The most prominent black sportscaster at ESPN, lover of hip-hop and Broadway Stuart Scott completed work on his memoir, Every Day I Fight, shortly before he passed away last month. Coming from Blue Rider Press on March 10, it is a fearless, intimate, and inspiring story.
Spicing up his sports commentary with his signature phrase “Booyah,” and “Cool as the other side of the pillow,” “Just call him butter ’cause he’s on a roll,” and “Wow! That was as hard-core as the Wu-Tang Clan on steroids,” Scott became a pop culture figure and was “easily one of the most influential personalities in ESPN history,” according to James Andrew Miller, an author of Those Guys Have All the Fun. Slate called Scott “a transitional figure for sports journalism, opening the door for a younger, blacker lexicon in sports media.”
“(Scott) really wanted to write a book, and as time went on and cancer really became the focus of his life, the most important thing for him was to write a book for his children,” literary agent David Black told Richard Sandomir of the New York Times, referring to Scott’s daughters, Taelor and Sydni. “So it became a story about his fight to live. That was the story he had to tell. He wanted his girls to be able to know their dad, and this was one way he could do it.”
Larry Platt was Scott’s collaborator on the book. After a day together, Platt told the New York Times, “I knew it was a project, but not just a cancer memoir, but a media memoir about a guy who’s fought back on every level — personally, professionally and healthwise.
“He was very much aware that the clock was ticking. We were talking about whether he wouldn’t be here when the book came out, and I said, That’s just you having the last word on cancer: ‘Yeah, you thought you’d silence me, but you didn’t.’ ”
Every Day I Fight, with a foreword by Robin Roberts, has a planned first run of 100,000 copies.