Everything They Had

by David Halberstam

  And so we also meet David Halberstam, not merely as a figure on a book jacket, but as a kind and decent person who wasn’t much of an athlete while growing up, but enjoyed fishing for bass on small Connecticut ponds with his father and brother and going to the occasional baseball game at Yankee Stadium and Fenway Park. A person who called his friends “pal,” liked the camaraderie of men, marveled at and appreciated those who gave their task everything they had, and was sometimes frustrated by those who did not. A man who enjoyed the process of his work as much as the product, and found peace and comfort on the water and with his family both in New York and on Nantucket, and about whom his wife, Jean, said, “[he] would like to be remembered as a historian and particularly remembered for his generosity to his peers and young people choosing the field of journalism.”

  That he will certainly be. I did not know David Halberstam well, but over the past twenty years was fortunate enough to give him some small assistance with several of his projects and then had occasion to collaborate with him on several others. Our encounters, I think, are revealing, and I am grateful that now I have the opportunity, in some small way, to repay him for that generosity.

  We first met when I was working at the Boston Public Library and David Halberstam was researching the book that would become The Summer of ’49. I was one of those young people, a fledgling writer who a few years earlier had started mining the newspaper microfilm and special collections of the BPL for help in writing stories on local sports history, primarily baseball. Soon after I began publishing these stories in Boston Magazine I started to hear from sports writers, most of whom wanted me to look something up on their behalf either in old newspapers or in the library’s archives. One of them must have tipped David off to the fact that I had become the de facto sports archivist at the library. One day I returned to my desk, and a note telling me to call David Halberstam was taped to my phone.

  No “while you were out” message has ever done more for a person’s self-esteem. I remember that I left it on the phone and then went to lunch, just so it would stay there a bit longer. I spoke to him later that day, and he made an appointment to visit the library a few days later.

  Most other sports writers who had contacted me before wanted me to look up material for them, and frankly, many treated me as if I were some kind of chambermaid. Not Halberstam. Not only was he extremely considerate, but after I set him up in a back room he wanted only minimal assistance and pored through the archival boxes himself. He was politely curious about me, and when I told him I had written an article about the Red Sox 1948 playoff game with the Cleveland Indians, and had been the first writer to interview Boston pitcher Denny Galehouse since he gave up the winning run more than forty years before, not only did he want to see the story, he wanted to talk. Thereafter he spoke to me as an equal, as a colleague, and as he continued his research over the next few days, we held several lengthy discussions about Boston, the Boston press, and the history of the Red Sox and Yankees. In the wake of our conversations I felt like the rookie hitter who discovered he could hit big league pitching; David Halberstam made me feel like I belonged.

  A few years later I was offered the opportunity to serve as series editor for the inaugural edition of the annual collection The Best American Sports Writing, the first book project of any kind I had ever been asked to be involved in. My editor at Houghton Mifflin asked me who I thought should serve as guest editor. I knew from the start that the collection should not be confined simply to the compound word “sportswriting” but should also include “sports writing,” the best writing on sports, a somewhat different thing. Halberstam’s work was already the best example of this. With The Summer of ’49 still on the bestseller list, and the earlier successes of The Breaks of the Game and The Amateurs still fresh, he fit the criteria perfectly. I immediately suggested that we ask Halberstam to serve as the first guest editor.

  My suggestion was, I recall, greeted with some skepticism. Not that my editor didn’t think Halberstam would be perfect for the job, but I do not think he believed that a writer of Halberstam’s stature would have any interest in serving on such a project, particularly one not yet out of the box. Naively perhaps, I thought otherwise. I boldly told my editor that I knew Halberstam from the library, and that when he contacted him, he should mention my name.

  A few days later my editor called with the happy news that David was on board. Moreover, he told me that the clincher had come when he told David that he would be working with me, providing me with yet another boost. Although many of the guest editors for The Best American Sports Writing make their selection in camera, which is their right and privilege, David was different. During the selection process he wanted to discuss the stories and solicited my input. That was a kindness I have never forgotten, for I think that together we created a sturdy template for the series, one that otherwise might have been less assured and lasting.

  I soon began to write books myself—primarily illustrated biographies and histories with photographs selected by my colleague and friend Richard Johnson. On several occasions we asked David to contribute an essay. He almost always agreed, asking only if he was being paid out of our own pockets or that of the publisher, and adjusting his fee accordingly.

  We worked together one last time in 1999, when my publisher decided to publish a collection entitled The Best Sports Writing of the Century. David Halberstam was my first and only suggestion to serve as guest editor. This time I was allowed to make the call, and again, the only question he asked was whether we would be working together or not.

  I cannot overstate how much that query meant to me, both personally and professionally. Once again he turned the editing of the book into a collaboration. Each time I sent him a bundle of material, I would soon receive a phone call from David wanting to discuss the stories. He seemed to know every writer and story already, and in conversations that were, in turn, sometimes funny and earthy but always profound, I felt as if I were the student at a private journalism seminar as he would deftly dissect a piece I liked that he did not, and, more often, show me why he liked the stories that he did. In one of those conversations, as we discussed the stories of W. C. Heinz, David openly wondered if Heinz was still living. I answered that I did not know, and over the next few minutes I could tell that David was intrigued by the possibility that he was—as I have already mentioned, Heinz had been an enormous influence on his career, but the two journalistic giants had never met or spoken.

  A few days later I received another call, and without even saying hello, David blurted out, “I just got off the phone with Bill Heinz,” and he proceeded to tell me all about it, speaking with the unbridled enthusiasm of a young boy who had just attended his first big league baseball game. His curiosity, combined with the selection of a few Heinz stories in the book, sparked something of a W. C. Heinz revival and introduced his work to an entirely new generation of writers, a true and lasting gift.

  It was during this time, as we spoke often and sometimes at length during the several months it took to put the book together, that I really began to comprehend the central role that sports—and sports writers—played in David Halberstam’s own personal biography. They were important to him and, to borrow a metaphor, he already knew the players without having to look at the scorecard. There truly was no one better equipped to serve as the captain of such a book than him.

  Later, after the book came out and he either referenced it in something he wrote or spoke of it in an interview, he nearly always mentioned that I did all the “heavy lifting,” an acknowledgment I cherished, for I knew that he was sincere. Like me, as a young man he had labored as a construction worker. Hard work was something he treasured and appreciated, and no writer I have ever encountered has matched his considerable work ethic. Yet as much as I appreciated the compliment, it also made me smile, because how could working with David Halberstam ever be considered “heavy lifting”?

  In the ensuing years before his passing we spoke only a few mor
e times, primarily about another collaboration that never quite came together. The title of this book, in fact, stems from those conversations.

  We envisioned putting together a book we hoped our daughters would read, a collection of sports writing solely about female athletes. The working title we agreed upon was Everything She Had, a phrase that seemed to acknowledge a quality that David Halberstam admired not only in athletes, but in anyone who strove to succeed.

  When I was asked to recommend a title for this volume, I immediately suggested Everything They Had. I believe the title recognizes that not only did David Halberstam value those who gave their task everything they had, but that inside these pages he responded in kind, with his own best effort. For David Halberstam wrote about sports with the same veracity with which he wrote about everything else, once summing up his approach to all his work by quoting none other than basketball legend Julius Erving, who said, “Being a professional is doing the things you love to do, on the days you don’t feel like doing them.” Here, in Everything They Had, I believe we gain a sense that David Halberstam himself was perhaps the best example of many of the qualities he admired most in others.

  Although I don’t believe I spoke to him at all over the last four or five years or so, that was fine. We were professional acquaintances, and I never felt comfortable contacting him unless it was absolutely necessary. Yet when I asked him once how I should respond if I was ever asked by anyone how to contact him, he told me simply, “Oh, I’m in the phone book.” On a few occasions when I encouraged trusted younger writer friends to contact him about projects or issues where I thought he might be of some help, he was, every single time.

  I was honored one last time when his editor at Hyperion, Will Schwalbe, contacted me about serving as the editor of this volume. Will described the circumstances of the project and then added that David’s wife, Jean, suggested that I serve as this book’s editor. There are no words to describe the degree of gratitude I feel toward her for allowing me to share the byline of this book.

  So once more I have been given the privilege of doing what David Halberstam would have described as the “heavy lifting,” again selecting the best of the very best from among the essays, features, columns, and other sports writing that David Halberstam produced over the course of his distinguished and inimitable career. Although, given the circumstances, part of that task was done with a measure of sadness, the burden, of course, was not really heavy at all. Like the writing that graces these pages, it was joyful and real, enriching, uplifting, and true.

  * * *

  EARLY DRAFTS

  In the spring of 1953 and 1954 people would turn to me and say:

  “Look, if sculling’s that dangerous, if people are always throwing at you and trying to sink you, why not quit? Why do you do it?”

  “Escape,” I would answer.

  DEATH OF A SCULLER,

  IN THREE ACTS

  Harvard Alumni Bulletin,

  April 23, 1955

  * * *

  DEATH OF A SCULLER, IN THREE ACTS

  From the Harvard Alumni Bulletin, April 23, 1955

  Harvard’s Sanitary Engineering Department recently recorded 1,000 times the normal radioactivity in Cambridge water. “When we put our Geiger counter to some Cambridge water,” Harold A. Thomas, associate professor of Sanitary Engineering, admitted, “it sounded like a bobcat caught in the bushes.”

  This discovery marks, not as some immediately imagined, something strikingly new on the local scene, but rather another step in an age-old unceasing struggle—that between man’s progress and the single sculler on the Charles River.

  To understand this conflict, one must realize that through the ages the shape and form of the single scull have changed remarkably little. True, from time to time artisans have managed to make them thinner and lighter, and this year the boathouse has added a fiberglass shell. But the basic concept of rowing has not changed.

  On the other hand, as man has progressed, the opposition to the sculler has armed itself with newer and more dangerous weapons. The cycle of the opposition’s development, historians note, falls roughly into three overlapping periods.

  The first of these is the stone age. If the stone age was at first simple, it was nonetheless irritating. Little boys stood on the bank of the Charles and threw rocks at the moving sculls. It was something of a game, with the sculler’s sanity the stake. Simple in its pure form, even the stone age underwent some modernization.

  First, the scullers learned to spot the little boys and row on the opposite side of the river. But the urchins were not to be fooled—they took to hiding on top of bridges and dropping rocks down on the passing shells. Since there always appears to be an abundance of little boys and big stones, this practice is employed even today.

  The other day I was rowing under the Weeks Bridge when two juvenile delinquents fired.

  “I got him,” said the first.

  “Nah, I got him,” said the other.

  “You both got me,” I said, tossing two enormous rocks out of the scull.

  Thus you see that while the stone age belongs to the past, in one form at least it is dangerously close to us today.

  The second part of the anti-scull cycle is best termed the machine age. Even the most accurate of rock throwers had to remain stationary on the river side. But with the advent of Robert Fulton, the Charles River mechanized. Motor boats, big and small, appeared, oblivious to the frail Harvard students and their frail craft. If formerly one had only to row to the other side to escape a rock, now the boats and their over-present waves were all over the river. To add to the sculler’s confusion, there are several types of motor boats.

  First of all, there is the Chris Craft pleasure boat, which contains at least one blonde and one hairy chest. While you row they come zooming by, within sinking distance, pull out the throttle, and yell: “Hey, kid, row that boat.” In order to stay afloat, of course, you must stop rowing.

  Even more dangerous than the floating leather-jacket set are the sight-seeing excursion boats which look like leftovers from the Mississippi River. For something like a dollar you can get on down in Boston and travel past Dunster House, all the way up to Watertown. It is a round trip, so you actually can see Dunster House twice.

  It also means they can tip the scullers over twice. The river boats, for that is what they are called on the Mississippi, have a ratio of almost two children to every adult. Since there are no rocks on the ship, they are very good-natured children.

  “Look at the rowboats,” they invariably shout, and then wave energetically. Since you have only as many hands as oars, it is almost impossible to wave back. Nevertheless, friendly passengers or not, it is a scientific fact that at least once this spring you will be tipped over by the excursion boat.

  This brings us to man’s final attack upon the sculler, the nuclear age as evidenced by the Sanitary Engineering Department’s discovery. Perhaps for the first time the sculler has no chance. Previously impervious in the face of rock and Evinrude, he bravely fought back, head over shoulder, his eyes peeled for trouble. That was in the old days. Now trouble is all around him, he is rowing on trouble.

  In the spring of 1953 and 1954 people would turn to me and say:

  “Look, if sculling’s that dangerous, if people are always throwing at you and trying to sink you, why not quit? Why do you do it?”

  “Escape,” I would answer. “No problem of coexistence on the river. No Iron Curtain, only the Lars Anderson Bridge. Why, for all it matters, the Czars might still be ruling Russia.”

  That was in the old days. Now atomic fission is everywhere. Nowhere is the conflict between East and West, Communism and Democracy, so clearly outlined as on the Charles River. A nightmare is haunting today’s single sculler: the vision of a motorboat filled with little boys. The little boys are armed with rocks, and they pursue him relentlessly until he is capsized into the nuclear waters of the Charles, Cambridge’s first casualty from radioactivity.


  HORSE RACING IN WARSAW: SPORT OF THE PEOPLE

  From the New York Times, June 13, 1965

  “Dumna,” said Tadeusz, “means ‘The Proud One.’”

  The American suggested they bet the horse since they had lost in the first three races and they needed all the pride they could get.

  “There will be some money on Dumna,” said Tadeusz, who considered himself a professional at the Sluzewiec track but claimed that in his later, less revolutionary, years he had found the will power to break the habit. “The sire of Dumna was a famous horse who won the Derby here 10 years ago. I am positive that I won on his father many times.”

  The American, who knew nothing about Aqueduct, let alone about racing in this Communist country, said Dumna sounded fine.

  It was a windy Wednesday at the races. The sun had been out earlier in the day but it had gone now, for the races on Wednesday are held in the late afternoon so the workers can come out and bet after the job. During the 74-day season in Warsaw the races are held on Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday, but it is on Wednesday afternoon that the real bettors, the real faithful, gather.

  Saturday and Sunday, Tadeusz noted with a slight measure of contempt, brought out women, people who think the race track is a place for a picnic, and rich peasants from the surrounding countryside who sell vegetables to Warsaw.

  “Often their children are quite plump,” he said.

  He was right in his estimation of the crowd. There were about 3,000 people there (as many as 10,000 on a good Sunday) and they were almost all working men in their 50’s and 40’s.

  “There are few young people here anymore,” he said. “Now they don’t want to spend their money on the races. They want to buy a car or a record player or take their girl to some student cellar and buy a bottle of wine.”