Exactly, and that is only one of the reasons I was visited last week by the eminent Daniel Snyder, “new” owner of the Washington Redskins. Dan gave me a football and we exchanged many other impressive gifts, such as the world’s best whiskey and the finest Davidoff cigars. I liked Snyder and I have vastly improved expectations for the Redskins this year. They are a team that has played a large part in my life. I still have friends who played for the Redskins—people like John Wilbur, whom I still see frequently in Hawaii, and Billy Kilmer, Sonny Jurgensen, Roy Jefferson, Charlie Taylor—players mainly from the Good old days of the 1970s, when the Skins were usually on the top of the NFL East, and I was living, for intensely political reasons, right smack in the middle of Washington, DC. Those were violent years for everyone, or at least everyone even faintly involved with either Football or Politics, and that was just about every person I knew.
I particularly remember Edward Bennett Williams, who was then the Owner of the Redskins. He had been a personal hero of mine long before I ever met him. Ed was arguably the Number-One Criminal Lawyer of his time or any other. Ed Williams was royalty, he was a living legend at all Law Schools, including Columbia, where I was spending a lot of my time in those years. Edward Bennett Williams was the Real Thing.
And so am I for that matter, but we will not dwell on that now. Time is running out on us. Alas, we will be forced to abbreviate or even chop off the many other things I was planning to discuss this week. I am still fatigued from my extremely successful, though tiring, spinal situation. I feel no pain (knock, knock), which is a beautiful improvement. That is all ye know and all ye need to know, for now. Mahalo.
—July 28, 2003
Speed Kills and Other Football Wisdom
It is never smart to bet money on “preseason” NFL football games, because they are utterly meaningless to anybody except the hundreds of players who may or may not be cut after each one. There are roughly 100 players out there for each team, competing desperately with each other for 53 roster jobs. Few of them even know each other’s names.
Preseason games are like a death dance for most of them. They will never be a starting player on any NFL team, they will never even get to wear a legitimate team jersey or see themselves on TV, like they always wanted to.
Trying out is like a huge casting call for a major Johnny Depp or Benicio Del Toro movie about sex, death, and violence in a typical all-American family that gets caught up in a kidnapping plot to move terrorists from Korea to New Orleans during the summer monsoon season. The movie will be a hot one, requiring thousands of mob-scene extras.
There will inevitably be many psychotics among them, many flaming unregistered Perverts and supergroupies depending entirely on Steroids and Downers to make it through the first few dozen practices. Most of them are habitually unemployed anyway, and trying out as an inside linebacker for the Miami Dolphins might look like a good idea, to some people.
And besides, there is always that one in a million chance that you might be suddenly discovered, like Marlon Brando.
Most of these stories have horrible endings, but there are, of course, exceptions to that rule, and we saw one of the best of them in real life on Monday night. Michael Lewis, known as “Beer Man” to his teammates, was a 29-year-old, onetime beer truck driver when he got his final tryout for the New Orleans Saints.
The Beer Man averaged 25.8 yards per kickoff return last year and 14.2 on punts, second in the NFL. He also runs the 100 in 4.2, which means certain death for any defender who suddenly gets assigned to cover him. Many failed, and many were instantly cut and sent back to the Arena League or NFL Europe.
That is the way it goes in the NFL, no mercy and no second chances. Speed kills, in the famous words of ultimate Raider Al Davis. You can’t teach speed, he said. Everything else in the game can be taught, but speed is a gift from God.
Right. And where was Al Davis when Michael Lewis came down the pipe? Who knows? And that is an unfair question anyway. Al can’t be everywhere at once, and he will likely get his hands on Lewis sooner or later.
We got a chance to see Beer Man in action on Monday night, and he performed as advertised. He ran off a truly spectacular 102-yard kickoff early in the game that got called back on one of those blind, dumb calls that can derail a referee’s career if it happens during the season, but this was just another one of those free-fall Exhibition games that nobody cares about.
In Michael Lewis’s case, it was a high-speed spin move that hasn’t been seen in the NFL since O. J. Simpson’s best days. Lewis was whacked sideways and seemed to fall down on his right shoulder, ending the play. But No. The Beer Man whirled and kept himself upright with the use of a stiff right arm to the ground and a rare trick of balance that kept him on his feet and picking up speed toward the goal line, while all the others watched. BOOM. It was special.
It was the Play of the Day, and probably the play of the NFL preseason. They don’t hardly make ’em like that anymore. It was the kind of play that O. J. Simpson himself would have recognized and admired, in the good old days, before his ruinous trials and eternal disgrace.
I was reminded of Gayle Sayers and Jim Brown, or even Barry Sanders at his best—so Michael Lewis is a hot one to watch, this season. He is a game breaker.
The Saints look a little iffy so far, but I expect them to level out and be a solid play-off team. At least they are wild and exciting.
My other predictions and selections, etc., will have to wait for next week. Fear not. We have a long strange season out there ahead of us. Mahalo.
—August 12, 2003
Nightmare in Hollywood
I had a truly horrible dream last night about how I blundered into a fight between Mike Tyson and Arnold Schwarzenegger on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. I was sitting next to Arnold (current betting favorite to be the next Governor of California) in the back seat of a black stretch limousine. We were on our way to a TV studio for a debate about his longtime working friendship with the powerful Bush family from Texas and how it might affect the next Bush presidency when the Terminator seizes power in Sacramento and tries to hand over the state’s 55 electoral votes by election day in 2004. That is the basic plan behind Schwarzenegger’s running. He doesn’t want to be Governor, he just wants the electoral votes to go to Bush this time.
It was a solemn subject and I didn’t quite understand why Schwarzenegger had agreed to debate it in public, with me or anyone else except maybe Karl Rove. He was raving and snarling into his cell phone about something that had to do with Arianna Huffington, so we tried to ignore him as the limo crept along in a gridlocked traffic jam. Tempers were rising and there were no ice cubes and we were sure to be late for the TV debate. I was ready to jump out of the car at the next stoplight and hide out at the Polo Lounge.
Suddenly I felt the car stop, and brakes screeched as the limo rear-ended a big SUV right in front of us. BANG. It was not much, more like a nudge than a crash, not even a small fender bender—and then the violence began.
I was looking over the driver’s shoulder when I saw what looked like a small, burly black man leap out of the SUV and come sprinting toward us, bellowing savagely. “You goddamn crazy honky bastard! I’ll kill you for this!” There were desperate screaming sounds and then the awful smashing of window glass, and then the car began rocking crazily. There was something familiar about our attacker’s face, but it was all happening so fast that I couldn’t be sure.
Then, ye gods, I recognized the vicious, snarling face of Mike Tyson, former heavyweight champion of the world who had once seemed unbeatable forever, by anybody—until he went over to Tokyo for a low-rent, bum-of-the-month type, no interest, who cares “tune-up fight” against some unranked, oft-beaten challenger named Buster Douglas, who was such a hopeless underdog that the fight was actually taken off the board in Las Vegas when the odds reached 40–1.
I only watched it on HBO because I knew I had to write about it that week. Nobody else even wanted to watch it with me. We had
all been Suckered once too often into paying big money to watch Tyson race across the ring and beat another terrified fighter half to death in 90 seconds, or 85 seconds, and that was it. There was no more.
Mike Tyson took all the fun out of boxing—especially for those of us who grew up on Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier.
I remember two minor details from the slow days leading up to the fight in Tokyo. One was a flippant reply by Tyson when Larry Merchant asked him if there was any possible way that he might lose this waltz with Douglas.
“Only if they have a sharpshooter in the crowd,” said Iron Mike with a confident leer.
The other memorable detail from that week was that Tyson had traveled himself all the way to Japan, 15,000 miles RT, 36 hours on a commercial airliner, because he was publicly crazed and distressed by the breakup of his first marriage, to superpopular TV actress Robin Givens, which was driving him nuts.
I noticed this and made a mental note of it. Mike Tyson, as history now shows us, has an extremely fragile ego when it comes to being rejected by women. There is no record of his doing anything but flipping out and spiraling into violence.
Back in 1990 those episodes seemed vaguely quaint or goofy, clearly driven by passions beyond his control. What the hell? Aren’t all violent high-strung athletes that way?
And that was my situation when the fight began. I was certain that it would end quickly, like all the others. Why shouldn’t it?
Why indeed? But now, in long retrospect, that first and only Tyson-Douglas fight appears as a wild and crazy thing. Buster Douglas literally beat the living piss out of the champ. It was one of the best and most shocking upsets in the history of professional boxing. Scheduled for 12 rounds, it ended with a TKO by Douglas after only 10.
I still watch that fight on tape from time to time, just for the wild excitement of it, the sheer impossibility. It ranks right up there with some of Ali’s finest hours.
There was no joy in Atlanta, or anywhere else in the NFL last week, for Michael Vick went down with a broken leg on the first offensive series of a meaningless preseason game. I was watching the play when it happened, and there was nothing particularly brutal or vicious about the tackle. It looked to me like a broken play that left Vick caught in his own backfield for a minor loss. So what?
But then, when he didn’t get up for too many minutes, the crowd began to rumble and groan. And then they brought on that evil yellow cart that always signals something ugly—but never with a hot young superstar like Michael Vick, who was thought to be invincible, too tough to hurt and too fast to catch. Vick was perfectly on track to become the Michael Jordan of his time. It was impossible for him to be crippled and put out for the season.
But it was true. The Falcons’ big Super Bowl dreams and high expectations went up in smoke when Vick went down. Their spectacular off-season trade for Buffalo’s all-pro wideout Peerless Price was a sure bet to hook up with Vick and produce instant Joe Montana/Jerry Rice–type results. But it suddenly looked like just another stupid personal mistake for both parties. Buffalo gave up its finest and most productive receiver (1,252 yards, 9 TDs, 94 catches last year), leaving Drew Bledsoe nobody special to throw to and Price with nobody special throwing passes to him—and the NFL without its hottest box-office attraction.
As for my horrible dream about Tyson and the Terminator beating each other to death on a crowded street in the middle of Hollywood, I woke up before it ended and I can’t remember who prevailed. It was just another small tragedy in the world of sports.
Okay. That’s it for now. Banzie.
—August 18, 2003
Speed Will Rule the NFL This Year
The football season is creeping along to a violent official start now, and I am starting to feel cranked up again. The summer has been strange and quick, as it usually is when you are 8,000 feet up in the mountains. Between getting married and having half my spine replaced, there has been a lot of leisure time for healing other people’s puncture wounds. The world of sports has many of them.
But so what? Puncture wounds come with the territory in this business. Look at Michael Vick. Look at the Atlanta Falcons. Look at Kobe Bryant. They are all facing nasty seasons.
The Denver Broncos are expected to be a force in the AFC West again this year, but I doubt it. The Broncos never quite recovered from the loss of John Elway, arguably the greatest quarterback of all time. He retired at the peak of his glory, after winning two straight Super Bowls, and the Broncos have never been the same without him, despite the heavy presence of alleged supercoach Mike Shanahan. His winning percentage since Elway’s departure has hovered just a bit over .500.
The Oakland Raiders’ W-L record since then has been .644, tops in the NFL. But that will not happen again this year. The San Diego Chargers are ranked in the bottom third of the league this year, and they will probably stay there.
Actually, there is nobody in the West of either conference who looks like a Super Bowl contender. I hope Oakland will get there and get even for last year’s freakish defeat, but I am not real optimistic. This is not going to be a good year for feel-good stories, in sports or anywhere else. Big darkness, soon come.
Tennessee’s rookie wide receiver Tyrone Calico is the most exciting wideout in the NFL to see on TV, but on paper he is a useless dunce and a sure bet to be cut before Labor Day.
Speaking, as always, as a Gambler, I’d have to say that Tyrone is a lock—if only because he is going to sell tickets. And take my word for it, Bubba, Tyrone Calico is going to be big this year.
Is that clear? Good. I see a lot of Speed coming into the league—and thank you again, Al Davis—which always means Action, and that is highly desirable. Teams like Philadelphia and Tennessee, and also the Washington Redskins, in the East are going to turn some serious Speed loose on the league in September.
Darrell Green has long been one of my personal heroes. He is what the best people in sports call a class act. For 21 years he has been the smartest, fastest, and meanest defensive back in a league where Fast and Smart and Mean are not especially rare commodities. No sir. You want speed? We got plenty of speed. Let’s see what you have.
Tyrone Calico runs the 40 in 4.3 seconds, which is Fast, but not red-hot fast, if you know what I mean. We have tall linebackers in this league who are at least as fast as that. Four point two is hot, 4.1 is real hot, and Dan Snyder told me about a Redskins undrafted rookie who regularly clocks four seconds flat. That is 4.0 over 40 yards.
Tyrone Calico weighs 222 pounds and stands six feet four inches tall. That is a speeding mass that nobody sane wants to get in front of, and definitely not more than once. Hell, look what happened to Michael Vick, and he barely got Hit at all.
And then there is Jets QB Chad Pennington, who went down and out on Sunday with his wrist broken in seven places. WHACKO! Now, 40-year-old Vinny Testaverde is all that stands between the Jets and a 3–13 finish this season.
I also like Miami and New Orleans for early-season wildness, and I have always had a special fondness for Jim Irsay’s high-speed, high-precision Indianapolis Colts. I have never believed that Tony Dungy really enjoys coaching Offense anyway. Defense is supposed to be his specialty, and the time has come for him to live up to that rep.
Nobody in the NFL has three individual players better than Peyton Manning, Edgerrin James, and Marvin Harrison. They are all very close to being the best in their business, and I wish them good luck this season.
I like the Colts’ wide-open, quick-strike-anytime offensive style. They are always fun to watch, but I can’t honestly recommend betting on them, not even with Points. It has something to do with the Curse of Baltimore that came down on the Colts when Irsay’s father raped them away in the dead of night to a curious new home in Indianapolis 33 years ago.
It was an ugly deed, and the Colts have never won anything since then. Football fans have long memories.…
What? Anita tells me that I am being unacceptably cruel to our friend James Irsay, current owner
of the Colts, who is a very different man from the beast that his father was.
“Why are you holding a grudge against his Father?” Anita screams. “His father is dead. What can James do about it now—take the Colts back to Baltimore?”
I hesitated. She was right. It was like expecting me to stand trial for the sins of Jack Kennedy. They could do that, “but it would be wrong.”
Richard Nixon said that, and I always get mushy about Nixon when football season rolls around. He was the Real Thing, a genuinely educated football fan.
I miss Nixon. Compared to these Nazis we have in the White House now, Richard Nixon was a flaming Liberal. Dr. Thompson said That. Mahalo.
P.S. It would not be fair to end this rant without answering your many questions about the final ending of that Tyson-Schwarzenegger fight I was telling you about last week. It never happened, because Arnold ran away. Iron Mike tried to chase him down, but he ran into a moving Police car and got arrested again.
There is a school of thought among sportswriters that believes Mike Tyson should be put to sleep for the greater good, and I am beginning to think they are right. We have enough to be terrified about these days without having to worry about accidentally running into that monster Tyson in the middle of a routine traffic jam.
—August 25, 2003
The Bush League
Why are we seeing George Bush on TV every two hours for nine or ten days at a time, like some kind of mutated Mr. Rogers clone? Something is dangerously wrong in any country where a monumentally Failed backwoods politician can scare our national TV networks so totally that they will give him anything he wants.
The answer to that one comes in two parts. One is that Bush will have to run for reelection next year, which three months ago seemed like a harmless waltz—but which is now looking like a dangerous gang fight that Bush might not win, because his overall game plan for Iraq was so hopelessly flawed that it could never have been successful. It was arrogant and ignorant and stupid, and now the vultures are coming home to roost.
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