Noted sports author and writer Jeff Pearlman continues to dole out fascinating insights and wild stories about his experiences with some of the biggest names in American sports history.
On Thursday, the New York Times best-selling author shared a story involving Milwaukee Brewers legend and Baseball Hall of Fame member Robin Yount, widely considered to be the greatest player in franchise history.
“It’s late 1990s, I’m covering a golf tournament for Sports Illustrated,” said Pearlman on his TikTok account. “I’m walking the course and there’s a guy, a fan, heckling one of the golfers. The fan is wearing a Milwaukee Brewers hat. He’s a really large guy. He has rips in his shirt. He doesn’t look so good. I wrote about him in the story and I referred to him as ‘Robin Yount.’ And I was joking. But I didn’t put Robin Yount in quotes or italics, I just said Robin Yount was heckling this guy. And I thought, well, obviously it wasn’t Robin Yount.
“Well, I’m home visiting my parents a couple of days after the magazine comes out. My mom says, ‘Jeff, someone on the phone named Robin Yount wants to talk to you.’ And I’m like, well, that can’t be. Well, I pick up the phone and it’s like ‘Hey, Jeff?’ and I’m like, yeah. He goes ‘This is Robin Yount, why did you say I was at a golf tournament heckling people?’ I was like ‘No no no no no, I meant it as a joke. It wasn’t really you, I was saying it couldn’t be.’ He’s like ‘Yeah, that’s not funny.’
“It goes to show the power of italics.”