Every Day I Fight

by Stuart Scott

  Fred Tindal ultimately mastered that weight and grew to be a solid 280-pounder. To this day, we speak multiple times a week, despite the fact that he’s in Abu Dhabi working a civilian job after retiring as a major from the Air Force. He named his daughter Sydney, and then two months later, by weird coincidence, I followed with my Sydni. “You know people are going to think we coordinated this so we could have daughters with the same name,” I said to Fred.

  “People are not going to believe this,” he said. Then we looked at each other: Who cared what other people thought?

  Every year for the past decade we’ve met for Daddy-Daughter Week, just us and our daughters, and those weeks are among the best memories of both our lives. One year we went to Aspen; another, Nantucket.

  You know how best friends seem to always share an inside joke, even if they can’t really define what it is? They just have a sensibility in common and operate together on an altogether different wavelength? That was me and Fred from the start. We were always messing with people, pulling pranks. We’d stage fights—in the library or parking lot we’d seemingly really throw down, gathering a crowd, until we’d let on it was all a fake.

  Like me, Fred didn’t allow himself to be pigeonholed. Though he played football (his dad made him quit his senior year out of concern for his safety), he was also in the drama club, and acting brought us together as much as football did. We were in West Side Story, which is my favorite play because it is both macho and artistic. I was a Shark, and the play took on symbolic meaning for me. As a black kid who’d get into his share of scuffles, I related to being a gang-fighting Shark. But the performance aspect called to me, as well; later, I’d learn some modern dance and do some choreography in college, but this was the first time I’d danced, and it felt very much like football: There was this need inside me to be physically self-expressive, and I just loved everything about the act—including that sense of camaraderie, which Fred was a big part of.

  Our love for the arts didn’t always mesh well with football. I had to leave practice early four or five times in the run-up to the West Side Story production, and I remember our old-school, crew-cutted coach, Doug Crater, wasn’t too happy about it. He didn’t put up a big fuss—which kind of surprised me—he just grumbled and said, “Okay.”

  By then I was the captain of our team. I led Reynolds in receiving as a junior, but it was with only 12 catches in a ten-game season. We just didn’t throw the ball that much, but neither did anyone else: I was the city’s second-leading receiver. Still, there were enough moments that led me to think I could really play this game. We played Greensboro Page, one of the best teams in the state. They featured Haywood Jeffires, who would go on to catch a few hundred passes in the NFL, and Mack Jones, who would star with Haywood at North Carolina State. They beat us 35–21, but I caught an acrobatic touchdown in that game that helped validate me as a receiver.

  Meantime, Fred and I were inseparable. We’d hang out in the garage of one of Fred’s neighbors, Gilbert Shelton, a kindly older black man. Mr. G would spend the day making bamboo chairs there, and we’d sit around and soak up his wisdom. One day, Mr. G said, “Hey, fellas, you hear that thunder last night?”

  “Nah, Mr. G, I didn’t hear anything,” I said.

  “You didn’t hear it?” he said. “Goodness, it was loud. It was like: Boo-yah!” He yelled it so loud, it startled me as if it were real thunder.

  Fred started laughing. “How’d that thunder go, again, Mr. G?”

  “BOO-YAH!”

  And another of our inside jokes was born. On the playground or in our streets, it came to represent a blast of energy. Someone laid somebody out in the secondary? Boo-yah! Someone went yard on the diamond? Boo-yah! Someone said something about your mama that totally shut you up? Boo-yah!

  Years later, when the phrase caught on and became part of my national identity, I was as surprised as anyone else, because I was just talking the language of my youth, one Fred and I had developed.

  Because of my passion for the game, I was driven to excel on the football field. When Rocky came out in 1976, one of my sisters was dating Bruce Hopkins, a defensive tackle at Wake Forest. Number 99. He gave me the sound track to Rocky, and from then on I’d lift weights every day in my room, blaring Bill Conti’s inspiring theme song. Today, my dad says that when he’d see me pumping iron after school with the words “gonna fly now …” filling the air, he knew that I’d do whatever I needed to do in order to accomplish my goals.

  Which doesn’t mean there weren’t setbacks. In the spring of my senior year, I was diagnosed with keratoconus, a disease of the cornea. I had to have a cornea transplant; the first one didn’t go right, so I had to have a second transplant shortly thereafter. Before it, my big sister Susan wrote me the most touching letter. I’ve misplaced it in recent years, but I remember it saying how much I meant to her and that she’d always be there for me. For years, whenever I’d get down, I’d just reread that letter—and any sense of feeling alone would disappear.

  It would be the first of eighteen—yes, you read that right—eighteen eye surgeries throughout my life. But even with the transplant, I was going to play football. And my heart was set on playing it at UNC, where my sisters had gone and where Fred was completing his freshman year.

  My senior year at Reynolds, I caught another 12 balls—again, among the best totals in the city. I was recruited heavily by three schools: Lenoir-Rhyne University and Catawba College, both of which played in Division II, and Western Carolina University, where Stephen went, which played 1-A ball.

  I gave Western Carolina serious thought, but Stephen advised me against it. “You won’t like it,” he said. The school is in Cullowhee, North Carolina, and there was a city about seven miles away. Outside that city was a sign that read: “Nigger Don’t Let the Sun Set on Your Ass Here.” Stephen knew my personality better than anyone. “You’d be getting into a lot of fights here,” he told me.

  No calls or letters came from Chapel Hill. I knew how good I was, and I couldn’t help but think that if we’d only thrown the ball more, if I had 25 catches instead of 12, more schools would have recruited me.

  I had a decision to make. Do I go the safe route and attend a Division II school, where I’ll no doubt have a shot at meaningful playing time? Or do I go to UNC anyway and try to defy the odds as a walk-on?

  That would be the harder thing. But I knew enough to know that the harder thing usually ends up being the most rewarding. UNC, here I come.

  CHAPTER THREE

  ALPHA MAN

  I don’t think I’m that old now, but when you think about it, I attended UNC during the Dark Ages. It was the early eighties. There was no such thing as a cell phone (we had to wait in long lines to use a pay phone to call home), no Internet, and hardly any cable TV. I went on to a career in television, but Fred and I didn’t even have a TV in our room.

  Fred was a year ahead of me. When I got there, we persuaded his roommate to swap rooms with me—otherwise, the dude was going to have two roommates. When I moved in early in my freshman year, that’s where we stayed till we both graduated: Ehringhaus Hall, room 021.

  So what did we do with all our time? Man, we hung out. You remember your college days, right? Our social life consisted mostly of just chillin’, a group of kids sitting on lower bunk beds, talking about anything and everything, ordering pizzas late at night. We were, all of us, basking in a newfound sense of freedom. My parents were strict but they didn’t sit on me; I had leeway growing up. Nothing like this, however. Suddenly, like so many of my friends, I was making every decision every day for myself. I loved that. We were there to figure stuff out: figure out girls, figure out our studies, figure out who we were. It was like this group project we were all embarking on.

  My first week at UNC, I quickly learned that this is what you did: You chilled on the “yard” near the undergrad library or you visited girls in their dorm rooms and just hung out. Fred and I both had girlfriends, and we made a love-song casse
tte mixtape for when one of us had the room to ourselves with our respective girl. If you came back to the room and heard the mixtape playing through the closed door, you knew to go somewhere else. Later, Fred and I would go over to the girls’ dorm rooms and serenade them with our velvety voices, singing everything from Luther Vandross to Billy Ocean.

  It was probably the most social I’ve ever been in my life. Because I’m on TV and I appear comfortable in and around large crowds, a lot of people expect me to be an extrovert. But I’ve always felt introverted. Recently, Sydni explained to me the difference between the two terms, and it hit home. “Being introverted doesn’t have to do with being shy,” she told me. “An introvert is someone who, when they’re most stressed, gets their energy back by being alone. An extrovert gets recharged by interacting with people.”

  Smart kid. Wonder where she got that from. I’ve always felt like an introvert, but I’m not shy or uncomfortable around people. It’s just that when I want to recharge, when I need to get my mojo back, when I want to feel at peace, I need to do that alone.

  But back then in the early eighties? I had energy to burn. One day, during my first week on campus, I left Fred at our dorm room to visit a classmate. I don’t remember her name, but when I got there, her roommate already had a visitor. There, sitting on the bed, all long-limbed, with that sardonic smile the nation was already getting to know, was Michael. As in Jordan.

  “Wassup.”

  “Wassup.” That baritone.

  Our first conversation. It would be pretty lacking in substance. We talked mostly to the girls. Sports didn’t come up. I’d always been a die-hard Carolina fan; I hadn’t even applied anywhere else after rejecting those football scholarships. Growing up, Stephen and I used to cut out the bottom of a plastic cup, tape it above our bedroom door, and have some simulated hoops wars—and I’d always be the Tar Heels. We’d keep stats and standings, and, because of our ferocious dunks, the paint above the door chipped away. My favorite point guard—to this day—was the seventies’ Tar Heel Phil Ford, who controlled the tempo of a game like no one I’d seen before and who sported a huge, cool Afro.

  But though I was a Tar Heel fanatic, I wasn’t starstruck by Michael Jordan. He was, by then, already well known. Two years before, as a freshman, he’d led UNC to the national title. Had it been Phil Ford in that dorm room, someone I grew up emulating on the playground, I might have been in awe. But from the moment I met him, Michael was a peer who was still free enough to be a regular kid on campus. We joked around in that dorm room, and then, within a week, it happened again. I went to visit a different girl. In I walked, and there was MJ, wearing Tar Heel blue, talking to her roommate.

  “You again?” I said, shaking his hand.

  “We gotta stop meeting like this, man,” he said, both of us laughing.

  From then on, I’d see him often. He lived in Granville Towers, where the basketball players stayed, but he dated a girl on South Campus, so he’d ride his bike over there all the time. Or I’d see him in the poolroom at the student union. Just one of the guys. At Woollen Gym, I played a few games of pickup basketball with him. If you were on Michael’s team, you knew you’d be playing for a while. You ended up on a team playing against him, and it meant you’d be sitting back down right quick.

  We were never tight friends, but always friendly. Whenever I’d run into him on campus, I’d be struck by how happy he seemed. Little did I know that, while I was basking in my newfound sense of freedom, those days would be among the last that Michael could enjoy his, that his life would soon be engulfed by a fame it’s hard for any of us to wrap our heads around.

  • • •

  IT’S BEEN THIRTY YEARS since those carefree days on campus, and it feels like a lifetime of conversations with Michael Jordan followed. For a time, quite literally: In the mid-to late nineties, Michael would only do the ESPN Sunday Conversation with me. I knew then that that had more to do with our alma mater than me. Michael’s loyalty to the school was such that, when he could, he was going to reward fellow Tar Heels. And I’m sure he was more comfortable with me since we had a history together.

  Our conversations through the years—whether on the air, at charity golf tournaments, or in VIP rooms in hot and sweaty clubs—didn’t go deep. We’d talk sports or, if in a group, bust on each other. Everyone who knows Michael knows he’s guarded with his feelings. He’s the antithesis of his buddy Charles Barkley—and that’s why their friendship works.

  Charles and I have had some deep talks over the past couple of decades, much more intense than anything I’ve ever shared with Michael. For all his advertised toughness, Charles is an introspective and sensitive soul. He texts me every few weeks, just to see how I’m doing. When I was first diagnosed, he called me to say: “Hey, boy, if you need someone to come to Connecticut and hold your hand, I’m there.” Taelor was born on his birthday—February 20—and they call each other every year. In 2005, when Taelor turned ten, their birthday fell on the night of the NBA All-Star Game in Denver, where I rented a room and threw a birthday bash for the two of them. Charles and I have bonded over our roles as Dad—his daughter, Christiana, is in her mid-twenties. At the specter of his daughter bringing home a young suitor, Charles said: “I feel like saying to him, ‘I know what you’re here to do to my daughter.’” Imagine the terror that kid would feel!

  Michael would never be so raw. Until, that is, we spoke last year at his annual golf tournament, which I’ve played in every year since 1997. We were sitting side by side, two aging alums. We started talking about our kids, and the dude came alive in a way I hadn’t seen since those dorm room and pool hall encounters three decades ago.

  “How you doing with the twins?” I asked, referring to his newborns.

  “Man, it’s just great,” he said, that familiar baritone bouncing with giddiness. “I get up every time. Every time Yvette gets up in the night, I get up because I want to feed them, and I’m giving them their milk in the middle of the night and changing their diapers. I just love it.”

  He asked after Sydni and Taelor. Meantime, his older boys, Jeffrey and Marcus, were making their way around the banquet hall. Jeffrey came over. I’ve been around Michael when people approach him in crowds, and there is, by necessity, a look he gives people: polite but detached. But as Jeffrey approached, everything stopped. The outside world melted away. He rose and threw himself into an embrace with his boy. Meantime, Marcus was glad-handing his way across the room.

  “Man, Marcus is the mayor,” I said of Michael’s second oldest. I follow Marcus on Twitter—he’s a social guy and he’s good at it. “He’s the star of the family.”

  “I know he is,” Michael says. “He knows everybody.”

  As the night wore on, countless people approached, wanting their picture taken with Michael or just to shake his hand. He was polite and generous. At one point, he sat back down and leaned over to me.

  “You ever get tired of all this, man?” he said, referring to the demands his public persona has placed on him.

  Surprised, I said, “Dude, I am, like, nowhere near your level.”

  He thought for a moment. “I don’t hate it,” he said. “Sometimes, it’s just tiring. You just have to do it.”

  “Yeah, you just have to accept it as part of the deal,” I said. He nodded. I realized I hadn’t asked after his daughter. “By the way, how’s Jasmine?”

  “Great, man,” he said, instantly beaming again. “She just graduated college. She’s got a job working with the Bobcats now.”

  There we were, a couple of middle-aged guys just talking about our kids. It was our most human conversation after thirty years of talking about sports. And that’s when I got to thinking. I’ve been lucky enough to have interviewed and have ongoing relationships with the three most iconic African-American men of the modern era: Michael, Tiger Woods, and Barack Obama. And as cool as that may sound, the most meaningful interactions I’ve had with all of them have been when we talk about our kids. Those are
the conversations I remember—not the ones about a jump shot, a par-five, or some policy prescription for the economy. No, the moments of real connection that have stayed with me have always been about what really matters.

  I’d see Tiger a lot back in the day. I didn’t see or speak to him for probably a year and a half after all that messiness in his private life went down. He understandably retreated into himself and focused on getting his life in order. Meantime, I cringed at how the media covered that story. I often felt embarrassed to be part of this media machine that exploits sports stars’ private troubles. The idea that Tiger somehow let us down is pure bull. He didn’t betray us. He had some problems in his marriage. It happens to people every day—but they’re not forced by a hyperventilating media pack to make public statements of contrition. Anyway, the first time I saw him after all that, it was at a public event, and his eyes lit up when he saw me. Moments after we embraced, he was searching for his phone. Before I knew it, I was watching video of his two kids—one of them swinging a golf club. I’d never seen him so happy, just being a dad.

  When I see Tiger now, he seems content. Most men—athletes or not—don’t go out of their way to gush about their kids. I do, as do my closest guy friends. But we’re a rarity, and it’s as though, in recent years, we’ve welcomed Tiger into our club. He is just so into being a dad.

  I suspect that has something to do with becoming a single dad. Tiger’s always loved his kids, as I did, but when you’re no longer married, suddenly your time with them becomes all the more precious. And you no longer have that parenting partner to fall back on, so you have no choice but to be selfless. To wit: I didn’t play Tiger’s celebrity charity golf tournament three years ago because it fell on a weekend I was scheduled to have Sydni and Taelor—and those dates were sacrosanct.

  The busiest man I know, the guy with the most pressure on him, seems to have this parenting thing all figured out. I was in Paris in 2008 with the kids and my ex-wife, Kim—post-divorce, we’d still often travel together as a family—when ESPN called; candidate Obama, a hoops fanatic, consented not only to being interviewed by me but to going mano a mano with me on the court. How could I say no? I asked my girls for permission to fly back to the States to do the interview. Sydni, then eight years old, had one condition: that, after it was done, I come back to Paris and carry her around the City of Lights on my shoulders for an entire day. Done.