Rafe Bartholomew is the former features editor at Grantland and the author of Two and Two: McSorley’s, My Dad, and Me.

“I never saw it as something negative because [my dad] comes out, to me, at the end, extremely heroic. … He becomes this dad who I idolized as a bartender, a guy who would hang out with me and make me laugh, a guy I just adored almost every step of the way. I mean, of course, everybody gets into fights. But to me it was always so obvious that he had overcome the problems in his childhood, he’d overcome his own drinking problem, he’d done all these things, and by the time I was older, he’d even found a way to get back into writing and self-publish a couple of books of poems about the bar. So he’s sort of managed to tick off all those goals, just maybe not on the same schedule, maybe not in the most normal way.”

Thanks to MailChimp, V by Viacom, and 2U for sponsoring this week's episode.


@Rafeboogs
rafebartholomew.com
Bartholomew on Longform
Pacific Rims: Beermen Ballin’ in Flip-Flops and the Philippines’ Unlikely Love Affair with Basketball (Berkley • 2011)
Bartholomew’s Archive at Grantland
Two and Two: McSorley’s, My Dad, and Me (Little, Brown & Company • 2017)
"The Old House at Home" (Joseph Mitchell • New Yorker • Apr 1940)
[3:45] Bartholomew’s Archive at Harper’s
[22:00] The Last Shot: City Streets, Basketball Dreams (Darcy Frey • Mariner Books • 2013)
[22:00] Swee’ Pea: The Story of Lloyd Daniels and Other Playground Basketball Legends (John Valenti • Atria • 2016)
[29:00] Coverage of Grantland at Deadspin
[29:30] "The Legend of the Iron Five" (Chuck Klosterman • Grantland • Jun 2011)
[24:11] "Press X for Beer Bottle: On L.A. Noire" (Tom Bissell • Grantland • Jun 2011)
[37:10] "Mayweather-Pacquiao: A Sad Morning in Manila" (Grantland • May 2015)
[38:30] "One Hundred Years of Arm Bars" (David Samuels • Grantland • Aug 2015)
[44:30] "Death and Tradition at the U.K. Grand National" (Sam Knight • Grantland • Apr 2013)
[45:00] "Dropped" (Jason Fagone • Grantland • Mar 2014)