten times, watched
Tuesdays with Morrie
fifty times, and seen
Dances with Wolves
sixty times. Sam sits by Bruce, the music promoter. Bruce met a beautiful Brazilian pentathlete about a foot taller than
him and thirty years younger. Bruce had a huge beard and hair sprouting all over the place when he took her to the judge to
get married. The judge looked at her, at him, at her, at him, then asked her, “Are you doing this of your own free will or
are you drugged?” They’re going on twenty-five years of marriage.

Meanwhile, Michael Viner is eating two breakfasts every morning. Turkey sandwiches with baked beans? That’s a bit of an exaggeration.
But who ever heard of chicken soup for breakfast?

Sometimes Michael brings his daughter in. Taylor Rose. Once, Taylor Rose ordered the chicken soup just like her dad, then
she said she wouldn’t eat it.

“Haven’t you heard of Methuselah?” I asked her. “He lived nine hundred years. That’s because every day for nine hundred years,
he had the chicken soup. The first day he didn’t, he dropped dead.”

“Did you know Methuselah?” she asked.

“Of course!” I said. “He used to sit at this table and have breakfast every morning.”

That’s a chapter.

W
AS I REALLY SEVENTY
when I went to see my son Chance’s first T-ball game? Nobody on either team knew how to play. Chance came up to the plate
and whacked the ball to center field. Then he ran after the ball. Not to first base—straight to center field. All the kids
playing the field ran after Chance. All the kids on Chance’s team ran after all the kids playing the field. Everybody jumped
into a pile trying to get the ball. I was laughing my head off.

I started taking Chance and Cannon to Dodgers games. First game, they didn’t know what was going on, and they fell asleep
by the fourth inning. The next game, they stayed awake until the fifth. After a while, I noticed them starting to ask, “Why
four balls and three strikes?”

Fred Wilpon offered to have Chance throw out the first pitch at a Mets-Dodgers game. Fred is the owner of the Mets and we
go back to high school together. Shawn told Chance it was a big honor and that he had to wear a Mets shirt when he went to
the mound.

Chance said, “I will not wear a Mets shirt. I’m a Dodger through and through.”

She said, “You have to.”

“I won’t.”

“You must.”

“I
won’t.
”

Finally, Shawn got him into the shirt. Chance immediately marched over to the Dodgers dugout and told every Dodger, “My mother
made me wear this.”

Then he went out to the mound. I stood behind him and watched him throw a perfect strike. The entire Dodgers dugout applauded.
The Dodgers second baseman Jeff Kent got him a packet of sunflower seeds so he could spit like the ballplayers.

The next thing I knew, Cannon was hitting three home runs over the fence in a single game. A guy watching said he’d never
seen it before in coach-pitch. I watched that little body run around the bases. Where did that come from? I never had any
power as a hitter.

I gave them the gift of baseball, and they gave me the gift of youth. Never could I have guessed that some of the biggest
thrills of my life were ahead of me. Taking them through the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, seeing them hold Jackie Robinson’s
first uniform—they had to wear white gloves. Going to spring training at Dodgers camp. In spring training, you can sit in
the cafeteria with the ballplayers. You can mingle. There was once a day when I couldn’t afford a ticket into Ebbets Field.
Now I was watching Tommy Lasorda carry out a birthday cake to Chance and his brother and their friends. There’s only one way
I know to describe the feeling. It’s a Jewish idiom—
kvelling.
You get a kick out of someone else’s thrill. It’s for them, but it’s an extension of you.

It’s the best kind of accomplishment. As Brad Pitt told me during a recent show, there’s nothing better than being a father.
Whatever’s in second place is way behind.

I’m such a better father now that I’m a great-grandfather. There’s no comparison. But the great joy my children bring me also
brings me pain. I feel it when they trip. And I feel it when I trip. That’s because I know that Chance is just the age I was
when my father died, and Cannon is only a year younger.

I once took Chance back to Brooklyn, to show him the apartment I grew up in. We stopped where Ebbets Field used to be. The
neighborhood had become housing projects. A drugstore across the street had bars over its windows. We sat on the curb and
I sang him my favorite song.

And there used to be a ballpark

Where the field was warm and green

And the people played their crazy game

With a joy I’d never seen

And the air was such a wonder

From the hot dogs and the beer

Yes, there used to be a ballpark, right here.

And there used to be rock candy

And a great big Fourth of July

With the fireworks exploding

All across the summer sky

And the people watched in wonder

How they’d laugh and how they’d cheer

And there used to be a ballpark, right here.

Now the children try to find it