Now, something weird happened immediately after that column was published: While pitching in a spring training game against the Phillies, a line drive hit Helling in the leg and broke his fibula. I felt terrible about this, specifically because I’d written the sentence “As long as Rick Helling walks this earth, I shall never sleep soundly.” I certainly didn’t believe I had cosmically caused this injury, but I didn’t like that I’d expressed a desire for a man to cease walking just before his leg shattered. It was not the type of irony I was looking for. My obsession with Helling had always been semi-performative, but now it seemed sick. I decided to just stop thinking about Rick Helling entirely; this was not difficult, particularly after his 2007 retirement. But then — in 2009 — I happened to be reading an issue of Time magazine (I think I was waiting to see the dentist). The magazine was running an excerpt from The Yankee Years, Joe Torre’s book written with Tom Verducci. The piece was headlined THE MAN WHO WARNED BASEBALL ABOUT STEROIDS.
To my horror, I realized the Man they were referring to was Rick Helling.
For all practical purposes, Helling will be remembered as the first player in Major League Baseball to take a meaningful stand against performance-enhancing drugs. The year was 1998: Baseball was spiking in popularity, mostly due to the explosion of home runs by Mark McGwire (who’d hit seventy that summer) and Sammy Sosa (who’d hit sixty-six). Though it seems insane in retrospect, no one wanted to admit that this uptick in power was unnatural . . . except, evidently, Rick Helling. At that winter’s players union meeting, Helling, who was only twenty-seven, stood up and said, “There is this problem with steroids. It’s happening. It’s real. And it’s so prevalent that guys who aren’t doing it are feeling pressure because they’re falling behind. It’s not a level playing field. We’ve got to figure out a way to address it . . . It’s one thing to be a cheater, to be somebody who doesn’t care whether it’s right or wrong. But it’s another thing when other guys feel like they have to do it just to keep up.” Nobody paid any attention to his ideas, so he delivered the same speech the following year. And he made it the year after that, and the year after that, and the year after that. And nobody cared, until they did. Helling had a nice career as a player (93 career wins, 1,058 strikeouts), but this was his real achievement. This is why he’ll be (justifiably) remembered by baseball historians. They will remember him as a truth pioneer.
So here’s my life: The one person I am on record for hating is the first baseball player on record for taking a public stand against anabolic steroids.
I have tried to rationalize my way out of this reality. I’ve reversed my position on steroids several times. I’ve tried to imagine that Helling’s speech was grandstanding, or that it’s the typical behavior of a narcissistic personality. But I can’t unread that book excerpt. Here’s Helling’s final quote, spoken as a retired activist, lodged in the article’s penultimate paragraph: “Anybody who knows me knows there was no doubt that I played it the right way. And that’s what I wanted to leave the game with. I couldn’t care less if I made one million dollars or one hundred million dollars, whether I won one game or whether I won three hundred games. I was in it to be honest to myself and to my teammates and to be a good father and husband. For me, it was just the way I was brought up.”
Those words make me think many things. However, they mainly make me think one thing: He’s lying. I don’t believe what he says, even though he has no reason to fabricate any of it. I just can’t see him as good. So I read those words again, and I read them again, and I read them again. I continue to absorb them as lies. I see them as small lies inside of larger lies. I try to make them what I want them to be. And — eventually — a feeling creeps over my shoulders and up my neck. It’s a feeling I’ve felt my whole life, and it’s a feeling I know I will have forever.
In my own story, I am the villain.
Rick Helling is not a bad guy because of what I remember from 1985; I am a bad guy because I remember it (and because it informs how I think about everything else). I know it’s wrong and I do it anyway. I do it consciously. I have the ability to think about this person in a thousand different contexts, yet I prefer keeping my mind unchanged. I can see every alternate reality, but I prefer to arbitrarily create my own. I know the truth, but I just don’t care.
It’s natural to think of one’s own life as a novel (or a movie or a play), and within that narrative we are always the central character. Thoughtful people try to overcome this compulsion, but they usually fail (in fact, trying makes it worse). In a commencement speech at Kenyon College, David Foster Wallace argued that conquering the preoccupation with self is pretty much the whole objective of being alive — but if we are to believe Wallace succeeded at this goal, it must be the darkest success imaginable. I’m far less confident than DFW. I don’t think it’s feasible (I think people can pretend to do it, but they can’t pretend to themselves). I have slowly come to believe that overcoming this self-focused worldview is impossible, and that life can be experienced only through an imaginary mirror that allows us to occupy the center of a story no one is telling. I don’t think the human mind is capable of getting outside of that box, and I’m not even sure if this limitation is particularly problematic. I never feel weird about being the main character in the nontransferable, nonexistent movie of my life. That’s totally fine. What makes me nervous is a growing suspicion that this movie is fucked up and devoid of meaning. The auteur is a nihilist. What if I’m the main character, but still not the protagonist? What if there is no protagonist? What if there’s just an uninteresting person, thinking about himself because there’s nothing else to think about?
I wear the plaid hat.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Chuck Klosterman would like to thank the following individuals for their assistance, insight, and support throughout the writing and editing of I Wear the Black Hat:
Melissa Maerz
Dmitry Kiper
Brant Rumble
Daniel Greenberg
Rob Sheffield
Bob Ethington
Jon Dolan
Michael Weinreb
Zach Baron
Brian Raftery
Ben Heller
John Jeremiah Sullivan
Steve Marsh
Sean Howe
Bill Simmons
Dan Fierman
Susan Moldow
Nan Graham
Kate Lloyd
Elisa Rivlin
© KRIS DRAKE
Chuck Klosterman is the New York Times bestselling author of five previous works of nonfiction (including Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs and Eating the Dinosaur) and two novels (Downtown Owl and The Visible Man). His debut book, Fargo Rock City, was a winner of the ASCAP–Deems Taylor Award. He has written for GQ, Esquire, Spin, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Believer, and The A.V. Club. He currently covers sports and popular culture for ESPN and serves as The Ethicist for The New York Times Magazine.
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Index
ABBA, 142
ABC, 56, 98
Abdul-Jabbar, Kareem, 165–67, 171–73, 179–80
Adams, Cecil, 10
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (video game), 156
Afghanistan, 144
Afghan War Diary, 144
AFL, 97
AIDS, 105, 113, 151
Airplane! (film), 167, 179
airplane hijacking, 40–42, 54–55
Albarn, Damon, 33
Albom, Mitch, 178
Ali, Muhammad, 50–54, 154, 155
Allen, Marcus, 98
Allen, Woody, 88, 154, 186
Allin, G.G., 158
“Along Came Jones” (Coasters), 10–11
AMC, 47, 48
Ament, Jeff, 172–73
American Experience (TV series), 107
American Gigolo (film), 152
American Psycho (Ellis), 74–75
American Rhapsody (Eszterhas), 109
Amin, Idi, 191
Amos, Tori, 31–32, 113
Andersen, Christopher, 113
anti-Semitism, 185
AOL, 138
Apollonia, 44
Arabian Prince, 95
Arfin, Lesley, 87
Ariel, Washington, 55
Arizona, 160, 162
Arkansas, 122
Aryan Brotherhood, 52
As Nasty as They Wanna Be (2 Live Crew), 78
Assange, Julian, 143–47
Atlas Shrugged (Rand), 130
Atta, Mohamed, 56
Aykroyd, Dan, 152
Backbeat (film), 180
Bananas (film), 154
Barney Oldfield’s Race for a Life (play), 10
baseball players, and drug usage, 197–98
Basic Instinct (film), 109–13, 130
Batman character, 59–61, 66, 69–70, 72, 73, 75
Bayless, Skip, 154
BBC, 51
Beastie Boys, 93
Beatles, 6, 53, 180, 189
Beavis and Butt-head (TV series), 131
Bell, Roland, 48
Bell, Stringer (fictional character, The Wire), 48, 50
Belushi, John, 152
Berman, Chris, 154
Bias, Len, 49
Big Con, The (Maurer), 42, 43
Big Lebowski, The (film), 33
Bill and Hillary: The Marriage (Andersen), 113
Billboard, 24
Björk, 100
Black, Rebecca, 16
Blackmore, Tim, 73
Black Sabbath, 131
Blur, 32–33, 34
Body Heat (film), 112
Bond, James (fictional character), 137, 161
Book of Lies, The (Crowley), 158
Book of the Law, The (Crowley), 158
Booth, John Wilkes, 20
Borden, Lizzie, 178
Botwin, Nancy (fictional character, Weeds), 47, 50
Bowie, David, 192
boxing, 50–54, 154–55
Branch, Cliff, 96
Breaking Bad (film), 48
“Break Stuff” (Limp Bizkit), 149
Broderick, Matthew, 142–43
Broken Flowers (film), 152
Bronson, Charles, 61, 67–68, 70, 71
Brooklyn, New York, 28, 60, 86, 150
Brothers in Arms tour, Dire Straits, 29
Brown, Chris, 45
Brown, James, 150
Brown, Nicole, 167, 170, 174–75, 176, 178
Browne, Jackson, 23, 24, 169
Brown University, 17
Bruce, Lenny, 79
Bryant, Kobe, 178–79
Buchanan, James, 19
Bundy, Ted, 74, 116–18
Burns, Patrick, 18
Bush, Barbara, 20
Bush, George H., 121
Bush, George W., 19, 20, 157–58
Cabey, Darrel, 65, 68
California, 25, 37
Cameron, Kirk, 28
Campbell, John, 137
Campbell, Luther, 78
Cannes Film Festival, 98
Carrey, Jim, 152
Carter, Jimmy, 120
Casino (film), 113
Casper, Dave, 103
Castro, Fidel, 134
Catch Me if You Can (film), 42
Chamberlain, Wilt, 123–24
Chase, Chevy, 150–53
Chavez, Ingrid, 46
Cheney, Dick, 19
Chicago Reader, 10
Christgau, Robert, 104
Chronic, The (Dr. Dre), 105
Chuck D, 89, 94
Churchill, Winston, 119
CIA, 61
Cinderella (band), 29
C.K., Louis, 83
Clay, Andrew Dice, 78–82, 84–86, 88
Claypool, Les, 30
Clinton (TV documentary), 107
Clinton, Bill, 107–09, 113–15, 119–29, 131
Clinton, Hillary, 109, 113, 115, 120, 125, 126, 128, 130
CNN, 55
Coasters, 10
Cobb, Randall “Tex,” 154–55
Coe, David Allan, 189
Coke (Coca-Cola), 32
Colbert, Stephen, 80
Coldplay, 33–34, 35
college football, Paterno’s career in, 14–18
Colts, 160, 161
comedians and serious films, 152
comedy
allowable subjects for, 83–84, 87
Chase’s career in, 150–53
Clay’s career in, 78–82, 84–86, 88
Comedy Central, 151
Community (TV series), 59, 151
context, and meaning, 6
Continental Divide (film), 152
Cooper, D. B., 40–42, 54–57
Coors beer, 105, 174
“Corduroy” (Pearl Jam), 173
Cosell, Howard, 153–55
Cowlings, A. C., 175
Crouch, Stanley, 63, 64–65
Crowley, Aleister, 155–59
Cruisin’ with the Tooz (Matuszak), 103
Cuba, 40
Cube, Ice, 80, 93–94, 95, 105
Cumberbatch, Benedict, 144
Curley, Tim, 16
Dahmer, Jeffrey, 118–19
Dancer in the Dark (von Trier), 100
Darko, Donnie (fictional character), 37
“Dark Side of Self and Social Perception: Black Uniforms and Aggression in Professional Sports, The” (Frank and Gilovich), 100–101
“Darling Nikki” (Prince), 44
Dave Matthews, 35
David, Larry, 79
Davis, Al, 97–98, 103, 105
Day, Morris (fictional character, Purple Rain), 44–46
Day the Laughter Died, The (Day), 88
DC Comics, 59
“Dear John” (Swift), 36
Death Certificate (Ice Cube), 105
death penalty, 20
Death Wish (film series), 61–62, 66–69, 70, 73
Deliberate Stranger, The (TV movie), 117
Democrats, 61, 113, 129, 161
Dershowitz, Alan, 168, 169
Deschanel, Zooey, 174
de Tocqueville, Alexis, 73
Detroit Lions, 193
DeVaughn, William, 91
Dexter (TV series), 49
Diamond Head, 1
Diary of a Drug Fiend (Crowley), 156
Diary of a Madman (Osbourne), 156
Dio, Ronnie James, 157
Dire Straits, 29
Dirty Harry (film), 69
Disclosure (film), 111
“Disco Strangler, The” (Eagles), 38
DJ Yella, 95, 105
Dr. Dre, 95, 105
Dr Pepper, 105
Dogville (von Trier), 98–100
Donnie Darko (film), 37
Do-Right, Dudley (cartoon character), 11
Dotcom, Kim, 137–43, 147
Double Live Gonzo (Nugent), 32
Douglas, Michael, 110–11
Downfall (film), 193
Dreamgirls (film), 152
Driving Miss Daisy (film), 152
Drudge Report
, 122
drug dealers, 47
drug usage
baseball players and, 197–98
football players and, 102
Keith Richards’s arrest for, 39–40
Duncan, Tim, 171
Dunn, Nora, 82
Dunst, Kirsten, 99
Durst, Fred, 149–50
Dylan, Bob, 186–89
Eagles, 23–26, 37, 38
Eastwood, Clint, 69
Easy Rider (film), 47
Eazy-E, 94, 95, 100, 104, 105
Ecstasy, 47
Elastica, 33
elections, presidential, 19–21, 120, 127–28, 161
Elliott, Chris, 30
Ellis, Bret Easton, 74–75
Ellsberg, Daniel, 145
EMF, 80
Engineer, The (play), 10
Enter the Void (film), 132
Entourage (TV series), 79
ESPN, 18, 28, 52, 105
Esquire (magazine), 195, 197
Eszterhas, Joe, 109–10
Explaining Hitler (Rosenbaum), 185
FAA, 41
Facebook, 119
“Face Down, Ass Up” (2 Live Crew), 78
Fackenheim, Emil, 185–86
Falco, Edie, 126
Faster Pussycat, 29
Fatal Attraction (film), 111
FBI, 41, 104, 117, 137, 138, 139
Fearless (Swift), 35–36
Fear of a Black Planet (Public Enemy), 93, 94
Fenby, Jonathan, 189
I Wear the Black Hat: Grappling With Villains (Real and Imagined) Page 23
