The Red Smith Reader

by Dave Anderson

  Recently a successful football coach was complaining about the bad press that college sports have received this year. He thinks the newspapers play up scandals and ignore news that puts athletics in a favorable light. “The sporting press,” he said, “has let football down badly this year.”

  Foolishly, an effort was made to explain that the press wasn’t letting football down. It was argued that many observers of the sports scene with a genuine respect for the good things in sports have been genuinely concerned about abuses and excesses which, they fear, threaten the very existence of amateur sports. It was foolish to attempt this explanation because the coach, a thoroughly honest, straight guy, doesn’t want to see any imperfections in the game that makes him a good living. He should have tuned in the radio last Friday night when two newspapermen, probably the best friends football ever had in their field, laid some truths on the line.

  These two men, Grantland Rice and Stanley Woodward, said all the things Judge Streit said later when he sentenced the basketball bagmen. They talked about the trapping and care and feeding of athletes, about slipping them through phony courses so they could make headlines and profits for the college with no danger of intellectual pursuits distracting them from the main job. They said that unless the colleges scrubbed up fast, there was sure to be a scandal that would invite the reformers to abolish intercollegiate sports altogether.

  They are dead right, because if a college kid can dump a basketball game he can also dump a football game. As a matter of fact, who honestly believes it hasn’t happened already?

  ALLIGATOR MAN

  PARIS, 1963

  On a hill overlooking the fifth and fifteenth greens of Saint-Nom-la-Breteche stands a house which visitors are told, cost a tidy $600,000 to build. Nearby is a more modest one, if you consider the Palace of Versailles modest compared to the Taj Mahal. It has a big alligator for a weather vane.

  “Pretty nice digs for an amateur tennis player,” a guy said to the owner, René LaCoste. Then the significance of the weather vane filtered through. “Oh, sure. I forgot you made those sports shirts with the alligator on the breast. You know, at Miami Beach they have armed guards at the city limits and no tourist is allowed in if he isn’t wearing one.”

  “It is not the shirts,” M’sieu LaCoste said. “More aviation and finance.” Diffidently he explained that when he quit international tennis in 1928 he had gone to work for his father, an automotive tycoon, then invested in Bendix Aircraft, and things had gone swimmingly.

  This was good to hear, for it is always good to know of an amateur tennis player making a buck without benefit of Jack Kramer. This amateur in particular, for he is one of the all-time greats: Back in the 1920’s, in the golden age of Jack Dempsey and Bobby Jones, Man O’War and Bill Tilden, Red Grange and Babe Ruth, the whole world knew about the Three Musketeers of France—Henri Cochet, Jean Borotra and Rene LaCoste.

  Rene had been watching Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player lead a big gallery through the fifth hole on a practice round for the Canada Cup golf matches which begin today. As chairman of the greens committee at Saint-Nom, Rene has been worried about the fifth and the fifteenth because, he said, after a rain worms come up and do nasty things to the turf.

  Apparently satisfied that the worms were under control, he led the way up to a tremendous lawn framed by the L-shaped house. Still in its first season, the lawn looks like a huge putting green, which is what it will be unless Rene decides to make it the first private grass court in the Ile-de-France. He hasn’t made up his mind.

  At the door visitors were greeted by Mme. LaCoste, and right away they understood why Rene, born to play tennis, is married to golf. In 1927 when he was Wimbledon champion, Mme. LaCoste was Mile. Thien de la Chaune, the first foreigner ever to win the British Women’s Amateur golf championship.

  “I saw him play tennis,” Mme. LaCoste said, “and he saw me play golf. In America, where I played very badly in your National Amateur because I loved America and was having too good a time. My cousin was a cousin of Jacques Brugnon, the fourth Musketeer, and we met through Jacques.”

  Mme. LaCoste wore a sports shirt complete with alligator. M’sieu LaCoste had a sports shirt with a scarf at the throat but a sweater concealed the insigne, if any. He is lean and keen, with straight hair turned gray. They have three golfing sons and a golfing daughter, which suggests that golfing genes are dominant, tennis recessive.

  Rene plays to a handicap of six, still bats a tennis ball against the wall three or four hours a week in a small room in Paris. When he was practicing tennis four hours a day he would relax at golf, sometimes playing fifty-four holes nonstop.

  “Then I had to take it seriously to beat her,” he said.

  “All our matches are decided on the last green,” Mme. LaCoste said.

  There’s an old story about a pitching machine Rene built to fire tennis balls at him at no miles an hour. The story goes that after Bill Tilden’s power beat him in 1925 he worked a year with the machine, came back and polished off Big Bill. It isn’t exactly true.

  “I built the machine,” he said, “and it was very good because it would shoot the ball exactly the same way all the time. To do this hitting against a wall, you must be very good. Also you could aim it up and practice smashing a lob.

  “But I had studied Tilden. He was tall and I reasoned that if you could keep the ball low and make him run, cross-court and short and long, you could beat him. In 1926 I beat Tilden and Bill Johnston in the Davis Cup and Borotra beat Johnston and we won the cup.

  “That year in the U.S. singles Cochet, I think, beat Tilden, then Borotra beat Cochet and I beat Borotra in the final. It was 1927 when I beat Tilden in the final.”

  Like all who follow the game, LaCoste believes open pro-amateur play is the only hope for tournament tennis. Then he said a surprising thing. Greatest player of all time, in his book, is Ken Rosewall—“He controls the ball. The girls? First Suzanne Lenglen, then Maureen Connolly.”

  Frank Frisch will have him perpetually barred from the Elderly and Fraternal Affiliation of These Kids Today Couldn’t Carry Our Shoes.

  CHRISSIE

  BOSTON, 1973

  Chris Evert, who regards grass with less enthusiasm than some other eighteen-year-olds, is practicing on the clipped lawns of the Long-wood Cricket Club here for the United States Open tennis championships in Forest Hills. Revisiting Forest Hills is a little like recapturing love’s young dream, for it was on the turf of the West Side Tennis Club that her romance with the galleries burst into flower. Playing in her first National Open two years ago as a pigtailed pixie of sixteen with her neat features set in an expression of sweetly childish intensity, Chrissie captivated the fans completely as she won, and won, and won again before Billie Jean King defeated her in the semifinals.

  What emotions are uppermost now as she returns to the scene of that popular triumph as an internationalist and professional with a chance to lift her prize money for the year over $100,000? Eagerness? Apprehension? Confidence? Anxiety? “Eagerness, I think,” she said. “I’m grateful that I had a good Wimbledon. It convinced me I could play well on grass, after all.”

  Lissome and trig and fastidiously turned out in a green and white cardigan with matching green pants, she sat sipping a ginger ale. One gets the impression that Ms. Christine Marie Evert would sooner commit a double foot-fault at match point than neglect eye shadow or nail polish. The eyes are brown and direct; the long hair framing the oval face is the color of Vermont maple syrup in the sun. “Thoughtful” and “undissembling” are the adjectives that occur first to describe her manner. Ask a question, she takes as long as she needs to turn it over and around. Then: “Yeah,” she’ll say in unaccented American, and elaborate as the topic merits.

  She was asked about the European tour leading up to Wimbledon, when she blew a lead of 7-6, 5-3 in the final round of the French Open and lost to Margaret Court, lost to Evonne Goolagong in the finals of the Italian Open, got creamed by Virg
inia Wade, 6-1, 6-2, on the grass at Nottingham, England, and finally was beaten by Julie Heldman in the London grass court championships.

  “It was pretty bad,” she said. “France was the worst because I thought I’d been doing well.”

  “Yet there was no outward sign that you were discouraged,”

  “I guess I kept it pretty much inside.”

  “Considering that you had beaten all the girls who beat you, doesn’t it seem now that your trouble must have been mental?”

  “Each match has to be considered separately,” she said, and left it there. In other words, you couldn’t lump all the defeats under a single easy explanation, and who wanted a detailed stroke analysis now?

  “Winning from Margaret was a big help,” she said. “That was a good match.” She meant her smashing upset of the top-seeded Margaret Court at Wimbledon. In the final, however, she caught Mrs. King at her supreme best and was knocked out, 6-0, 7-5.

  “I wasn’t ready for that match,” she said. “Billie Jean and I waited six hours the day before, and it was rained out. I dreamt about the match that night. I dreamt of winning Wimbledon. Then when the match started I was flat, I couldn’t get interested. And Billie Jean was great.”

  “Did you panic after the first set?”

  “I made up my mind it wouldn’t be love-love.”

  Chris has been swinging a racquet for thirteen of her eighteen years, but tennis is still fun for her. “I love the game, I really do, although I wouldn’t say an hour and a half of concentrating in a hard match is all fun. At first I’m nervous. Then if I win a few games I feel more confident. Everybody asks how long I want to keep playing and I tell them two or three years more, but you can’t put a limit on it. I’m enjoying it now, traveling and going out nights and having fun. Forest Hills now—I love New York.

  “I keep thinking stars like Billie Jean and Margaret can’t go on forever and then maybe—but I don’t know. Rosie Casals and others are young and there are so many new ones coming up. I may not be cut out to be number one.

  “The most important thing right now?” There was a long pause. “My family is important. I’m away a lot, but I still want to be close to my family.”

  Turning pro hasn’t made much difference. “I was keyed up for my first pro tournament, I liked the idea of playing for money. I won that for $10,000, and it was fun. But the money isn’t all that important. I never see it, it just goes to the bank.”

  So far about $76,000 has gone to the bank this year, income from endorsements probably will match that figure, and first prize at Forest Hills is $25,000, thanks to the “Ban equalizer.” This is a $55,000 grant the manufacturers of Ban deodorants have made so women players will not only smell nice, but also stand as straight as men in the Chase Manhattan. Chris is pleased that for the first time, women will compete for the same money as men.

  “I don’t think I would have fought for it as hard as Billie Jean did,” she said, “but it’s right. We can’t play the men’s game, but we put out just as much in competition and we draw as many people.”

  “How do you feel about Bobby Riggs versus the girls?”

  “I think it’s good for tennis, but I don’t like him putting down women’s tennis.”

  “He’s only out to make a buck, Chris. He isn’t serious about that chauvinist pig act. He’s just found a new gimmick—”

  But Chrissie was wrinkling her nose.

  TANTRUMS ON GRASS

  1981

  The Wimbledon championships are under way, that courtly gathering of knights and ladies, the beauty and chivalry of the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club with its strawberries and cream, its white gloves and flowery hats, meticulously manicured lawns and impeccable manners. It is also the stage on which a spoiled brat like John McEnroe can demonstrate just how ugly an ugly American can get.

  This is not to suggest that boorishness on the courts is an American monopoly. McEnroe and Jimmy Connors can be as coarse as goats, and they are Americans, but Ilie Nastase has scaled peaks of vulgarity in his time, and he is a Rumanian. However, Sandy Mayer ran Nastase out of Wimbledon in the first round, and Connors has not misbehaved up to now, so the responsibility of making an ass of himself devolves on McEnroe. He is equal to the assignment.

  By all accounts, the tantrum tossed by Superbrat during his opening match with Tom Gullikson was up to his unappetizing standards. He smashed two racquets, was twice penalized a point for misbehavior, called the umpire an “incompetent fool,” pulled a sitdown strike and addressed an obscenity to the referee.

  He should, of course, have been flung out of the tournament onto his ear, but leniency on the part of tennis officials has become something close to vice. We have come to accept this as a fact of life in the United States, but there seemed some ground for hope that a degree of civility might be expected in hallowed Wimbledon. As a matter of fact, the day after his performance, McEnroe was fined $1,500 and warned that another offense would bring a much stiffer fine or possibly expulsion.

  Perhaps with the population explosion on the courts, Major Walter Wingfield’s genteel game of sphairistike has begun to attract a clientele formerly confined to soccer matches and fist fights. Marvin Hagler, having escaped with his life from Wembley Arena after hammering Alan Minter loose from the middleweight championship, could contribute some thoughts about the gentility of British sportsmen and their marksmanship with bottles, beer cans, and even more lethal missiles.

  But in McEnroe’s case, he was the culprit, not any of the spectators. They expressed their disapproval with hoots, whistles and slow, cadenced handclapping.

  In the United States and many other countries, business concerns put up hundreds of thousands of dollars to sponsor tennis tournaments every week. Naturally the sponsors want the game’s uppercase names on the program to provide the publicity their dollars are buying.

  Perhaps the sponsor doesn’t ask the officials to tolerate loutish behavior by the stars, but the people who run tournaments don’t have to be told who is picking up the tab. Consequently the brats have been temporized with until they believe—they know for certain—that they can get away with murder.

  They are all pros today, and they compete for loot that makes major league baseball players look like paupers. Monetary fines mean nothing. Penalizing misbehavior by awarding points to the opponent amounts to something less than a slap on the wrist.

  The solution is to throw the bums out, and do it on the first offense. The certified members of the Riffraff Club have offended often enough, so there is no longer any point in waiting for a second or third offense in any particular tournament. They should be warned before play starts that the first time they give cause, they will be pitched into the street, and no appeal will be heard.

  Enforce such a rule just two or three times, and the slum-clearance job would be completed. If a McEnroe, Connors, or Nastase, or any seeking to emulate them, couldn’t compete in the money tournaments, they might have to go to work for a living. True, there is a constitutional guarantee against cruel or unusual punishment, but this would be a case of letting the punishment fit the crime.

  Prominent tennis players have been heard to applaud Jimmy Connors because he is colorful, while cocking a snoot atBjorn Borg because he seldom gives any outward sign of emotion. Perhaps there are officials who feel the same way, and certainly hoodlumism seems to have a distinct crowd appeal.

  Anyone old enough to read this has lived long enough to have witnessed growth in the popularity of the game. This was good to see. It was fine when the United States nationals, Davis Cup competition and such escaped from the cramped environs of the West Side Tennis Club and found a new and larger public in Flushing Meadows.

  But there are some differences in the techniques and philosophies of a Monday night pro football game in Foxboro, Massachusetts, a bullfight in Mexico City, a fight in the Felt Forum, a Yankees-Red Sox game in Fenway Park and a mixed-doubles match at Wimbledon. The differences should be discernible.
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  Perhaps nothing can be done to alter the fact that top players who behave like dead-end kids do draw cash customers. It should, though, be possible to teach the whippersnappers a few manners.

  7

  Fishing

  GRANDPA AND GRANDSON

  CHILMARK, MASSACHUSETTS, 1977

  “Grandpa,” the fisherman asked, watching his companion crawl under a barbed-wire fence, “did you grow old or were you made old?”

  The fisherman had a little plastic rod and a spinning reel with a bobber on the line. He had dug worms out of a compost heap and now he dunked one in Turtle Pond on Ozzie Fischer’s farm near Beetlebung Corner here on Martha’s Vineyard. He watched the bobber intently, moving his bait here and there beside lily pads. White water lilies rested on the surface, their petals opened fully. Water striders darted about in cheeky defiance of natural laws. The fisherman noticed a wooden structure floating in the middle of the pond. “The dog has to swim to his house,” he said. “It does look like a doghouse,” he was told, “but Mr. Fischer built that for ducks in case they wanted to make a nest in it and lay their eggs.”

  Not even a turtle showed interest in the worm. This may explain why you never see anybody fishing Turtle Pond. However, the swan pond in West Tisbury was only a fifteen-minute drive down island and it is common to see boys fishing there. Probably the proper name is Mill Pond, but in the fisherman’s family it is known as the swan pond because a cob and his pen live and love and rear their cygnets there. The couple’s only child this year is already half the size of the parents.

  The fisherman was thoughtful on the drive. “Do people who don’t have a birthday grow older?” he asked.

  Yes, he was told, there is one way to avoid that but the method isn’t recommended.

  “Some people don’t have a birthday,” he said. “They have to pick July.” After a silence he added an afterthought. “Or December. I’d pick July.”