Everything They Had (3 page)

A few days later my editor called with the happy news that David was on board. Moreover, he told me that the clincher had come when he told David that he would be working with me, providing me with yet another boost. Although many of the guest editors for
The Best American Sports Writing
make their selection
in camera
, which is their right and privilege, David was different. During the selection process he wanted to discuss the stories and solicited my input. That was a kindness I have never forgotten, for I think that together we created a sturdy template for the series, one that otherwise might have been less assured and lasting.

I soon began to write books myself—primarily illustrated biographies and histories with photographs selected by my colleague and friend Richard Johnson. On several occasions we asked David to contribute an essay. He almost always agreed, asking only if he was being paid out of our own pockets or that of the publisher, and adjusting his fee accordingly.

We worked together one last time in 1999, when my publisher decided to publish a collection entitled
The Best Sports Writing of the Century
. David Halberstam was my first and only suggestion to serve as guest editor. This time I was allowed to make the call, and again, the only question he asked was whether we would be working together or not.

I cannot overstate how much that query meant to me, both personally and professionally. Once again he turned the editing of the book into a collaboration. Each time I sent him a bundle of material, I would soon receive a phone call from David wanting to discuss the stories. He seemed to know every writer and story already, and in conversations that were, in turn, sometimes funny and earthy but always profound, I felt as if I were the student at a private journalism seminar as he would deftly dissect a piece I liked that he did not, and, more often, show me why he liked the stories that he did. In one of those conversations, as we discussed the stories of W. C. Heinz, David openly wondered if Heinz was still living. I answered that I did not know, and over the next few minutes I could tell that David was intrigued by the possibility that he was—as I have already mentioned, Heinz had been an enormous influence on his career, but the two journalistic giants had never met or spoken.

A few days later I received another call, and without even saying hello, David blurted out, “I just got off the phone with Bill Heinz,” and he proceeded to tell me all about it, speaking with the unbridled enthusiasm of a young boy who had just attended his first big league baseball game. His curiosity, combined with the selection of a few Heinz stories in the book, sparked something of a W. C. Heinz revival and introduced his work to an entirely new generation of writers, a true and lasting gift.

It was during this time, as we spoke often and sometimes at length during the several months it took to put the book together, that I really began to comprehend the central role that sports—and sports writers—played in David Halberstam's own personal biography. They were important to him and, to borrow a metaphor, he already knew the players without having to look at the scorecard. There truly was no one better equipped to serve as the captain of such a book than him.

Later, after the book came out and he either referenced it in something he wrote or spoke of it in an interview, he nearly always mentioned that I did all the “heavy lifting,” an acknowledgment I cherished, for I knew that he was sincere. Like me, as a young man he had labored as a construction worker. Hard work was something he treasured and appreciated, and no writer I have ever encountered has matched his considerable work ethic. Yet as much as I appreciated the compliment, it also made me smile, because how could working with David Halberstam ever be considered “heavy lifting”?

In the ensuing years before his passing we spoke only a few more times, primarily about another collaboration that never quite came together. The title of this book, in fact, stems from those conversations.

We envisioned putting together a book we hoped our daughters would read, a collection of sports writing solely about female athletes. The working title we agreed upon was
Everything She Had
, a phrase that seemed to acknowledge a quality that David Halberstam admired not only in athletes, but in anyone who strove to succeed.

When I was asked to recommend a title for this volume, I immediately suggested
Everything They Had
. I believe the title recognizes that not only did David Halberstam value those who gave their task everything they had, but that inside these pages he responded in kind, with his own best effort. For David Halberstam wrote about sports with the same veracity with which he wrote about everything else, once summing up his approach to all his work by quoting none other than basketball legend Julius Erving, who said, “Being a professional is doing the things you love to do, on the days you don't feel like doing them.” Here, in
Everything They Had
, I believe we gain a sense that David Halberstam himself was perhaps the best example of many of the qualities he admired most in others.

Although I don't believe I spoke to him at all over the last four or five years or so, that was fine. We were professional acquaintances, and I never felt comfortable contacting him unless it was absolutely necessary. Yet when I asked him once how I should respond if I was ever asked by anyone how to contact him, he told me simply, “Oh, I'm in the phone book.” On a few occasions when I encouraged trusted younger writer friends to contact him about projects or issues where I thought he might be of some help, he was, every single time.

I was honored one last time when his editor at Hyperion, Will Schwalbe, contacted me about serving as the editor of this volume. Will described the circumstances of the project and then added that David's wife, Jean, suggested that I serve as this book's editor. There are no words to describe the degree of gratitude I feel toward her for allowing me to share the byline of this book.

So once more I have been given the privilege of doing what David Halberstam would have described as the “heavy lifting,” again selecting the best of the very best from among the essays, features, columns, and other sports writing that David Halberstam produced over the course of his distinguished and inimitable career. Although, given the circumstances, part of that task was done with a measure of sadness, the burden, of course, was not really heavy at all. Like the writing that graces these pages, it was joyful and real, enriching, uplifting, and true.

In the spring of 1953 and 1954 people would turn to me and say:

“Look, if sculling's that dangerous, if people are always throwing at you and trying to sink you, why not quit? Why do you do it?”

“Escape,” I would answer.

D
EATH OF A
S
CULLER,
IN
T
HREE
A
CTS

Harvard Alumni Bulletin
,
April 23, 1955

Harvard's Sanitary Engineering Department recently recorded 1,000 times the normal radioactivity in Cambridge water. “When we put our Geiger counter to some Cambridge water,” Harold A. Thomas, associate professor of Sanitary Engineering, admitted, “it sounded like a bobcat caught in the bushes.”

This discovery marks, not as some immediately imagined, something strikingly new on the local scene, but rather another step in an age-old unceasing struggle—that between man's progress and the single sculler on the Charles River.

To understand this conflict, one must realize that through the ages the shape and form of the single scull have changed remarkably little. True, from time to time artisans have managed to make them thinner and lighter, and this year the boathouse has added a fiberglass shell. But the basic concept of rowing has not changed.

On the other hand, as man has progressed, the opposition to the sculler has armed itself with newer and more dangerous weapons. The cycle of the opposition's development, historians note, falls roughly into three overlapping periods.

The first of these is the stone age. If the stone age was at first simple, it was nonetheless irritating. Little boys stood on the bank of the Charles and threw rocks at the moving sculls. It was something of a game, with the sculler's sanity the stake. Simple in its pure form, even the stone age underwent some modernization.

First, the scullers learned to spot the little boys and row on the opposite side of the river. But the urchins were not to be fooled—they took to hiding on top of bridges and dropping rocks down on the passing shells. Since there always appears to be an abundance of little boys and big stones, this practice is employed even today.

The other day I was rowing under the Weeks Bridge when two juvenile delinquents fired.

“I got him,” said the first.

“Nah, I got him,” said the other.

“You both got me,” I said, tossing two enormous rocks out of the scull.

Thus you see that while the stone age belongs to the past, in one form at least it is dangerously close to us today.

The second part of the anti-scull cycle is best termed the machine age. Even the most accurate of rock throwers had to remain stationary on the river side. But with the advent of Robert Fulton, the Charles River mechanized. Motor boats, big and small, appeared, oblivious to the frail Harvard students and their frail craft. If formerly one had only to row to the other side to escape a rock, now the boats and their over-present waves were all over the river. To add to the sculler's confusion, there are several types of motor boats.

First of all, there is the Chris Craft pleasure boat, which contains at least one blonde and one hairy chest. While you row they come zooming by, within sinking distance, pull out the throttle, and yell: “Hey, kid, row that boat.” In order to stay afloat, of course, you must stop rowing.

Even more dangerous than the floating leather-jacket set are the sight-seeing excursion boats which look like leftovers from the Mississippi River. For something like a dollar you can get on down in Boston and travel past Dunster House, all the way up to Watertown. It is a round trip, so you actually can see Dunster House twice.

It also means they can tip the scullers over twice. The river boats, for that is what they are called on the Mississippi, have a ratio of almost two children to every adult. Since there are no rocks on the ship, they are very good-natured children.

“Look at the rowboats,” they invariably shout, and then wave energetically. Since you have only as many hands as oars, it is almost impossible to wave back. Nevertheless, friendly passengers or not, it is a scientific fact that at least once this spring you will be tipped over by the excursion boat.

This brings us to man's final attack upon the sculler, the nuclear age as evidenced by the Sanitary Engineering Department's discovery. Perhaps for the first time the sculler has no chance. Previously impervious in the face of rock and Evinrude, he bravely fought back, head over shoulder, his eyes peeled for trouble. That was in the old days. Now trouble is all around him, he is rowing on trouble.

In the spring of 1953 and 1954 people would turn to me and say:

“Look, if sculling's that dangerous, if people are always throwing at you and trying to sink you, why not quit? Why do you do it?”

“Escape,” I would answer. “No problem of coexistence on the river. No Iron Curtain, only the Lars Anderson Bridge. Why, for all it matters, the Czars might still be ruling Russia.”

That was in the old days. Now atomic fission is everywhere. Nowhere is the conflict between East and West, Communism and Democracy, so clearly outlined as on the Charles River. A nightmare is haunting today's single sculler: the vision of a motorboat filled with little boys. The little boys are armed with rocks, and they pursue him relentlessly until he is capsized into the nuclear waters of the Charles, Cambridge's first casualty from radioactivity.

“Dumna,” said Tadeusz, “means ‘The Proud One.'”

The American suggested they bet the horse since they had lost in the first three races and they needed all the pride they could get.