Wright Thompson
speaker
994 appearances
3 recordings
2 series
first heard Jun 2025
last heard 17 Sep
Wright Thompson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 1.
Appearances
So, yeah. So how do you become a senior writer? Well, they just sort of name it. I mean, it's pretty funny. You know, my oldest friend in the world is Seth Wickersham. And I worked in a bunch of newspapers. He started at ESPN magazine, like as a fact checker. And we both ended up being named senior writers randomly on the same day. So that was fun. Yeah. I don't know what that means.
I think that means you're old and overpaid. Sort of like, you know, executive producer is a Latin phrase for taking credit. You know, I think it's some of that.
And then some terrible fucking cliche.
Dude, if I worked in the NFL and I saw him come in, I would turn and run. Yeah. But, like, no, I mean, I think, you know, I'm incredibly biased, but I think he's the best sports writer in America. But, yeah, we've known each other a really long time, and...
Uh, I mean, as you guys know, it's a lot easier to do this job with a tribe, you know, with people who sort of understand, you know, I'm, I'm in New York chasing Aaron judge right now. And I could call Seth and he completely understands, uh, you know, it's just, it's just helpful. Cause I mean, this is otherwise a soulless, lonely place. So I'm, I'm super grateful.
Michael Jordan. Okay, so he's the GOAT. And, you know, it's interesting because, you know, I mean, one of the books you talked about called The Cost of These Dreams, which is a collection of my ESPN stories, you know, two of the sort of tentpole stories in that book are a profile of Michael Jordan and a profile of Tiger Woods. And I always thought it was, I mean...
I feel really bad for Tiger Woods because he comes along. They have a model for what to do with a star. It's the Michael Jordan playbook. It's Nike and Phil Knight and Tiger's parents. And they did what they thought was best. And it's always astonishing that no one in that room at Nike, not...
tinker hatfield not phil knight nobody it occurred to no one that the playbook had been built around michael jordan who is an extreme extrovert and they applaud it to tiger woods who is an extreme introvert and like honestly it feels like they broken yeah you know but there's that great john updike quote i love the mask eats the face and uh that happens to so many people in public life
I mean, you know, it was happening to Jordan. I mean, one of the interesting things about Jordan in the last 10 or 15 years is that he's been doing real work on how to deal with the existential problem of you created yourself to be the perfect basketball killing machine. And every one of those traits that you elevated at the expense of some other trait or some other person you might've been, uh,
You basically prune the ability to enjoy having been Michael Jordan. Right. So I think these are doing like real, real work on the, you know, on how to be happy.
You know, it's so interesting. You go read Bill Russell talking about being a star, and it could be a modern guy talking, and he talks about the loneliness. You know, I'm in New York right now doing Yankee stuff. I was one of the last people in the old Yankee stadium. Uh, like to the point that major league baseball put one of those holograms on my notebook the night they closed it.
And I'm wandering around during the game. And this guy sort of comes out of the shadows who works there and is like, come with me and don't tell anybody I showed you this. And he walks me down this hall into a room that is full of chairs that have been like unbolted from the, it's like a storage room. He's like, you know what this is? And I'm like, what?
He goes, this used to be the Yankees clubhouse used to be down here. And this is the room where Lou Gehrig would sit by himself after he knew his diagnosis and no one else did. And like, this is the room where Lou Gehrig would sit and get ready to die. And, you know, if you think if you're Aaron Judge, you're not just competing against Otani. You're competing against Ruth and Garrick.
You're competing against DiMaggio and Mantle. I mean, the ghost that these guys have to wrestle with on the way to being the thing they want to be. I just find that incredibly compelling. And I also think that if I were in their shoes, it would crush me. I mean, I would end up on page six doing dumb shit out in New York City.
Like the guys who, you know, I mean, the guys who do this well are really amazing.
No, like, yeah, go cry on your $300 million sort of thing. Right, right. I mean, like... It is... You know, I mean, I... I've profiled a lot of athletes and almost none of them are just happy. You know what I mean? Like the guy who, you know, the guy who was probably more, you guys remember Dale Murphy who played for Atlanta Braves? Yeah. Like time MVP.
So Murph is probably the happiest former athlete I've ever met. And it is because he very intentionally, when he retired, set about killing the avatar of famous Dale Murphy. And most of these guys try to hang on to it. You know, he went and ran like a Mormon mission in Boston after he retired, like not a ceremonial job. You know what I mean? Like a hard job dealing with young people.
you know you're someone's parent and there's a tremendous amount of responsibility i think the guys who were happiest are the ones who understand what it means and what it doesn't mean and are able to you know cash their checks and walk away and you're like hey whatever happened to that guy i don't know man i think he's down at key west he has dinner at manja manja every night yeah yeah like
Like those are the, the ability to kill the avatar, not let the mask eat the face feels like, like I don't have any special, I just have been around a lot of guys. That's the only sort of knowledge I have.
It's not like, you know, but it, it does feel, you know, like when you go through that collection, the cost of these streams, that collection of stories, and if you're looking for a through line, I mean, that's what, you know, the song's named after, the book is named after a drive-by truckers lyric that I really like. And it's because it's,
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