Game 58: Josh Rosenfeld - Peanut Butter and Bacon on White Toast
When famed sportswriter John Feinstein, best known for A Season On The Brink, started writing his next book on Kermit Washington’s infamous punch that obliterated the frontal skull of Rudy Tomjonavich, he was able to sit down with nearly everybody involved in that melee. Everybody except Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, whose on-court fight led to the sucker punch that will lead Tomjonavich’s eventual obituary, despite two NBA titles as a coach. But when Feinstein interviewed ex-Lakers PR Director Josh Rosenfeld, who was Washington’s close friend in college, he lucked into talking to “one of a handful of people in the world Jabbar trusted implicitly.” All it took was one phone call from Rosenfeld and 24 hours later, Abdul-Jabbar finally responded to weeks worth of interview requests.
That was the respect Rosenfeld earned as the man in charge of handling all media and press relations for the Lakers during the height of their Showtime popularity. From handling ticket requests to helping TV networks with their celebrity shots to (I’m assuming) discreetly cleaning up messes by the lascivious Lakers, it was Rosenfeld’s job to make sure the players and the organization always looked good.
However, Rosenfeld began his career on the other side of the media scrum. After graduating from the American University, Rosenfeld worked as a sports journalist for the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner. But after only two years, he was hired as the Los Angeles Lakers’ PR Director at a time when the PR staff was essentially him. It’s now a 9 person operation, but from 1982-1989, Rosenfeld saw Showtime from up close. So close that Muhammad Ali once stole his seat on press row after getting bored with Jerry Buss’ owner’s box party way up near the rafters.
Being the Lakers’ PR Director, Rosenfeld constantly rubbed shoulders with celebrities. But it gave him an insight to celebrity Lakers fandom, one that is more organic and real than the way its portrayed. After leaving the Lakers in 1989 to work for the NBA as its first Director of International PR, he eventually worked one season for the New York Knicks and was surprised that they gave away tickets to celebrities. Not with the Lakers. Hollywood’s biggest stars spend their hard earned backend profits to secure their seats. Sure, the team would sometimes help them get up-close seats to the biggest games, but they weren’t handing the tickets over for free. And sometimes they wouldn’t even help in the first place. According to Rosenfeld, Ted Danson and Michael J. Fox, at the height of their fame, wanted to see if they could buy some seats to the Lakers-Celtics 1987 NBA Finals rematch. But when Dr. Buss found out it would be the first game they attended all year, he blew them off.
Before leaving the Lakers for the NBA’s main office, Rosenfeld played a small part in the Lakers-Celtics rivalry. During the heated 1984 NBA Finals, which the Lakers lost, Rosenfeld lost his cool and threw a towel into the Boston Garden crowd in the aftermath of Kurt Rambis getting clotheslined by Kevin McHale. It turned out that the person he nailed in the face was the wife of Celtics center Robert Parish. Several Celtics tried to barge into the Lakers’ locker room after the game and Pat Riley was pissed at Rosenfeld. So pissed that he demanded his PR Director apologize to Parish to crush this PR crisis of his own making. But according to Jeff Pearlman’s Showtime, when they met the next day, Parish broke the tension by joking that he’d “been waiting for somebody to get that lady to shut up forever.” What the book doesn’t mention is that Parish was later accused by his wife of physically and mentally abusing her for over a decade.
After Rosenfeld’s time with the NBA and Knicks came to an end, he ended up back where he started: Sportswriting. Rosenfeld spent two years as Editor in Chief of the Sports Business Daily’s NBA section and then returned to full-time writing as a sportswriter for the Newark Herald-Examiner until 2011. These days, Rosenfeld now works at WBGO 88.3, a Newark-based jazz public radio station. Just like Abdul-Jabbar, Rosenfeld fell in love with jazz after his dad took him to a concert as a child. And all this time I thought it was Rosenfeld’s love of expensive oriental rugs that forged his connection with Kareem.
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Peanut Butter and Bacon Sandwich On White Toast
During the season, I average working 12-16 hours a day, seven days a week at The Forum. Those hours, coupled by the fact that I am single, do not leave me a lot of time to enjoy a nice, home-cooked meal.
When I get the chance, I like to prepare Mexican fare, like tacos and burritos, or simple seafood dishes, like sauteed scallops and shrimp with vegetables.
But usually, my home-cooked meals consist of bowls of cold cereal, as much as ½ or ¾ a box at a time, or sandwiches. My favorite sandwich and one I heartily recommend is peanut butter and bacon on white toast. You’ll need a glass of milk on the side to help wash it down.
Of course, most of my meals are eaten out and I prefer ethnic food, especially Thai and Japanese cuisine.
No surprises here. Josh Rosenfeld’s peanut butter and bacon sandwich tasted like a sandwich with peanut butter and bacon. It’s not as bad a combo as it sounds, but instead of a side of milk, the sandwich could use some honey to help wash its dry ass ingredients down.
