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Photography by Matt Marcinkowski
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Photography by Matt Marcinkowski
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Photography by Matt Marcinkowski
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Photography by Matt Marcinkowski
The news clip begins outside Busch Stadium. It was July 16, 1988, and the Cardinals had just traded pitcher John Tudor to the Dodgers for slugger Pedro Guerrero. KSDK reporter Deanne Lane solicited reaction to the transaction from passing fans. In this case, the proverbial man on the street was a bespectacled 8-year-old in a red National League Championship T-shirt. Lane probably expected something cute and simple, a nugget of “kids say the darnedest things” gold. Instead, with a worn-in mitt tucked under his left arm and his nervous little sister frozen in silence at his side, Benjamin Hochman launched into a full analysis of the deal.
“Guerrero has home run power,” he observed. “He can hit and do all that stuff, but Tudor is the ace of everybody. He can do everything.”
“Are you sorry to see Tudor go?” Lane asked.
“Yeah,” Benjamin admitted, disappointment in his voice. “I wanted to see him pitch tonight, but that’s the way it goes.”
The tape then cuts to a live shot of Lane. “You may want to keep your eyes on that little kid,” she tells the anchor back in the studio. “Only 8 years old, he knows a lot about baseball.”
The footage was preserved as part of a montage that opens the VHS recording of Benjamin’s bar mitzvah. The highlight of that rite of passage, aside from its religious significance, came during the kiddush, a traditional blessing over wine. The adults took quick sips. Benjamin chugged, his glass remaining tipped up well after the rabbi had moved on to a closing prayer. In the background, adults snickered. Though it wasn’t caught on the tape, girls in the back row surely smiled and giggled.
Together forever: Benjamin’s first experience in sports media and his first public joke.
Jere Hochman remembers nights spent sitting at his grandmother’s kitchen table in University City as she pasted S&H Green Stamps into her booklet or played gin rummy. Invariably, a transistor radio was on in the background, playing that night’s Cardinals game. Each morning, Jere read the box score in the paper. “That’s when they put the standings on the front page of the sports section, where they belong,” he says. In 1964, he listened to the World Series by smuggling a radio into science class, running the earpiece up under his clothes.
On May 10, 1980, the day Benjamin was born, Jere waited just 17 hours to introduce his infant son to the game. He cradled Benjamin in his arms, rocking him, as Jack Buck’s comforting voice wafted from a radio in the window, filling the room. Jere has forgotten that the Cardinals lost, 5–3. He remembers that perfect moment, baseball and his boy.
When he was 6 years old, Benjamin listened to a record called Celebration! every night before bed. It wasn’t a Kool & The Gang album; rather, it was a collection of highlights from the Cards’ championship season in 1982 as called by Buck. Benjamin memorized every word. “Brummer is stealing home! He is…saaaaaafffe!!” Growing up with a Cardinals obsession is hardly a unique experience in St. Louis, but the Hochmans took it to another level. Many families watched Field of Dreams. Jere and Benjamin drove to Iowa, to the actual field, to play catch. Many people went to card shows. Jere arranged for his son to have his own table at one, the way some parents might help their kids set up a lemonade stand. Long before the Internet made fantasy sports mainstream, Jere ran an offline league for Benjamin and his friends. They bought the entire set of Topps trading cards for that season, then had the boys over to the house for a draft. They took turns picking players from the stack of cards. As the season went on, Jere used a rudimentary spreadsheet to track their stats. Jere has forgotten the rules, or who won, if anyone did. He remembers the looks on the boys’ faces when they grabbed their favorite player’s card.
Benjamin grew up at 208 Lancaster in Clayton, where he and Jere spent hours in the back yard playing catch and fielding ground balls. But ask Benjamin for the address of his childhood home, and he says something different: Section 244, Row 5, Seats 1 through 4. Those were, all of the Hochmans agree, the best seats in the second Busch Stadium, right on the railing, where you could put your feet up, where you could yell to your friends when they walked past. Benjamin’s sister, Emily, remembers learning how to score a game in those seats, penciling diamonds onto the card as players advanced around the bases. She laughed at Fredbird and watched Ozzie Smith do flips.
“It’s cliché, but it’s the best baseball city and the best fans ever,” Jere says. “It’s baseball the way it ought to be.”
Also a bit cliché but no less true: Benjamin knew that he wanted to be a sportswriter as soon as he learned to write. At age 4, he made up baseball rosters, then invented stories about the imaginary players. A decade later, he became the only freshman writer on the staff of the Clayton Globe. He idolized Post-Dispatch columnist Bernie Miklasz, who at some point in the early days of the Internet published his America Online contact info in the paper. Soon, instant messages started popping up from a kid named Benjamin. The aspiring sportswriter was enthusiastic and curious, asking Miklasz about his job. The grizzled columnist told the boy that sportswriting isn’t easy: Jobs are scarce. You’ll have to work long days and nights, spending weekends away from family in airports and press boxes. But he also offered hope: “Work hard, follow your dream, and write, write, write,” Miklasz typed. “If you do that, you’ll realize your goals.” Benjamin always signed off in the same way, by telling Miklasz that his goal was to succeed him at the Post-Dispatch. The whole thing is so corny that it seems contrived, but it’s true—and amazing. How many kids know exactly what they want to do with their lives? How many do it?
His senior year at Clayton High School, Benjamin penned the annual student-run musical. Miklasz wrote the production up in his notes column. It was called The Franchise, about an expansion baseball team in Utah. Really, the team, with its all-powerful owner and blindly loyal fans, was a metaphor for Nazi Germany. He wrote in some bar scenes, based loosely on Cheers, and Emily played one of the regulars. Benjamin gave himself a cameo as The Fonz. He had one line, which was, of course, “Ayyyyy.” He practiced that line in the mirror, adjusting the pitch and tone, like Kramer trying to find the exact right way to say, “These pretzels are making me thirsty.”
Jere forgot all of the lines and most of the plot: “I just remember laughing…and laughing…and laughing.”
Benjamin went to journalism school at the University of Missouri, where he also managed the men’s basketball team. One day at practice, he was standing on the sideline with a ball in one hand, a water bottle in the other, and a towel over his shoulder. The guys were playing three-on-three at both baskets. A ball was deflected at the far end and came rolling—fast—on a collision course with the ankle of one of the best players on the team, Clarence Gilbert, who never saw it coming. Benjamin sprang into action. He dropped his ball, flung his towel away, sprinted across the floor, wove among 7-footers, and slid like a soccer goalie to stop the ball right before it ended Gilbert’s career. Earlier, Tigers coach Quin Snyder had been lecturing his players about their lackluster energy. Now, he stopped the practice. “That’s the hustle I’m talking about!” he yelled. “That’s what we need right there!”
Benjamin refers to himself as a “late bloomer.” He came to college a little pudgy, with dorky glasses and a goatee, his homage to Mark McGwire or, as he puts it, “my homage to not getting laid.” His sophomore year, though, he interned at the Sporting News and, improbably, was cast to model in an advertisement for Footaction, a sports shoe store. He thought that this was his big break. That year, the basketball team had a new assistant coach, Igor Kokoškov, whose girlfriend was a European beauty queen. She flew in for a game and ended up sitting outside the locker room with the managers, telling stories about her recent photo shoots in Milan and Paris. That’s when one of the managers, a good-looking, popular kid, jumped in: “Hooch here is a model, too.”
She looked Benjamin up and down, from glasses to bulges, sure that this must be some kind of cruel joke. It was.
Stories like these, told by Benjamin with self-deprecating charm, helped him make a best friend of Graham Watson, the goalie of the women’s soccer team. They met in an introductory reporting class in which students worked at the Columbia Missourian newspaper. Benjamin cracked jokes in meetings that kept Graham laughing all day. They parted ways after graduation—Benjamin leaving for New Orleans’ Times-Picayune, Graham for the Dallas Morning News—but stayed close.
One year, she came to visit Benjamin for New Year’s. By this point, he had shed a few pounds, lost the glasses, shaved his facial hair. He had bloomed into Frodo Baggins, sometimes even getting into VIP sections at clubs as Elijah Wood. He saw himself as an unofficial ambassador for the Big Easy and took it upon himself to show her the best it had to offer. They drove straight from the airport to one of his favorite bars, Fat Harry’s. The pair watched football all day, then dressed up for a concert at the House of Blues. They stayed out all night, ringing in 2005, and in the morning Ben said, “In New Orleans, when you’re hung over, you go back out.” So for breakfast they went to Pat O’Brien’s on Bourbon Street and drank hurricanes. They stayed out all night again. Graham had such a good time that when her best friends from Redlands High School, in California, were picking a destination for their annual summer trip, she suggested New Orleans. Back at Pat O’Brien’s, Benjamin hit it off with her friend Erin Meines. They kissed for the first time just outside the men’s room. They were in their mid-twenties, living in different cities. She had a boyfriend. This was a random hookup, nothing serious.
A couple of months later, Hurricane Katrina hit. Benjamin evacuated to Baton Rouge. Even there, 80 miles away, it was the worst storm he had ever seen. With the power out, he listened to the news on a radio as people in New Orleans called in to report that entire neighborhoods had washed away. He considered returning to the city to report on the devastation, but his editor told him to stick to his beat, covering the Tulane football team.
All he needed to do was find it.
Eventually the team settled in tiny Ruston, Louisiana, staying in a condemned dormitory near Louisiana Tech. At first, Benjamin thought he was missing the big story, but then he interviewed the quarterback, and the kid was crying, and they talked about another player who couldn’t locate his uncle. The big story was right in front of him. The Green Wave played 11 games in 11 different cities that season. But they played, and Ben told their story. He co-authored a book about the team, Fourth and New Orleans. The work earned Benjamin a promotion, to cover another displaced team, the NBA’s Hornets, then playing in Oklahoma City.
“I was proud to tell these stories, because this wasn’t about football,” Benjamin says of his season with Tulane. “It was about people who played football who were from New Orleans who lost their homes and still somehow tried to play football.”
In the fall of 2007, Benjamin landed a job covering the Nuggets for the Denver Post. A year later, Graham moved to Colorado, too, to write about college football for ESPN.com (she now does the same for Yahoo!). He made sure that her social calendar stayed full. At the Whiskey Bar, where Mizzou alumni gather to watch football games, Benjamin appointed himself the official yeller of “M-I-Z,” to which every true son responds “Z-O-U.” Anyone else attempting to start the cheer was in for a showdown. He threw themed parties, like a ’20s soirée called the Great Gatstravaganza or an Over the Top affair, based on a film in which Sylvester Stallone plays an over-the-road truck driver who tries to reconcile with his alienated son while becoming a champion arm wrestler. Every year, their friends played bar golf. Participants dress up like extras from Caddyshack for a pub crawl in which each bar represents a hole.
Benjamin was still single, and Graham’s friend Erin had cycled through less-than-stellar boyfriends. Graham decided to set them up. When Erin asked about visiting Denver, Graham mentioned Benjamin. “Do you remember that Ben guy from New Orleans? He lives here now,” she said. “You should maybe reconnect. Ben’s doing big things.”
At first, Erin was hesitant. “Wasn’t he really short?” she asked. Benjamin was reluctant, too. “Setups—I’m not sure,” he said. “She doesn’t live here. What possible future could we have?”
In October 2009, Erin came to Denver, supposedly to visit her old friend, who was preparing for her wedding. “That was like the main reason of the trip,” Benjamin recalls, “but clearly Graham was going to make sure it involved me kissing Erin again.”
At the time, Benjamin and Graham hosted a radio show in Denver, together with another friend, Lindsay Jones, also of the Denver Post. The day Erin arrived, Lindsay and Benjamin went to lunch before the show, and he was wearing athletic shorts and a T-shirt. But he came to the studio, where he knew Erin would be, in a button-up shirt and sweater. The show’s producer noticed that Benjamin was cracking more jokes that usual, peeking through the glass to see whether Erin was entertained. He stuttered, feeling nervous. Afterward, they all went out for dinner, and Lindsay was sure to call Benjamin out for the wardrobe change.
The next night, they gathered at Benjamin’s to watch the Cardinals’ first playoff game. It stretched on for nearly four hours, and the Cardinals lost. Erin had sat through an interminable baseball game between two teams she cared nothing about, hoping for a kiss. But at the door, Benjamin chickened out. The next night, after the Cardinals lost again, Benjamin met his friends at a bar, determined not to repeat the previous night’s mistake. Right away, the chemistry was palpable. Graham and Lindsay, each suddenly feeling like a third wheel, considered leaving their friends alone. When the group walked to another bar, Benjamin and Erin hung back. It was there, on Blake Street between 19th and 20th, near the baseball stadium, that they had their second first kiss.
Things moved quickly. As the Nuggets beat writer, Benjamin was always on the road, traveling up and down the West Coast. He and Erin would meet up in Los Angeles or San Francisco or Chicago, like a honeymoon every weekend. The first of those rendezvous was in San Diego, a week after the kiss in Colorado. Benjamin remembers making out and making love. He can still see the sunlight streaming into the room, falling on the white sheets. That’s where they changed their Facebook statuses to “in a relationship.”
The next summer, Erin moved to Denver to start a life with Benjamin. They rented a house and adopted a Labradoodle puppy they named Ewing. Benjamin had always wanted to name a son Ewing, after the family from Dallas, and Erin let him use the name for the dog so he couldn’t also use it for a future child. Their relationship was like that. He was gregarious, hilarious, the life of the party. She was goofy and funny, too, but in a quieter, sharper way. His sister, Emily, remembers a dinner together in Chicago, where she lives. Erin told a funny story. Benjamin, in what Emily calls “true Ben fashion,” tried to top it. Erin sat quietly, letting him finish. Then she said, “Mine was better.”
Erin became a Cardinals fan. Benjamin, who knew nothing about fiction writing, helped Erin with her novel. Together, they visited the New York hotel where it was set. Erin talked about converting to Judaism so they could raise their children in that faith. Another time, a friend spotted them out together buying a Christmas tree. Erin and Graham had gone to look at engagement rings, a not-so-subtle hint to Benjamin.
Benjamin’s favorite thing about Erin may have been her hair—which always seemed to shine—but it was probably her laugh. She cackled, in a cute way, a way that showed she wasn’t embarrassed to laugh hard, to let the funny go clear through her. The hardest she ever laughed was at a video clip of her boyfriend at a Nuggets game. He had been working on a blockbuster story about Carmelo Anthony but was having trouble cornering the superstar for a one-on-one. So when he heard that Anthony was sneaking out the back door of the arena, he went after him, and his sprint was caught on camera. No one had ever seen a hobbit move so fast. Erin howled.
On December 30, 2010, Benjamin and Erin took Ewing out into the snow for the first time. She wore a puffy purple coat and a stocking cap over that stunning blond hair. Ewing was a ball of brown fur. They laughed as he tried to figure out this white stuff, then began to play.
“Look at this! It’s a snowy wonderland!” Erin said.
“Hey, little buddy, do you like the snow?” Benjamin asked.
“Hey, Ewing, watch me throw snow at Daddy!”
Less than a month later, Erin was dead.
When Benjamin left town for road trips, Erin and Graham sometimes had girls’ nights. On Friday, January 28, 2011, they planned to rent a Zac Efron movie. Erin, who had celiac disease, would cook something healthy. Despite admonishments from her friend, the pregnant Graham would order a pizza. But on Tuesday, Erin texted to say that she wasn’t feeling well. Benjamin brought his girlfriend flowers and Coke, like her mother used to when she was sick, but had to fly to D.C. for work later that day.
By Wednesday, Erin was feeling better and told Graham they were still on for Friday. But Thursday night, Graham didn’t sleep. The baby felt like he was trying to kick his way out of her belly. Friday morning, she texted Erin that she wasn’t going to make it that night. Erin didn’t respond. Benjamin was in Cleveland, where the Nuggets were set to play the Cavaliers. Maybe it’s just hindsight, but he remembers it as an ominously dark and dreary day. He’d been trying to text Erin, too, but she hadn’t answered. He thought back to their conversation from the night before. Had he said something to deserve the silent treatment? He called Graham: “Are you still going to see Erin today?”
“No, I’m glad you called,” she said. “I tried texting her a couple of times today. I haven’t heard back, but when you talk to her, can you just tell her that I’m not going to show up, so don’t order pizza?”
Now, Benjamin was worried. By the afternoon, when he still hadn’t heard from Erin, his frantic calls unanswered, he called his cousin JB, who also lived in Denver. “This is going to sound weird, but I haven’t heard from Erin all day,” Benjamin said. “Can you go by the house just to see what’s going on?” JB found all of the doors locked. He walked around to a window and saw Erin on the floor. The house had a thick wood door. JB broke it down. He called 911 and began CPR.
When JB called back, Benjamin was already at the arena, but the game hadn’t started. He went into a bathroom stall and answered. JB was crying, but he couldn’t bring himself to break the news. “It’s not good. It’s not good.” He just kept repeating that phrase, then “I’m sorry.” Still on the phone, in a daze, Benjamin stumbled out of the bathroom and into the arena’s luxury bar, where he collapsed across a couch. He punched the cushions. Once he was finally able to pry himself up, he caught a cab to the airport. He wasn’t sure whether Erin might still be alive, whether maybe she was on life support, whether maybe he could get on a flight in time to say goodbye.
When he got to the Continental counter, a sweet woman told him there were no more flights to Denver. Benjamin asked about the possibility of hiring a private jet. The price was exorbitant, but he wanted to do it. “Let me wait to find out if she’s still alive,” he said, the morbid thought giving him a chill. Minutes later, JB called again. He put a police officer on the phone, who told Benjamin that his girlfriend had died.
Benjamin fell on the floor at the airport. He wept. He thought about himself, about Erin, about his family, about her family, about the dog, about their friends. It overwhelmed him. His mother sent a family friend to take him back to his hotel. Though he couldn’t hold it together enough to speak, he insisted on talking to Graham when she called. Graham had lost not only her best friend from high school but also the girlfriend of her best friend from college. Benjamin wanted to comfort her.
The next morning, he flew back to Denver. His parents and sister met him, and they got rooms in a hotel. Benjamin couldn’t bear to go back into the house or to see Ewing. For days, he just cried. He thought a lot about how to honor Erin, about how to live on in a way that would make her proud. He thought about how to share the bad news in a way that would make it clear to everyone what a wonderful person he’d lost. On January 31, he posted on Facebook: “I didn’t know if I should share this on FB, but here it goes… The love of my life is dead. My girlfriend Erin Meines lived with me in Denver. We had a beautiful house and a little puppy. Erin died unexpectedly. I’ll take your thoughts, prayers, anything you got. She was the sweetest soul around.”
An autopsy was performed, but the cause of death couldn’t be determined. Murder, suicide, drugs, all the obvious diseases and maladies—each was ruled out. It was all just so incomprehensible. Meanwhile, Lindsay adopted Ewing, and Graham took the lead on cleaning and emptying the house. “I am very much like Peter Pan,” Benjamin says. “I’m kind of careless with some things in life. I’m goofy, making jokes a lot. So for that human to suddenly deal with the death of his girlfriend—the pain involving himself and his family and friends—it was a crazy emotional and psychological transition.”
In California for the funeral, Benjamin and his family stayed with Graham’s parents. In her eulogy, Graham mentioned Erin and Benjamin’s first kiss in New Orleans, even though the guy Erin had been dating at the time was in the audience. Afterward, they laughed about that, a needed moment of levity. Back in Denver, Benjamin held a candlelight vigil for Erin outside the house, on the night before Valentine’s Day. Friends took turns sharing happy memories about Erin; then the group walked to a nearby dive bar named the Candlelight. Erin would have laughed at the cleverness.
Benjamin’s editors at the Denver Post gave him a few weeks off. Lindsay, who also worked at the Post (she’s now a sportswriter for USA Today), volunteered to go on a road trip in Benjamin’s place. She told Nuggets coach George Karl why she was there, and he wrapped her in a big hug. The thought of that gesture still brings Benjamin to tears. The coach broke down the barrier between journalist and subject to share in a human moment.
On Benjamin’s first day back at work, he broke the biggest story of his career. For weeks, rumors had been flying that the Nuggets planned to trade Carmelo Anthony, their best player, to the Knicks. That evening, Benjamin’s sources confirmed that the deal was done. He reported it on Twitter, then sat back as the news spread in a waterfall of retweets. As his colleagues scrambled to catch up, he let out a triumphant scream. As Graham put it, “He could really use a win right now.” Another came when Benjamin, in a blue sweater vest and bow tie, earned the best-dressed award at that summer’s bar golf event. Allegations of a sympathy vote were never proven.
At about the same time his life was being torn apart, Benjamin’s career took off. “That first year, I tried to do so many things that she would be proud of,” he says. By pouring himself into his work, Benjamin distracted himself from the pain.
It’s easy for beat writers, who do the same thing day after day, game after game, to start going through the motions. Benjamin never did. He started a blog called NBA (National Burger Adventure), writing reviews of restaurants in the various cities he visited. The most hilarious of these was his take on a McDonald’s in Charlotte in which he pretended to have never heard of the place: “It seemed to be a popular lunch spot for Charlotte locals—in fact, when I told the lady I’d never been to McDonald’s, the gent behind me in line began laughing out loud.” The next fall, an NBA lockout postponed the season. With no basketball to cover, Benjamin began a video series called “Tales From a Locked-Out Sports Writer.” He tried yoga and went hiking in the mountains, even though, as Emily says, he’s the least outdoorsy person alive. Benjamin prefers to think of himself as “indoorsy.” And he found other stories to cover: He wrote about a softball league for septuagenarians, opening with this doozy: “The ballplayer proudly put on his uniform, and then headed to chemotherapy.” He topped it with a story about a boy who pitched a no-hitter and hit four home runs after the death of his estranged mother. He wrote this three months after the death of his own girlfriend.
For support, Benjamin relied on his friends. For therapy, he turned to David Freese. The Cardinals seemed like a lost cause in 2011. It’s said that the dog days of summer separate the contenders from the pretenders in baseball, and in St. Louis, we know the heat of August well. Near the end of that month, the Cardinals were 10 ½ games out of the playoffs. But then the Cardinals started winning. The Braves started losing. On the last day of the season, if Philadelphia beat Atlanta, St. Louis would make the playoffs. After 13 excruciating innings, the Braves fell and the Cardinals were in.
“2011 has been a shit year,” Benjamin posted on Facebook. “Erin’s unexpected death has turned my life upside-down. But I know she wants me to smile. And I know she was smiling down on me last night when the Cardinals made the playoffs.”
The Cardinals upset the Phillies in the Division Series; ace Chris Carpenter outdueled ace Roy Halladay 1–0 in the decisive Game 5. In the NLCS, the Cardinals did it again, ousting the Brewers in six games. “After her husband died, actress Blythe Danner won an Emmy award… and she said in her speech, ‘I think my husband is up there, stirring this up for me,’” Benjamin wrote on Facebook. “Well, the Cardinals were 10 ½ games out of the wild card on Aug. 25. And now, they’re in the World Series. I can’t help but think that Erin is up there, stirring this up for me.”
In the World Series, the Cardinals played the Texas Rangers, Graham’s favorite team, possibly splitting Erin’s divine allegiance, and St. Louis fell behind three games to two. Benjamin flew to St. Louis for Game 6. That’s when David Freese took over. It felt like every time he came to the plate, there were men on base and two outs and two strikes and the game on the line. In the ninth inning, with the Cardinals down by two runs and down to the final strike of their season, Freese hit a two-run triple to tie the game. The Cardinals were again down by two and again down to their final strike in the 10th, when Lance Berkman came through. And then in the 11th, Freese hit the walk-off home run that guaranteed that he will never pay for another drink.
As Benjamin would later write, “I hopped onto the metal bleacher bench, punched the sky with both fists and let out an uncontrollable primal scream of euphoria. No one had ever cheered louder for anything.” The next night, he was back in the same seats for Game 7. The Cardinals won 6–2. When they made the final out and clinched the title, Benjamin cried uncontrollably. He raised his arms to the sky, to Erin. On Facebook, he simply wrote, “You did it blondie.”
He penned a column about Erin’s death and the Cardinals’ magical run. It’s one of the best sports columns ever written, up there with W.C. Heinz writing about the death of a racehorse or Jim Murray writing about the death of his wife. What is it about death that brings out the best in writers? Benjamin described Erin as “a luminous lady, an effervescent goofball, a stunner with blonde hair that was seemingly illuminated, making her appear almost angelic.”
Benjamin makes friends everywhere he goes. Once, on a trip to Japan with Emily, they went to see the Yomiuri Giants, sitting near a family with five kids, all in Koji Uehara shirts, celebrating the pitcher who went on to become the Red Sox closer. Despite their differences, Benjamin befriended them, using baseball as a common language.
He met Joan Niesen when the Nuggets visited the Timberwolves, whom she was covering for Fox Sports. He walked up to her and said, “Hi, I’m Benjamin. I’m from St. Louis, too, and I went to Mizzou, too, and I love the Cardinals, too. We should be friends.” Eventually he helped her land a job at the Denver Post. She’s now a writer for Sports Illustrated.
Shortly after Benjamin met Jonah Keri, he invited the baseball writer for Grantland on a trip to New Orleans for the NCAA Basketball Championship game. Despite not knowing Benjamin that well, Jonah said yes. On Tuesday, the night after the game, Benjamin took him out for what he believes is the perfect New Orleans night: First, they went to Jacques Imo’s, Benjamin’s favorite restaurant in the world. They had blackened redfish, followed by alligator sausage cheesecake, which Benjamin calls “orgasmic.” Then they went next door to the Maple Leaf Bar to see the Rebirth Brass Band, which Benjamin describes as “the most intoxicating musical experience you could have.”
He and Jonah became regulars at a bar called 1up, where they played NBA Jam, the classic two-on-two arcade game. They always played as the Golden State Warriors, and they were unbeatable. Once, during a playoff series between the Nuggets and Lakers, a TV guy from Los Angeles challenged Benjamin to a game. Benjamin won, and the guy didn’t take it well. When the series went back to L.A., Benjamin saw the reporter at a bar, sitting with a bunch of Laker Girls, the prettiest women in the prettiest city. Benjamin recruited a female friend to walk up to the table and pretend to recognize the broadcaster. Just when he was starting to feel important, she said, “Oh my God—you’re the guy who lost to Benjamin Hochman the other day in NBA Jam!”
With his sense of humor, it’s no surprise that Benjamin has done standup comedy, appearing at clubs around Denver. His act includes this sage advice: “When shaving a beard, always shave the Hitler mustache first, because if you wait until last and then suddenly a fire breaks out in your apartment, you have to make a decision: Do I try to shave the mustache and risk dying in a blazing inferno, or do I run downstairs with my neighbors looking at me like I just invaded Poland?”
Benjamin continued to make a name for himself with his writing. In 2013, he was promoted to columnist, a position that gave him greater creative freedom. He had fun. For one column, he met his doppelgänger, Elijah Wood, at a film festival, dubbing himself “Fat Frodo, Lord of the Onion Rings.” But he also wasn’t afraid to tackle serious issues. For his penultimate column in Denver, he wrote about Broncos rookie Shane Ray, who played with Michael Sam at Mizzou, using the column to advocate for greater acceptance of LGBT athletes. His bottom line: “Life is short. We’re all going to die. Don’t be a jerk to gay people.”
This past summer, he created the Nine Innings project, writing nine love letters to baseball. For one, he found kids playing in the streets, just like in the good old days. For another, he tried to track down a specific stadium seat that had been hit by a famous minor league home run. For the final installment, he wrote about the bond that baseball creates in families. He wrote about his dad listening to the World Series in science class, and about a soldier serving overseas who stayed in touch with his parents by following the Rockies. It’s sure to win awards.
In most cases, a person’s friends might not be the most objective critics of his work. But many of Benjamin’s closest confidants are themselves accomplished sports journalists, giving them a unique perspective on what makes him good.
Jonah lauds Benjamin’s youthful exuberance. “Ben is 35 years old. I say this with all kindness in my heart, but he acts, often, younger than that,” Jonah says. “He really is a very young soul.” Joan appreciates Benjamin’s ability to take a sports story and make it universal. “He knows that sports are more than sports,” she says. Lindsay adds that Benjamin is the kind of writer who agonizes over every word, but he’s also more than just witty turns of phrase and Seinfeld references, though readers can expect plenty of those. He’s willing to take a stand.
Graham worked with Bernie Miklasz and Bryan Burwell at the Post-Dispatch. “They both had their unique styles,” she says. “He is not like either one of them. He likes to throw in little jokes that will make you giggle and maybe even make you roll your eyes… He’s fun.”
Perhaps the highest praise comes from his idol himself. “Ben’s pieces are fresh,” Miklasz says. “There are boilerplate columnists, and Ben is the opposite of that. He thinks this is the greatest job in the world, even though it isn’t. And it’s invigorating to see the spirit he brings.”
Benjamin took the call in the bathroom.
He’d heard a rumor that Miklasz was planning to leave the paper, so when a 314 number popped up on his phone, he had a feeling about who might be calling. He was in Chicago to see a show that his sister had written for Second City, so he ran into the bathroom to answer the phone. It was Roger Hensley, the sports editor of the Post-Dispatch, and it was the call Benjamin had been waiting for all his life. While Benjamin described his accomplishments, sinks turned on and off, toilets flushed, hand dryers whirred. The background noise didn’t cost him the interview, and Benjamin took the job. His father couldn’t have been prouder. Miklasz was tickled, too. “He was my No. 1 choice,” Miklasz says. “When the P-D made the decision, no one was more thrilled than Ben Hochman—but I may have been a close second in that regard.”
Benjamin pens his first column for the Post-Dispatch on September 3. We meet the next morning. The first thing I want to know is, why? He was living in Denver, one of America’s fastest-growing cities. There were four major sports teams and mountains and Peyton Manning. He gave it up to come to St. Louis, with three major sports teams, possibly soon to be two. We have a shrinking population and a landfill fire that’s burning toward a pile of radioactive waste and #Ferguson.
His response, about the Cardinals’ being perennial contenders and the stadium drama’s being interesting and so on, doesn’t answer the question. But when I walk into his living room, I instantly understand. We unpack box after box of his Cardinals memorabilia, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There are posters of Post-Dispatch front pages from the Cardinals’ run in 2011, with Yadier Molina going crazy in every photo. He has balls signed by Jim Edmonds and Yogi Berra, a whole heap of replica rings. We find a copy of the Celebration! album he listened to as a kid and copy after copy of old issues of the newspaper, which Benjamin collects.
As Jere says: “St. Louis sports is Ben.”
That leads me to my next question: Given his childhood, can he be an objective journalist, or will he be a fan in the press box? He even knows the Kroenkes, having managed the Mizzou basketball team when Josh was a member. This time, Benjamin has an answer ready. “I can’t be a fanboy. I have to be the guy who keeps the team accountable,” he says. “I will use my knowledge and my passion for St. Louis to enhance my writing.”
Next, I ask about Erin. He says he hasn’t told the full story to anyone since his psychologist. He lies down on a loveseat, and I pull up an armchair, and suddenly I feel like the shrink. Even now, whenever he thinks of Cleveland, he says out loud, “Get out of there.” When he gets to the part in the airport, he runs to the bathroom to retch. We talk about Erin’s novel, which Benjamin hopes to someday finish, and his love life, which has been a struggle since Erin’s death. Her presence remains so strong, other women have felt like they can’t compete. “I don’t like saying ‘move on,’” Benjamin says. “But there is no question that it’s been difficult trying to honor Erin and also start a new relationship.”
To change the mood, we head to Carl’s Drive In, the same place he went before Game 6 of the 2011 World Series. That day, he ate across the counter from closer Jason Motte. On this day, we talk about his transition to the new job. Miklasz was the Post columnist for 26 years, and his fans felt a personal connection. Change will come hard for some readers, and the paper’s online commenters are notoriously harsh, especially when sportswriters veer into social commentary, which Benjamin is wont to do. “I always try to write a piece that can somehow actually make a difference,” he says. “I try to write it in a way that the skeptical reader will appreciate.”
We stop by my house for a quick round of NBA Jam. Benjamin wins the first game. “I’m trying to decide which way I’m going to score on you,” he taunts. Not wanting to let him get too cocky, I take the second game. “Yeah, I’m disappointed!” he says after a missed dunk. And in the third and final contest, he makes a 3-pointer at the buzzer to win by 2. I handle losing better than the TV guy from Los Angeles.
We finish the day with a tour of Clayton High School, Benjamin’s old stomping ground. When we meet journalism teacher Erin Castellano, Benjamin offers to help with her class. He’s already met with a couple of her students to give advice. He’s been mentoring aspiring journalists for years, trying to pay forward the help Miklasz and others gave him. After Benjamin talks with Kevin Rosenthal, the Clayton junior texts, “This was probably one of the most enlightening and entertaining conversations I’ve ever had.”
Benjamin’s advice: Attack the day. You only get one shot at life, so go for it.
We run into his old soccer coach in the stairwell. He tells me that when Benjamin was a little kid, he was on TV, breaking down the Cardinals as if he was an adult.
It’s a good thing he never grew up.
