I always had two or three jobs at the same time. I started doing yard work when I was 7 or 8. When I was 13 I got my first state job doing road construction. Between working sports and school I hardly ever had free time.

What's more important than who's going to be the first black manager is who's going to be the first black sports editor of the New York Times.

Growing up in Huntington Beach you were either a traditional sports athlete a skateboarder or a surfer. I got my first skateboard when I was five and skated off and on over the years did a little BMX racing as a kid and then in my freshman or sophomore year I started getting a little bit more into skateboarding.

Boxing for me it's the beginning of all sports. I'm willing to bet that the first sport was a man against another man in a fight so I think that's something innate in all of us.

As a kid I was fascinated with sports and I loved sports more than anything else. The first books I read were about sports like books about Baseball Joe as one baseball hero was called.

One of my first jobs was at the Boston Globe. I worked in the sports department six months a year. When I was ready to graduate the sports editor gave me a job as a schoolboy sports writer.

I was a ballplayer but only for a limited time. I grew up playing in Wisconsin. It's a very sports-centric part of the country that I grew up in and I played a lot of sports but baseball first and foremost. I played through high school. I was a middle-infielder.

I worked at my high school newspaper at Andover which came out weekly unusual for a high school paper. Then my first day at Penn I went right to the 'Daily Pennsylvanian' and pretty much spent most of my college career working both as the sports editor and then editor of the editorial page.

I would never encourage my children to be athletes - first because my children are not athletes and second because there are so many people pushing to get to the top in sports that 100 people are crushed for each one who breaks through. This is unfortunate.

While writing my first 90 books I was magazine editor publisher book publisher executive etc. so I was established in publishing. three of my seven or so books were biographies of sports stars and really opened doors for me in that area.