Oliver Regis was so disappointed in his view — his seat was up in the nosebleed section — that he snuck down into an empty chair in the third row. He posed as part of Mayweather’s security detail.

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

Good morning. I’m Rachel Martin. We all know Floyd Mayweather won the big boxing match with Conor McGregor Saturday. But I’d argue there was another victor – a British guy named Oliver Regis. He was so disappointed in his view – his seat was up in a nosebleed section – he snuck down into an empty chair in the third row of the arena posing as part of Mayweather’s security detail. The con was even better because Regis is a McGregor fan with a tattoo on his leg to prove it. It’s MORNING EDITION.

Copyright © 2017 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

Andy Murray has established himself as one of the only male tennis players to stand up for his female counterparts, advocating for equal pay and calling out sexism in the sport. NPR’s Kelly McEvers speaks with Elle magazine writer Lizzy Goodman about Murray’s unique brand of feminism.

KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:

Professional tennis is one of the major sports where men and women play in the same tournaments, on the same courts. Yet women make less money than men, and they deal with a lot of scrutiny. But one male player, Andy Murray, who is currently ranked number two in the world, has become a kind of champion for women in the sport. He gets in fights with people on Twitter. This summer at Wimbledon, he corrected a reporter who said Sam Querrey was the first U.S. player to advance to a semifinal since 2009.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: How would you describe the…

ANDY MURRAY: Male player.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: I beg your pardon.

MURRAY: Male player, right?

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Yes.

MURRAY: Yeah.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Yes, first male player. That’s for sure.

MCEVERS: Meaning the Williams sisters Serena and Venus have made it to the semis tons of times. Lizzy Goodman recently profiled Murray for Elle magazine, and she is here in the studio with me now. Hey there.

LIZZY GOODMAN: Hey there.

MCEVERS: OK, so first let’s just talk about last year. I mean it was a pretty tough year for women in tennis, right? What happened?

GOODMAN: Yes. I – it kind of started in the spring with the Indian Wells tournament, which is one of the biggest tournaments of the year. And the tournament director gave some quotes in which he basically said that the women are riding the coattails of the men. So sort of – and he used the phrase, get down on their knees and thank Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer and these sort of banner players on the male side for the attention they’ve brought the sport in the last few years.

So that was not received well. And that was kind of the gun going off. And as the year progressed, there were a series of events in which this came up. And tournament directors made ill-advised comments in response.

MCEVERS: And so enter into Andy Murray. I mean we talked about some of the things that he did. What else has he done and said?

GOODMAN: He’s been at this for a long time (laughter). It’s – his mom, Judy Murray, is a kind of stalwart supporter of women in tennis, an incredible coach, an icon in the sport in general and an advocate for women. But he also quite famously sort of ushered in the era of bold name coaching with his relationship with Ivan Lendl. Now that’s standard. Like, all the big players on the male side have kind of recruit past greats to help them. Andy was first.

Then his second choice after he worked with Ivan Lendl – the next person that he went to was a woman, Amelie Mauresmo, and that drew a lot of negative attention at the time. It was like he had launched this sort of – this pattern. And then when he changed it up by hiring the next in line of sort of amazing former players to work with and it happened to be a female human being, that was quite scandalous.

MCEVERS: Really? And so what did he do when people criticized him for that?

GOODMAN: He spoke out really strongly about it. And I think the clip you played is a really good example of what’s great about Andy’s feminism, which is that it’s kind of – it’s dudish (ph). Like, there’s something very, like, bro-y (ph) in the best way about his response. He doesn’t give this sort of soliloquy about – excuse me, reporter; did you actually mean to say? He’s just like, male player, right?

Like, it’s very in the language of his – the way he speaks about everything else is how he speaks about this, and I think that’s what’s lent power to his advocacy in this space because on some level, he’s sort of like, I’d really rather not talk about this. But, like, you’ve got to be kidding me. Like, I can’t anymore. And I think that’s – the female players that I spoke to for the piece – that echoed – that rings really true with them because it’s sort of, like – it’s not something you want to talk about. It’s eye roll inducing, and yet it’s so prevalent.

MCEVERS: Yeah, your piece is called “Game Changer.” I mean do you think he really is changing the game and helping it move forward in the way people treat women?

GOODMAN: I think so. I think that attention on this level from this side of the aisle, so to speak, is powerful. I don’t – I think it’s unfortunate that that’s what it takes…

MCEVERS: Right.

GOODMAN: …(Laughter) Obviously.

MCEVERS: Yeah. We’re talking about a dude as a feminist here.

GOODMAN: Yes.

MCEVERS: Yeah.

GOODMAN: And I struggled with that in the piece. I mean to write a piece in a women’s magazine that uses this kind of attention on a man and have it be about feminism is a trick, you know? But I think to – it’s appropriate because he is making waves in a way that has an effect. You can tell by Serena’s response to it.

I mean Serena’s response to Andy has basically been – at each of these junctures has been, like, you know, all of us are grateful to him for calling these issues out because you have to – there – we need it from all sides. And he has a powerful megaphone.

MCEVERS: Lizzy Goodman is a contributing editor at Elle magazine. She’s also out with a new book called “Meet Me In The Bathroom.” It’s an oral history of rock in New York City in the first decade of the 2000s. Thank you.

GOODMAN: Thank you so much.

(SOUNDBITE OF TORO Y MOI SONG, “SAY THAT”)

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NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

Today we lost an amazing athlete and an even greater friend pic.twitter.com/TDrD0mLkUn

— Kyle Merber (@TheRealMerb) August 29, 2017

Boxer Floyd Mayweather defeated UFC champion Conor McGregor in a fight Saturday. Host A Martinez recaps the match with MMAjunkie columnist Ben Fowlkes.

A MARTINEZ, HOST:

It was a matchup some had characterized as bizarre, boxing champ Floyd Mayweather entering the ring on Saturday night with UFC fighter and first-time boxer Conor McGregor. In the 10th round, Mayweather had McGregor on the ropes, and the referee stopped the fight, delivering Mayweather a victory by technical knockout. Joining me now to discuss last night’s fight is Ben Fowlkes. He’s a columnist for mmajunkie.com. Ben, thanks so much for being here.

BEN FOWLKES: Hey. Thanks for having me.

MARTINEZ: All right, this match pitted one of the all-time boxing greats, Mayweather, against a mixed martial arts champion, McGregor. What did you expect going in? What did you actually see coming out?

FOWLKES: Well, I will admit I did not have huge high expectations for Conor McGregor’s boxing game just ’cause we did not even know if he had won prior to this. But he acquitted himself very well in the fight. You know, he arguably won at least the first three rounds – won the first round on all three judges’ scorecards – I think surprised a lot of people. I mean, Mayweather is not known as a very fast starter or a very aggressive starter in the beginning.

But still, to see Conor McGregor go out there, land some jabs against somebody like Floyd Mayweather and hang tough the way he did – I think that was a pleasant surprise for a lot of people who mainly bought it, I think, because it’s kind of a cultural curiosity, not because they expected a really great, competitive fight.

MARTINEZ: Yeah. But most people just thought that if McGregor had a chance at all, he would try and knock out Floyd early. But then he lasted – as you just mentioned, he lasted 10 whole rounds. Do you think this brings any legitimacy to MMA fighters in the eyes boxing fans?

FOWLKES: Well, boxing fans and MMA fans have kind of a tortured relationship as it is. MMA fans, I think, sometimes have a little bit of a little brother complex when it comes to boxing. And they have been criticized saying that, you know, the technique isn’t good or that MMA is barbaric. And I don’t know if it’s necessarily going to change people’s minds. I think a lot of people saw what they wanted to see with something like this.

But I do think – you know, you heard Mayweather after the fight that he was surprised at how good a boxer Conor McGregor was. I think it proved that just because, you know, you are in one sport doesn’t mean you can’t also go in there and do the other one. I mean – and I think if you had Mayweather trying to cross over in the other direction, it would be a lot less competitive.

So I do think you have to give Conor McGregor his props in that sense. At the same time, Floyd Mayweather fought a noncharacteristic fight for him, a little more aggressive going after – looking for the finish there. And that definitely did affect the kind of fight that you saw.

MARTINEZ: Now, Floyd Mayweather says that this was his last fight. I’ll believe it when I see it, Ben, because he is going to make about $300 million for this. So I could (laughter) – if that paycheck is down the road again, I wouldn’t be surprised if he tried to cash that again. But do you think it’s true, or what do you think with Floyd Mayweather? Is he done forever? I mean, he would finish with a 50-0 record if he ends it.

FOWLKES: Well, you always have to take anything a boxer says about his future…

MARTINEZ: (Laughter) Yeah.

FOWLKES: …Or any fighter says about his future in the ring with a grain of salt because, like you said, Mayweather is especially known as a guy who likes money and really likes spending money. So…

MARTINEZ: It’s his nickname, Money Mayweather, yeah.

FOWLKES: That’s right. And, you know, he may – if he sees another opportunity, you know, maybe to do a rematch of this fight or some other big fight, I think it would take something really colossal to get him to consider doing it again. And he did look a little bit slower. He started to look 40 years old, so I think that he’s probably aware of that.

But if there is a big paycheck in it, all those guys are going to consider it again, especially if you keep winning them all, then you don’t have as much reason to really consider retirement if you’re not in there taking bad beatings.

MARTINEZ: Now, Ben, by most accounts, it was a competitive fight. People seemed to enjoy the show. How do you see the future of the fight game going forward? Are we going to see more of these matchups?

FOWLKES: You know, that’s interesting. I think you need the personalities to sell the matchup. I think that even if you had a more competitive technical pairing between two guys, if you don’t have those big personalities…

MARTINEZ: Yeah.

FOWLKES: …It’s not going to work as well. But the fight game is kind of…

MARTINEZ: That’s Ben Fowlkes columnist for mmajunkie.com. Ben, thanks a lot.

Copyright © 2017 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor meet in the ring Saturday night. The two fighters may have near flawless fighting records, but they’re facing heat for provocative comments.

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

Let’s switch gears for a minute and talk about fight night. That is tonight. World champion Floyd Mayweather, undefeated in his professional career, is taking on UFC reigning lightweight fighter Conor McGregor. They square off tonight in a live pay-per-view special that has been hyped for months by fans and the fighters. And it’s also put off at least some would-be fans because of the pre-show antics. McGregor has been making statements against Mayweather that a lot of people consider racist, such as telling his opponent to dance for me, boy. And Mayweather has tossed anti-gay slurs back at McGregor, not to mention Mayweather’s whole history with domestic violence.

With all of that, maybe because of that, the fight is turning out to be the most lucrative in boxing history, with estimates of $300 to $500 million in revenue. But we have questions – well, one really – why? Why so much attention? Why so much money? So we called up Gautham Nagesh. He runs a boxing news website, Stiff Jab. And he’s been covering the sport for almost a decade now. Gautham, welcome. Thanks so much for joining us once again.

GAUTHAM NAGESH: Thanks for having me.

MARTIN: So why? Why all the hype? Why so much money? Is this even really a boxing match?

NAGESH: Well, in theory, it is a boxing match because it’s going to take place under boxing rules tonight. Even though Conor McGregor is mostly famous for being a mixed martial artist, he has agreed to become a boxer for one fight, at least, in order to get a chance at Floyd Mayweather, the sport’s biggest star. And UFC has sort of overtaken boxing in the public consciousness in many aspects. One aspect where it hasn’t is in the amount of money the fighters get paid. And so Conor McGregor is the biggest star in the UFC, but he only makes a fraction of the money that Floyd Mayweather makes, hence the appeal of coming over to boxing and fighting Floyd.

MARTIN: So let’s talk about the trash talk because, you know, trash talk is a part of a lot of sports. It’s certainly a part of boxing. I mean, Muhammad Ali was, you know, an artist at this. But the things these men seem to be saying has really turned off a lot of people, even a lot of sportswriters, I mean, the racial slurs, the homophobic slurs. What’s your take on this as a person who’s in the sport – follows it closely?

NAGESH: Well, I think certainly it’s been ugly at times. Conor McGregor’s comments, I think, in – perhaps at the New York press conference where he said he was black below his waist, I think that’s completely out of line. Some of the things that were said about female fans. And then, of course, Floyd has this very long, clear record of domestic violence. And so understandably, there are a lot of people who are put off by this behavior.

I think, just as a reporter, it’s fair to say that while a large portion of the public finds it reprehensible, the sorts of people who buy pay-per-view fights, I think, expect some degree of unsavory aspects to the people who fight, whether or not that’s true. In my experience, it isn’t. Boxers are generally some of the most decent people I’ve ever met. But boxing, as I’ve said before, is not necessarily the occupation that anyone, including boxers, would pick for their children. I mean, when you really step back – again, we are watching men who are paid to fight each other and risk death for the entertainment of the public.

MARTIN: Is there any sense within the boxing world that this degrades the sport? I mean, boxing is an Olympic sport. And is there any sense in which this degrades it? What do you think?

NAGESH: I think there are many people who feel that way. I think it’s fair to feel that way. Larry Merchant used to always say that nothing can destroy boxing and nothing can save it. Boxing has seen much worse things – fixed fights, tournaments broadcast on TV that turned out to be shambolic, you know, gambling rituals. This is hardly the worst thing that’s happened in boxing. With that said, if Conor McGregor were to somehow beat Floyd Mayweather tonight, that might be the worst possible thing that could happen for boxing because it would render the sport, in some ways, irrelevant.

MARTIN: That was Gautham Nagesh, founder of the boxing website Stiff Jab. We reached him in Detroit. Gautham, thanks so much for joining us.

NAGESH: Thanks for having me.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAMB OF GOD’S “ASHES OF THE WAKE”)

Copyright © 2017 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

Almost everyone agrees that the much-hyped boxing match between Floyd Mayweather and MMA champ Conor McGregor will not be much of a fight. But fans will shell out an estimated half a billion dollars to watch. NPR’s Robert Siegel talks with sports columnist Adam Kilgore of The Washington Post about the fight.

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

Two summers ago, a mixed martial arts champion named Conor McGregor was doing an interview with Conan O’Brien.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

CONAN O’BRIEN: What if you were in the ring with Floyd Mayweather? What do you think would happen? He’s obviously an incredibly – one of the greatest boxers anyone’s ever seen…

CONOR MCGREGOR: If you’re asking would I like to fight Floyd, I mean, who would not like to dance around the ring for $180 million?

O’BRIEN: Yeah.

(LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE)

SIEGEL: And the trash talk has been going on ever since.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

FLOYD MAYWEATHER: I’m not the same fighter I was 10 years ago. I’m not the same fighter I was five years ago. I’m not the same fighter I was two years ago. But I got enough to beat you.

SIEGEL: Well, now this spectacle of a matchup is actually happening. Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Conor McGregor will box Saturday night in Las Vegas and on Showtime pay-per-view. As sports columnist Adam Kilgore of The Washington Post has written, the racial difference between the two has been a selling point for this fight. Are there any other selling points?

Adam Kilgore, thanks for joining us today.

ADAM KILGORE: Thanks for having me.

SIEGEL: And first, tell us about the two fighters, starting with the 40-year-old Floyd Mayweather.

KILGORE: Floyd Mayweather is regarded as one of the greatest tactical fighters in boxing history. Outside of the ring he’s known for controversy. He’s twice been convicted of battery against women. And he has this sort of almost like pathological obsession with money. Is his nickname is Money. He has a lot of business interests outside of boxing, including a strip club in Las Vegas. So he’s quite a, you know, only-in-boxing character.

SIEGEL: OK. And in the other corner 29-year-old Conor McGregor.

KILGORE: Conor McGregor comes from a poor part of Dublin, Ireland, called Crumlin. He’s an incredible showman. He’s got an incredible left hook that’s taken him to the top of mixed martial arts in a promotion called UFC, Ultimate Fighting Championship. He trained as a boxer as a teenager. But, you know, as far as the highest level of the sport is concerned, he’s never boxed before. And no one really knows if he can box.

SIEGEL: Now, McGregor, as a mixed martial artist, can kick, grab, trip, wrestle. In a boxing match, all he’s allowed to do is punch above the belt. Does he have a prayer against Mayweather?

KILGORE: Conor McGregor has the proverbial almost definition of a puncher’s chance. There is a school of thought that if he comes out and just throws haymakers and is very aggressive early on, he has a prayer to connect and maybe knock Mayweather down. The problem is Mayweather’s been knocked down once in his entire career. And most boxing analysts – and I would agree with these folks – think that he’s not going to get a clean shot if he gets a shot at all.

SIEGEL: Now, you’ve written about the race angle in this fight. As the famed fight promoter Don King once said, if it’s a fight between a white boxer and a black boxer, you can play the race card tremendously and get an overwhelming return. Is that what’s selling this fight?

KILGORE: I think that’s part of what’s selling the fight. I do think that novelty is the primary selling point. But certainly the fighters have not shied away from using race as a selling point. In one of the first tour stops, McGregor twice told Floyd Mayweather…

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

MCGREGOR: Dance for me, boy. Dance for me, sir. Dance for me.

KILGORE: In a subsequent tour stop, after there had been, you know, a bit of an uproar about those comments, McGregor said that he could not be racist because he was half-black from the bellybutton down, implying exactly what you think he’s implying there. Certainly boxing has a long tradition of promoting fights along racial lines, and both Mayweather and McGregor have sort of used that tactic.

SIEGEL: Adam Kilgore is a national sports columnist for The Washington Post. Thanks for talking with us.

KILGORE: Thank you.

Copyright © 2017 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

Benches clear, punches thrown in Yankees-Tigers game with Miguel Cabrera and Austin Romine at the center of it. https://t.co/g32ygLF1czpic.twitter.com/QMsJ5fEDQO

— MLB (@MLB) August 24, 2017

we ain’t done yet #Yankees#tigerspic.twitter.com/nJPxO5gliK

— Batavia’s Best (@bataviasbest) August 24, 2017

Multiple sports were a mirror to the real world in the tumultuous week following Charlottesville. Football, basketball and even baseball.

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

And it’s time for sports.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

SIMON: Remember when sports was a diversion? Not now. Sports are a mirror to the real world everywhere this tumultuous week, certainly following Charlottesville football, basketball and baseball. NPR’s Tom Goldman joins us. Tom, thanks for being with us.

TOM GOLDMAN, BYLINE: Thank you, Scott.

SIMON: Let’s start with the NFL. Last year, Colin Kaepernick notably took a knee during pre-game national anthems and set off a controversy. He still has not been signed by a team this year. But several players have essentially picked up where he left off, including last night in Seattle.

GOLDMAN: Yeah, that’s right. Defensive lineman Michael Bennett – he’s been to the Pro Bowl twice. He won a Super Bowl with Seattle. He sat during the anthem before the Seahawks game versus Minnesota last night. And it was the second straight game he’s done that. And he says he’ll do it all season to protest social injustice and to promote equality for all citizens. Now, what was striking last night was who joined him. Seattle center Justin Britt, who is white, stood next to Bennett with his hand on Bennett’s shoulder, apparently answering Bennett’s call earlier in the week for white players to join in these protests. Up to now, it’s been African-American players, who make up nearly 70 percent of the NFL.

SIMON: And this kind of show of solidarity happened the night before, didn’t it?

GOLDMAN: Yeah, it did. Chris Long, a white defensive end with the Philadelphia Eagles – he put his arm around teammate Malcolm Jenkins, who’s black, when Jenkins raised his fist during the anthem. You know, Scott, Michael Bennett said earlier in the week, when you bring somebody who doesn’t have to be part of the conversation – making himself vulnerable – when that happens, things will really take a jump. Now, we will see if the conversation changes. But in a week of painful division between races that you have been talking about a lot on the show, certainly, these two moments resonated. Certainly, it did for Bennett, who said after last night’s game that what Justin Britt did was a very emotional moment – to have that kind of solidarity with someone from a different part of America.

SIMON: And baseball hasn’t been the staging ground for a lot of this, by contrast. But tell us about what’s going on in Boston now.

GOLDMAN: Yeah, well, Red Sox owner John Henry this week proposed renaming famed Yawkey Way, the street outside of Fenway Park named after longtime Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey. Now, Henry said in an interview he was haunted by Yawkey’s racist legacy. The Red Sox were the last team to integrate in the majors in 1959. Now, this, of course, comes at a time when there’s a lot of debate about removing or moving Confederate statues in the South. There will be resistance to what Henry’s proposing. The Yawkey name is steeped in tradition. And the Yawkey Trust is a charitable foundation that has spread money and goodwill all around Boston and New England. So, Scott, this is not an easy issue.

SIMON: I want to say something because, you know, of course, I wrote a book about Jackie Robinson.

GOLDMAN: Right.

SIMON: The Red Sox have invited me to an event they have for his birthday every January, where Boston area students come, and they learn that the Red Sox could’ve signed Jackie Robinson a couple of months before Brooklyn did but didn’t just because of the color of his skin. And I’ve got to say I admire how Mr. Henry – his partners, Tom Werner and Larry Lucchino, who just retired – have really worked to acknowledge the shameful legacy of the Red Sox – and in a way that really just brings honor to the team now.

GOLDMAN: Yeah, that’s a good point. And, you know, shameful legacy – complicated legacy. And, you know, we were reminded of that a couple of months ago, certainly, when Adam Jones of the Baltimore Orioles said he encountered racist taunts from some fans at Fenway Park. So this will be an interesting chapter in a long, long history.

SIMON: Quick question – Giancarlo Stanton have a chance to hit – what? – 60, 61, 62 home runs?

GOLDMAN: Well, the way he’s going, he does. But he traditionally cools down later in the season. So we’ll see if he gets to the 61 by Roger Maris in 1961, which many purists consider still the single-season home run mark.

SIMON: That’s right. NPR sports correspondent Tom Goldman, thanks so much for being with us.

Copyright © 2017 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

Derek Jeter had a spectacular career playing shortstop for the New York Yankees, during which he managed to avoid scandal and embarrassment and kept his private life tastefully private. So, what might all that brilliance as a player mean for him as he now becomes an owner?

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

Derek Jeter had a spectacular career playing shortstop for the New York Yankees. Over 20 years, he was on five World Series-winning teams. He was an All Star 14 times. And despite being the toast of the town in New York City, he managed to avoid scandal and embarrassment and kept his private life tastefully private.

So what might all that brilliance as a player mean for him as he now becomes an owner – a minority owner but still part of the group that’s buying the Miami Marlins of baseball’s National League? Have superstar athletes typically translated their superpowers to the front office?

We’ve called up sportswriter Jonah Keri of CBS Sports and Sports Illustrated to hear what he has to say. Jonah, welcome back to the program.

JONAH KERI: Thank you, Robert.

SIEGEL: And do we know what Derek Jeter’s actual job is going to be in Miami? And does the fact that he made more than 3,000 hits in the Major Leagues mean that he’s likely to be any good at it?

KERI: Well, he might become the most hardworking man in America, frankly, if the titles match what he might end up doing. What Jeter has expressed an interest in doing and what the reports are is that he plans to run both the business operations side and the baseball operations side. That does not happen anywhere in sports. You never, ever see that.

To run either of those departments would be a gigantic task. And obviously, in the case of Jeter, he doesn’t really have any experience in doing either one. So 3,000 hits are great. He has terrific baseball instincts. He has experience in the business world. But to run an entire franchise on both sides – that is a daunting task for anybody.

SIEGEL: Does he have any role models, great athletes who’ve gone on to ownership and big management positions and done exceptionally well? Or are there some who’ve done exceptionally poorly?

KERI: Well, it’s kind of a mixed bag. Mario Lemieux probably stands out as the best example of this. He owns a small share of the Pittsburgh Penguins and also does an excellent job of overseeing the hockey operations side of the Penguins, of course one of the most successful franchises in the NHL. But on the downside, Michael Jordan has not fared particularly well. And then the one maybe that we’re waiting on to see how it goes is Magic Johnson.

Magic Johnson has owned a small piece of the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Los Angeles Dodgers are a great team. But all reports from the baseball world are that his role is basically ceremonial. And now he’s getting more involved with the Los Angeles Lakers, and he certainly has experience in the basketball world. If the Lakers were to turn it around, you could go ahead and credit Johnson with that success, at least to some extent.

SIEGEL: Do you think that a great player who’s a leader of his team on the court or on the field or wherever – on the ice – are there some talents at work there, some skills of character that are just well-suited to making executive decisions?

KERI: It’s certainly possible. You know, you see that. You’ll see Fortune 500 companies bring in superstar athletes to come speak and to motivate and so on. But to me, what it comes down to is largely a credibility issue. The Marlins are about to be not owned by a gentleman named Jeffrey Loria, who is nobody’s favorite person. He has done all kinds of unsavory things during his time as a baseball owner.

Here comes Jeter, who has, as you said, pretty much an immaculate reputation. This is the kind of thing where maybe the Marlins just get taken more seriously as a franchise. I think the best-case scenario for the Marlins here is that Jeter kind of does no harm in his actual roles and that maybe the benefit here is that he’s Derek Jeter and people react to that.

SIEGEL: If Lemieux is a role model, can you see something that he did in Pittsburgh that another former star like Jeter might be able to do in Miami?

KERI: Well, Lemieux has this way of getting involved but only to a certain extent. He’s certainly in on it when it comes to hockey decisions. But he also has a staff that is empowered to make decisions on their own. So he can weigh in, but he’s not necessarily the absolute final word. He’s not necessarily the guy who’s doing everything on the micro. The best thing Jeter can do, if you’re thinking about the Lemieux book, is OK, you’re involved. You apply your expertise. But you hire really smart people, which is the lesson for a sports franchise and the lesson for literally any other company.

SIEGEL: You remind me of what John Elway, the great quarterback for the Denver Broncos, said when he signed on as being president of the club – not general manager, not head coach – said, I’m not interested in being a head coach or general manager. I don’t have that kind of experience to be able to pick those players day in, day out and such. He helped lead the Broncos to a Super Bowl victory.

KERI: Self-awareness is something that all of us could stand to have more of, and (laughter) kudos to John Elway for having some of it.

SIEGEL: Thank you very much. I’ve been talking with sportswriter Jonah Keri.

KERI: Thanks, Robert.

(SOUNDBITE OF J.S.T.A.R.S.’ “TRIPPING THE LIGHT FANTASTIC”)

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