The first signal of change was the massive response to my Hey Rube column by 100,000 loyal ESPN.com readers in ten (10) days.… Hot damn! I want to Thank all of you very sincerely. You made a huge Difference. Abe Lincoln would be proud of us today and so would Bobby Kennedy. If it is true, as Edmund Burke said, that “the only thing necessary for the triumph of Evil is for good men to do Nothing” (and I have always believed that is true), then we are sure as hell not doing Nothing. I salute You.
Justice is expensive in America. There are no Free Passes.… You might want to remember this, the next time you get careless and blow off a few Parking Tickets. They will come back to haunt you the next time you see a Cop car in your rearview mirror. Or if you notice your teenage daughter hanging out with a rotten-looking Skinhead.… There is no such thing as Paranoia. Your worst fears can come true at any moment.… What happened to Lisl Auman can happen to Anybody in America, and when it does, you will sure as hell need Friends.… Take my word for it, folks. I have Been There, and it ain’t Fun.
Thanks again for your help on this. It is good Karma and also very wise.
—May 14, 2001
Patrick Roy and Warren Zevon—Two Champions at the Top of Their Game
Warren Zevon arrived at my house on Saturday and said he was in the mood to write a few songs about Hockey. “Thank God you’re home,” he said. “I had to drive all night to get out of Utah without being locked up. What’s wrong with those people?”
“What people?” I asked him. “The ones over in Utah,” he said nervously. “They’ve been following me ever since Salt Lake City. They pulled me over at some kind of police checkpoint and accused me of being a Sex Offender—I was terrified. They even had a picture of me.”
“Nonsense,” I said. “They’re doing that to a lot of people these days. They’re rounding up the Bigamists before the Olympics start. They don’t want to be embarrassed in the eyes of the world again.”
Warren seemed far too frantic to do any serious songwriting, so I tried to calm him down with some of the fresh Jimson tea I’d brewed up for the Holiday. I knew he was a rabid hockey fan, so I told him we could watch the Stanley Cup game on TV pretty soon.
“Excellent,” he said. “I have come to Love professional hockey. I watch it all the time on TV—especially the Stanley Cup play-offs.”
“Well,” I replied with a smile, “tonight is our lucky night. Game 1 is coming up on ESPN very soon. We will drink some more of this Tea and get ourselves Prepared for it.”
“Bless you, Doc,” he said. “We can Watch the game together and then write a song about it.” He paused momentarily and reached again for the teapot.… “This is very exciting,” he said eagerly. “I can hardly wait to see Patrick Roy in action. He is one of my personal heroes. Roy is the finest athlete in Sports now. I worship him.”
I nodded but said nothing. There was a faraway look in his eyes now, and he spoke in an oddly Dreamy voice. I could see that he had forgotten all about his troubles in Utah, and now he was jabbering happily.…
When the phone rang, he ignored me and picked it up before I could get to it. “Patrick Roy fan club,” he said. “Zevon speaking. We are ready for the game here—are you ready?” He laughed. “Are you a Bigamist? What? Don’t lie to me, you yellow-bellied pervert!” Then he laughed again and hung up.
“That will teach those Bigamists a lesson,” he chuckled. “That fool will never call back!”
I jerked the phone away from him and told him to calm down. “You’re starting to act weird,” I told him. “Get a grip on yourself.”
The game was the most dominating display of big-time hockey either of us had ever seen. The Avalanche humiliated the favored defending champion NJ Devils.
Patrick Roy got his shutout and “could have beaten NJ all by himself,” Zevon boasted. “He made midgets of us all. I will never forget this game. Our song will be called ‘You’re a Whole Different Person When You’re Scared.’”
Which proved to be true, when we played it back on his new age Hugo machine 40 hours later.
Zevon is famous for his ability to stay awake for as long as it takes—often for 85 or 90 straight hours. “I wrote ‘Hit Somebody’ in 75 hours,” he said, “and look what happened to that one.”
Indeed. It rocketed to the top of the charts and was hailed as “the finest song ever written about hockey” by Rolling Stone and Songs of the Rich and Famous.
Warren Zevon is as adept at songwriting as he is with a classics than any other musician of our time, with the possible exception of Bob Dylan.… He is also an expert at lacrosse—which we also watched while we worked. He went wild when Princeton beat Syracuse for the NCAA Championship on Sunday.
He disappeared in the middle of the night, still without sleep—saying he was headed to Indianapolis to write a song with Colts owner James Irsay, who had just returned from buying Kerouac’s original manuscript of On the Road for $2.43 million at Christie’s Auction House in New York. Irsay is another one of Warren’s heroes.
Warren is a profoundly mysterious man, and I have learned not to argue with him, about hockey or anything else. He is a dangerous drinker, and a whole different person when he’s scared.
—May 28, 2001
Wild Days at the Sports Desk
It will come as no surprise to anybody who has ever had to work for a living when I say that there are Fast days and slow days in Every business. It is a Universal Truth that no one but a certified Moron would deny—not even the Filthy Rich who have never worked a day in their lives and still believe in Santa Claus, if only because they can afford to think that way.
Not even professional Journalists can deny a thing like that with a straight face. It is an open secret on any newspaper that the Sports Desk will see more Action, on any given day, than any other Desk will see in a month.… That is why Sportswriters are almost always the lowest-paid people on Newspaper staffs: They are charter members of the Too Much Fun Club, and they like it that way.
“Why should I work for a living,” they say, “if I can get paid doing something I love?”
And who will argue with them? Not me. I am a Natural-born Sportswriter. I have a knack for it, a God-given talent. After I first learned that it was possible to sleep late and go to work at Two in the afternoon, and still get Paid for it, I never did anything else.
You bet. Some people call me lazy, but they are Wrong. If I am lazy, then so is Chris Berman of ESPN and Bob Costas of NBC. Both are members of the Too Much Fun Club, and they both learned their trade from former New York Yankees Hall of Fame shortstop Phil Rizzuto—who went from Playing baseball for a living to talking about baseball for an even better living. Rizzuto was my hero as a youth, and I wanted to be just like him when I grew up. I too played shortstop for many years (in Louisville’s version of what is now the Little League), until I was struck down by Acne and Baby Fat.
It was Beer that finally ended my career as a full-time Athlete—first Beer, then Girls, and finally a brief fling with Crime. That is a fatal mix for any star athlete, and for a while I thought I was Finished. I went into shock when I no longer heard cheers. My life turned weird overnight, and people snickered when I lumbered out on the Diving Board. It was horrible.
But not for long. The shock quickly wore off, and I soon found a home at the sports desk—any sports desk, from the Louisville Courier-Journal to the Tallahassee Democrat to Time magazine and the Brazil Herald to the New York Herald-Tribune. They all have a sports desk.
—June 11, 2001
Eerie Lull Rattles the Sports World
Some weeks are ugly in the world of Sports, and last week was definitely one of them. Millions of serious basketball fans—80 percent of them rooting feverishly for the Philadelphia 76ers (according to USA Today)—watched in painful disbelief as the preternaturally arrogant Los Angeles Lakers stomped the helpless 76ers into quivering Blood sausage (on their Home court in front of 19,000 Philly supporters). The Philly fans had been conned into betting huge chu
nks of their own money on their Homeboys to somehow prevail and bring home the Bacon—and toward the end they got Bitter about it. The whole vast city of Philadelphia was humiliated, once again, and even the Mayor freaked out when he had to pay off his bets.
He was far from alone in his grief. The whole nation was plunged into mourning for one reason or another (from floods in Philadelphia to suicidal despair in the White House) when they heard the news of the U.S. Navy running amok with bombs and heavy Artillery on the war-torn beaches of Vieques, where local Protesters were stripped naked and brutally beaten by wild-eyed U.S. Marines.
The White House was blindsided and fatally paralyzed by the horrible news from Vieques, which broke on Page One of the New York Times and was reported in such bloodcurdling detail that not even the hapless child-president dared to deny it.… “He has his own problems right now,” said one highranking White House official who refused to be named or even quoted except on conditions of total anonymity. “As far as I know, the President knows absolutely nothing about the island of Vieques. As far as I know, he doesn’t even know where it is.”
Whoops! Enough of that. Back to sports.
We were all taught in school that right-thinking people go to Work on weekdays and relax on Saturday and Sunday, and that Bad things happen to people who don’t. That is why high school football games are scheduled on Friday night and College teams play on Saturday. It is the American Way, and I learned it like everybody else did.
But things changed when I grew up and went into the Sportswriting business. All of a sudden I found myself going to Work on weekends, which caused my life to change radically.… I still went to Football games on Fridays and Saturdays, and I still drank beer on those nights, but I no longer sat with my friends in the carefree Student section, and I no longer took my girlfriends along with me to the games—no more than normal people take their girlfriends with them to the Office. It was out of the question.
So I was forced to change my ways. It was awkward at first, but not for long. The first time I got a real-money Paycheck for watching a football game from the Press box or covering a Muhammad Ali fight from ringside, I quickly saw the Light.
The sporting world is faced with an eerie lull this week, and many people are nervous. The winter is over, the harvest is in, and the Revenue Stream from Hockey and Basketball profits has dwindled down to a trickle. The next few months will not be a happy time for winter sports executives who failed to meet Expectations, as they say in the Bean Counters’ cubicles. Dr. Chop is coming to town.
It happens every year in every sport, like a game of Musical Chairs in a grade school classroom. There are only 32 professional basketball teams in the NBA and only 16 slots in the Play-offs, so the math is not difficult. At least 16 well-paid professional Coaches will be Terminated With Prejudice before Labor Day, and not one of them will be surprised. They learned the difference between Winning and Losing a long time ago.
—June 18, 2001
Olympic Disaster in Utah
The barren state of Utah took another cruel beating in the public prints last week, and the 2002 Winter Olympic Games slipped another foul notch toward the Abyss.… First it was felony bribery, then a rash of scandalous Sex crimes, and finally a plague of meat-eating crickets.… It is an open secret now that Salt Lake City’s giddy ambition to host the first Winter Olympics on U.S. soil since 1980 is doomed to Shame & Failure.
Third-term GOP Governor Michael O. Leavitt, who is now the chairman of the EPA, appointed by Bush, has been fatally smeared, and three officials of the all-powerful Church of Latter-Day Saints are accused of covering up Bribery, Fraud, & shameless Prostitution. Even the mayor of Salt Lake City was staggered by the overweening Lewdness of the charges—which ranged from Pimping and Gross Sexual Imposition to Perjury and Wife Beating. Two prominent members of the original Salt Lake Organizing Committee were indicted by the U.S. Justice Department and will go on trial in July on a grab bag of State and Federal antibribery charges that could put them in prison for the rest of their lives.
Hosting the Winter Olympics is always a high-risk venture. The last winter festival in Nagano was a financial disaster for the Japanese Government and a monumental failure for the U.S. winter sports establishment.… And next year’s train wreck in Utah will be no different.
Everybody who goes there will be walking in the queasy shadow of punishment. Salt Lake City has developed such hideous worldwide Karma that success is out of the question. The SLOC has put Utah so deep in Debt for the next 30 years that No money will be available for anything except bribes, whiskey, and the mandatory 10 percent membership fee to the Church of Latter-Day Saints—the same corrupt greedheads who ran up the debt in the first place.
Corruption is a Way of Life in Utah, and they seem to like it that way. Mormons have been beating and cheating each other since the arrival of Brigham Young in 1847.… He was a stern and gentle man, they say, and nobody argued when he made Utah the permanent Kingdom of the Mormon Church and everything it stood for.
“So what?” my friend Cromwell snarled when I showed him the latest list of bizarre crimes allegedly committed by state officials and Church leaders in the ongoing Utah Olympics nightmare. “Nobody cares what happens in Utah anyway. It has always been a sinkhole of Vice and Corruption. The last time I went to Utah, I got busted for Soliciting a Prostitute in the Salt Lake Airport. It cost me $2,000 just to leave the State.”
“Yeah,” I nodded. “It’s the Mormon way of life—a handful of Gimme and a mouthful of Much Obliged. I know it well.”
Which was true. I am all too familiar with Utah.
—June 26, 2001
The Wisdom of Nashville and the Violence of Jack Nicholson _A Football Story
It was raining in the “City of 10,000 Whores” on Sunday night—a heavy, drenching rain that only added to the pain of the 69,000 Tennessee Titans fans who packed themselves into the immense new Adelphia Coliseum to watch the hometown Titans be embarrassed by Miami in a game that was deeply scarred by human dumbness. It was also deeply painful to local gamblers, who were forced to give Miami six (6) points, which added insult to injury. By halftime many of them had the look of people who had just been hit in the kidneys by Lightning.
Nashville is a river town with a long and sleazy history. It was a capital of commerce before the Civil War, when it became a vicious war zone and a swollen mecca for gamblers and prostitutes. The population doubled during the War, and most of the newcomers had Syphilis.… But that was before Football was invented, and Nashville today is a thriving city of 520,000 relatively healthy sports fans who don’t mind admitting that they gamble a lot of money on many football games.
That is what happens in sweltering cities with no team in the NFL—like Los Angeles, where high-dollar gambling is by far the most popular sport in town. Millions of dollars go up for grabs every weekend. “Real football fans were happy when the Rams and the Raiders left town,” Jack Nicholson told me. “Now we can watch the goddamn games on TV, instead of driving all the way out to Anaheim, or down to that monstrous Coliseum. Nobody wants an NFL team in LA, except maybe the TV networks.”
That is because of the “mandatory TV blackouts” that the league imposes on any Market where the local team fails to sell all the seats in its “home stadium.” The LA Coliseum, for instance, seats slightly more than 100,000, and neither the Raiders nor the Rams ever had a sellout crowd. “It was a hateful situation to put yourself in,” said Jack, “sitting out there in the smog with a mob of criminal swine full of warm beer. At a Raiders game you could get beaten and robbed without ever leaving your seat. It was like an outdoor jail.”
Jack is famous for spending most of his winter nights in the glitzy Indoor jail where the Lakers play, but I didn’t want to complicate our conversation by introducing perverse elements, so I didn’t bring it up. He is a serious basketball fan and he gets a whole different perspective by sitting in his profoundly expensive courtside seat, which he’s maintained for almo
st 30 years in three different venues. The difference between sitting on the court for a game and sitting in row 99 is the difference between living in the Hollywood hills and renting on the outskirts of Nashville.
“You should move to Tennessee for football season,” I told him. “You’d like the games a lot better if you knew you were surrounded on all sides by thousands of whores and gamblers.”
He smiled wanly and scratched at his groin. “Who the hell do you think I sit with now?” he muttered. “A crowd of innocent children?”
Indeed. I have attended football games in both towns, and I have to admit that I do prefer Nashville. You can get a lot closer to the action there, and on most days you will lose a lot less money. The whores and gamblers will rub up against you, down south, and they have a nicer way of speaking. The closest seats in the LA Coliseum are about 40 yards from the field, far across an Olympic-sized track and field pavilion, and you can’t even see the players’ numbers without powerful binoculars. Even the occasional roar of the crowd seems distant and vaguely impersonal. It is like sitting in a traffic jam on the San Diego Freeway with your windows rolled up and Portuguese music booming out of the surround-sound speakers while animals gnaw on your neck and diseased bill collectors hammer on your doors with golf clubs.
O. J. Simpson doesn’t live in LA anymore, but that doesn’t mean the city is not full of extremely dangerous freaks. You are far more likely to be randomly killed on your way to a football game in Los Angeles than you are in Nashville—but there are potential killers in Any crowd larger than two these days, and even Two can be dangerous after midnight.
In any case, I have watched football games from every angle from the sideline in Oakland and the huddle in Frankfort, Kentucky, to the top row of the Superdome in New Orleans and the press box in Washington—I have watched them in Kezar Stadium and from the deck of a big sailing yacht 500 miles south of Bermuda with naked women lolling around—and I can tell you for sure that the best seat in any house is right in front of a high-end TV set with a few good friends who know football and like to see green money moving around the room. That is how it should be done. Selah.
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