By Bob Markus
Do you remember where you were 25 years ago today? Who you were with? What you were doing? Me, I can't remember where I was last Friday. But I remember where I was 25 years ago today. I was in the tiny Wrigley Field office of Chicago Cubs manager Lee Elia, listening, with two other writers and a small scattering of radio reporters, to an astonishing, profanity-laced rant by the embattled manaager.
Even more astonishing than Elia's tirade, which nearly cost him his job, is the fact that even today, a quarter of a century later, it is remembered, talked about and, especially, written about. In the past week there have been dozens of stories written about today's observance, as if it were the anniversary of some natural disaster or political upheaval.
It has been written about in newspapers from Canada to San Francisco to Cleveland. Even the Manchester Guardian mentions it as the No.3 rated postgame meltdown in sports history. Rated above it were Mike Tyson's vow to eat Lennox Lewis's children and a Scottish soccer club chairman's punch to the jaw of a reporter whose question he didn't care for.
It's all over the internet and if you want to hear the complete, unexpurgated, version all you have to do is dial up You Tube. But please don't do it until the kiddies are in bed. Wikipedia, which seems to be more or less the internet version of Encyclopedia Brittanica, devotes more than half its biographical sketch to the tirade. It, too, doesn't pull any punches, quoting Elia f-word for f-word that "eighty five per cent of the f-ing world is working. The other 15 come out here--a f-ing playground for the c-suckers."
The Chicago Tribune, of course, has played it up bigtime, including a piece in this morning's paper revealing that then Tribune sports editor George Langford almost lost his job over the story I wrote. It seems that Editor Jim Squires didn't like my quoting Elia as saying, "if those are the real Chicago fans they can kiss my ass right downtown--and print it!"
Langford told the Tribune's Fred Mitchell that Squires had told him he was fired, but later called back and sort of apologized. Bill Parker, who made up the paper that day, also was under the impression he was fired. "I think Squires said, 'Fire all of them,'" Parker, who still works at The Tribune, told Mitchell.
Whether that included me, I have no idea. In fact, until today I had no idea the story, which UPI recognized as the best sports story in Illinois for that year, was that controversial. Except for the "kiss my ass" quote there were no banned words used. I had earlier described the tirade as "the most sizzling footage recorded since the Nixon tapes, a scathing, raging indictment of Cubs fans by the frustrated Elia, who had just seen his team drop a heart-breaking 4-3 game to the Los Angeles Dodgers."
Later I reported that "liberally sprinkling his tirade with expletives that a roomful of Rosemary Woodses could not delete, Elia stormed ". . . . what am I supposed to do, go out there and let my players get destroyed every day and be quiet? For the nickel-and-dime people who show up every day? They don't even work. That's why they're out at the ball game. It's a playground for the suckers. . . .rip those country suckers like they rip the players." That, of course, was a cleaned up version of what Elia actually said. If you insert an F-word in front of every noun and a four-letter slang term for a male reproductive organ in front of every suckers you'll have a better idea of the tone of delivery. (For those of you too young to remember, Rosemary Woods was Nixon's secretary responsible for his tapes being released liberally salted with the phrase "expletive deleted."
Originally there were no more than half a dozen media members in the room when Elia began his tirade and only one of them, Les Grobstein, recorded the entire interview. That tape has literally been heard around the world, which is why Elia's entire career is defined by that one explosive moment.
It's too bad, too, because he really wasn't a bad manager. In fact, after that early season losss which dropped the Cubs' record to 5-14, Elia had them within 2 1/2 games of the division lead just before the All-Star game. During the interim his handling of his pitching staff was the best I have ever seen before or since.
My own relationship with Elia at the time was one of arms-length politeness, which was too bad because I really liked the man and we had once been quite friendly. That all changed when I took over the Cubs beat after the All-Star game the previous year. As a player, Elia had had a cup of coffee with the White Sox in1966 and a sip of Decaf with the Cubs in 1968. He was one of those low talent high energy type of players who will run through a wall for his team and I admired that and once wrote a favorable article about him. He appreciated that and when I showed up in the Wrigley Field locker room to begin my assignment with the Cubs he hugged me and ushered me into his office, where a beat reporter from one of the suburban papers was already sitting.
I asked Elia for a fill-in on his club and he gave it to me. It was not a pretty picture he painted. Among other things he said, "I never thought Bump wills (second baseman) was that bad a fielder. You can take four games and just throw them in Bump Wills locker, because that's what he's cost us with his glove." He said he had a left fielder, Keith Moreland, who had to be replaced defensively in the late innings because "if I don't get him out of there the ball will find him."
He said that every time he takes Moreland out of a game he wonders what he'll do if catcher Jody Davis were to get hurt. The only other player on the roster who could play the position had never done so in a big league game. He said he couldn't use outfielder Bob Molinaro in the outfield because he couldn't field, and didn't want to use outfielder Steve Henderson at bat if he could help it because he couldn't hit. There was more, but you get the idea.
With another writer sitting in the office I never dreamed that Elia would think he was talking off the record. But when I wrote what he had told me he cornered me in the airport the next morning with thunder in his eyes. "I thought we were friends," he yelled. "I thought I was just giving you background. How am I going to face those guys?"
I was wondering the same thing.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
By Bob Markus
When Danica Patrick had completed her historic ride Sunday, becoming the first woman driver ever to win an Indy Car race, she got on her radio and "all I could think of to say, was 'thank you.'" I hope that one of the people she wanted to thank was Janet Guthrie. Guthrie is to women in auto racing what Jackie Robinson was to black baseball players.
Before Guthrie no woman had ever driven in the Indianapolis 500. Not long before Guthrie, no woman had even been allowed in Gasoline Alley. Auto racing was a man's game. Period. Guthrie changed all that with one stunning run--four quick laps--around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway one Sunday afternoon in May of 1977. Her four-lap average speed of 188.403 m.p.h. was easily the fastest of the final week-end of qualifying and 17th fastest over-all in the 33-car field.
Those were different times at Indianapolis. The crowds were bigger and the media turnout smaller. O, sure, there was always a big media turnout for pole day, but after that the bigshot columnists would go home, leaving the final three qualifying days to the native Hoosiers and a small group of big city writers from the midwest. I was one of them.
The Indianapolis 500 had always been my favorite assignment and I was probably responsible for the fact that the Chicago Tribune covered the race at all. The paper's editorial viewpoint was that the race was a study in carnage and served no useful purpose. It should be discontinued. For a time it sent its automotive editor to cover the race, but when I joined the sports staff in 1960 it had been several years since The Tribune had covered one of the country's major traditions, an event held less than 200 miles from Tribune Tower.
Although I had never seen the race in person--it was not televised in those days--I listened to it on the radio every Memorial day and remember vividly leaving the office at the Moline Dispatch, where I was working at the time (1955), and hearing on the radio that Bill Vukovich, going for his third straight victory at Indy, had been killed in a crash. I ran back to the office and we were able to get a short story in the paper, an afternoon daily, that was just going to press.
I started lobbying the Tribune to send someone--preferably me--to Indianapolis, pointing out that, although we did not staff it, we always made the wire service account of the race the eight column banner the day after the race. Of course, nobody listened to me then; I was just a kid on the copy desk, but by 1968 I was a columnist and they finally relented, allowing me to cover pole day and the race. The Tribune has had at least one writer at the 500 every year since.
The 1977 race was my 10th and it was historic for two reasons: Guthrie's qualifying run and A.J. Foyt's fourth Indy 500 victory. Of c ourse, the whole world was watching Foyt making history, but there weren't that many of us watching Guthrie. In fact, after Guthrie had done a few trackside radio interviews and answered some questions from the small print media contingent, I spent an hour interviewing her--just Janet, her publicist and me--in the team's motor home.
Guthrie by then was 39 years old, a rather plain looking woman, not unattractive, but not the stunning beauty that is Danica Patrick. She was still dressed in her driving suit as she began to talk about her life in general and her life in racing in particular. She could not keep a slight edge of bitterness from her tone as she recalled all the barriers she had had to knock down "all those guys howling 'She hasn't paid her dues.' Hah, hah."
She recalled the days when she lived "in really depressing poverty," self-imposed to be sure because she is a college graduate from "a very bookish family, " who sent her to Miss Harris School for Girls in Florida "where the objective was to avoid sports at all costs. I mean I grew up in the 1950s, when ladies weren't supposed to glow. I clearly had a sheltered upbringing."
She gave that all up, gave up a job as an aerospace physicist to go auto racing full time, leaving the genteel life behind "for a $90 a month apartment behind a storefront, where you can't have your friends in for dinner." She scuffled for nearly 10 years "beating my brains out trying to get a professional ride in road racing. I can't begin to tell you the endless letters I sent out."
Finally, out of the blue came a call from Rolla Vollstedt, a longtime Indy 500 car owner who routinely got his drivers into the big show despite a limited budget. One of his drivers was Dick Simon who later would become a moderately successful car owner himself. Simon, whatever his private thoughts, treated Guthrie like any other teammate, perhaps went a little beyond that in easing her way into the heretofore exclusive male fraternity.
It wasn't all that easy. Guthrie had become a symbol and her appearance at Indianapolis was greeted with skepticism by many and with outright hostlity be a few. "If I'd failed," she said, "most people would have said, 'hah, hah, she can't race because she's a woman.' Had I blown this chance, in the minds of a lot of people, it might have been a good thing."
But she didn't blow it and the fact that she finished 26th on race day is irrelevant. What Janet Guthrie did on that Sunday in May was to open the doors for others to follow, for Lyn St. James, who qualified for six Indy 500s in the '90s, for Sarah Fisher, who has finished as high as second in an Indy Car race and is planning to campaign her own race car at Indy this year, and for Danica Patrick, who finally, in her 50th Indy Car race, drove to victory lane and glory for the first time.
Michael Andretti, her car owner, says it was the first of many and I agree. In fact, after watching her make two stunning moves in her first Indianapolis 500 while finishing fourth, I've wondered what took her so long.
When Janet Guthrie first broke the gender barrier at Indianapolis, I wrote: ""This was not Billie Jean King beating a 55-year-old Bobby Riggs. This was as if Billie Jean King had reached the men's quarter finals at Wimbledon." Danica Patrick's victory in Japan has put her into the finals. Can she do it, win the Indianapolis 500? Sure she can. If you believe in omens, consider this: The year she finished fourth in Indianapolis, she had also finished fourth in Japan. This year she finished first in Japan, so. . . .
When Danica Patrick had completed her historic ride Sunday, becoming the first woman driver ever to win an Indy Car race, she got on her radio and "all I could think of to say, was 'thank you.'" I hope that one of the people she wanted to thank was Janet Guthrie. Guthrie is to women in auto racing what Jackie Robinson was to black baseball players.
Before Guthrie no woman had ever driven in the Indianapolis 500. Not long before Guthrie, no woman had even been allowed in Gasoline Alley. Auto racing was a man's game. Period. Guthrie changed all that with one stunning run--four quick laps--around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway one Sunday afternoon in May of 1977. Her four-lap average speed of 188.403 m.p.h. was easily the fastest of the final week-end of qualifying and 17th fastest over-all in the 33-car field.
Those were different times at Indianapolis. The crowds were bigger and the media turnout smaller. O, sure, there was always a big media turnout for pole day, but after that the bigshot columnists would go home, leaving the final three qualifying days to the native Hoosiers and a small group of big city writers from the midwest. I was one of them.
The Indianapolis 500 had always been my favorite assignment and I was probably responsible for the fact that the Chicago Tribune covered the race at all. The paper's editorial viewpoint was that the race was a study in carnage and served no useful purpose. It should be discontinued. For a time it sent its automotive editor to cover the race, but when I joined the sports staff in 1960 it had been several years since The Tribune had covered one of the country's major traditions, an event held less than 200 miles from Tribune Tower.
Although I had never seen the race in person--it was not televised in those days--I listened to it on the radio every Memorial day and remember vividly leaving the office at the Moline Dispatch, where I was working at the time (1955), and hearing on the radio that Bill Vukovich, going for his third straight victory at Indy, had been killed in a crash. I ran back to the office and we were able to get a short story in the paper, an afternoon daily, that was just going to press.
I started lobbying the Tribune to send someone--preferably me--to Indianapolis, pointing out that, although we did not staff it, we always made the wire service account of the race the eight column banner the day after the race. Of course, nobody listened to me then; I was just a kid on the copy desk, but by 1968 I was a columnist and they finally relented, allowing me to cover pole day and the race. The Tribune has had at least one writer at the 500 every year since.
The 1977 race was my 10th and it was historic for two reasons: Guthrie's qualifying run and A.J. Foyt's fourth Indy 500 victory. Of c ourse, the whole world was watching Foyt making history, but there weren't that many of us watching Guthrie. In fact, after Guthrie had done a few trackside radio interviews and answered some questions from the small print media contingent, I spent an hour interviewing her--just Janet, her publicist and me--in the team's motor home.
Guthrie by then was 39 years old, a rather plain looking woman, not unattractive, but not the stunning beauty that is Danica Patrick. She was still dressed in her driving suit as she began to talk about her life in general and her life in racing in particular. She could not keep a slight edge of bitterness from her tone as she recalled all the barriers she had had to knock down "all those guys howling 'She hasn't paid her dues.' Hah, hah."
She recalled the days when she lived "in really depressing poverty," self-imposed to be sure because she is a college graduate from "a very bookish family, " who sent her to Miss Harris School for Girls in Florida "where the objective was to avoid sports at all costs. I mean I grew up in the 1950s, when ladies weren't supposed to glow. I clearly had a sheltered upbringing."
She gave that all up, gave up a job as an aerospace physicist to go auto racing full time, leaving the genteel life behind "for a $90 a month apartment behind a storefront, where you can't have your friends in for dinner." She scuffled for nearly 10 years "beating my brains out trying to get a professional ride in road racing. I can't begin to tell you the endless letters I sent out."
Finally, out of the blue came a call from Rolla Vollstedt, a longtime Indy 500 car owner who routinely got his drivers into the big show despite a limited budget. One of his drivers was Dick Simon who later would become a moderately successful car owner himself. Simon, whatever his private thoughts, treated Guthrie like any other teammate, perhaps went a little beyond that in easing her way into the heretofore exclusive male fraternity.
It wasn't all that easy. Guthrie had become a symbol and her appearance at Indianapolis was greeted with skepticism by many and with outright hostlity be a few. "If I'd failed," she said, "most people would have said, 'hah, hah, she can't race because she's a woman.' Had I blown this chance, in the minds of a lot of people, it might have been a good thing."
But she didn't blow it and the fact that she finished 26th on race day is irrelevant. What Janet Guthrie did on that Sunday in May was to open the doors for others to follow, for Lyn St. James, who qualified for six Indy 500s in the '90s, for Sarah Fisher, who has finished as high as second in an Indy Car race and is planning to campaign her own race car at Indy this year, and for Danica Patrick, who finally, in her 50th Indy Car race, drove to victory lane and glory for the first time.
Michael Andretti, her car owner, says it was the first of many and I agree. In fact, after watching her make two stunning moves in her first Indianapolis 500 while finishing fourth, I've wondered what took her so long.
When Janet Guthrie first broke the gender barrier at Indianapolis, I wrote: ""This was not Billie Jean King beating a 55-year-old Bobby Riggs. This was as if Billie Jean King had reached the men's quarter finals at Wimbledon." Danica Patrick's victory in Japan has put her into the finals. Can she do it, win the Indianapolis 500? Sure she can. If you believe in omens, consider this: The year she finished fourth in Indianapolis, she had also finished fourth in Japan. This year she finished first in Japan, so. . . .
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
My Life in Sports
By Bob Markus
One thing I learned as a columnist for the Chicago Tribune is that you never know where your next column's going to come from (apologies to my English teachers for not writing. . .from where your next column's going to come). This one had its genesis in a Big Ten alumni picnic I attended over the week-end in Hollywood, Fl. South Florida alums from all the Big Ten schools attended and although I'm not one of them (Missouri '55) my wife is a loyal Illinois grad.
As it often does when Illinois grads come together, the conversation eventually turned to the subject of Chief Illiniwek. For those of you who don't know, Chief Illiniwek is, or was, the symbol of Illinois athletic teams. He had appeared at halftime of all Illinois football games since 1926, when he was introduced at a game against Pennsylvania. When the game ended, the chief approached Penn's Quaker mascot at midfield and offered him a peace pipe.
Since then Chief Illiniwek had been a campus icon, his halftime dance often cheered more lustily than the sometimes tepid performances of the football team. I may not have gone to Illinois, but I covered dozens of games there and, no matter how bad the game might be, the Chief's performance never failed to thrill me. Dressed in buckskin regalia with a full-length feathered headgear, the chief performed a stylized, if somewhat frenzied, dance that kept the fans in their seats and probably hurt concessions sales.
But the Chief will dance no more, the victim of political correctness and a massive misunderstanding of his role on the part of anti-Chief activists. Now I'm as politically correct as the next guy and I can understand why the Pekin (Ill.) Chinks had to change their nickname. Of course, should we ever get in a war with China, Chinks will be acceptable and will fit nicely in a headline.
I can even understand why Native Americans would not be happy with the nickname "Redskins" or with the Atlanta Braves' Tomahawk Chop. I must confess the latter irritates me, too. But Chief Illiniwek is meant to represent all that was noble in "the noble redman."
He is not a mascot. Mascots dress in funky costumes and roam the sidelines trying to irritate the other team's mascots. Chief Illiniwek does not do that. He enters the stadium in quiet dignity, does his thing, and exits the same way.
"He was a symbol of our geographic ancestors," says Roger Huddleston, co-chairman of the Honor the Chief Society. "He represents honor, tradition, and integrity. He's not just 4 1/2 minutes at halftime." Huddleston is not himself an alumni. "I went only one semester," he says, "but when I was 10 years old, my dad took me to a game. Illinois played Army on a beautiful autumn day. At halftime something strange happened. Everybody stood up. Nobody left to get a hotdog. The excitment of that moment caught me." As it has thousands of others.
The Chief had been under siege for several years, but alumni sentiment was so high in his favor that attempts to banish him had always been turned aside. "The latest surveys show that 82 per cent favor him and 79 per cent of students on campus want the Chief returned," says Huddleston.
Last year, however, under pressure from the NCAA, the Chief was laid to rest. Now, Huddleston's group is bent on performing the biggest resurrection since you know who's. He says the Honor the Chief Society has 1,000 dues paying members, that the building of a new costume, or regalia, is 70 per cent completed and that there are 14 candidates in tryouts to be the new Chief.
He's reasonably certain that the Chief will appear in this fall's homecoming parade. Like most Illinois fans he's hoping eventually the Chief will return to center stage at football and basketball games. Right now that seems like mission impossible, but I have a modest proposal. Either the University or the Honor the Chief Society should establish an annual scholarship to a deserving Native American and let him or, dare I say it, her portray Chief Illiniwek.
That should please everyone, but you know it won't. There are some people who see bigotry behind every tepee and others so fearful of giving offense they even question if it's proper to use the term "Fighting Illini" in reference to the school's athletic teams. Illini, of course, is an Indian, excuse me, Native American, word and we musn't use those in naming our teams. It isn't dignified.
Following that reasoning to its logical conclusion we'd have to change the names of states like Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and both Dakotas. If it's dignity you want, look no farther than Chief Illiniwek. Honest Injun.
One thing I learned as a columnist for the Chicago Tribune is that you never know where your next column's going to come from (apologies to my English teachers for not writing. . .from where your next column's going to come). This one had its genesis in a Big Ten alumni picnic I attended over the week-end in Hollywood, Fl. South Florida alums from all the Big Ten schools attended and although I'm not one of them (Missouri '55) my wife is a loyal Illinois grad.
As it often does when Illinois grads come together, the conversation eventually turned to the subject of Chief Illiniwek. For those of you who don't know, Chief Illiniwek is, or was, the symbol of Illinois athletic teams. He had appeared at halftime of all Illinois football games since 1926, when he was introduced at a game against Pennsylvania. When the game ended, the chief approached Penn's Quaker mascot at midfield and offered him a peace pipe.
Since then Chief Illiniwek had been a campus icon, his halftime dance often cheered more lustily than the sometimes tepid performances of the football team. I may not have gone to Illinois, but I covered dozens of games there and, no matter how bad the game might be, the Chief's performance never failed to thrill me. Dressed in buckskin regalia with a full-length feathered headgear, the chief performed a stylized, if somewhat frenzied, dance that kept the fans in their seats and probably hurt concessions sales.
But the Chief will dance no more, the victim of political correctness and a massive misunderstanding of his role on the part of anti-Chief activists. Now I'm as politically correct as the next guy and I can understand why the Pekin (Ill.) Chinks had to change their nickname. Of course, should we ever get in a war with China, Chinks will be acceptable and will fit nicely in a headline.
I can even understand why Native Americans would not be happy with the nickname "Redskins" or with the Atlanta Braves' Tomahawk Chop. I must confess the latter irritates me, too. But Chief Illiniwek is meant to represent all that was noble in "the noble redman."
He is not a mascot. Mascots dress in funky costumes and roam the sidelines trying to irritate the other team's mascots. Chief Illiniwek does not do that. He enters the stadium in quiet dignity, does his thing, and exits the same way.
"He was a symbol of our geographic ancestors," says Roger Huddleston, co-chairman of the Honor the Chief Society. "He represents honor, tradition, and integrity. He's not just 4 1/2 minutes at halftime." Huddleston is not himself an alumni. "I went only one semester," he says, "but when I was 10 years old, my dad took me to a game. Illinois played Army on a beautiful autumn day. At halftime something strange happened. Everybody stood up. Nobody left to get a hotdog. The excitment of that moment caught me." As it has thousands of others.
The Chief had been under siege for several years, but alumni sentiment was so high in his favor that attempts to banish him had always been turned aside. "The latest surveys show that 82 per cent favor him and 79 per cent of students on campus want the Chief returned," says Huddleston.
Last year, however, under pressure from the NCAA, the Chief was laid to rest. Now, Huddleston's group is bent on performing the biggest resurrection since you know who's. He says the Honor the Chief Society has 1,000 dues paying members, that the building of a new costume, or regalia, is 70 per cent completed and that there are 14 candidates in tryouts to be the new Chief.
He's reasonably certain that the Chief will appear in this fall's homecoming parade. Like most Illinois fans he's hoping eventually the Chief will return to center stage at football and basketball games. Right now that seems like mission impossible, but I have a modest proposal. Either the University or the Honor the Chief Society should establish an annual scholarship to a deserving Native American and let him or, dare I say it, her portray Chief Illiniwek.
That should please everyone, but you know it won't. There are some people who see bigotry behind every tepee and others so fearful of giving offense they even question if it's proper to use the term "Fighting Illini" in reference to the school's athletic teams. Illini, of course, is an Indian, excuse me, Native American, word and we musn't use those in naming our teams. It isn't dignified.
Following that reasoning to its logical conclusion we'd have to change the names of states like Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and both Dakotas. If it's dignity you want, look no farther than Chief Illiniwek. Honest Injun.
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
My Life in Sports
BY BOB MARKUS
They said it would be easy, like climbing back on a bicycle. But they are the same people who told me my golf game would get better after I retired and had more time to play. It's been nearly 12 years since I've written anything except a Christmas letter and nearly 30 since I last wrote a sports column for The Chicago Tribune.
I was pretty good at it once. Good enough to win a National Headliner award as best sports columnist in the country. Good enough to win three Illinois sports writer of the year awards and a double handful of wire service best story awards. But that was then and this is now. Do I still have a little hop in my fastball? Is there still a little bite in my curve?
I'm going to try to find out. Don't ask me why because I haven't the faintest. Maybe after 12 years of playing golf and bridge and reading and working crossword puzzles I'm ready to try something meaningful again. Not that writing about sports is necessarily meaningful.
But it's what I do--or did--and lately I've had this urge to do it again. I'm not sure exactly where I'm going with this. I'll probably talk some about my own career, even if it is ancient history. But what the heck, we still study about the Greeks and Romans don't we?
And it hasn't been THAT long. Chris Chelios, who was a graybeard when I last talked to him while covering the Blackhawks, my last assignment for The Tribune, is still playing. So is Gary Roberts, whose career appeared to be in jeopardy way back then because of a back problem. Evander Holyfield, whose fight with an over-the-hill Larry Holmes I covered in Las Vegas, is still fighting, well over the hill himself by now.
It's quite likely that you never heard of me unless you lived in Chciago. Even there I wasn't exactly a household name. But, the people I wrote about were the super stars of their time. Muhammad Ali. Bobby Hull. Joe DiMaggio. Hank Aaron. Arnold Palmer. Willie Mays. George Halas. Don Shula. Sugar Ray Leonard. And, like a real life Forest Gump, I was present at some of the most storied sports events of my era. I was there when Franco Harris made his immaculate reception. I was there when Garo Yepremian kicked the game-winning field goal on Christmas day to end what was at the time football's longest game in the second overtime. I was there when the Russians beat the United States in the gold medal final in Munich on what I wrote was "the greatest three-second violation in the history of the sport."
I was there in New York when Joe Frazier beat Muhammad Ali for the undisputed heavyweight championship and I was there in New Orleans when Ali won the title back for a second time against Leon Spinks.
I have been at World Series and Super Bowls (I once won the writer's pool at two consecutive Super Bowls, thus becoming, if not rich, at least famous for awhile.) I saw Billy Jean King turn Bobby Riggs into an old man in the time it takes to play three sets of tennis. I saw A.J. Foyt, Al Unser and Rick Mears each win his fourth Indianapolis 500.
I have been invited to duke it out behind his closed manager's office door by Leo Durocher and threatened with bodily harm by enigmatic baseball player Alex Johnson. Once, while covering the Baltimore Colts' training camp I was saved from being gunned down by an irate saloon keeper, who objected to a column I had written about his establishment.
In weeks to come I might write of some of these things, or I might write about how I became a columnist in the first place--and how I became a noncolumnist in the second place. Along the way you'll meet an interesting cast of characters, like Jimmy Segretti, a makeup editor, whose hatred of writers was so viceral that he stopped speaking to his best friend, Roy Damer, the day Damer was promoted from the copy desk to become The Tribune's Big Ten writer..
But I don't intend to simply wallow in the past. If I'm going to do this I'll have to be prepared to comment on present day sports topics as well. I'll be interested to see if I still can do it. It might, indeed, be as easy as climbing back on a bicycle. But I wouldn't know because, you see, I've never ridden a bicycle.
They said it would be easy, like climbing back on a bicycle. But they are the same people who told me my golf game would get better after I retired and had more time to play. It's been nearly 12 years since I've written anything except a Christmas letter and nearly 30 since I last wrote a sports column for The Chicago Tribune.
I was pretty good at it once. Good enough to win a National Headliner award as best sports columnist in the country. Good enough to win three Illinois sports writer of the year awards and a double handful of wire service best story awards. But that was then and this is now. Do I still have a little hop in my fastball? Is there still a little bite in my curve?
I'm going to try to find out. Don't ask me why because I haven't the faintest. Maybe after 12 years of playing golf and bridge and reading and working crossword puzzles I'm ready to try something meaningful again. Not that writing about sports is necessarily meaningful.
But it's what I do--or did--and lately I've had this urge to do it again. I'm not sure exactly where I'm going with this. I'll probably talk some about my own career, even if it is ancient history. But what the heck, we still study about the Greeks and Romans don't we?
And it hasn't been THAT long. Chris Chelios, who was a graybeard when I last talked to him while covering the Blackhawks, my last assignment for The Tribune, is still playing. So is Gary Roberts, whose career appeared to be in jeopardy way back then because of a back problem. Evander Holyfield, whose fight with an over-the-hill Larry Holmes I covered in Las Vegas, is still fighting, well over the hill himself by now.
It's quite likely that you never heard of me unless you lived in Chciago. Even there I wasn't exactly a household name. But, the people I wrote about were the super stars of their time. Muhammad Ali. Bobby Hull. Joe DiMaggio. Hank Aaron. Arnold Palmer. Willie Mays. George Halas. Don Shula. Sugar Ray Leonard. And, like a real life Forest Gump, I was present at some of the most storied sports events of my era. I was there when Franco Harris made his immaculate reception. I was there when Garo Yepremian kicked the game-winning field goal on Christmas day to end what was at the time football's longest game in the second overtime. I was there when the Russians beat the United States in the gold medal final in Munich on what I wrote was "the greatest three-second violation in the history of the sport."
I was there in New York when Joe Frazier beat Muhammad Ali for the undisputed heavyweight championship and I was there in New Orleans when Ali won the title back for a second time against Leon Spinks.
I have been at World Series and Super Bowls (I once won the writer's pool at two consecutive Super Bowls, thus becoming, if not rich, at least famous for awhile.) I saw Billy Jean King turn Bobby Riggs into an old man in the time it takes to play three sets of tennis. I saw A.J. Foyt, Al Unser and Rick Mears each win his fourth Indianapolis 500.
I have been invited to duke it out behind his closed manager's office door by Leo Durocher and threatened with bodily harm by enigmatic baseball player Alex Johnson. Once, while covering the Baltimore Colts' training camp I was saved from being gunned down by an irate saloon keeper, who objected to a column I had written about his establishment.
In weeks to come I might write of some of these things, or I might write about how I became a columnist in the first place--and how I became a noncolumnist in the second place. Along the way you'll meet an interesting cast of characters, like Jimmy Segretti, a makeup editor, whose hatred of writers was so viceral that he stopped speaking to his best friend, Roy Damer, the day Damer was promoted from the copy desk to become The Tribune's Big Ten writer..
But I don't intend to simply wallow in the past. If I'm going to do this I'll have to be prepared to comment on present day sports topics as well. I'll be interested to see if I still can do it. It might, indeed, be as easy as climbing back on a bicycle. But I wouldn't know because, you see, I've never ridden a bicycle.
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