Olympic Affair

by Terry Frei

  Glenn thought a moment. “There’s one other story I keep hearing that isn’t true,” he said. “The Denver guys keep saying I’ve been carrying around Hans Sievert’s picture and pull it out and say I was going to beat him in Berlin.”

  Gallico feigned shock. “You mean that’s not true?”

  “No!”

  “Glenn . . . good stories sell papers,” Gallico said. “Even if they’re only stories.” Then, suddenly, his tone darkened. “But it’s that kind of bullshit—it’s what people expect—is helping drive me out of the sportswriting business.”

  Glenn was incredulous. “You get paid to go to games and you’re going to quit?”

  “Yup,” Gallico said. “There’re other things going on, too, with a wife trying to clean me out in the divorce, but I’m tired of this racket.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Don’t laugh . . . write fiction. And don’t say that I already do.”

  “Well, good luck with that,” Glenn said.

  “In the meantime, it’s up to you to give me something good to write about in Berlin.”

  “Have you been to Germany before?”

  “Bunch of times,” Gallico said. “I speak the language okay . . . at least I will after I get some practice for a few days. But between you and me, the way things are going over there, it might even be more handy to not let anyone know I speak it . . . and just listen.”

  6

  Onboard Bonding

  The decathlon and discus men joined their track teammates on the open-air sports deck the next morning. They’d been ordered to wear their Olympic uniforms at the first workout so the photographers could load up on pictures. The massive shot-putter, Jack Torrance, and the universally respected Glenn Cunningham led the warm-up stretching exercises and calisthenics.

  The coaches watched, ready to pitch in with suggestions. But they had made it clear that he and the staff wouldn’t interfere with individual training programs.

  The Negroes started out leisurely running together, with Jesse Owens leading. Nobody, including Glenn, seemed to think much of it. That was the way it was. Then Glenn Cunningham joined the Negroes. He didn’t say a word; the former University of Kansas star just ran with them. His story was universally known, at least among the American athletes. His badly scarred legs were reminders of the horrific Kansas schoolhouse fire that had killed his brother and left him facing a life in which even walking would be a miracle. He had done much better than that.

  By the second lap, the group was about thirty—including the Farm Boy from Simla and several women runners, too. As they trotted, Glenn saw the glares and sensed others, including from a few of the athletes from other sports on deck, and, even more so, many “public” passengers. The pack took care to avoid the passengers indulging in morning walks or merely peering out over the water along the rail. The tennis net and flying balls in the middle of the deck were obstacles, too, and Glenn’s first injury was the bruise on his calf from an errant serve.

  Owens started slowing near the end of the fifth loop, and the others followed his lead and gradually came to a stop. As they stood around, some with their hands on the back of their heads and others just waiting, it was as if all were thinking: What next? Cunningham was as winded as if he had walked to the refrigerator to fetch a milk bottle. He stepped into the middle of the group. Glenn Morris at least had broken a sweat, and he ran his hand across his forehead and then back through his hair as Cunningham started talking.

  “Now,” Cunningham said. “It’s time to get something important on the table.”

  He paused. As if on cue, Jack Torrance arrived at the edge of the group. Torrance always made it clear to anyone who asked about his shot-put training routine that it didn’t include running, even slowly.

  Cunningham continued, “I know this won’t be the first time you’ve all heard something like this.”

  Glenn Morris noticed Cunningham’s look in Torrance’s direction and realized the spirited discussion in the hotel lobby the previous morning qualified as “something like this.”

  “This is an individual sport, but we’re a team, and we’re all representing our country together,” Cunningham said. “Negroes, whites, Jews, Christians, guys, gals. All of us. Right?”

  Glenn Morris nodded, too.

  “But that’s a two-way street,” Cunningham said. “Jesse Owens, they were trying to make a point—and some of us were in on it—when they planned out the dinner seating last night and assigned you to sit with three Southern white boys.”

  Hurdlers Glenn Hardin and Forrest Towns, plus Torrance, raised their hands slightly. It was a roll call, not a request to speak. Three Southern white boys.

  “But you decided you didn’t want to sit with them and went to another table,” Cunningham said. “Why?”

  Owens looked around. “Want me to be honest, don’t you?” he asked.

  “Of course,” Cunningham said.

  “I thought if I sat down, they’d get up and leave.”

  Cunningham turned to Torrance. “Jack?”

  “Hell, we suggested it, Jesse,” Torrance said. “I wanted to back up something I’d said at the hotel. We weren’t going to leave the table.”

  “Towns?”

  “That’s right,” responded the University of Georgia student.

  “Hardin?”

  “I was going to ask for starting tips, for Christ sake,” drawled the Mississippi native and former Torrance teammate at LSU.

  That triggered nervous laughter.

  Cunningham said, “Remember, when we get to Germany, the thing Hitler and his thugs can throw back in our faces is that we don’t practice what we preach because of the way we treat Negroes in our country.” At that, Owens and many of the Negroes nodded. “If we’re acting like we’re two teams—one black, one white—we’re leaning into the punch,” Cunningham said.

  Other trackmen, wondering what was going on, were gathering on the perimeter of the discussion. “Everybody!” Cunningham announced, raising his voice, “I can’t tell anyone who they should play shuffleboard with on this ship or who you should be friends with, but we have to be a team.”

  Ralph Metcalfe, a lanky Negro sprinter expected to challenge Owens in the 100 meters, spoke up. “You’re forgetting something.”

  “What’s that?” Cunningham asked.

  “There are some people on this team—and, for sure, some of the jackass Badgers—who think Hitler’s right. There’s a master race . . . and then there’s the rest of us.”

  There were murmurs of assent.

  “Anybody?” Cunningham asked. “Thoughts on that?” He looked around and settled on Glenn Morris.

  “Morris?”

  Oh, Jesus, don’t say anything stupid.

  “I played college football, too,” Morris said. He paused, thinking of how far to step out on the limb.

  “Keep going,” Cunningham said.

  “I don’t miss being banged up all the time. I don’t miss the broken noses. I miss that feeling that everybody in the locker room is depending on each other. If I dropped the pass or I didn’t make the block, somebody else looked bad. We had to root for each other; we had to depend on each other. That’s what I miss. We’re all out there on our own. We need to change that, I think.”

  “That all sounds good,” said young Negro sprinter Mack Robinson. “But I don’t get your point.”

  “My point,” Glenn said, “is that we should start acting like we’re a team.”

  “All agreed?” Cunningham asked.

  At least there were no objections.

  Cunningham turned to high jumper Cornelius Johnson. “Corny, you were on the team in Los Angeles, too, even though you were twelve or whatever it was.”

  Smiling, Johnson corrected him. “Eighteen.”

  “Wouldn’t you say that we would have done even better if we had bonded better as a team out there? I think since we were home, it was like we all were on our own. Just a bunch of individuals throw
n together.”

  “Absolutely,” Johnson said.

  “So I’m saying now that we’re going to Germany, it’s going to take more of acting like a team”—he nodded at Glenn Morris—“like a football team, even, to do as well as we’re capable of doing.”

  “I’ll go along with that,” said Torrance.

  “Me, too,” said Jesse Owens.

  As they broke up, the sprinters began working on their starts, running sprints in each direction at the side of the deck, from one chalked line to another. The other sprinters stretched.

  Glenn wandered over. Time to match action with words.

  “Can I join you?” he asked of nobody in particular.

  Owens gestured at the slightly wavy starting line with his hand.

  “On your mark,” he said, grinning.

  They all ran a few sprints, and at one point, Marty Glickman waited for Glenn and asked if he could talk to him privately. Over here, he gestured.

  “First off,” Glickman said, “I’m going to play football at Syracuse, so I identify with you.”

  “Thanks,” Glenn said.

  “The other thing you should know . . . well, you were at the Trials, weren’t you?”

  Glenn nodded.

  Glickman continued, “So you know, I’m looking over my shoulder a bit here, too. We ran that 100-meter final and they told me I was third—behind Owens and Metcalfe. So I’m being interviewed on the radio, and they’re saying I’m the boy who’s going to be running with them in the 100 meters in Berlin, and while I’m talking, the judges come and tell me I’ve been bumped down to fourth behind Frank Wykoff . . . and then they say I was fifth, behind Foy Draper, too. So I’ve gone from running in the 100 at the Olympics with Jesse and Ralph to just being on the team and hoping we stick to the way it’s been done in the past so I have a spot in the sprint relay. The two guys they suddenly placed ahead of me in the 100 run for Cromwell at USC. So . . .”

  Dean Cromwell of USC was the American team’s assistant coach, nominally in charge of the sprinters.

  “How do they pick the relay?” Glenn asked.

  “It’s always been that the top three from the trials run the 100, and then the next four run the relay. So if they stick to that, it should be Foy Draper, me, Stoller, and Mack Robinson. But there are no real rules, so I’m at their mercy now. Mack doesn’t care all that much because he’s running in the 200, but for me and Stoller, the relay’s our only chance. Writers already are saying the coaches are telling ’em nothing will be decided until we’re in Berlin. Maybe not until the last minute.”

  Glenn was incredulous. “How could they take you and not let you run?”

  “They might. They said we’d at least run in the exhibitions over there after the Olympics. And . . .”

  Glickman suddenly was a bit self-conscious.

  “What else were you going to say?” Glenn asked.

  “Well . . . look, we’ve talked about this, but the Germans would prefer there aren’t any Jews competing at all. The Badgers know that, too. I’m not saying they’ll screw us because of that, but I’m wondering. We’ll just see what happens.” He paused, and then added, “Come on, let’s run.”

  After a few more sprints, Glenn found himself next to Owens.

  “Hey, Jesse, how do you divide up your training?” Glenn asked.

  “Been meaning to ask you the same thing,” Owens said. “I’ve got three or four events. You’ve got ten!”

  “Well, the stuff from the coaches is that it really comes down to trying to work one set of muscles one day, another set the next.”

  “That’s what they say . . . what do you think?”

  “I’ve never figured out which muscles are in which group,” Glenn said. “I think you have to trust what your body tells you. Every day.”

  They each ran another “sprint”—Glenn first, Jesse following. By then, they had drawn a crowd. Gawking women holding umbrellas to shield them from the sun, other athletes, scribes and photographers all gathered near them. AP’s Alan Gould wore a suit and a bowtie. He called out, “All right, boys, which one of you is going to be called ‘the world’s greatest athlete’ after Berlin?”

  “Can’t it be both of us?” Jesse asked.

  Another scribe, Joe Williams of the New York World-Telegram, wondered: “Have you gentlemen decided what’s smaller—Jesse’s Oakville, Alabama, or Glenn’s Simla, Colorado?”

  “Nothing’s smaller than Simla,” Glenn said.

  Owens reached out his right hand.

  “Wanna bet?” he asked.

  “You’re on!”

  Gould laughed and said he would do the research and get back to them with the verdict.

  As Glenn finished up his workout and picked up his sweat suit, Gould approached him again and asked if he could come to Glenn’s room that afternoon with his photographer. “We might have gotten a good picture here of you in your uniform, but the bosses and papers want something of you alone, in street clothes and all cleaned up,” Gould said. “We are, you know, the world’s largest news-gathering organization.”

  “Okay,” Glenn said, “after our meeting.”

  No more than five minutes later, as Glenn drank a glass of water procured from the on-deck bar, Joe Williams caught up with him and introduced himself. This is getting ridiculous, Glenn thought.

  “Hey, Morris, just want you to know one of the Denver papers—the Rocky Mountain News—is running my stuff and throwing a few bucks my way to do a separate piece or two about you.” He chuckled. “Especially if you win, of course. So when I’m asking you questions or trying to set up an interview, it’s for your folks back home in Colorado, too. I’ll be like Gould and the news-service boys, too, that way. Did he give you the ‘world’s largest news-gathering organization’ pitch?”

  Glenn laughed. “A couple of times now,” he confessed.

  “Well, there are going to be a bunch of us after you, you know,” Williams said. “Just make sure you keep your head on straight.”

  “That won’t be a problem, Mister Williams.”

  Avery Brundage presided over an all-team gathering in the social room. “I know some of you, and this team in general,” he said, “are about to accomplish feats that will set the standards for American Olympic teams for many decades to come!”

  Around Glenn, many of his track teammates cheered lustily.

  “Now, here’s something very important, people,” Brundage said. “A lot of you said you didn’t like the ‘training-table’ lunch and dinner yesterday.”

  The grumbles confirmed that.

  “All right, we’ll make a deal,” Brundage said. “We’ll get the ship’s regular menu for you . . .”

  He held up his hand to quiet the cheers.

  “. . . as long as it’s understood that you have to be careful about it. If all you do is say keep it coming and shovel it in, you’re going to balloon up and your Olympic clothes and uniforms won’t fit by the time we get to Berlin.”

  “What if they don’t fit now?” a weightlifter asked.

  The head nodding from many of his teammates confirmed that the Badgers doing the measuring had been inaccurate with others, too.

  Brundage ignored that. “So we’re agreed on food?”

  The nods, claps, and yells were his answer.

  “All right, second point,” he said. “The Olympic tradition is that delegations dip their flags to the host nation’s head of state and Olympic officials in the opening ceremonies. It’s part of our U.S. Army regulations that the flag never dips, and we as Olympians are obligated to follow that. We need to decide an alternative gesture of acknowledgment.”

  “Why?” Marty Glickman asked loudly.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You’re talking about Hitler. Why can’t we just ignore him?”

  “We can’t do that,” Brundage said.

  Glenn Cunningham raised his hand. “Well, the Winter Olympics were in Germany, too, right?”

  “That’s correct.”
>
  “What did we do then?” Cunningham asked.

  “No flag dip,” said Brundage. “It was ‘eyes right’ . . . everybody looked over at his box as the team passed by. It didn’t go over very well. So we’re going to try something a little different in Berlin. Here’s my suggestion: Eyes right again, but men doff your caps, and put them over your hearts. It’s a salute to the flag you’re walking behind, not the man you’re looking at.”

  At first, Glenn was shocked that Brundage was consulting them, but he quickly decided that it was a way to spread out the blame.

  “Why do we have to decide now?” asked a basketball player. “We’ve still got two weeks before the opening ceremonies. Can’t we all think about it?”

  “No,” said Brundage. “We need to start preparing people for what we’re doing. Unless there is something else—and I mean something else reasonable—anybody wants to throw out there, we’re going with the eyes right and hats over the hearts.”

  “I can go along with that,” Jesse Owens said.

  “I still think we should just ignore him,” Glickman said.

  “That’s not an option,” Brundage snapped. “Besides, it’s not just Hitler in the reviewing box. You have to look at it like you’re acknowledging both the host nation and the Olympic tradition—not just one man. So is that agreeable?”

  No response.

  “All right,” Brundage said with a tone of finality. “That’s what we’re doing.”

  He then announced that all but the track and field athletes could leave, because the final order of business involved only them.

  “Think this is going to be good or bad?” Bob Clark asked Glenn.

  “Don’t know . . . but I’ll vote for bad,” Glenn replied.

  Brundage panned the remaining group. “Okay, as I think many of you know, we’re continuing our tradition of having a fun meet with Great Britain after the Games. This time, it’s going to be in London—White City—on the 15th. Some of you will go there.”

  Glenn Cunningham spoke up firmly, but with some diplomacy. “Sir, that’s before the closing ceremonies in Berlin. Wasn’t there any way that meet could be later?”