Life Its Ownself

by Dan Jenkins

  "We threatened a strike," he said. "We made a big noise about wanting a percentage of the TV revenue, trying to force a wage scale on 'em. They only called us Commies. They don't realize it's only another form of profit-sharing. Profit- sharing is a hundred years old in this country, man! The owners' grandfathers invented profit-sharing! Looks like the grandfathers were smarter people, doesn't it?"

  We were alone in the bar. Dreamer lowered his voice anyhow and had a gleam in his eye as he said, "We're going to Plan B, Clyde. Operation Dixie. That's the code name. It came out of our board-of-directors meeting."

  "Play bad on purpose?"

  "We're all goin' Dixie," he said.

  "What do you think you'll accomplish?"

  With satisfaction, Dreamer said, "An inferior product!"

  "And?"

  He said, "The big turn-off is coming, man. The public will wake up one day and say, 'What's this shit coming down?' We keep our jobs, but the game becomes a joke. TV ratings drop. This hits the owner in his pocketbook. Stadiums are empty. Coaches get fired by the dozens. Players get traded frantically. Every team is a bag of garbage. A seven-nine record gets you to the playoffs! The press gets hot. Ball clubs are an embarrassment to their communities. Owners commit suicide. We figure in less than two seasons, we can create mass hysteria."

  "How many players are going along with you on this?"

  "In a strike action, we were never going to get more than sixty-five percent. That became apparent. Too many Republicans in the league. Operation Dixie takes it out of the realm of politics. We think we have ninety-five percent right now. Among other things, there's less risk of injury."

  "Sorry you didn't think of it sooner," I said. "I'd still be in a uniform."

  "You could play on crutches now and you wouldn't get tackled!"

  Dreamer said the Players Association had appointed a Script Committee.

  Members of the Script Committee were in charge of thinking up ways to break the hearts of the owners and fans. Missed field goals from close in, fumbles on key downs, dropped passes for touchdowns. These were only a few. The possibilities were limitless.

  Everybody was looking forward to the hilarity of it, Dreamer said. "A team drives all the way down the field. A field goal will win it. They're on the five-yard line. The owner's up in his box celebrating, but—"

  "It's blocked?"

  "Bad snap," Dreamer's grin was what you'd call sinister.

  How was it all going to be resolved in the master plan? I inquired.

  Dreamer said, "The owners will figure out what's going on and ask for a meeting. We'll get a wage scale and free agents with bargaining power. In return, we play football again."

  "If it goes on too long, you won't regain the public's confidence."

  "That's true, but it's a problem of the owners', not ours. What's the worst thing that'll happen? The NFL dies, right? So what? Somebody starts a new league. Rich guys will always want to own football teams and they'll always need athletes. We've got 'em, Clyde. We've got 'em right here."

  Kathy and a two-man camera crew came into the bar. There was a nice spot where we could do the insert, she said. It was over in a corner of plastic flowers near the indoor swimming pool.

  On our way to set up for the interview, I said to Kathy, "Dreamer was just telling me how the Redskins are ready to get after 'em tomorrow."

  She looked at Dreamer, and said, "Pumped up, huh?"

  "I've never seen a team as well prepared," he said.

  Kathy positioned Dreamer and I on a small brick wall that separated the indoor swimming pool from the motel's Pong games, vending machines, and AstroTurf putting green. She handed me a microphone.

  "Just chat informally for about ten minutes," she said. "Try to look relaxed. It'll help with the editing if you can keep your questions and answers as short as possible."

  "How much of this will they use?" I asked.

  "About sixty seconds," said Kathy. "Maybe ninety."

  "That much?"

  "Go!" Kathy said, as a hand-held cameraman moved in closer to us.

  Our faces—Dreamer's and mine—grew solemn. Holding the mike, I turned to the Redskins' cornerback and said, "What about this Washington team, Dreamer?"

  "They're the most dedicated athletes I've ever been associated with, Clyde. Our workouts have been the most intense I've ever seen—and you know the old saying: if you practice well, you play well."

  "You're a vice-president of the Players Association. There's been a lot of strike talk, as we know. Has this had an effect on the football we're seeing this year?"

  "I'm glad you ask that question," Dreamer said. "We have our differences with the owners, of course, but I look for a settlement in the near future because the players and the owners have a big thing in common: love of the game. From the players' point of view, we would never let our negotiations interfere with the competition on the field. We're football players first. To answer your question, I've never seen the quality of play on a higher level."

  "The injury," said Kathy, intruding. "Talk about the injury."

  "My injury?" I said.

  "Keep going, we're rolling!"

  To Dreamer again, I said, "Uh... let me ask you about a rumor, Dreamer. Is it true you've been seeing a psychiatrist since you caused the injury that put me out of pro football?"

  Dreamer was alert.

  "Uh...I haven't actually sought professional help, but I've discussed it at length with a good friend who studied psychology in school."

  "At Ohio State?"

  "Yes. He reminded me I'd played football for Woody Hayes and I couldn't be held responsible for my violent actions in an adult society."

  "I would agree with that. And I'd like to take this opportunity to tell America I don't hold a grudge. You had a job to do, Dreamer. I respect that."

  We shook hands with sincerity—on camera.

  And Dreamer said, "It's a tendency I haven't been able to bring under complete control. I see a ball-carrier and there's this crazy, animal urge that takes over my body. It's like I'm possessed and the only emotional release I have is to hurt somebody. Quite frankly, I wouldn't want to be in a Green Bay uniform tomorrow."

  "Great!" Kathy said, stepping in to take the mike. "That's incredible! Richard Marks will go bonkers."

  "All a man knows is what people tell him," I said.

  Kathy said, "It's fantastic! We have the scoop on the strike! We have the inner feelings of the man who injured you! We have—"

  "Kathy," I said, cutting her off. "We'll chat later, okay?"

  I led Dreamer off to the side for a moment. In a half- whisper, I asked him if he was aware of the magazine piece Shake Tiller had been working on.

  "We helped him on it," Dreamer said. "He's not gonna come out and say Operation Dixie is an official position of the Players Association. He's gonna lay it out as his own theory—a rumor. This'll get their attention, baby."

  "Who, the FBI?"

  "The owners, man."

  I hadn't known exactly what would be in Shake's story, other than a libelous condemnation of the zebras. Shake hadn't wanted me to read the article before he sent it off to Playboy. What I didn't know wouldn't hurt me.

  "We laid it all out for him," Dreamer said. "We wanted it in print, like a trial balloon, you understand what I'm sayin'? There's a better-than-even chance the owners are idiots and they can't figure out what's going on. Shake's story will tell 'em. We'll deny there's an Operation Dixie, but the idea will be planted. It'll fester in their minds. The more it festers, the quicker they'll come to the bargaining table."

  "I'm trying not to be troubled by the logic," I said.

  In parting, Dreamer said, "If you'd been more active in the association, Clyde, you'd know this is what's called creative use of the media. It's just another way for us to tell the owners how it is. We're saying if you fuck with us, Jack, you're fuckin' with your heartbeat!"

  Larry Hoage's firmly held layers of streaky gray hair somehow looked heav
ier to me in person than they had on television.

  He had come to dinner that night in a cashmere hounds'- tooth jacket over a white cashmere turtleneck, and—it was more than a hunch—makeup.

  The color of his face was in that area between an orange golf ball and coffee with cream. The face had undergone a couple of lifts, and his teeth had been painted. Larry's face also told you that the mind which controlled it had never, in all his forty-odd years, given a thought to anything more complicated than his own personal appearance.

  Larry Hoage was not the Talking Head on which all other television personalities had been patterned, but he was the perfect example of a man who had made a fortune out of radio and TV through the sheer lunacy of his profession, and had mistakenly attributed this accident to his intelligence.

  Like so many others in his business, Larry Hoage had become a personality on looks and voice alone. He was everything wrong with broadcasting, but you couldn't convince anyone in broadcasting of it. Larry had become a recognizable face, therefore he was a star.

  He had come up the usual way. He had done it all for a TV station in Los Angeles—news reader, weather reader, editorial reader. One evening he had filled in for the sports reader, and somebody had liked his enthusiasm, his delivery. Sports was fun and Larry's ho, ho, ho's made it even more fun, somebody thought.

  The network began to call on him in emergencies to do play-by-play on college football and basketball games. Another fool thought he had talent. One of Richard Marks's predecessors. Larry was thus assigned to the NFL. That's when Larry got serious. The NFL wasn't sport, it was patriotism. A new NFL shill was born. The league liked shills, hence the network liked Larry.

  All this started fifteen years ago. Larry had since become established, a big name. He knew how to shake hands with affiliates, tell jokes to sponsors. He never refused an assignment, never complained about being overworked. If you needed a guy to fly all night and host a surfing show or interview a Bulgarian weightlifter, Larry was your man.

  The network publicity department promoted him as hardworking, studious, reliable. He was a "good family man," it was said, because he had a dopey wife and two dopey kids and lived in a dopey house in Orange County. I had no doubt that on the walls of his den you would find photos of Larry lounging in golf carts in Palm Springs with Gerald Ford, Gene Autry, and Bob Hope.

  Perhaps worse than anything, Larry believed that the endless clichés in which he spoke were his own original thoughts.

  I stood up to greet Larry when he arrived at our dinner table. "Number Twenty-Three," he said. "Shake Tiller, Eighty- Eight; T.J. Lambert, Fifty-One; Hose Manning, Seventeen— one of the great New York Giant teams!"

  "Hose was Number Nine," I said.

  "Pablo Patterson, Sixty-Seven," said Larry.

  "Puddin Patterson?"

  "How 'bout that game in the snow? Everybody on their feet at Yankee Stadium, the field a virtual quagmire, the wind whipping through the bleachers. I thought the Eagles were home free, but old Eighty-Eight showed 'em! Whatta catch!"

  "I caught it."

  "Glad to have you aboard, Billy Clyde! At ease, sport, we'll carve out a niche for you!"

  Larry shifted us around so that he could sit at the head of the table. This way, he could face the room; rather, the room could face him. Kathy and I were on his left. Kathy looked more grownup in a skirt, sweater, and heels. Mike Rash and Teddy Cole were across from us. Mike and Teddy could have passed as twins in their jeans, fatigue jackets, uncombed hair, and laid-back attitudes.

  Every time I looked at Larry during dinner I remembered an old Texas expression. In a convenient moment, I'd murmured it to Kathy Montgomery: "If Larry had a brain, he'd be outdoors playing with it."

  Only Larry had complained about the frozen lobster tails, the lukewarm baked potato, and the salad bar in the motel's gourmet restaurant.

  The others were finishing off the remains of a good Michigan wine, and I was finishing off the remains of a young Scotch, as Larry said, "Well, chilluns, I think we're in for a real old-fashioned, gut-bustin' sidewinder tomorrow! This is going to be some kind of football game!"

  Nods and hums greeted Larry's statement.

  He turned to Kathy and said, "Before I forget, tell the front desk to put me in another room. These walls are so darn thin. The guy next door to me has a bladder problem. I don't want to listen to that all night!"

  "No problem, be right back," said Kathy, bolting out of the dining room.

  A waiter brought the dinner check while Kathy was away. Larry Hoage was handed the check, an act that startled him. But he quickly looked relieved as Teddy Cole reached over, picked up the check, and casually signed it.

  "Can't argue with the producer," Larry said to me. "Producers have the big pencil!"

  My colleague held out his wineglass to Mike Rash.

  "How 'bout it, El Directo? Any vino left?"

  Mike Rash emptied the last of the wine into Larry's glass as Kathy returned to the table. Larry was being moved to a suite.

  "I gave the bell captain five dollars to make sure he does it now," she said.

  "Now, you put that on your expense account, young lady!" said Larry.

  "She's not allowed," Teddy Cole said, digging lazily into his pocket. He tossed a $5 bill to Kathy.

  "It's no big deal," Kathy said, hesitant to pick up the money.

  I took out my moneyclip and pulled off a $100 bill. Offering it to Kathy, I said, "Here, I'll put you on my expense account."

  Kathy poked me on the arm.

  I put the hundred away, having had my little joke. Mike Rash mentioned to Larry that I had done a "very good" insert with Dreamer Tatum that afternoon.

  "Excellent job," Teddy Cole said.

  "Really neat," said Kathy.

  "Dreamer Tatum!" Larry Hoage blustered. "Number Thirty-Two! You don't run the football at him, boy! You'll come up a day late and a dollar short!"

  "He's a good one," I said.

  "Yes, sir, chilluns, you don't stick your hand in the cookie jar when Dreamer Tatum's around! He'll snatch you bald- headed!"

  "Billy Clyde interviewed him today," Teddy Cole said.

  "Dreamer Tatum is one of the all-time greats!" Larry Hoage guaranteed us. "He'll come after you like a hookin' bull!"

  "We're not on the air yet, Larry," said Mike Rash.

  Larry stood up.

  "Okay, chilluns, I've enjoyed it, but it's time for the Old Professor to do his homework!"

  He looked down at Kathy.

  "Press guide in my room?"

  "Yes."

  "Flip card?"

  "Right."

  "Today's papers?"

  "Check."

  "Gate pass?"

  "Done."

  Now he looked at me.

  "Glad to have you on the flight deck, Billy Clyde. Don't worry about a thing. Any problems, I'll get you down out of the fog, no sweat!"

  "Thanks, Larry."

  "Who do you like in this melee?"

  "Well..."

  "I'll tell you who I like. When you've been around this sport as long as I have, you kind of get an inkling, you know? I've got a feeling the Redskins are going to cut the old wolf loose when they ring that bell tomorrow! Yes, sir, I think Washington's gonna put the big britches on 'em!"

  On his way out of the restaurant, Larry paused to sign autographs for people at two different tables. I thought of getting their names and turning them over to the proper authorities. With such lunatics on the prowl, I figured no one in Green Bay was safe that night.

  Kathy, Mike, Teddy, and I walked into the lobby. I presented the option of a nightcap in the motel bar before bedtime. Everyone passed.

  Mike and Teddy said goodnight. They shuffled away down separate hallways.

  "Sure you don't want a drink?" I said to Kathy.

  "No, thanks. I have to be up at dawn."

  "Why?"

  "There's a lot of stuff to take care of."

  "The kickoff's not till one o'clo
ck."

  "It's sleaze work, but that's what trusty sidekicks do."

  She offered me a handshake.

  "Hey, listen, it's really neat to know you. This is gonna be fun, having you around," she said.

  Unexpectedly, then, she gave me a quick kiss on the cheek.

  "See you up in the booth!" And she walked away. I watched her all the way down the hall. When she had disappeared around a corner, I hobbled toward my own room to call the missus.

  ELEVEN

  Things were certainly hopping at Enjolie's in Beverly Hills, which was where the long-distance operator had managed to locate Barbara Jane Bookman, star of Rita's Limo Stop.

  It was official. Word had come in that afternoon. Rita was a full go for thirteen episodes. It was slotted into ABC's prime-time lineup in January.

  Naturally, everybody had to celebrate. Barbara Jane had gone over to Enjolie's to meet Carolyn Barnes and Jack Sullivan. And the old Dom Perignon corks were flying all over the room, soaring into the bucketed trees and bouncing off the threadbare sweaters of screenwriters who were discussing the use of the CUT TO as Dickens would have applied it.

  "I'm afraid we're making a scene," Barb said.

  "How are the witches taking it?"

  "The good witches think we're somebody important. They aren't sure who, but they're smiling. The bad witches are watering the flowers."

  "You did good," I said. "I guess now I'd better find out where Sheldon Gurtz has his suits made."

  Only half the war was won, Barb said. Now the show had to get the ratings. It had to make the Top Twenty—like Notre Dame every season, even with 5 losses—or it wouldn't be renewed for next year. This made it all the more important for the scripts to be good, and all the more necessary for Sheldon Gurtz and Kitty Feldman to die.

  "You didn't invite them tonight?"

  "They're having their own party in the Valley."

  "Hardly as festive as where you are."

  "Might be better. They'll have Hula Hoops."