Uncle Luke, the man whose booty-shaking madness once made
the U.S. Supreme Court stand up for free speech, gets as nasty as he wants to be for Miami New Times. This week, Luke writes a special online column about his favorite sports writer and commentator Dan Le Batard. Luke's regular column will return next week.
I finally get to write about my good friend Dan after all the years he wrote about me. I'm here to make a public plea Dan: You need to bury the hatchet with Hank Goldberg, God dammit!
I met Le Batard when he was doing his investigative reporting for the Miami Herald. He was the guy looking into whether or not there was a "Pay to Play" scheme going on with the University of Miami football team. When he was doing his reporting, he would come up to the golf course where I was playing to ask me questions.
I don't know how the fuck he found out, but I just stood there bouncing a golf ball on my club while he tried to interview me.
Dan wrote the article. It made him famous and sent him on to a great journalistic career. Although I never admitted to it, and after the news story came out I always gave him a hard time about it. But we ended up becoming good friends. He was one of the guests at my wedding last year.
Dan became the king of the print sports media in Miami. And Hank Goldberg, who was king of the Miami radio sports media, used to talk about Dan like a dog. Then Le Batard got on the radio and ran Hank into retirement. Dan and Stugotz run the best sports radio show in Miami. He's got a great young vibrant hip audience.
I happened to bump into Hank recently at the airport and he mentioned that his listens to Dan all the time. I called up Le Batard and told him about running into Goldberg. Hank was one of the people who motivated him to try talk radio because Goldberg was always talking bad about him. Dan basically told me, "Fuck Hank!"
But I know deep down Dan has goodness in heart because I have never seen him with an ugly girl. Dan has a lot of love for good looking women just like I do. So he really doesn't have a mean bone in his body.
So I'm telling Dan there comes a time when you need to face your demons. Take Hank out and buy him some dinner.
