Mark Vancil has been called “Michael Jordan’s Boswell.” For more than 30 years that has been the case and it all began when Vancil, a native of far west suburban and charming Sycamore, was a young sportswriter covering the Bulls and their rookie named Jordan for the Chicago Sun-Times. Vancil had come to the paper after getting a journalism degree at Northern Illinois University and working at such newspapers as Florida’s Clearwater Sun and St. Petersburg Times, DeKalb’s Chronicle and the Aurora Beacon-News. “When I came to the Sun-Times in 1984, the Bulls weren’t good, so they took a chance on this young guy,” he told me last week, “I think Michael and I became friends, in part, because I never asked him for anything.” Vancil would soon leave the Sun-Times to cover the NBA for the short-lived sports daily The National. But he never lost touch with Jordan. “I had been thinking about writing books since I was young and finally in Jordan I came upon the perfect subject,” he told me. “I pitched the idea in the late ‘80s and nothing happened. Then in 1992, I was ready.” He was in Southern California, where Michael was practicing with the so-called U.S. “Dream Team” for the Olympics. “We were a stairwell, and he tells me he is going to quit and play baseball,” Vancil says. “I realized that the next season could be his last in the NBA, the timing was perfect for a book.” Vancil explained his idea, telling Jordan, “I can guarantee you a million dollars.” Jordan smiled and said, “You’ve got a million dollars?” “Not yet,” said Vancil. They made a deal, orchestrated an innovative publishing venture and in 1993 the world had “Rare Air: Michael on Michael,” with dozens of striking photos by acclaimed Walter Iooss Jr. and words from Jordan. “This was Michael’s book, his words. I interviewed him all over (on tape) and put it together,” Vancil says. The book was a sensation. It is estimated to have sold more than 2.5 million copies. (You can now find autographed copies online for, oh my, many thousands of dollars.) This success spawned a publishing company called Rare Air Media. Vancil also wrote books about Ken Griffey Jr., Mario Andretti, Dan Marino and musician Johnny Cash. His latest, just published, is unlike the rest but certainly benefits from Vancil’s experiences and opinions. It is a thought-provoking marvel titled “The Last Excellent Man: The Meaning of Our Jordan Year,” which is a bit about Jordan but also a lot else. Mark Vancil’s new book “The Last Excellent Man: The Meaning of Our Jordan Year.” (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune) In it, there is Vancil’s near dust-up with Oprah, the quiet visits Jordan would make to local children’s hospitals, “acts of kindness personal and executed quietly”; and thoughts on politics, technology, sports gambling. Though Vancil, in his self-effacing manner, writes “readers (will) notice that parts of my life string through these pages … the attention to my own life in these pages is uncomfortable.” Sorry he feels that way but having him pepper the book is what gives it its special kick, its authoritativeness, its philosophical potency as in “The connection between people and their inner lives is largely misunderstood, if acknowledged at all. Yet, it appears to be the source of Jordan’s on-court theatrics, (Taylor) Swift’s three-and-a-half-hour performances, and the soulful countenance with which both travel.” There is no specific “man” referred to in the title, and many men and women are discussed, including Caitlin Clark, Muhammad Ali and Steve Jobs. One of the most moving portions deals with the murder of James Jordan, Michael’s father, whose body was discovered on Aug. 13, 1993, by a fisherman in a South Carolina swamp. I learned things, such as that race car driver Mario Andretti “could pick out his wife in the infield while maneuvering a Ferrari around the track’s 17 turns, sometimes at 180 miles an hour.” I was especially grabbed when Vancil addresses “America’s peculiar desire to attack what it previously cheered.” He writes of the theories surrounding Jordan’s first “retirement,” and how any involved would have had to craft “one of the greatest conspiracies in the history of conspiracies, and then maintained a Black Ops level silence for more than 30 years.” I had not seen Vancil in some time before we sat down last week and our conversation was filled with memories of the newspaper business and the names of mutual friends, such as his high school friend and former Sun-Times and New York Times writer Dirk Johnson. Another of those ink-stained pals, Ron Rapoport, told me, “I remember when Mark was one of us at the Sun-Times, scuffling to get athletes’ quotes and trying to make deadlines, and then all of a sudden he became this journalistic colossus explaining the phenomenon of Michael Jordan to the world. Did James Boswell know as much about Samuel Johnson as Mark does about Jordan? I wonder.” I was happy to hear that Vancil and his wife Laura, who runs a granola company, have been married for more than three decades and have four grown children, often dropping into the family home in the suburbs. And, born storyteller that he is, he told me, “Laura and I went on our first date in mid-January 1993. After dinner, she suggested extending the night at the Old Town Ale House. I was hooked. So, for symmetry, a while later we stopped into the Ale House on our way to a family event, put Patsy Cline on the jukebox, got down on a knee at the bar, and that was that. We were married on Sept. 4.” He still talks to Jordan. They are friends. “Yes,” Vancil says. “Of course our lives have diverged.” He smiles and then says, “For one thing, Michael’s a multi-billionaire and I’m not.” And that’s OK. Money isn’t everything. [email protected]