The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
PTFO - The Fax and the Furious: How One Screeching Machine Upended Sports — and Society as We Knew It
Thu, 27 Mar 2025
Thirty years ago this month, Michael Jordan shocked the world with a two-word transmission: "I'm back." But the rise and fall of this especially nostalgic technology is inextricably hard-wired to the sports world, from frantic prodigies to foul-mouthed coaches and fans glued to FaxCam. Pablo communes with a relic between himself and J.A. Adande — the Hall-of-Fame sportswriter and long-suffering fax-sender — for a jam session on innovation and increasingly epic fails that plunges PTFO into the literal depths of modern communication. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the significance of the phrase 'I'm back' in sports history?
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This studio is a time machine today. We are traveling back in time. Do you remember the relic on our desk here? I do.
I still technically own a fax machine. Now, is this a plain paper fax or is it the thermal paper fax? This is a plain paper fax.
This is, she is, well, I guess he is, the brother and telefax 1570 MC from, I believe it's a mid-90s vintage. Ooh, the sound. Those beeps.
It sounds like the wheel on Price is Right when it's spinning around. Yes. Can you make that sound some more? That's so satisfying. It is. First of all, just the tactile nature of it, touching it.
The haptic sensation of pressing a keypad on a... And again, this is... Yeah, reach over there. Yep. It feels good. We don't do that enough. No. We don't dial.
When's the last time you...
pressed a button. When was the last time you beheld a 15 by 15, eight and a half inch high gray device that was essential to your former life? was instrumental in my childhood memory. And also, this is not a joke. We bought this on eBay.
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Chapter 2: Why is the fax machine nostalgic for sports journalists?
Maybe we can slip into practice. So I was getting ready to start my internship at the Miami Herald. So I called the Miami Herald. I say, can you fax over a request? I'm in Monte Carlo. I'm in Monte Carlo. I say, hey, you don't know me. It's an all-time introduction. You don't know me. My name is Jay Adana. I'm going to be the intern starting next month. I'm in Monte Carlo right now.
Do you want to start on the Dream Team? They're like, yeah. All right, you got to fax something on letterhead. So it was so big. You understand, the entryway to cover anything was you would need to fax something on the company letterhead. Right, proof of your credential. Before that, I guess you would have had to mail in the request.
But by the late 80s, 90s, you could fax in your request, and that's how you would get access. I get credentialed. I still have that credential. I have pretty much every credential I ever had. That is my number one credential. Green construction paper, Dream Team USA basketball, men's basketball, training camp, Monte Carlo. So I go in. You walk in, Jordan, Barkley, Magic, Bird, they're all there.
Barkley was just on this... He was talking about how they went to dinner with the Prince of Monaco.
I think Chuck Daly was a little nervous when they had the dinner in Monte Carlo when the Prince arrived and tried to keep Charles as far away from the Prince as possible.
And they had all these rules, like, when the prince is done eating, you have to stop eating. He says, well, what if I'm hungrier than him? What if he ate beforehand and he wants to stop early, but we have to, like, hurry up? Like, hey, the prince is almost done. Hurry up. Get it done. And then he announces, guys, I'm retiring from basketball. I'm going to be a swimmer.
Because I was out by the pool yesterday, and all these women were topless.
And if there's going to be topless women by the pool, like they got over here, he's like, I'm going to be a swimmer.
He says, y'all be thinking I'm Mark Spitz by the end of this. This is a dream assignment for you to write about, in other words. It was incredible. But right afterward, I had to get back to Paris. I had a plane leaving from Paris the next day. So I had to take a train back to Paris and get ready to get back home. My only option was to handwrite it out on the train.
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