Craig Kilborn Tells An UNBELIEVABLE Clint Eastwood Story

Craig Kilborn came on The Rich Eisen Show's "This Was SportsCenter" with a story he has told many times, and he warned everyone up front that it was his best. It is a Clint Eastwood story. It does not disappoint.

Kilborn set the scene from his days leaving ESPN for The Daily Show. The move to New York came with perks he had never had, including a wardrobe person, an assistant, and a producer who insisted he get a free haircut from a friend in Midtown.

"So I go to Midtown," Kilborn said. The stylist was, in his telling, a very nice man, and the two got to chatting. Kilborn brought up Carmel, California, where he used to live. That is when the conversation took a turn.

The stylist mentioned that Eastwood had once been the mayor there, then offered a rather specific and very personal claim about the actor's anatomy, putting the number at twelve inches. Kilborn had to work blue for a beat, then promised the rest of the story was clean.

Naturally, he could not let it go. Kilborn called Dina, Eastwood's wife at the time, and repeated what the hairdresser said. "That's funny," she told him. "That's not true."

Three months later, Dina called again. She and Clint were in town and wanted Kilborn to join them for dinner. It would be the first time he ever sat down with Eastwood, and the venue was Nobu.

Kilborn admitted he was playing it cool. Eastwood sat across from him, Dina beside, and Kilborn figured the last thing to do with Clint Eastwood was talk too much. Halfway through the meal, he finally found his opening.

He told Eastwood that he and his father loved "Where Eagles Dare," the film Eastwood made with Richard Burton, and asked whether Burton drank a lot. Eastwood lit up. "Yeah, I matched him with beer, but he chased it with scotch. I couldn't keep up," Eastwood said, before adding that he later did "Paint Your Wagon" with Lee Marvin and figured all actors drank like that.

The question got Eastwood talking, which is when Dina decided to loop him in on the rest of it. She told Clint about the hairdresser. Kilborn, mortified, asked whether they had any secrets at all.

Then came the button. Eastwood, without missing a beat, delivered the line that makes the whole thing worth telling. "He was an inch off."

Rich could barely handle it. "Killer, that is unbelievable," he said. Kilborn, ever the showman, took the laugh and swore to every word of it, a true story that earns its place in the "This Was SportsCenter" vault.