People or events sometimes come full circle in our lives. If that circle is negative, some call it bad karma. If the circle is positive, some call it serendipity, and religious folks might call it providence. Whatever you want to call it, it happened to me recently.
I am Jewish, and, through a series of what I would call providential events, came to believe in Jesus in August 1978. Gaining a new appreciation for my Jewish heritage after coming to believe in Jesus as the Jewish Messiah, I joined a group called Jews for Jesus and, in 1980, relocated 3,000 miles from my previous home to work with them at their San Francisco headquarters.
Lowell Cohn (photo courtesy KNBR)
Almost immediately after relocating, I began reading the sports page in the San Francisco Chronicle. The Chronicle had a controversial sports columnist named Lowell Cohn, and in 1978, several born-again Christians on the Giants began to speak out about Jesus in post-game interviews. The Giants, who had been mired in mediocrity for most of the 1970s, came to life that year and led the division until mid-August before a September swoon landed them in third place behind the Dodgers and Reds.
The press didn’t trouble the born-again Giants when they talked about Jesus…when they were winning. But the following year, when the Giants reverted to their losing ways, the media dubbed the Christians the “God Squad” and began to take potshots at them.
Cohn, ever the satirist, wrote a column in 1980 called Can Satan Save the Giants? in which he suggested that since God wasn’t helping the Giants very much, one of them should sell his soul to the devil. A year later, Cohn wrote another column called Lavelle and the Fiend, in which he said that born-again pitcher Gary Lavelle was intolerant because he had called San Francisco a satanic region, in part because the Church of Satan was founded there by Anton LaVey in 1966.
As I was reading these columns in the Chronicle, I found them irritating. Of course, Cohn wrote to provoke a reaction. But as a Jesus believer, I felt that he was unfairly picking on the God Squadders.
Some forty years later, after retiring from writing sports for The Vacaville (CA) Reporter newspaper, I decided to write a book about the God Squad. I wanted to interview Cohn, but I approached that possibility with fear and trepidation. What were his true feelings about the born-again Christians on the Giants? Did he harbor hostility toward them? Or would he be hostile toward me when I revealed (Cohn is Jewish) that I am a Jewish believer in Jesus?
I expected Cohn’s personality to match the acerbic wit of his columns and that he would either refuse the interview or, if he agreed to it, would slice and dice me. To my surprise and pleasure, Cohn not only agreed to the interview, which we did by phone, but was extremely gracious and wanted to help me, a fellow writer. He had no animosity toward the God Squadders or born-again believers (Jewish or otherwise). We talked for forty minutes, and it was one of the best interviews I have ever experienced.
My Book
My book, The God Squad: The Born-Again San Francisco Giants of 1978, was published in November 2023, and I made sure to thank Lowell Cohn in the Acknowledgments section. I also sent him a signed copy of my book. He then posted a very nice Tweet about my book on his X account.
Late in 2024, Lowell, who writes a Substack column three times a week, mentioned that he was having difficulty finding a publisher for an autobiographical book he wrote titled Brooklyn Jew. I emailed him to let him know that if he continued to strike out with publishers, he might want to try Eric and Peggy Johnson at Alive Book Publishing, who produced my book.
In the spring of this year, Lowell took my suggestion and met with the Johnsons. He liked them and their publishing house. Eric suggested that Lowell ask me to copyedit his book, which I was more than happy to do, as Lowell had been so helpful to me regarding my book.
I read the book through, and Lowell, being an accomplished and excellent writer, needed little editing. I highly recommend Brooklyn Jew, soon to be published. Rather than a straightforward, chronological retelling of Lowell’s life, it is a series of fascinating vignettes of some of the indelible moments of his life and career. While I’m at it, I would also recommend his previous book, Gloves Off.
To my surprise, Lowell treated me to lunch at a great little place halfway between his home and mine as a thank you. We sat at the backyard outdoor patio and talked for 2 ½ hours about writing, our lives, and his many encounters with athletes and coaches during his 15 years at the Chronicle and 23 years at the Santa Rosa Press Democrat.
When the page proofs came back from the publisher, Lowell asked me to read through them. Again, to my surprise, he decided to treat me to a second lunch. We talked for another couple of hours, never running out of topics. We found that we have much in common.
Both raised in the New York City area (I was born in Manhattan and raised in Hackensack, New Jersey, a New York City suburb), we laughed at the fact that while we should have emerged as tough city guys, we both still have rather sensitive natures. He also found it amusing that I had thought he would be a prickly and intimidating personality before I interviewed him. He explained that although he writes that way, he is not that way as a person. And he is not.
So, 40-plus years after resenting the satirical tone of his columns about the God Squad, I have become good friends with Lowell.
Serendipity? Providence? Call it whatever you like. I’m just glad it happened.
Thanks for the shout-out, Matt! Good article!