Changing His Stripes ... And Undercover cop turned NBA Ref tells his tale

CNN Sports Illustrated.com ran a tremendous review of my favorite project, Covert, the Bob Delaney story in an internet post in early January.

In the world of promoting a book, it doesn't get a whole lot better than that review.

Oh wait.

What about this one in the magazine this week, one of the most read and purchased copies of the magazine each year as fans flock to newsstands to get the Super Bowl round-up and photography.

So, in the Scorecard section of "SI," Jack McCallum writes:

Should you one night notice Bob Delaney engaged in a heated debate with, say, Rasheed Wallace, the oft-angry Pistons center who is a foot taller than the NBA referee, rest assured that Delaney is not intimidated. In his previous life as an undercover state cop who infiltrated organized crime in New Jersey, he had daily dealings with mobsters such as the one who described a non-existent dental plan to an employee thusly: "The dental plan? That's designed to keep your own (*&@#in') teeth. Any more questions?"

There was indeed a strong (though dark) comedic element to Delaney's surreptitious life in the mid-1970s as a "trucking executive" in a world inhabited by all manner of reprobates, and that tone is present in his book, Covert. Delaney watched in amazement and amusement (obviously both restrained) as the criminals he was trying to bring down aped The Godfather movies. Delaney learned how one of his most feared "associates" in the trucking business had managed to have sex with his girlfriend during a prison hitch - he and the woman, uh, sat in a chair ringed by the convict's associates.

But what makes Covert stand out is Delaney's evocation of the cocktail of fear and guilt that he choked down each night. He was terrified of the people he was dealing with, but he also noticed that a form of Stockholm syndrome began to take hold. To infiltrate, he had to identify with his colleagues and, at some level, become one of them. "Without realizing it, I had started to change," Delaney writes. "I was thinking like a real Mob guy, seeing everything through a prism of paranoia."

Delaney's tale is told with understated style and is all the more dramtic for it. It has a triumphant denouement-he is one of the NBA's top refs and has refused, as he told SI, "to go into hiding and give the bad guys power over me that they don't deserve." But if anyone picks up the film option to Covert, trust me, it won't look like Forget Paris. -- Jack McCallum