Sportswriter Deford coming to Maine Sports Illustrated veteran to speak at Camden Opera House on Jan. 30

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Frank Deford is the Rolls Royce of sportswriters.

The Princeton-educated writer has been delivering luxurious prose for Sports Illustrated since 1962 and penned 13 books, including “Casey on the Loose,” now under development as a Broadway play. Not satisfied with the print medium alone, the suave Deford also appears on National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition” every Wednesday and on HBO’s Realsports with Bryant Gumbel.

Deford, 66, hailed by GQ as “the world’s greatest sportswriter,” will appear at Camden Opera House at 2:30 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 30, as part of Camden Public Library’s “Arts and Lecture Series.” The appearance is well timed, the week after the NFL conference championship games and the week before the Super Bowl.

It takes a special person to brave Maine weather in late January when most sportswriters are already thinking about spring training. “The only other offer was the end of February. No one offered a spot in August,” Deford said in a phone interview. Actually, he will be in northern Michigan the week before, so a Maine winter did not faze him a bit.

Deford says Red Sox fans must adopt an entire new outlook, now that Boston has won the World Series for the first time since indoor refrigeration was invented.

“The theory was that a World Series victory was the worst thing that could happen to Boston. They were always buoyed by their masochism and their fear of failure,” he said. “The Cub fan was always resigned to defeat, but the Red Sox feared victory. Now the air is out of their balloon. Will they become like the snotty Yankee fans and expect to win every year and be furious if they don’t?”

In case you missed it, Deford wrote a hilarious parody of the Gettysburg Address, titled “Fenway Park Address” regarding the 2004 World Series.

It starts:

“Fourscore and six years ago, our fathers saw before them in this city, in Fenway Park, a Worlds Championship, granted to Boston by the Red Sox and dedicated to the proposition that there has been so many before, so would so many more soon follow. Now we are engaged again in a great series, testing whether, without victory, this city or any city so dedicated to the national pastime can long endure.” The rest can be read at SI.com.

The New York Yankees’ payroll has ballooned to more than $200 million, leaving the rest of the league far behind, with many already predicting a 100-win season and a Yankee World Series victory in 2005.

“How do Yankee fans enjoy that? What is the fun in that?” Deford wondered.

Deford said the Yankees’ $200 million payroll has been derided by many of the smaller market areas, which have “lost” before the season starts. Some have said the disparity in payroll will ruin the game.

“It will take a lot more than that to ruin baseball,” he said. “Drugs are much more of a threat that Steinbrenner. The Yankees are operating within the rules. The rules have to be changed.”

Deford said steroids present a far greater threat to the game.

“Look at the Olympics,” he said. “One violation and you are out. In baseball, you have to get caught five times. All baseball has to do is what every other sports does. It is up to the players to allow random testing. Up until now they have been supporting the bad guys. They have to stand up for what matters and back it up with harsh penalties.”

In SI, Deford wrote, “Most athletes would do anything to hold back the night, to buy just a little more time. Anything, just to keep on being 36 for a few more years. Hey, it’s no different from older actresses getting breast implants to keep up with the ingenues, is it?”

Baseball has been damaged by the steroid scandal, but has weathered far more serious events, like the throwing of the 1919 World Series, he said.

Deford admitted to watching the Orange Bowl and the national championship between the University of Southern California and Oklahoma, but boycotted other bowls such as the Sugar Bowl game with Auburn seeking the title. Like most sane football fans, Deford said the time has come for a playoff system to determine a true national champion.

He calls the current bowl system “asinine.”

“There are plenty of villains and plenty of blame to go around,” he said. “College presidents are in bed with the bowls and say they don’t want players kept out of classes for additional games. But every other sport at every level has playoffs. Those kids practice from August to November, then stop until the January bowls. That makes no sense. If basketball did that, they would be having games in July.”

Deford said the bowl system is a “relic” from a time when it took several days on a train to get to bowl games.

Among the awards on the Deford walls are a National Magazine award for a profile on legendary Celtic player Bill Russell. He has been elected to the Sportscaster Hall of Fame. He was voted sportswriter of the year six times and the American Journalism Review has called him the nation’s finest sportswriter. He also has an Emmy and Peabody award.

Not bad a for a man who never intended to become a member of the newspaper “toy department” after leaving Princeton in 1962.

“I got led astray,” he said.

“It was not what I had in mind. I never set out to be a sportswriter, just a writer. But I was lucky enough to get hired by Sports Illustrated. I thought it would never work. But I fit into it. I think that Sports Illustrated has lifted the discipline of sports writing by hiring more intelligent, well-read writers,” he said.

He has seen them all, in every sport, even bowling. One of his favorite subjects, Bill Russell, once said that professional basketball players had to lend their personal dignity to playing a child’s game in shorts.

Deford takes the same approach to writing about sports.

“I have never been ashamed of being a sportswriter. It is not so much the subject but the quality of work, which counts. I never robbed banks. And I think the profession is much more respected than it once was and it has enjoyed more than its quota of hugely qualified writers, going back to Ring Lardner,” he said.

In April, Deford is scheduled to release his latest book, “Old Ball Game,” about the relationship between John McGraw and Christy Mathewson.

What is it like at the Princeton class reunions for a sportswriter to rub elbows with the financial elite? “I don’t go to class reunions. I wouldn’t go if I were a nuclear physicist,” said Frank Deford, a.k.a. the “world’s greatest sportswriter.”

Frank Deford will speak at 2:30 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 30, at the Camden Opera House. Tickets run $22-$50 for adults ($50 includes a later reception) and $8 per student. For more information, call Bay Chamber Concerts at 236-2823. Emmet Meara can be reached at emmetmeara@msn.com.