10 | The Writer • January 2020
FREELANCE SUCCESS
BY PETE CROATTO
The survivor: An interview
with Pat Jordan
The legendary magazine writer and A False Spring author has written for
himself since 1970 – and he’s having more fun than ever.P
at Jordan once asked his
father, Patsy, an orphan
forced to make his own way
in life at age 15, how he did
it. “It’s easy, kid,” he said. “You walk
through shit until you get to clover.”
The younger Jordan knows some-
thing about that. A pitching phenom
who saw his baseball career collapse
at age 21, Jordan worked a variety of
jobs – stonemason’s assistant, soda
jerk, newspaper writer, parochial
school teacher – while honing his
style at night in his attic office. He
became a terrific magazine writer,
concise and poetic and unflinching.
Name a major publication, alive or
dead, and he’s probably written a
memorable piece there. He’s a pretty
good author too. His 1975 memoir
about his baseball flame-out, A False
Spring, is widely considered one of the
best sports books ever written. (His
follow-up, 1999’s A Nice Tuesday,
might be better.)
That, to me, is not the amazing
part. It’s this: Jordan has written for
himself for half a century.
When we talked in October, Jordan
was wrapping up two books. The first,
tentatively titled Friends, about his long-
time friendship with baseball legend
Tom Seaver, is slated for an April release
by Post Hill Press. The second, My
Father’s Con, is a memoir about Patsy, a
professional gambler and con artist. Jor-
dan calls it his most personal work.
I wanted to find out what kept Jor-
dan going. Jordan, who turns 79 in
April, was candid and eloquent in
describing how he has adapted to
magazines’ wobbly existence while
enjoying the ride. Here’s an excerpt of
our lengthy chat, edited for clarity and
for space.Are the books the two big projects
you’re working on now?
Yeah. The magazines that I worked for
didn’t see me, because I never went
into the magazine [offices] like The
New York Times. So they started to
drop me because I got old, because I’m
not hip like the millennials, which is
ridiculous because my father was the
hippest guy I ever met until the day hedied at 95. Not only for that, but for
the fact that magazines dried up,
period. When I worked for Sports Illus-
trated in the ’70s, they’d tell me the
bonus pieces were 5,000 words. I’d
write eight, they’d run 7,500. Today’s
magazines, the whole magazine isn’t
7,500 words!How did the rates change? What you
were getting paid – did that fluctuate or
stay the same?
I was making three dollars a word.
The two magazines that paid a lot
were Playboy and New York Times
Magazine. So Playboy, for example,
ran long: 5,000 or 6,000 words. So I
would make between $15,000 and
$18,000 with them. Sometimes
$20,000. That killed me, when Playboy
died. Three stories a year, and I’d made
my dough. New York Times, I’d get
3,000 words, but it would [run] 3,
words. So I would get between $10,
and $12,000. And Men’s Journal used
to pay well, too, but very short. They’d
pay about 2 dollars a word, but now
they don’t pay anything; they just got
taken over by somebody. Oh, I had an
online thing with Sports on Earth
which was paying me a ton of money.
They would pay $15,000, or $18,000.
They folded. So I lost maybe $80,
within one year.How did you adjust?
I said, “OK, that’s the writing on the
wall. If I’ve got a good idea, I’ll go to
the right magazine to do something I Index-Journal,^ Greenwood,^ S.C.