You’d think that encounter with the police would have woken me up, but it didn’t. When I think back on those days I can only shake my head. I’m just lucky no one died while I was driving like that.
That spring I visited Bernie at his place in Kalamazoo. He had grown tired of being shuffled between the minors and the NHL and decided to wind down his career. He could have played for a lot of teams in Europe or the minors, but he picked the Detroit Red Wings’ minor league team, the K-Wings, because he wanted to set up a career with the Kalamazoo-based pharmaceutical giant, Upjohn. Unlike so many athletes who never prepare for life after their careers end, Bernie had already earned a business degree and established a good reputation in Kalamazoo, and he was in demand.
He had gotten married, bought a small house, and had two sons: Jonathan—who, I’m proud to say, was named after me—and Shawn. Eventually they would have one more boy, Andrew. I was just as proud of Bernie’s success after hockey—and maybe more impressed.
Back in Canada Gail had married her longtime boyfriend, Paul, and started a family. But she was often sick, suffering from an eating disorder one month, an obsessive-compulsive disorder the next, followed by a bout of agoraphobia. She had already begun to sequester herself in her home with her kids. Paul was concerned, but because he was at work all day, he had no idea just how sick she was.
I hated the distance between us, with me in Baltimore, Bernie in Kalamazoo, and Gail just outside Toronto. But we did a decent job visiting each other and staying in touch. I was probably doing a better job of being a brother as an adult than I had when we were growing up.
My maternal grandparents had moved to a small retirement town northwest of Toronto, where they had recently celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary. I was working in Baltimore when I learned that my beloved Nanny, who had battled diabetes and heart disease for years, had been hospitalized. The next morning I drove from Baltimore and arrived in Toronto that evening. My plan was to have dinner with friends and then head north to see Nanny in the morning. I met up with Gord Martineau, my former news anchor at citytv, and we hit our old stomping grounds. After a night that ended too late I woke up and drove to my see my grandmother in the hospital.
When I walked into her room, she said, “John, you look terrible! Do you feel okay?” I couldn’t tell her I was hungover, so I blamed it on my diabetes. That was the wrong thing to say, because when Nanny’s doctor walked in to check on her, she said, “Doctor, can you look at my grandson? He’s not feeling well.” The next thing I knew, he had checked my blood pressure and blood sugar and found both to be high. I was on my way to the ICU. Instead of cheering up my Nanny, I just made her worry about my self-inflicted illness. When I reached the ICU I looked up to see Nanny being wheeled in to take care of me. I didn’t have the heart to tell her I was just really, really hungover.
A year later I got the call I’d long dreaded. Nanny had passed away quietly in her sleep. Her funeral was a celebration of everything she had meant to so many people in her community, at her job, and especially in her church. But this was my Nanny, the first bright light I saw in a dark childhood. I wouldn’t let anyone console me or even talk to me.
After the pallbearers lowered her into the grave, I dropped to my knees in the dirt and wept like a little boy. Bernie and my cousin Loretta pulled me away from the grave.
Two years later my grandfather joined Nanny, and I felt a deep loss again. The night we buried him my mother made plans to sing at a local pub. Growing up, I didn’t understand her relationship with her parents, and I still don’t.
One night in Baltimore I had the enviable job of judging a Hawaiian Tropic Bikini Contest. I’d judged similar events, and the women were generally the same: amazing bodies and smiles but not too bright. This particular evening I brought along two friends from work, who shared a mutual interest in drinking.
When the contest was over, one of my friends headed directly for the contestants. I spotted my other friend in the back of the club, talking to two gorgeous women, so I went over. One of them simply floored me—and I had just judged a bikini contest. She was more attractive than any of the contestants. I could only muster an utterly lame line, but I said it with utmost sincerity, which might have been my saving grace: “You are the most beautiful girl I have ever met.” I meant every word.
I liked the sound of her name: Wanda Burton. I took her out to the dance floor, then invited her to the afterparty held on a yacht. To my delight she said yes, so we hopped into my car and drove to the harbor. Although we’d only known each other an hour, I was already convinced this was the woman I was meant to marry.
When I drove Wanda home I was burning to ask her out the next day. But I’d become leery of women trying to get with someone who looked like he had a dollar—and when you’re on local TV they always think you’re a lot richer than you are. So I thought, Let’s just see how down to earth she is. I conjured up the least sexy date I could think of.
“I’ve got to pick up a new lawnmower tomorrow,” I said. “Want to come with me?”
She didn’t miss a beat. “Only if I can watch you cut your grass.”
Man, she was good!
“Well, I don’t usually go that far on the first date,” I said, “but for you I’ll make an exception.”
Wanda’s parents had split up when she was eight or nine, and her father lived in Philadelphia. Although twenty-five, Wanda was close to her mother, Dolores, and still lived at home. That’s where I picked her up the next day for our lawnmower date.
Dolores answered the door and invited me in. “Come on back to the kitchen with me. She’ll be down in a minute.”
Once we sat down I noticed that Dolores had a picture cube on the table. I picked it up, looking at every facet. All six of them were filled with action photos of Reggie Jackson—Mr. October.
“Big fan?” I asked.
She nodded and then asked if I’d ever met Reggie. I hesitated. Finally I said, as diplomatically as I could, “I don’t want to burst your bubble, because you clearly like him a lot. But he can be…” I was searching for the right words but could only come up with, “a bit difficult.”
“Oh?” she said, encouraging me to elaborate.
This put me in a tough spot. I was trying to decide how much to tell her of an exchange I’d had with Reggie about a year earlier at the batting cage. I had asked my news director if I could go down to the Orioles’ Memorial Stadium when Jackson’s California Angels were in town and try to get an interview.
“You’re not going to get an interview with him,” my news director told me. “He’s under contract with ABC, so he only talks with ABC affiliates.”
Our station, WMAR, was an NBC affiliate, but I figured, why not? If you’re too afraid to ask for an interview, you’re probably not going to make it in journalism. Heck, I had already befriended Eddie Murray and John Thompson, so I decided to take my chances. I approached the batting cage just as Jackson stepped out, which I figured was perfect timing.
“Mr. Jackson, may I have an interview?”
“No!”
“Oh, is it because of your contract?”
“It’s got nothing to do with my contract,” he snapped. In hindsight he might have thought I was asking about his contract with the Angels, not ABC, but that didn’t stop him from dressing me down in front of the players and the press. “I don’t like you guys! You’re all a bunch of assholes.”
As I slunk away, tail between my legs, the future Hall of Famer, Rod Carew, pulled me aside and said, “Don’t take it personally, kid. He’s like that with everybody.”
So when Dolores seemed to be coaxing the story out of me, I tried to balance honesty and diplomacy. “Well, I tried to interview him once, and he kind of brushed me off.” I left it at that.
Wanda’s mother looked at me for a moment, smiled, and said, “I just wondered because he’s my brother.”
My eyes grew large. Oh, crap! I stammered an apology, but Dolores just chuckled. �
�Don’t worry—we know how he can be sometimes.”
“A great ball player,” I kept saying, unable to stop. “Just a really great ball player.”
While I struggled to extract my foot from my mouth, Wanda appeared at the kitchen door, looking radiant—with a giant pink curler still clinging to the top of her head. I did not think that was a new trend, but I didn’t want to say anything. I didn’t need to stick my other foot in my mouth too.
Her mother reached over and swiped the curler out of her hair. Wanda let out an embarrassed laugh and got over it quickly, which made me like her even more.
At the hardware store I picked out an electric mower.
“Why not a gas mower?” Wanda asked. “It’ll be a hassle slinging that cord all around the yard.”
I informed her, a bit haughtily, that I’d grown up hauling an electric mower across the yard—I had been a lawn mowing professional, after all—and I would manage just fine.
Once we got back to my place I showed Wanda to the TV room, got her an iced tea, told her I’d only be a few minutes, then headed out to wrestle with the yard. My living room windows looked out to the backyard, where I hoped she’d glimpse me sweating behind the mower, looking like the man of the house.
But not long after I’d started, sure enough, I proceeded to run over the electrical cord, slicing it in half, literally cutting the power to the lawnmower. When I went back inside and saw Wanda in the living room, she seemed to be drawn to her TV show, not looking out the window as I’d originally hoped. Lucky break. So I slipped back inside the kitchen, as if I had come back solely to get a drink and mop up what little sweat I’d produced.
She looked at me and said, “You cut the cord, didn’t you?”
This woman already had me figured out.
I sat down on the couch next to her to watch TV, and just as I started to cozy up to her, my cocker spaniel, Angie, pushed her way between us with an ill-humored growl.
“Let me guess,” Wanda said. “Your ex-girlfriend’s dog?”
She didn’t miss a thing. I was smitten beyond hope.
Wanda and I quickly became a couple. But whenever I’d pull her close, she cooled me off and kept me in check. I’d have to pay my dues before she’d let me get too close to her.
In Wanda I found a partner who was sensitive to my mood swings, even my dark spells. Where friends and the police failed to get me to straighten up, Wanda succeeded. She was the best incentive I had.
I was reveling in the thrill of this new love—someone completely different from all the other women I had dated—when I got a call that put me on the move again.
Since our news anchor, Sally Thorner, and I had joined WMAR, our station had jumped from the bottom to one of the top stations in the Baltimore market, which turned out to be a great launching pad for talent. My years there happened to overlap with those of a young woman from Mississippi named Oprah Winfrey, who anchored the local news. She wasn’t there long before Chicago came calling, and you know the rest.
In the summer of 1986 my agent, Chuck Bennett, phoned to tell me that a cable network called ESPN was interested in talking to me. You’d think I’d be jumping up and down, but I didn’t even have cable then, and being from Canada, I actually had no idea what ESPN was. In my defense, ESPN had only been on the air for seven years and specialized in the America’s Cup, Australian Rules Football, and other relatively obscure events. No one called it the Worldwide Leader in 1986.
Besides, I had just signed a new four-year contract with WMAR, and I was set to make $150,000 a year—more money than I’d ever imagined I could make playing hockey, let alone broadcasting. I’d done a few things with the NBC network, and they’d liked it. I was in the running to host their national baseball coverage, so I thought NBC would be my next stop. It seemed like the safer bet by far.
For all these reasons, not to mention my growing relationship with Wanda, I told my agent that I wasn’t interested. Chuck called me back two days later and said that ESPN wasn’t taking no for an answer.
“They want you to fly to Connecticut to see their facilities.”
The job still didn’t interest me, but I’d never seen Connecticut, and the trip was free, so I figured, why not? If they were trying to impress me with the tour, however, they failed. In 1986 ESPN was a two-room operation with a single antiquated studio. They told me they wanted me to be one of the lead anchors for their signature show, something called SportsCenter. I was polite throughout the visit, but I wasn’t even tempted.
Chuck passed on to ESPN my decision to decline. Then in October Chuck called again to tell me they were offering me a four-year contract for a good chunk more than I was making in Baltimore. This fledgling cable network now had my attention.
But I still didn’t say yes. There were too many hurdles. For starters I’d have to talk my way out of the contract I’d just signed with WMAR and gamble that I could talk my new love into coming along for the ride. I was certain the only way I could convince Wanda to leave her job and her family would be to marry her. The problem was that we were just five months into our relationship and were still moving slowly, so I sensed it was too soon to ask her to marry me. I needed to proceed very carefully with her.
Eventually I told ESPN I was intrigued, which meant I had to tell WMAR about ESPN’s offer. But WMAR wasn’t going to give up without a fight. When the general manager took me out to dinner I listened while he tried to play the guilt card, but he knew he couldn’t in good conscience keep me from making more money and working for a national network—no matter how small. He finally agreed to let me out of my contract if I promised to stay through the Christmas season, or the fall ratings period. We made a deal, and we parted with no hard feelings. Baltimore had been very good to me.
Now for the tricky part: Could I convince Wanda to come with me?
CHAPTER 19
A Family of My Own
WHEN I FLEW TO CONNECTICUT TO LOOK FOR A HOME I brought Wanda with me, hoping to include her in the decision. I thought I could buy a home similar to what I had in Baltimore for about the same price. We were looking in the middle of Connecticut, after all, not New York. That’s when I suffered my first real estate sticker shock. For the price of my home in Baltimore I could get a house in a run-down area of Hartford or a double-wide trailer. After some searching we found a townhouse under construction for $160,000 and I took it.
On the flight home I said something to Wanda I’d never said to anyone before: “It’s clear where we’re headed, and I want you to come here with me.”
As usual, Wanda was no pushover. She said she had to talk about it with her mother and father before she could make such a big move. I understood, but after committing to leave WMAR for ESPN in late December, I could only pray that she’d come with me.
After talking it over with her parents, Wanda told me what I wanted to hear: she had decided to come with me. If she hadn’t, I’m not sure I would have stayed at ESPN very long or even followed through with the agreement—which is not the approach I took with my early offers in Espanola, North Bay, Moncton, or Baltimore, when my job always came first. My priorities were changing.
Soon after we moved to Connecticut we got married. Everything looked perfect from the outside. We had a nice home, a nice car, and a loving, committed marriage. But Wanda is pretty sharp, so it didn’t take long for her to start seeing signs that all was not well with me.
For example, occasionally I would say something critical about my parents that Wanda couldn’t understand. “You shouldn’t say that about people who’ve taken care of you your whole life,” she’d say.
“I wouldn’t say that,” I’d reply, “about people who had taken care of me my whole life.”
Before Wanda and I were married I stood firm: no kids. I didn’t want to repeat my father’s mistakes, and I was still afraid I would. I hadn’t been violent since I quit playing semi-pro hockey, and I was certain I would never abandon Wanda, but I was afraid the anger and violence were stil
l inside me and could come out if I became a father. Besides, I was much too busy with my career to give children the time and attention they deserved.
But one morning I woke up beside Wanda and the words just sprang up from someplace deep within me. “When are we going to have a baby?” I asked. I hadn’t planned on saying anything like that, but even as I looked at her shocked face, it felt right. Betting on myself was the risky wager. Betting on Wanda—this loving, caring soul—that was the easy one.
But it wasn’t going to be that simple for us. In the early years of our marriage I usually kept my childhood to myself or, worse, would continue to fabricate the ideal parents I never had. I had become so accustomed to the fantasy version of my family that keeping up the façade had become a reflex. I would also pull away from Wanda emotionally, refusing to share my problems with her, and sometimes I retreated physically too.
After we decided to have children, Wanda visited her doctor and told her how often we were having sex. The doctor said, “That’s not going to work.” I was spending long hours at ESPN, but the real problem was that I was still screwed up. Pushing her away was all I knew how to do.
Wanda finally gave me an ultimatum: “If we’re going to have children, you have to come to grips with what went on in your past.”
And that was how she persuaded me to see a therapist. I was definitely reluctant. It’s difficult for anyone to tell people about their secrets, and it seems to be more difficult for men who grew up playing sports. We respond to pain with phrases like, “Suck it up,” “Walk it off,” and “Rub a little dirt in it.” Those have their place, but they’re not much help when you’re dealing with childhood trauma, and the depression that often follows. Adding to the usual stigmas, black people seem to be especially reluctant to seek help. In all the therapists’ offices I’ve visited over the years I’ve never seen another black person in the waiting room—ever.
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