In more than four decades of covering sports, Lesley Visser has almost always been the "first." The first woman enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the first woman to win the Lifetime Achievement Sports Emmy, the first woman on Monday Night Football, the first woman on the Network broadcasts of the Final Four, the NBA Finals, the World Series and the Super Bowl - and she's the only woman to have presented the Lombardi Trophy to the winning Super Bowl team. Along the way, Lesley's made many friends and acquaintances, from the wide world of sports, music, business and Hollywood. She's excited to bring her mirth and merriment, along with some serious interviews, to this new venture.
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Jessica Mendoza
Episode 35
Thursday, June 23, 2022 • Duration 29:51
Jessica Mendoza is one of those people who make you want to, as Vin Scully says, "pull up a chair." Throw out a topic, and she's there. Olympic softball? Mendoza won a Gold medal in 2004 in Athens, then watched while the sport was jerked in and out of the Games for more than a decade. Softball won't be included in Paris in 2024, but Mendoza will be tenacious about it being added to the Games in LA in 2028. From her roots as a 4-year-old dragging a bat around the backyard, Mendoza's been a captivating pioneer. A beneficiary of Title IX, she squeezed every opportunity out of the landmark legislation - a scholarship to Stanford (plus a Masters), the US National Team, network television (including calling Jake Arrieta's no-hitter on Sunday Night Baseball), and most recently, the Women's College World Series, aka the Oklahoma Invitational. All this, plus why, as a child of the Dodgers, Brett Butler was her idol. More, please!
Val Ackerman
Episode 34
Thursday, June 16, 2022 • Duration 39:23
As an attorney, Val Ackerman can usually see both sides. But not on this topic. With bona fides that include an early Title IX basketball scholarship to Virginia, a law degree from UCLA, being tapped by David Stern in 1996 to help design the WNBA, sitting with Pres. George Bush at the Beijing Olympics in 2008 as the first female President of USA Basketball, and thoughts born of her current position as the Commissioner of the Big East, Val Ackerman is certain of one thing. The men and women should play the Final Four in the same city at the same time. She tells us why, along with theories about NIL and how the Big East offers value beyond money. Val Ackerman is fearless - she grew up minutes from where Washington crossed the Delaware. And one of them is in the Naismith Hall of Fame.
Cal Ripken Jr
Episode 25
Thursday, April 7, 2022 • Duration 42:36
He was the everyday player’s Everyday Player. And on September 6, 1995, with President Clinton and now President Biden watching in Camden Yards, Cal Ripken, Jr. broke Lou Gehrig’s consecutive-games streak (1925-39), a streak that officially started for Ripken on May 30, 1982 and ended with a 22-minute standing ovation for the shortstop’s 2131st straight game. In between, he’d been the AL MVP twice, won a World Series, and become as famous in Baltimore as the “Star Spangled Banner.” Cal’s written dozens of books and been the subject of a dozen books. And in today’s baseball culture, which is trending toward “load management,” it’s unlikely anyone will ever touch Ripken’s total of 2632 consecutive games. The leader right now? Whit Merrifield, second baseman for the Kansas City Royals, with 443. Play ball!
Bruce Pearl
Episode 24
Thursday, March 31, 2022 • Duration 28:08
Bruce Pearl’s first interview with Auburn was a calamity. He’d been out of coaching for three years, the result of an NCAA investigation that deemed him ultimately responsible for transgressions at Tennessee. He’d taken a job in business, working for a grocery distributor in Knoxville. When Auburn came calling in 2014, Bruce was filled with guilt and self-doubt, and told Auburn that he wasn’t sure he was the best candidate for the job. But when all were convinced, Pearl did what he’s always done – turned the program around with a mixture of marketing, recruiting and excellent coaching. A lifelong outsider, and proud of it, Pearl was only the fifth Jewish coach to lead a team to the Final Four. Now he wants to bring his team to Israel.
Bill Walton - Part 2
Episode 23
Thursday, March 24, 2022 • Duration 32:35
Bill Walton and Lesley still disagree. After watching him play in college and covering him in the NBA, Lesley got to work with him for about five years when Bill, Dick Enberg and her did March Madness together for CBS. One night, on their way to an NCAA Regional semifinal, Bill started talking about who sweated the most in the history of the NBA. Lesley said Patrick Ewing, he said Moses Malone. Lesley said Kevin Garnett and he said Ken Kesey. Who? Yes, the legendary author who took LSD with his fellow Merry Pranksters.
Bill Walton - Part 1
Episode 22
Thursday, March 17, 2022 • Duration 35:53
Bill Walton said the Celtics saved his life. He was a kid from La Mesa, California, who didn't have a TV at home, but would catch Celtics games wherever he could. It was his dream to play on the parquet floor, and when it finally happened in 1985, Walton thought he was so terrible "a disgrace to basketball" that he apologized to the team. Bird and McHale told him not to be so hard on himself, there were 81 games to go. The 1986 Championship team was the happiest time of his professional life. The cycle was complete - Walton was still the pot-smoking Grateful Dead-loving guru he'd been at UCLA, but now he won titles with both John Wooden and Red Auerbach. And stay tuned for why he rubbed dirt from Larry Bird's driveway on his chest.
Jason Clarke
Episode 21
Thursday, March 10, 2022 • Duration 29:54
It might seem a stretch to think that actor Jason Clarke, the son of a sheep-shearer in the Australian outback, could play the iconic legend Jerry West, but Clarke got a round of applause from an acclaimed writer central to the project. Jeff Pearlman, author of "Showtime," on which the HBO series "Winning Time" is based, told Lesley that "Jason Clarke is the best-cast role" in the production. Clarke worked up to 16 hours a day to capture the complicated champion - everything from his Appalachian accent to dribbling left-handed. And all without the cooperation of West himself. Clarke reached out with deep respect, but West preferred his privacy. West once told Lesley that "Hollywood eats people" and that "most great athletes are loners."
NOTE: This interview was recorded before the airing of "Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty" on HBO.
Jim Larrañaga
Episode 20
Thursday, March 3, 2022 • Duration 41:27
At 72-years old, Jim Larranaga is a kid coach in the ACC. Jim Boeheim is 77, Mike Krzyzewski is 75, even Leonard Hamilton is 73. But there's an excellent chance that Larranaga and his Miami Hurricanes will join some of the others in the joy of March Madness. Larranaga was, of course, the darling of the dance in 2006 when he led 11th-seeded George Mason to the Final Four. Before the semi-final - a loss to eventual champion Florida - Lesley told Jim that most people had only thought of George Mason as the "Father of the Bill of Rights." But that run by the Patriots is why we love college basketball. At Miami, Larranaga has a team full of perimeter players, what CBS' Jon Rothstein calls "more guards than Shawshank," and a defense that steals much more than it can eat. Led by a coach of Cuban descent who grew up in Bronx and played at Providence in the days of Ernie D, the Hurricanes are in very good hands.
Gary Williams
Episode 19
Thursday, February 24, 2022 • Duration 35:07
Twenty years ago, when Maryland beat Indiana for the National Championship, it was one of the happiest scenes in the history of college basketball. Maryland fans had been through a lot, including sanctions after the departure of Bob Wade, which meant no TV, no national presence. For decades, Maryland was considered the poor cousin to ACC heavyweights Duke and North Carolina, occasionally NC State or Wake Forest. Gary Williams played at Maryland, and shares a great story about facing Billy Cunningham and Carolina. Lesley got to cover Gary at all three of his major stops - at Boston College when BC won the Big East in 1983, at Ohio State in the Big Ten, and at Maryland, where he returned to Cole Field House and the ACC. He called Maryland's win over Duke at home in 2002, "the greatest victory ever at Cole Field House" - and this from a guy who saw, in person, one of the most important games in history, when Texas Western, with five black starters, beat Kentucky in College Park for the Championship in 1966. It's Gary's passion for all things Terrapin that's made him so popular, and why the 2002 team will be celebrated all year.
Robert Parrish
Episode 18
Thursday, February 17, 2022 • Duration 42:07
If you followed the epic battles between the Lakers and the Celtics in the 1980's, didn't you always wonder if Robert Parish (the "Chief") ever talked to Laker fan Jack Nicholson about the "Chief" in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest? They did! Parish said Nicholson once came up to him in the layup line before a game and they had a chat. Unselfish and underappreciated, Parish considered retirement from the dysfunctional Golden State Warriors before Red Auerbach engineered the blockbuster trade for him in 1980, which also included drafting Kevin McHale. Robert loved the Celtic style - rebounding, blocking shots, passing, and constantly running to get in shape. Parish said he enjoyed looking across the court in Game 5 of the Finals in 1984 and seeing Kareem Abdul Jabbar, in the 100-degree heat in Boston Garden, with no air-conditioning, sucking on an oxygen mask. All his memories are polished gems.