Life on the Run (17 page)

“Okay, champ, you have it now,” I say with a wink.

“Who knows,” one of my friends says as our visitor staggers around tables heading for the reassuring darkness of the bar, “if he was a boxer maybe you got off easy.”

When we leave the restaurant a man on the street recognizes me. He approaches and says simply as if he were an ordered antidote to the boxer, “Thank you for all the wonderful evenings you have given me. I think the Knicks are class.” I say thanks for the words and we walk our separate ways.

There is no question about it. Being a member of a successful New York basketball team is a mixed blessing. The notoriety forces one to look at the world differently from other people. It provides money and access. At the same time, it sets one apart from the rest of society and denies one the privilege of being an equal member of a crowd. There is little chance, for example, for a public figure to fail without people knowing it, and no one grows without failing. Many avoid the embarrassment of public failure by never placing themselves in positions where they might fail. Therefore, they never grow. My constant problem is to find places where I am allowed to fail in private. Everyone does not thirst for fame. For me, fame holds as much danger as it does benefit.

If you are famous you get special service at banks, passport offices, and airline ticket counters, and come to expect that service while not respecting yourself for wanting it. Fame is being paid a lot of money for what people think about you as well as for what you do… having strange women approach you and say they want to meet you, know you in every way, right now… misassessing the amount of interest other people have in you… trying to find yourself while under the scrutiny of thousands of eyes… reacting instead of acting, being passive instead of active… having people tell you what they want you to do with your life… learning to understand what others want from you… sensing people in a restaurant whispering and pointing toward your party… forgetting how hot the subways are in August… having someone write that if you visit this kid who is dying in a hospital he will get better… having strangers constantly test you and probe for the dimension of your “real” personality… coming into contact with ten times more people in a year than most people do in a lifetime… remaining unable to escape those few minutes or several years when what you did made you famous….

The American historian Daniel Boorstin in his book
The Image
has observed:

The other Knicks and I got to our present positions of celebrity through similar routes. There are many encouragements for a boy to be an athlete while in high school. The good athlete is popular among his classmates, but the star athlete develops a reputation outside high school. Townspeople, adults, single him out for attention and interest. Teachers might favor him even if unconsciously. Growing up, when most young people struggle to define their tastes and develop their own sense of right and wrong, the star athlete lies protected in his momentary nest of fame. The community tells him that he is a basketball star. For the townspeople his future is as clearly outlined as his record-book past. They expect him to become an even greater athlete and to do those things which will bring about the fulfillment of what is wholly their fantasy. The adolescent who receives such attention rarely develops personal doubts. There is a smug cockiness about achievements, or a sincere determination to continue along a course that has brought success and praise. The athlete continues to devote his energies to sport. Compared with the natural fears and insecurities of his classmates, he has it easy. His self-assurance is constantly reinforced by public approval.

The athletes who succeed in making college teams have the high school experience duplicated on a grander scale. The few who excel on university teams find that admiration comes then, not from high school friends and adult family friends, but from the national press and from adults they have never met. They begin to see that they can make a good living simply by playing the sport. Self-definition again comes from external sources, not from within. While their physical skill lasts, professional athletes are celebrities—fondled and excused, praised and believed. Only toward the end of their careers do the stars realize that their sense of identity is insufficient.

“I need not tell you what it is to be knocking about in an open boat. I remember nights and days of calm, when we pulled, we pulled, and the boat seemed to stand still, as if bewitched within the circle of the sea horizon. I remember the heat, the deluge of rain-squalls that kept us bailing for dear life (but filled our water cask), and I remember sixteen hours on end with a mouth dry as a cinder and a steering oar over the stern to keep my first command head on to the breaking sea. I did not know how good a man I was till then. I remember the drawn faces, the dejected figures of my two men, and I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more—the feeling I could last forever, outlast the sea, the earth and all men; the deceitful feeling that lures us on to joys, to perils, to love, to vain effort—to death; the triumphant conviction of strength, the heat of life in the handful of dust, the glow in the heart that with every year grows dim, grows cold, grows small and expires—and expires, too soon, too soon—before life itself.”

(From
Youth
, by Joseph Conrad)

T
HE TRAFFIC TO JFK AIRPORT SLOWS TO A CRAWL FOR THE LAST
five miles of the journey. Two cars have crashed at the intersection of the Van Wyck Expressway and the Southern State Parkway. Normally non-rush hour driving time from Manhattan is thirty-five minutes. Today I will be lucky to make it in fifty. I make most flights with little time to spare, and this delay could prove costly. The Knick’s rule is that if a player misses a flight he must pay a hundred dollar fine plus his own fare. Since we fly to Los Angeles today that could mean a four hundred dollar mistake.

Arriving at the American Airlines terminal ten minutes before departure, I throw my bags to the ticket agent and run for the gate, only to find a line at the security checkpoint. After waiting another five minutes I go through the metal detector and make the plane just as the gate attendant is closing down the flight. The whole group is assembled as I walk into the fuselage. My arrival draws applause. “Too bad, I was hoping you’d miss, Bill,” Holzman says good-naturedly. “You’d have to dig deep for four hundred bucks. Maybe you’d have to go to that stone house where you keep the money from your first paycheck, right Danny?”

“Riiight,” Danny says, stretching the single syllable word to an exclamation which falls somewhere between a battle cry and the sound made during a throat examination.

“Red,” Danny continues, “Bill says it’s twenty minutes to La-Guardia and thirty-five to JFK. Now Red, Bill knows. You got it perfect don’t you, Bill. No mistakes, just right down to the minute. Bill probably got his doughnut and coffee at that greasy spoon on 8th Avenue, read
The New York Times
, then cabbed it to meet the fellows. Almost missed though, didn’t you, Senator?”

“Take it easy on him, Danny,” Red says. “Remember the job. It’s not too long now.”

“Oh, yeah, the job. Remember Bill, Red and I get the first two jobs when you make it big in politics. You know, the high-paying no-show at the beach. The one you promised. I’ll call you and say, ‘Hello Bill, Danny here. Yeah Bill, the water’s still in the ocean and it’s still wet. How about the Atlantic? Bill, have you checked with Red today? and, Bill, don’t forget to mail the check.’”

The plane rolls out to the take-off runway and we are quickly on our way to L.A. for the first stop of a five-game western trip.

Shortly after we are up the stewardess comes around for drink orders. Holzman sets no rules about liquor so each player follows his own inclination.

“Good afternoon,” the stewardess says to Monroe and Jackson, “and what would you like to drink today on our red carpet service to Los Angeles?”

Jackson stares at her, smiling until she is finished, and then says with a straight face, “On our red carpet service to Los Angeles I’d like a glass of orange juice and 7-Up mixed.”

“And you, sir,” she says to Earl who’s reading
Rolling Stone
magazine.

“I’ll have tea with six sugars and lemon.”

“Well, well, six sugars, sir. That’s a lot. Are you sure? The three gentlemen in front want the same thing. We might run short on sugars.”

“I’m sure,” Earl says.

After the meal DeBusschere talks with one of the sportswriters on the trip. Willis reads a book on estate planning. Frazier reads a book on how to improve vocabulary. Earl, Phil, Barnett, and a rookie play cards with Lucas keeping score. Barnett is the moving force behind the game. “Deal ’em,” he says to the regular players and the game begins. Using the table in the front of the first class section of a 747 (or the aisle floor of a 727 with a blanket thrown over it) the four gamblers face each other in whatever game the dealer chooses: whist, bid whist, tonk, hi-low middle, or the staple game, poker. Stakes are relatively small but not insignificant. On a New York-Los Angeles flight a player can win as much as four hundred dollars.

Barnett says he gambles for relaxation and to pass the time—not to win big money. He began playing cards at home with his family while listening to radio programs such as Inner Sanctum and Gang Busters. Outside home he didn’t play cards much until he got to college. And then during his years in Los Angeles with the Lakers he got into games with doctors and lawyers in which three to four thousand dollars might change hands in one night. Poker is his favorite card game. Ask him why and he says, “It reflects a lot about an individual. It is a personality clash more than luck. It gives you an opportunity to make a choice, which is like a lot of things in life—either you can play or you can get out.”

Jackson has the deal. Poker is the game. Phil lost the previous hand on a showdown with Barnett. Phil’s big hands fumble the cards and the eight of clubs falls on the floor.

“Better get a crocus sack to shuffle those cards in,” Barnett says. “Jealous man can’t work and a scared man can’t gamble. Deal ’em, chump.”

The public address system comes on and the captain says, “We hope you are all enjoying the flight. We are flying at 30,000 feet and place ourselves two hours from Los Angeles. On your right is Durango, Colorado, and in the distance you can see Pikes Peak.”

“Rich just ‘Humphrey Bogarted’ that last pot,” says Earl, “just took it for nothing.”

“Look at there,” says the rookie, “he already spread three kings this time; that’s gonna be tough to beat. You should drop now.”

“Yeah,” says Phil as he throws in his cards.

“Way to dig deep, turkey,” Barnett says as he picks up the pot with a toothy smile.

“Better stop countin’ the dollars Rich or they’ll get away from you,” says the rookie. “If Phil had one more club in that hand a while back he’d been over.”

“I’m hip,” says Earl.

“Two in a row makes the rooster crow,” Barnett retorts. “You a real Koufax, Earl, pitchin’ good cards to me.”

The captain makes another announcement: “Shortly we’ll cross the Four Corners—directly above the place where Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado meet at a single point.”

“Your deal Rich,” says Phil. Barnett selects five card stud, deuces wild, and takes his time with the cards, careful to demonstrate in great detail his shuffling ability.

“Way to shuffle the cards,” Earl says, pausing, “to death!”

Everyone looks at their hole card and then at each other.

“Cost you ten to go,” says Earl, who opens with ten dollars on the strength of a pair of fives showing on three cards. Everybody stays.

The fourth card is dealt. Sixty dollars now sit in the pot.

“Tryin’ to stare a hole in ’em, man,” Barnett says to Jackson and the rookie. “Either drop the money or drop out. Put some money in the game and you can talk.”

“Can’t stand your love,” the rookie says as he drops.

With the fifth card there is no more excitement. Earl with a deuce as his hole card shows three fives. He wins the hand, taking Barnett with him to the end.

“How’s it read, Computer,” Dick says to Lucas.

“Barnett up $35 on trip up, $346 on year, Jackson down $26 on trip and up $115 on year, Monroe up $54 on trip, down $85 on year, rookie down $30 on trip, down $43 on year,” Lucas concludes.

The captain comes on again, “Ladies and gentlemen, if you look out on the right of the aircraft you’ll see the main canyon of the Grand Canyon. If you look up the Colorado River along the edges of the canyon you’ll be able to see what looks like a green area. I know it’s hard to see due to the snow, but that’s the Havasupi Indian Reservation. They live on the bottom of the canyon.”