The comedian long known as the “Prince of Pain” does experience joy, especially when it’s THE Ohio State University beating Michigan in football.
Or any sport.
Richard Lewis, an iconic staple of the American comedy scene as a stand-up and late-night show fixture starting in the early 1970s through his regular appearances on best friend Larry David’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm” since 2000, is a 1969 Ohio State grad. And he’s fiercely proud of it.
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He’s also unafraid to talk trash about Michigan — on Twitter, in person, on the phone, on his couch in front of the TV.
“I have such a hatred for that institution. I have never missed an (OSU-UM) game since I was 17,” Lewis said. “People who go to Ohio State have such a disdain for the Wolverines. Is this like a cult? No, there’s a big history involved with these two teams. Until the day I die, I will want to crush that team up north. I never put the letter M on anything.”
The 75-year-old Lewis theorizes that the desire to see Ohio State games, and especially to see the Buckeyes or any team beat Michigan in any sport, has extended his life.
“If I’m flipping channels, if the Wolverines are playing badminton against Rice, I start screaming for Rice,” Lewis said. “It’s lengthened my life, this fear of missing out on Buckeye football.”
#BeatMichigan #ohiostate @OhioStateAlumni @OSU_SpiritSquad
I haven’t missed this game since I was 17!
As a graduate in 1969, I vow to never#CurbYourEnthusiasm (or mine) to crush that hexed team up North.@DispatchAlerts pic.twitter.com/eDsB4V9T9N
— Richard Lewis (@TheRichardLewis) November 24, 2018
It’s not possible to talk to Lewis, even about sports, without also talking about his famous pal, the co-creator of “Seinfeld” whose exaggerated misanthropy, mannerisms, anxieties, quirks, expressions and peccadillos have made HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm” a critically acclaimed and publicly-adored TV series for two decades.
They were born three days apart in the same Brooklyn hospital in 1947, meeting and disliking one another as young teens at a sports camp in 1960 before reconnecting as young comedians and sports nuts in the early 1970s.
And Richard Lewis-Larry David sports anecdotes, along with their half-century friendship, are much like their semi-fictional relationship on TV — hilarious, maybe a little sardonic, and rooted in the sort of love that allows best friends to bicker.
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For example, Lewis rented a limo to take David to the 1997 Rose Bowl, not far from their homes in Los Angeles. They had seats in the stands, but also VIP press box passes, to watch the Buckeyes play Arizona State.
“It starts to rain within a minute and a half of the game. I say, ‘Let’s go upstairs, sit with the (OSU) president.’ He goes, ‘OK, let’s go,’” Lewis recalled.
“We start to walk away, and I’m getting mocked by the crowd for leaving the stands. I made up some bulls—, ‘I’m allergic to rain!’ I don’t know what the f— I said. They laughed. I ask Larry, ‘Where’s your pass?’ ‘I lost it,’ he said. I stared at him. This was a minute and a half into the game. It was a ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ moment. I wanted to strangle him.
“I got so angry. ‘Just follow me,’ I said. We leave.” The limo was under a parking lot light in the drizzle and gloaming.
“We didn’t speak at all in the car,” Lewis said. “I was mortified I couldn’t see the (Buckeyes) play. I saw the last 10 minutes of the second quarter at home. I didn’t speak to him for a while.”
Such moments aren’t limited to Ohio State events. Both comedians are enormous sports fans.
“Larry loves hockey. When we were young comics, we’d get nosebleeds for Rangers games,” Lewis said. “We would be miles away from the rink at the top. I couldn’t see the puck. It was the worst seats you can imagine. He would look down at the section below us — ‘I’ve been watching for 10 minutes, go to those two empty seats.’
“So we’d move down to those seats and then (the ticket-holders) would show up, so we go back to the bad seats. … He’d spot more seats. All I’d do is follow him to better seats. He has not been a good partner.”
And in a dispute reminiscent of their TV relationship, David said it was actually Lewis who has been unhappy with their seats.
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“He was never satisfied with his seat. He was always looking for something better. Sometimes we’d have to pay off the ushers to move down,” David said. “One time, we were in the second row at Madison Square Garden. He was complaining the whole game! He wanted the first row. ‘Will you shut up?!’ What a little baby.”
Goofing aside, David clearly enjoys watching sports with his buddy.
“He’s fun to watch games with,” David said.
#friendshipmatters pic.twitter.com/zAaWo4bGwW
— Richard Lewis (@TheRichardLewis) July 19, 2022
Lewis recounted another time, also before David’s broader fame, the pair flew to San Antonio for a Knicks-Spurs game. Spurs fans recognized Lewis and heckled the lifelong Knicks fan.
“We get there, and the game was a nightmare because we lost. And it’s two Jewish guys in Texas. They didn’t realize who he was, but knew who I was, and they were screaming and mocking,” Lewis said. “He wanted to stay an extra night, to play golf with some friends. We have a little motel room near the Alamo. ‘I’ll get nightmares,’ I said. It was a horror show, I had to get out of there. We had another fight,” Lewis said.
Lewis tells these stories in his classic angst-ridden style, but it’s evident that the anecdotes come from a place of a deep, longtime love for his best friend — who happens to have graduated from Maryland in 1970, a fact that fuels a Lewis sports fantasy.
“I’d love to have a big game against Maryland,” Lewis said. “I’d plan to watch together. I’ll really be arrogant.”
David isn’t a big college football fan, at least not like Lewis.
“He knows everything about me, but he couldn’t care less about Ohio State,” Lewis said. “If (a Buckeyes game is) not going well, I become like a satanic figure in his life, and I leave.”
That seems like a scene out of “Curb,” but it also is their real-life friendship.
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“Our relationship is exactly the same (as on the show),” David said.
Lewis’ deep Ohio State fandom hasn’t been entirely smooth. There was a brief incident with the Buckeyes’ mascot, Brutus, when Lewis was homecoming grand marshal in 1986: “They put my name on the (video) board, I walk out, it’s hot. Brutus came over and I made a joke — ‘Don’t you sweat under that?’ — and he didn’t take it right. We had a little shoving action,” Lewis said. “I said to myself, ‘This is no way to be a grand marshal. You don’t screw around with Brutus.’”
Lewis also was grand marshal in 1995 — without incident, he added.
In 2000, OSU’s athletic department let slip a wisecrack about Lewis in a basketball media guide, in the section about famous alums. It referred to Lewis as “actor, writer, comedian, drunk” as a reference to his ultimately successful battles with addiction. Lewis, who has done PSAs and other promotional work for OSU, was hurt and the school apologized.
Lewis also has spoken out about the OSU athletic department’s scandals in recent years.
As a two-time Grand Marshall and winner of a distinguished alumni award at my alma mater, The Ohio State University, I won’t rest easy until the Buckeye wrestlers get their dignity back and the domestic violence of the former coach’s ex-wife the same. #OhioStateFootball pic.twitter.com/g0RHDcXGlY
— Richard Lewis (@TheRichardLewis) August 2, 2018
There remains one elusive goal on Lewis’ OSU bucket list: Dotting the I.
That’s the honor, usually reserved for an upperclassman sousaphone player but occasionally someone else, to literally be the dot over the letter “i” when the band performs its “Script Ohio” routine.
“Why can’t I dot the I? That’s so grandiose,” Lewis said. Notables to have done it include Bob Hope, Jack Nicklaus, John Glenn and former Ohio State football coaches Woody Hayes and Earle Bruce.
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These days, Lewis says he’d be happy to escort the I-dotting band member to perform their duty.
“Maybe I can walk out and pat them on the back. ‘Don’t make it a semi-colon.’ I’d be his manager for 20 feet,” he said.
His Ohio State fandom began in the Hayes era, and they had one encounter when Lewis was a student.
“I was shopping for hamburger meat, for dinner, at the supermarket. I put my hand on what looked like a pound of meat, and a bear-like mitt slaps my hand. It was the coach, Woody,” Lewis said. “He slapped my hand. I was so scared.”
“’I was here first. That’s my meat,’” Hayes said, as Lewis recounts the incident. “I said, ‘You can have anything here in the freezer. I am here to serve.’ He has such a presence about him.”
It was a decade later when Hayes’ career ended after he swung his fist into the throat of a Clemson football player returning an interception in the 1978 Gator Bowl. Lewis said he believes in second chances and forgiveness but termed that incident part of “a really bad era” that wiped out the good Hayes had done.
Lewis had arrived at Ohio State during Hayes’ tenure, when he was coaching the Buckeyes to the 1968 season national championship, a year that included a 50-14 rout of Michigan at the Horseshoe and a 27-16 win over USC in the Rose Bowl on New Year’s Day 1969.
“That year, in particular, was the most exciting run I’ve ever had as a sports enthusiast,” Lewis said. “I was in the stands for the games, and it was too good to be true.”
Decades later, with his reputation and celebrity firmly established, he was on the field for Ohio State’s 2002 national championship game.
“On the sidelines, to be there live, I knew I was watching real history,” Lewis said.
Lewis’ fandom and devotion to his alma mater can seem incongruous with his 50-year career.
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Known for his black suits and enviable mane of black hair — it’s a bit grayer now — Lewis made his mark making audiences laugh at his self-deprecating bits about his anxiety, depression, love life and battles with addiction.
The black outfits are a source of comic irritation for David: “He’s a complete phony. He knows he’s a phony. He may be fooling the public but he’s not fooling me,” he said, laughing like a brother tweaking a brother.
Lewis is also widely credited — maybe not by Bartlett’s — for coining the phrase “___ from hell.” He did Johnny Carson and Letterman, numerous stand-up specials, and had his own comedy series with Jamie Lee Curtis (“Anything But Love” from 1989-92 on Fox). His movie roles have included “Robin Hood: Men In Tights” and “Leaving Las Vegas.”
He also starred in an independent 1999 sports dark comedy movie, as a louche college basketball coach, called “Game Day.”
That flick fits in with his brand of comedy. A lifelong hardcore sports fan, he grew up in Brooklyn and New Jersey rooting for the Mets and Knicks and becoming friends over the years with figures such as Mickey Mantle.
Which is odd because he grew up a fan of the Brooklyn Dodgers, especially first baseman Gil Hodges, who later managed the Mets to their iconic 1969 World Series title but died of a heart attack at age 47 in 1972. That Hodges love led to a friendship with Mantle. The Yankees icon during his playing days would pass not far from where Lewis lived on the way to the stadium. One day, Lewis said, he was wearing a Hodges t-shirt and teasing the passing players. Later, when Lewis was a celebrity himself, he recounted that story to Mantle, who hung a photo of them together inside his New York City restaurant.
Other sports pals came to include Vin Scully, Joe Namath, Bill Russell, Mark Jackson, Bob Costas and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Jackson, Lewis added, became a good friend who checked up on his during his hard work to get sober.
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In the ‘70s, he was doing a stand-up set and noticed a tall guy in the audience. It was Wilt Chamberlain.
Lewis, of course, has a fun anecdote about them meeting: “I finish my set, and he had like seven dates with him. He put his hand out, it’s the size of a Pizza Hut box. I had a mini panic attack. I put my finger in the middle of his palm. Wilt squeezed my finger, and he wouldn’t let go. ‘Wilt, my finger!’”
Hanging with superstars and doing TV and movies is a long way from Columbus, Ohio. How did he end up at Ohio State?
“I got in,” Lewis deadpanned.
His parents took him on a campus visit in 1966 and that cemented his choice.
“I fell in love with the campus,” Lewis said. “I was so taken by it, I didn’t care about other schools at that point. I was a Buckeye right out of the gate.”
After graduating in 1969 with a marketing degree, he stuck around OSU for a few more months. He even entertained the idea of getting a master’s degree in communications and another sheepskin for film.
His father put the kibosh on that. Lewis went back to New York. He worked for an ad agency and began trying his hand at comedy writing and stand-up. That’s when he re-met Larry David.
Their shared sports fanaticism and disappointment, and occasional delights, helped their bond.
“I love sports so much,” Lewis said, adding that he played Little League and basketball. He said he played stickball from age 6 until his mid-sixties, calling himself a difficult player to get out during his prime — a much harder out than David, he added.
“I seriously could not get the ball by him,” David confirmed. “He hit everything. It was so frustrating to play him. I had a decent arm. He had a great eye. He would have been a good golfer. I tried to get him golfing a hundred times.”
And David remembers Lewis was a good basketball player, too. “He had a great outside shot,” he said.
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Even touring for 50 years, Lewis made the Buckeyes a priority. He’d try to schedule shows around their football schedule. In person, on TV, on radio — as long as he could get the live action, he was happy.
“I don’t think since ‘66 I’ve missed any football games that were televised while I was on the road,” Lewis said. “I don’t think I did too many concerts in Michigan. Why set myself up for people screaming at me? I couldn’t blame them.”
He’s not been to a game in Columbus in about 15 years, he said, because touring and work kept him busy. He’s contented these days to watch from home.
“When I was much younger, I used to go to some bars. It got too rowdy, and I haven’t had a drink in 28 years,” Lewis said. “I can’t take the pre-game that starts at 7 and the kickoff is in five hours. The older I got, I turn it on just before kickoff. I’m so nervous. I turn it on literally during the opening kickoff and then I am so glued.”
He’s also worked through back and shoulder surgeries in recent years that nearly derailed his appearances in the 11th season of “Curb” last year, but he’s healing nicely, he said, and plans to return for the next season.
“My back is fine, the shoulder is healing great,” he said. “I’m waiting to find out how many episodes. I can’t wait. I am so grateful I’ve been part of this juggernaut since 2000.”
Ohio State also has been something of a juggernaut since 2000, and Lewis called this era of Buckeye football “a golden age.” Particularly beating Michigan 16 of the past 19 meetings.
“I cannot tell you the pleasure I get rooting against the coach of Michigan, the team and university, the groundskeeper,” he said.
And how does Lewis think the Buckeyes will do this season?
“Based on the little reading I’ve done so far — I like to get more into as we get closer — they’re so solid offensively. They manage to (fill) any holes,” he said. “There are always tough road games. I’m convinced they’re going to make the playoff. I hope it’s against Alabama. For my 75th birthday present, I’d like to see (Nick Saban’s) smirk fall into the mud. That’s my dream. I will go to a witch and put a hex on them. I’ll even risk going to jail for hiring a witch. I need to see another championship, and I will, and I prefer it to be against Alabama.”
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Short of that, he wants to see Michigan have a powerhouse season and then get skunked by the Buckeyes at the end of November.
“It ruins their year. It ruins everything in Ann Arbor,” he said.
(Photo of Larry David and Richard Lewis: Charley Gallay / FilmMagic for HBO via Getty Images)
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