Interview with Peter Schwartz
Peter Schwartz is a lawyer and along with John Sexton the author of the New York Times bestseller, Baseball as a Road to God: Seeing Beyond the Game.
The World Series and WrestleMania
Contents
Max Raskin: I usually don’t interview my friends, but now that I am I get to ask a question with absolutely no context for the reader. What are the three best WrestleManias?
Peter Schwartz: At number one, I have to go with the irresistible force meeting the immovable object, WrestleMania III, which most people would say culminated in the biggest wrestling match of all-time — André the Giant versus Hulk Hogan. But the undercard had “Macho Man” Randy Savage versus Ricky “the Dragon” Steamboat, a classic for the Intercontinental belt. But Hogan and André, just off the charts. Hogan claims that he didn't know until André called the spot in the ring that he was ‘going over,’ which is wrestling parlance for winning the match. A lot of times Hogan has claimed things that have been debunked but, regardless, that tops the list.
Number two — I would say is kind of the modern version of that match —WrestleMania X8 [18], “Hollywood” Hulk Hogan and The Rock. In a way, it re-lived WrestleMania III, except with Hogan as the bad guy. But the fans in my hometown of Toronto didn't seem to know or care because they all cheered for him and heckled The Rock out of the SkyDome.
Number three — an event that's probably near the bottom of everyone else's list, but I thought was so kitschy and unique – WrestleMania IX, which was at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. More accurately, it was in a parking lot at Caesars Palace and was billed as “The World’s Largest Toga Party.” It proved to be exactly that.
MR: What about top three World Series.
PS: As in my favorite World Series, or the top three World Series ever played?
MR: Answer what you want to.
PS: I'll give you the three greatest World Series of my lifetime, because it's hard to put yourself in the shoes of someone watching in 1955 or 1956 with the Dodgers and the Yankees, and some of these other storybook matchups.
But in my lifetime, there's been three that really rise to the top. And that's to say nothing of 1997 and 2011, which were also great World Series.
Going in reverse order, number three would be the Cubs and the Indians (now Guardians) in 2016, which ended with the greatest baseball game I've ever seen, Game Seven. The Cubs reversing the curse, the Guardians continuing their drought, and all the subplots that went into that. It was a fantastic series.
I would put 1991 — the Twins and the Braves — at number two. That’s where Jack Morris and John Smoltz had the classic Game Seven. Jack Morris pitched a complete game 10-inning shutout to win it. Game Six was also thrilling. There were about four or five games decided by one run in the bottom of the ninth or in extra innings. The home team won every game. So that's got to be on the list.
And then at number one, I have to say 2001, with the Yankees and the Diamondbacks. Despite the result – the Yankees losing in the wake of 9/11, the one time that America was firmly behind them, right at the end of Game Seven. Those games in New York with what they called the “mystique and aura.” President Bush throwing out the first pitch, and the dramatic walk-offs in Games Four and Five, and then Game Seven with Curt Schilling dueling with Roger Clemens, and Mariano Rivera uncharacteristically blowing the save. I think that that would be my top three. A lot of baseball fans would say 1975, but that was before my time.
The Best of the Best
MR: If you could have met any baseball player throughout history, who would it have been?
PS: Well, I mean, no-brainer: George Herman Ruth. And not only would I want to meet him, I'd want to meet him between games of a doubleheader over the spread of hot dogs that he would've been consuming at that moment. He was a larger-than-life force.
And if I could pick any moment I could ever witness, I would be transported to that game in the 1932 World Series when he called his shot off Charlie Root of the Cubs and hit the ball into center field at Wrigley with two strikes against him.
MR: Who do you think is the best pitcher of all time?
PS: Sandy Koufax.
MR: Really?
PS: Yes.
If we're talking relief pitchers, then obviously Rivera is tops; but if we're talking starters or relievers, then I have to select among starters due to their greater impact on the game.
Koufax's career was shortened by his health issues — his arthritis and elbow spurs — but if you look at his peak performance, to say nothing of what he did off the field and how he was this symbolic figure for legions of fans, I put him at number one.
MR: Why not Clemens?
PS: So that's exactly what I was about to say — if you look at the length of a career as a whole, Clemens has the highest wins above replacement. Now, there are two types of wins above replacement — two ways it's calculated — but this is the stat that looks at wins versus players that would be comparable at their position. And Clemens is number one as a pitcher in the calculation I think is best. I am an advocate for Clemens, Barry Bonds, and Pete Rose being in the Hall of Fame for whole other sets of issues.
I think Clemens is the best righty ever, and I'll say Koufax is the best lefty ever— “the Left Arm of God,” as they called him. But I think if I had to pick one, if the fate of the Earth depended on the outcome of a game, I'm probably going with Bob Gibson or Sandy Koufax.
Casey Stengel, the legendary Yankees manager, used to put the ball in the shoe of a pitcher, so the morning they'd come to the ballpark they'd know that they're pitching. That’s how Don Larson learned he was in the lineup the day he pitched a perfect game in the 1956 World Series. He didn't even know he was pitching until he saw the ball in his spikes, in his words. I would put the ball in Koufax's spikes.
MR: What about the greats of law school — did you have a favorite professor at NYU?
PS: I notice there so happens to be a beautiful portrait of him right over your shoulder. And that would be Burt Neuborne. Interestingly enough, he was my professor when I did a fellowship years earlier, before law school, for a journalist to learn law in residence at NYU’s law school. He’s brilliant. And the way he would take any issue, dissect it, and then put it back together but in different ways was unlike anything I had seen before. Each class was a kaleidoscope. He’s the only law professor who I could say holds your attention in class and held your attention on the silver screen in The People vs. Larry Flynt, which not only was he an actor in, but one of the main characters was based on him. Not Larry Flynt.
MR: What about of all time — of all your professors you had throughout all your education, and someone had to teach just one class, whose spikes would you put the ball in?
PS: It should not surprise you given our mutual affinity, but that would be John Sexton – no matter the subject of that one class, whether it’s his course on the Supreme Court and religion, baseball and religion, or civil procedure, to name a few. I talked about the Babe being a larger-than-life force. When it comes to academics, John's a larger-than-life force for very good reasons.
John Sexton
MR: When did you actually meet him for the first time?
PS: This is a great story. Now I see why you are the modern-day Larry King. You evoke the great story immediately.
It was August 2002. I was a wide-eyed, incoming freshman at NYU. And in those days, they actually printed orientation materials in a booklet. I had read all about the incoming president of the university who was dean of the law school and was really into baseball — the Brooklyn Dodgers in particular. So I'm walking down Washington Square South, and I see a bearded man in a Yankee cap and a blue Brooklyn Prep sweatshirt surveying the construction of what became the Kimmel Center, the centerpiece of the NYU campus, I think one could say.
I recognized him from the booklet, and I said to him, "So, what do you think of this building?" First words I ever said to him. And he said, "It's a monstrosity. If I was president at the time, I never would've approved it." I told myself immediately, "I like this guy." And I introduced myself and said, "I hear you're a big Jackie Robinson fan. I just wrote this paper about Jackie Robinson. Can I send it to you?"
From that point onwards — nearly 23 years and counting — grew this wonderful relationship in my life. We designed this independent study that turned into a class, Baseball as a Road to God, which I have helped him for years in teaching. It became our book, and that book is now becoming a documentary film in partnership with Major League Baseball. It became our connective tissue…much more so than student and teacher, and protege and mentor, and so forth. We became friends, and he became my de facto New York family, which grew out of that first experience.
MR: And you went down the Grand Canyon with him?
PS: Yes. That was the sanctum sanctorum. I think you did it twice, didn't you?
MR: Just once. I was going to do it twice, but I got married.
PS: I think your wife would say that that was a good decision.
It was one of the most memorable two-week experiences of my life. We rafted down the Colorado. It was like going back through time…
MR: You've been to probably dozens of games with John at this point. What is your favorite memory of going to baseball with him?
I forget if you were there with us at Derek Jeter’s last home game?
PS: No — I had to pull out right before the game because my grandmother fell ill in Canada, and I flew back on short notice and missed that game.
MR: That was probably the great baseball moment of my life.
PS: That’s salt in the wounds.
I will tell you that several great games come to mind, one of which was the fifth game of a Division Series between the Yankees and the Orioles. We were there with Jim Traub, John's friend and author extraordinaire. It was one of the early days of the new Yankee Stadium, and there was still a lot of talk about whether the electricity in the air from the old stadium could ever get transported to the new one. The jury has since come back, and the answer is largely ‘no’ — but there are nights, or in that case afternoons, where you get that sense. That was one of them. That game stands out.
John always has an eclectic group of guests with him. We went to a Red Sox game in 2023, and it was the U.S. Ambassador to South Korea, the former Editor-in-Chief of the New York Daily News, John, and me. John is laser focused on the game. He wants to know if there’s going to be a hit-and-run or the exact distance of the lead the runner should take at first base. Meanwhile, the ambassador and the editor are talking about global affairs. And I'm in the middle straddling the fences, kind of taking it all in.
MR: When was the last time you scored a game?
PS: I haven't scored a game in years, but for many years, I scored almost every game I attended. I can't pinpoint why or when exactly I stopped doing that, but I can tell you on my third date with my now wife, I took her to Yankee Stadium, and I busted out the scorebook and started penciling in the lineup. She took one look at me, and I think she thought I was crazy. But that was me in all my glory, and so I did it. I would hope she ended up finding it interesting because she married me, but it used to be a regular occurrence. I wouldn't score playoff or World Series games, because the atmosphere made it too difficult.
Finding Love on Mother’s Day
MR: You have one of the great stories about how you met your wife. Can you tell it?
PS: I can tell it. Including the important disclaimer I'll put in about halfway through.
So, it was Mother's Day weekend 2014. My parents had just come to visit me from Canada. Unbeknownst to them, the closet door at my apartment’s entrance was replaced from one that slides open to one that swings open. And because it wasn't originally designed that way, when my mother was putting her coat in the closet and swung it open, it clipped the light fixture which came down.
This was probably the most heroic act I've ever done in my entire life — probably nothing will come close, even if I live for another hundred years — but I threw my mother out of the way and the light fixture crashed on my head. Miraculously, it didn't cut my head at all, but it sliced my hand open.
So off we went to the emergency room at a nearby hospital in New York. I'm dazed, convincing myself I will need an amputation. As I’m sitting, the physician's assistant is sewing me up and talking about how there’s a doctor there who's also from Toronto. But she wasn’t working that day. This is going in one ear and out the other as my mom's talking to him. I'm 30-something years old then, but I'm wearing my high school sweatshirt and have a baby face, so I look like I'm a teenager. That’s an important part of this. You'll have to edit this down. [N.B. I didn’t.]
So, he finished sewing up my hand. Out of nowhere, my future wife comes in. And here's where I put in that important disclaimer — she was not my doctor! The physician’s assistant makes the introduction, and she starts talking to my mom. They talk all about geography in Toronto, and who knows who from the tight-knit Jewish community.
She said about two words to me, if that — looked at me, took pity upon this kid who had this paper cut and was in the hospital, and that was it. And in a move she had never done before or since, gave her name and number to my mother, not even to me, thinking that this poor, poor kid is obviously new to the big city and in way over his head. Little did she know I'd been there for well over a decade at that point.
I go for dinner that night with my parents, I'm like, "Can you believe how into me that doctor was?" My mom says, "You're completely out of your mind."
So, what do I do? Inexplicably, I wait three weeks and then call her, leaving a rambling voicemail message. She has no idea at first who I am. I start by saying, "Don't worry, my fingers are okay." And then I asked her out on a date, which she didn't realize was a date — she came to the restaurant post-overnight shift.
I got so animated in my story-telling, I knocked the bottle of wine all over the table, and here's what she says was the difference maker that distinguished me from other guys out there — anyone else she says would've been mortified, but I kept talking. She later asked, "Why did you keep talking?" I said, "Well, I was mid-story. You never stop mid-story.”
Baseball as a Road to God
MR: Have you changed your religious attitudes or beliefs over your lifetime?
PS: The short answer is no.
The longer answer is a little bit. I'll explain what that means.
I am Jewish. I grew up in the conservative tradition. I still go to synagogue in that tradition. My experience with the book and with exploring these concepts and living my life, I feel just as connected to religiosity as I ever did. I feel just as strongly in the presence of a higher power, but I don't necessarily think the way I did when I was younger — that it's an anthropomorphic presence sitting on the clouds and residing in green pastures.
I think that the form and substance of what that is might be more complex. Religion to me is more based on the experiential — how we evoke these feelings that those in the great religious traditions have been trying to encapsulate in their texts, and in their traditions, and in their rituals throughout time — not necessarily in a dogmatic way though.
MR: That's a real John answer.
MR: Baseball is definitely a road to God for you, right?
PS: Yes. We define ‘a road to God’ as that which evokes this experience of breaking through the transcendent plane. The epiphany. Baseball can give epiphany.
MR: Is there something else like that for you? Do you have any weird hobbies that I still don't know about?
PS: Well, you don't know so much about the boat building work I did with my father for years.
MR: I do know a little bit about that because I think you talked about it at your wedding. But that’s a good one.
PS: We restored two vintage wooden boats, a Shepherd, which is a Canadian mahogany, and a Riva, an Italian runabout. I loved the process each time.
MR: Are you handy?
PS: Not like him. And I'd say not like my sons who take after him.
MR: You're now a very successful lawyer at a very successful firm. How does law fit into all of this? Do you get that same oomph?
PS: I do get that oomph in a different way. I'm a corporate attorney, and I work on transactions that really interest me because they’re sports-focused. When a team is bought or sold, I help represent the buyer or the seller or the league, or media deals, league restructuring, corporate matters, financing, things like that.
MR: If you could be the owner of any team throughout history, which would it be?
PS: Could they call me ‘Colonel’ like they called [onetime Yankees owner] Colonel Ruppert?
MR: Yeah.
PS: I think that would have to be the late 1990s, early-2000s Yankees.
MR: If you could own one minor league baseball team, who would you want to own?
PS: I don't know if the Savannah Bananas count, because they're not really a minor league team, they're more of a barnstorming Harlem Globetrotters of baseball. But that would be my answer. I can give you a real minor league team, but that would be my answer.
MR: Does putting the money into something that you love — how does that affect things?
PS: I'll put it this way. For years, as you know from our time together at Bloomberg News, I compiled sports team valuations. How much the Yankees are worth, how much the Cowboys are worth.
At a certain point, I said, "Rather than just write about this, I’d like to be in the room." And if not now, when? And if not as a lawyer, how?
And that's why, a little bit later in life, I went to law school and transitioned to leverage all these past experiences. So to answer your question — what gives me that thrill or that oomph is working on these transactions in which I've been invested in this industry for two decades, but now doing it in a hands-on way as opposed to being 30,000 feet in the air. That gives me a thrill each day when I'm rolling up my sleeves and getting to work.