Story of his life: ESPN’s Mayne commentates on sports, fatherhood

In a phone interview from a Hartford-area Little League field last week, ESPN personality Kenny Mayne spoke about his new book “An Incomplete & Inaccurate History of Sport,” in his well-known, deadpan tone of voice.

Only he had to stop and pause throughout to coach his two daughters, Annie and Riley.

“Good job, Annie,” he said. “Now, run to first.”

That is, essentially, the way Mayne’s book works.

With more than 50 chapters covering sports from dodgeball to yachting, Mayne writes with the dry humor he’s known for on ESPN’s SportsCenter. But those chapters are mainly devoted to personal anecdotes: stories that jump from nostalgic accounts of his childhood, to sentiments on life as a father today, to his one-of-a-kind perspective on the world of sports, all with illustrations provided by Annie and Riley.

Mayne will sign books tonight at Barnes and Nobles at The Grove and is a featured speaker at this weekend’s Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, where he will speak Saturday at noon.

Mayne is hardly shy about the often silly nature of the book.

“We’re actually still looking for the premise,” Mayne joked. “I just kind of kept writing and writing, and it became kind of like what my daughters call a “˜chapter book.'”

Mayne jokes in the book that it took him “four or five hours” to write it, and he opens with a “Foreword,” a “Backwords” and another “Forward.”

Yet the book manages to deliver a personal side of Mayne that fans don’t see on the screen.

He writes of the birth of his second daughter and the “crazy things” he said in the delivery room.

He depicts what may have been the “wildest night of (his) life,” when he served as an usher for a Muhammad Ali-Larry Holmes bout in 1980.

And he discusses one of the most crucial moments of his professional career, when, as a freelance reporter, he sent a sarcastic letter to ESPN executive John Walsh.

That vignette, covered in a chapter entitled “Controlled Scramble,” is part of one of the book’s best metaphors, which comes from a story about Mayne’s brief time as a backup quarterback in the NFL.

“It’s a nice metaphor for life, about knowing what you’re doing but being a little bit on the edge,” Mayne said.

The letter launched Mayne’s ESPN career back in 1994. Years later, it was a contract negotiation with ESPN that prompted Mayne to begin his book.

Mayne started the project in 2006, when he was in the process of negotiating a new contract with ESPN and uncertain about his professional future. He said he was inspired by Jon Stewart’s “America (The Book).”

“It became a little bit of my backup,” Mayne said. “At least I had something going.”

Mayne ended up signing a new deal with ESPN, but still pushed forward with the book.

He said the publishing process was very new and somewhat disappointing because he was so familiar with the immediacy of television reporting.

“At the same time, I now understand there’s so much to set up,” Mayne said. “I’m glad we took extra time.”

The “Controlled Scramble” chapter covers a seminal moment of Mayne’s career, then Mayne shifts almost effortlessly to his everyday routine.

He devotes an entire “hunting” chapter to his Starbucks ordering habits and how he can never seem to get his espresso drink in the right-sized cup.

At one point, in a chapter about his former UNLV teammate Randall Cunningham, Mayne asks, “Is this even a book about sports?”

Sometimes, the answer to that question seems to be an obvious yes, and sometimes it seems to be an equally obvious no.

Then there are the times when the line between the two blurs, such as when Mayne writes with a sort of nostalgia about the days of his youth, when sports meant the most to him.

That sentiment is beautifully portrayed in a chapter about Mayne’s childhood friend Mark Sansaver, a brilliant athlete stricken with muscular dystrophy.

The gravity of that story may not seem to mesh in a book that includes a chapter on duckpin bowling. But somehow, Mayne pulls it off.

He may have described the nature of the book best, indirectly, when discussing his approach to his Little League assistant coaching duties.

“I just let things flow,” he said.

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