Flanagan's Run

by Tom McNab

  18 May 1931. The Colombia Hotel, Peoria, Illinois.

  Toffler looked at his watch. He had seen it all before, with his old college friends, Commissioner K. M. Landis, in the Black Sox scandal of 1920. It had been a nine-match world series between the Sox and the underdogs, the Cincinnati Reds.

  In the first match Eddie Cicotte, the starting pitcher for the White Sox, gave up five runs in four innings and the Reds won 9–1. The second game had been close until Lefty Williams walked three Cincinnati batters, then allowed a three-run triple by a powder-puff hitter, Larry Kopf.

  The third game had gone to the Sox, but the fourth went to the Reds, when Cicotte again chipped in with a couple of errors. At 3–1 against, the players in on the fix decided to make it look good, for the next two matches went to the Sox. But the roof fell in during the next game, when the Reds scored four times in the first innings and went on to win the World Series 5–3.

  Eventually, early in September 1920, stories started leaking out that the previous year’s series had been thrown and Toffler had been close to it from the beginning. Three Black Sox players, Jackson, Cicotte and Williams, signed confessions admitting their part in the scheme, but before they could be brought to trial there was a sudden turnover in the Illinois state attorney’s office and all the confessions mysteriously disappeared. When the case entered the courts the players repudiated their statements and the case was dropped.

  That the players had been acquitted mattered little to K. M. Landis. He banned them all from major league parks, and even went as far as ensuring that they could not play even in the minor leagues.

  Toffler sniffed, pulled back his cuff, and looked at his watch. It was 7.30. The Black Sox, Battling Siki, Ty Cobb, Jim Thorpe, Charles Flanagan, it was all the same. They all reeked of corruption, the fast buck.

  He looked up to see Flanagan, lean and tanned, standing in front of him, dressed in an immaculate pin-striped grey double-breasted suit. Toffler forced a smile. “Mr Flanagan?”

  The Irishman nodded.

  Toffler extended a limp hand. “Perhaps we should go over to the bar?”

  Flanagan led the way and they perched themselves on two narrow stools.

  After they had ordered and received their drinks Toffler began, stiffly. “Your men have come a long way, Mr Flanagan.”

  Flanagan’s teeth parted in a grimace as the whiskey hit the back of his throat.

  “Further than we ever expected,” he replied. “Two thousand two hundred and ten miles, to be exact. Just over eight hundred to go.”

  Toffler smiled.

  “Just so,” he said. He laid down his glass.

  “Mr Flanagan, you must forgive me my frankness. Would it be fair to say that you devised the Trans-America for personal – ”

  “Profit?” said Flanagan. “Say it, Mr Toffler. It’s not a dirty word, not in my vocabulary.”

  “I was going to say ‘gain’,” said Toffler.

  “Same thing,” said Flanagan. “The answer’s yes, that was my aim.”

  “Would it be impolite of me to ask you how much you expected to clear on the Trans-America?”

  “It would be impolite,” said Flanagan. “But I’ll tell you. Close on one hundred and fifty grand.”

  Toffler nodded.

  “What would be your response if I asked you if you would like to receive that sum from me tonight to stop the Trans-America now? Stop it dead?”

  “I’d say that you must have some pretty good reason for doing such a thing.”

  Toffler’s soft lips pouted affably.

  “Mr Flanagan, it cannot possibly have passed your notice that next year the United States will host the tenth Olympic Games.”

  “No,” said Flanagan, nodding to the barman to set up two more drinks. “It has not passed my notice.”

  “Then you must realize,” continued Toffler, “that, as matters stand, the Trans-America represents a considerable embarrassment to the American Olympic Committee – indeed, to the whole American Olympic Movement.”

  “You mean to Mr Brundage, Aloysius P. Leonard, and the officers of the AAU?”

  “Amongst others,” said Toffier. “But please let me continue. A group of public-spirited businessmen have put together a fund to . . . to meet your expenses if the Trans-America is wound up.”

  “It’ll take more than one hundred and fifty g’s,” said Flanagan.

  “You must know that we’ve come up against a lot of unexpected problems – damaged equipment, towns failing to pay up, legal bills. All told, I think my ball park figure is a quarter of a million.”

  Toffler picked up his glass and seemed to be studying its contents intensely. He looked up.

  “I think we can meet that figure,” he said, quietly.

  “Let me get this clear,” said Flanagan, pointing a finger at Toffler. “You’re willing to put up a quarter of a million bucks just to stop the Trans-America?”

  “Exactly,” said Toffler.

  “Then that means you think you’re beaten,” said Flanagan.

  Toffler flushed and put down his glass. “Just what exactly do you mean?” he asked, his voice rising.

  Flanagan’s voice was hard and even.

  “Mr Toffler, you know exactly what I mean. Since the Mojave I haven’t been running a flat race, I’ve been in some goddam crazy steeplechase, with no rules. Hell, for the past six weeks the Trans-America has been like some moving disaster area. Natural catastrophes we could take – rain in the Mojave, snow in the Rockies. If you and your Ivy League buddies had anything to do with that you must have been on a ouija board to the Almighty Himself. But the rest has been pure Tammany Hall, no holds barred.”

  Toffler’s face twisted into a scowl.

  “I can see that I must lay my cards on the table, Flanagan. Do you realize, do you have any conception of the noble history of the Olympic movement? Have you any understanding of the honour, the privilege which accrues to the United States in securing the Games for Los Angeles? And now, because of the interest which your tawdry circus has excited, some of the world’s greatest athletes may be tempted to forsake their precious amateur status to join you.”

  Flanagan reached into his inside pocket, withdrew a Havana and bit into it. He placed the plug in the ash-tray beside him, then struck a match on the sole of his shoe and lit his cigar, puffing slowly. He put the match in the ash-tray, withdrew the cigar from his mouth and tapped imaginary ash from its tip.

  “Mr Toffler,” he said slowly. “You surprise me, you really do. You see, I always thought that America was a free country. As things stand, being an amateur athlete isn’t a matter of choice, because we don’t have any pros. At present, there is no choice. But the Trans-America and next year’s Trans-Europe will give some amateur athletes that choice for the first time. A real profession, a career.”

  “You intend to hold a Trans-Europe next year?” gasped Toffler.

  “Preparations are now well in hand,” replied Flanagan. “All the way from London to Moscow, the White City Stadium to Lenin Stadium.”

  Toffler gulped down his sherry.

  “Perhaps you’d like to join me in something stronger, perhaps a whiskey, Mr Toffler?” smiled Flanagan. “But first, let me take you back a few years, to 1913 to be exact, to poor ol’ Jim Thorpe, losing his Olympic medals because he took twelve bucks a week playing bush league baseball. Who headed the commission that canned him?”

  “I did,” said Toffler.

  “You surely did. Twelve bucks a week to a guy who didn’t know amateur status from a salami sandwich. That was real justice. But let me take you on a few years more to 1925, to a young promoter trying to fix some indoor meets with Abrahams, Paddock, Scholz at the Garden – all the Olympic boys. It was a nice deal, five grand to the AAU, five grand to the YMCA for a new gymnasium, a couple of grand to the promoter. But it was no deal. That young promoter’s face didn’t fit with Mr Martin Toffler, so the YMCA missed out on its gymnasium. Now, who do you think the promoter was? I’ll gi
ve you three guesses.”

  Toffler reddened. “There were good reasons,” he began.

  “I’m sure there were,” said Flanagan. “There always were, where I was concerned. The promoter was me, but apparently I wasn’t the right kind of person to be promoting AAU meets. All right to fix the track and rake the pits, but no way I could get to wear the white tuxedo.”

  “That’s all in the past,” said Toffler. “No point in raking it up now. So I admit the Committee may have erred back in twenty-five, but this is a fresh situation.”

  “First let’s get one thing clear,” said Flanagan. “Do you admit that you have been behind all the blocks that have been put on the Trans-America?”

  “I . . . I admit that I may have spoken to a few people.”

  “Vegas? Topeka? Kansas City? Colombia? Poliakoff? You seem to know quite a few people, Mr Toffler.”

  Toffler bared his teeth. “Flanagan, have you any idea of where your ragged regiment lies in the world of sport? I’ll tell you. Level with Shipwreck Kelly pole-sitting on the roof of the Wild West bar in the Bronx. In the same world as marathon dancers hanging on to each other in the smoky filth of dime-a-dance halls, Jimmy Dooley keeping a bike going for five days. That’s your little world.”

  “So now it’s all out,” said Flanagan, leaning back on his stool. “Look, Toffler, I don’t have to justify the Trans-America to you. Or to anyone else for that matter. It justifies itself every day out there on the roads of America. Hell, I don’t know any more than you what makes one sports performance a stunt, like pole-squatting or spitting for distance, and another one people admire and want to emulate, like baseball or marathon. Perhaps it’s because people see in it qualities they admire – skill, endurance, intelligence, will. I don’t know. What I do know is that the Trans-America stands right up there with the marathon, long-distance cycling and swimming. It isn’t people like you or me who’ll decide whether or not those guys out there are athletes or freaks. Mr Joe Public will decide. And he’s already made up his mind. He likes what he sees.”

  “So you’re going on with this . . . circus?” said Toffler, his mouth set tight.

  “Let me say something,” said Flanagan. “Because I’ve always wanted to meet one of you guys head on, face to face. People like you don’t love sport; you love the committees, the parties, meeting Baron de Coubertin, shaking the president’s hand, being Mr Big. You haven’t done much in your life, but in the AAU you suddenly find you can tell some of the greatest muscle in the world where to go and what to do. You think you’ve got some sort of God-given right to run sport, some sort of monopoly. So if an upstart like me threatens to spoil the garden party then the answer is to fix him or to buy him off. You don’t live in sport, you live on it.”

  “Is that your final word?” asked Tofiler.

  “You can bet your last 250 g’s it is,” said Flanagan, gulping down the last of his whiskey. He turned to the man who had been sitting with his back to them on the stool behind Toffler.

  “And now, Mr Toffler, there’s someone I’d like you to meet.”

  “Meet someone?” queried Toffler, puzzled. “Who?”

  The man spun on his stool to face Toffler.

  “FBI Agent Ernest J. Bullard,” said Flanagan. “I think that you two may have a lot to talk about.”

  Charles C. Flanagan was back in his rocking-chair again, eyes half-closed. It had been good to get it all off his chest, after so many years. It would, of course, change nothing, for nothing could change the cold hellos, the eyes staring past him, which he had for years endured anyway from Toffler and his kind.

  One thing, however, was clear. Any future problems of the Trans-America would no longer emanate from Toffler and his AAU cronies. Ernest Bullard had made sure of that. Bullard had taken detailed notes of the Toffler-Flanagan Peoria conversation, and these were more than enough to put FBI agents on Toffler’s trail, should the need ever arise.

  For the moment Bullard had put Toffler on probation, and the grey, shaking Olympic official had mumbled his goodbyes through dry lips. But there were other troubles enough. From the beginning, the financial basis of the Trans-America had been fragile, since no one knew how many men would survive the three thousand miles from Los Angeles to New York. They had guessed at three hundred men lasting into the last thousand miles, and now, in fact, carried over a thousand, each one costing nearly ten dollars a day to feed and house. The Trans-America had been a step in the dark in more ways than one, and they were learning on the hoof. Flanagan’s only profit would be experience, the sort of experience that would be invaluable in the Trans-Europe.

  The Trans-Europe! Flanagan had only tossed the idea at Toffler to test the man’s reaction, for not a single preparation had been made and Flanagan had only the vaguest idea of the countries lying between London and Moscow. Still, the world of sport was watching the Trans-America. Pro track and field had to start somewhere, and this might well be the beginning. Why not? He could see it all, the World Professional Track and Field Association, with a network of Trans-Continental races, supported by a capillary structure of national races. They could run parallel to the Olympics, perhaps even join up with it at some future point when the Tofflers of the world realized that there was nothing morally wrong in accepting money for competing in track and field athletics. The WPTFA would be the governing body, maintaining a rigid moral code, higher even than the Olympic movement, since payments would be open and above board. And at its head would be Charles C.

  Flanagan, the father of pro track and field . . .

  Or would they simply go the way of roller pole, battle ball, Bronx bull-fighting, ice baseball, basketball on roller skates, aerial golf, water baseball? The line between sport and freak sport was a thin one, and Toffler had probably not been too far out when he had tried to compare Flanagan’s men with marathon dancers and pole-sitters. To qualify as sport there had to be something noble about it, something which struck a chord in every spectator – Red Grange crazy-legging it through the broken field, Babe Ruth making the clean, long bop into the bleachers, Charley Paddock leaping for the tape, Nurmi striding, ice-cold, through lap after lap . . .

  It had grabbed him. His first and only aim in holding the Trans-America had indeed been the quick buck, but over the miles his motives had changed. Now he wanted to see who would come out on top, whether it was to be gabby little Doc Cole, the phlegmatic Morgan or the tough, vulnerable Scot, McPhail. Would it be Lord Thurleigh, the Finn, Eskola, or the rapidly-closing pack of All-Americans led by Capaldi? And then there was the Australian, Mullins, the Jap, Son, and the Frenchmen, Dasriaux and Bouin . . . Tonight, in Peoria, he could have stepped out clear, if not clean, with 250,000 bucks; but it had never entered his head.

  For a brief moment it was as if the years had rolled back. Then Doc looked at Lily more closely. True, the structure of the strong, high cheek-boned face was still there, the bright, even teeth, but Lily Carson’s blue eyes were tired now, her face puffy, her make-up garish and contrived.

  Doc smiled and kissed her right cheek.

  “How long has it been?” he asked.

  “Ten years, come Thanksgiving Day,” said Lily, sitting down in the candlelit bar of the Colombia Hotel, Peoria.

  “You’re looking great,” lied Doc.

  Lily smiled weakly, lit a cigarette, and nodded at the white-coated waiter hovering above them.

  “Still drinking orange juice?” she asked.

  Doc nodded.

  “Two orange juices, one special, one straight.” Lily pulled heavily on her cigarette. “I suppose you’re still doing those crazy exercises too. What did you call ’em – sandwich exercises?”

  “Sandow,” he corrected her. “The Sandow Programme.” He smiled. “Every morning, without fail.”

  She shook her head. “Things don’t change much, do they? Here you are, fifty-four years of age, still running, still doing kid’s exercises. Where has it all got you?”

  Doc puckered his lips. “It’s
got me this far, eight hundred miles short of New York. I’m lying second.”

  “And is this it, the Big One you always used to talk about?”

  Doc nodded, as he accepted his orange juice.

  “Yep. This is the one I was looking for all those years back.”

  “The Big One. The great race in the sky. You must have gypsy blood in you, Alex. You sure waited long enough, giving up just about everything that made life worth living, waiting around for it. D’you know, I used to lie waiting with the hots for you in hotel rooms from Austin, Texas to Davenport, Iowa, while you were out on the roads running your heart out?”

  Doc smiled and shook his head.

  “And when you got back, your heart beating fit to bust, you would shower and lie down beside me and go to sleep, goddam you. Sometimes I could have killed you.”

  Doc shook his head once more and put his hand across the table to cover hers. “We got together a few times, didn’t we?”

  Lily smiled. “When it did happen it was good. But, after all, I was with the fittest man in the world. A little more quantity wouldn’t have gone amiss.”

  Doc sipped his orange juice.

  “Well, it’s all panning out now, the golden pot at the end of the rainbow, in New York.”

  Lily looked at him across the table.

  “Was it all worth it – really?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well,” she said, her hands cupping her glass. “When you were competing as a pro, against Longboat and all those other crazy marathon runners, there was some reason for running. You won a few, you lost a few, but it all had some purpose. But when it all dried up, before the war, you still kept running. I never could understand why.”

  Doc bit his lip. “I don’t know if I can explain it to you, honey. When the pro circuit died, in 1913, I couldn’t get back as an amateur – the AAU wouldn’t let me. Hell, I thought, I’m just beginning to get a grip of this long-distance running, so why stop now? So I decided to compete against myself By 1924 I had cracked most world records from ten miles upwards to marathon.”