Sports in America by James A. Michener
The most intriguing study I came upon was written not by a psychologist or an athletic philosopher, but by a geographer, John F. Rooney, of Oklahoma State University. He said in effect: ‘Let us study the young men with football talent the way a geographic economist approaches a cargo of gold ore. Where was it mined? Where is it being sent for processing? Who will be the ultimate user?’ He used as data the rosters of 136 major college teams over a period of six years, covering 14,500 players in all.
Rooney’s conclusions are striking. They appear in three places, The Geographical Review (October 1969); Rooney’s book A Geography of American Sport; and as a chapter in the excellent anthology Sport and the Social Order by Donald Ball and John Loy, which I shall be referring to several times. Rooney proves that a city like New York, with its crowded areas and inadequate playing space, produces ‘at the incredibly low rate of only 13 percent of the national norm.’ Philadelphia, Boston, San Francisco and St. Louis are almost as bad. But the suburbs of these same cities, where there is space for gridirons, produce more than the average. ‘The counties around New York City operate at a rate fifteen times greater than the city.’ So do the suburbs of Boston, Los Angeles and San Francisco. But it is in his analysis of the fifty states that his most interesting figures appear:
ORIGIN OF FOOTBALL PLAYERS ON 136 MAJOR-COLLEGE TEAMS EXPRESSED AS PER CAPITA INDEX NUMBER
(Norm: Alabama, Massachusetts, Florida = 1.03)
Which states provide the greatest per capita percentage of players for the professional teams? Mississippi 2.94; Louisiana 2.44; Texas 2.11; Alabama 1.74; and Georgia 1.40, which data provide support for my earlier argument that it is young people from less advantaged areas who look to professional sports as a way of life. You do not find young people of promise from the advantaged states like Wisconsin, Iowa, Connecticut and Oregon bothering with professional sports. They don’t have to.
Rooney’s study, an extensive one filled with graphs and instructive maps, offers other data which one should discuss at length; I found most interesting his identification of certain areas in which the high schools produced football players for export:
COUNTIES THAT RANK HIGH IN OUTPUT OF COLLEGE FOOTBALL PLAYERS
Steubenville, Ohio, and Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, the two leaders in per capita rate, are some twenty-five miles apart. In fact, seven of the twelve leading counties are located in the steel region of western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio. The belt that stretches from Johnstown, Pennsylvania, through the Pittsburgh region, across the panhandle of West Virginia, and via Youngstown to Cleveland accounted for 1,250 ball players, representing a production 2.5 times the national average. Thus from an area with a population of slightly more than six million came nearly 9 percent of the nation’s major-college recruits, and they go anywhere to play.
Rooney also addresses himself to the problem that agitated me: ‘Where is the hotbed of collegiate football?’ He comes up with a statistical answer—ignoring the emotional factors that impressed me so strongly—and shows that certain states support college and university teams far out of proportion to their population:
EMPHASIS ON MAJOR-COLLEGE FOOTBALL BY STATES EXPRESSED AS A PER CAPITA INDEX NUMBER
One final item: Pennsylvania produced 1,333 high school players in this study, and 78 percent had to emigrate out of the state in order to find a college in which to play. Texas produced 1,290 players, and 82 percent of them found a college in Texas which wanted them.
Rooney gives similar breakdowns for other sports, and those for basketball contain some surprises. The city of New York does not lead the nation in supplying hotshot high school players for export; Philadelphia does. In the per capita production, Utah leads, possibly because Mormons emphasize physical well-being, but as the following table shows, Utah is such a basketball-crazy state, with four major teams in a sparsely populated area, that it has to import sixty-one players, seven more than it produces at home (53 percent of total). New Jersey, on the other hand, produces many fine basketball players, but because it is the state with the fewest colleges per capita, most of its stars have to emigrate if they want to play (86 percent). North Carolina and Maryland, whose teams have dominated eastern play for some years, produce so few players from within their states that their championship teams have to be recruited mainly from the north. In fact, no southern state produces anywhere near its projected quota, and whole teams in some of the southern conferences have to be lured south by attractive scholarships.
WHERE 161 MAJOR COLLEGES FIND THEIR BASKETBALL PLAYERS SURPLUS STATES, TOP COLUMN; DEFICIT STATES, BOTTOM COLUMN
A principal characteristic of serious athletes is that they can absorb pain much better than the average person. They may become hypochondriacal about it, and overly body-conscious, but they can withstand a level of pain that is startling. When I had the opportunity of attending a training camp run by one of the top NFL teams, I was prepared for everything I saw: the long drills, the intense dedication of the coaches, the skull sessions, the endless hours watching film, the huge helpings at the training table—everything, that is, except the obvious pain these men had to withstand.
I spent long hours in the taping room, watching as the trainers slapped on miles of adhesive, and it occurred to me that every one of these players bore with him some damage from previous seasons or some heavily discolored bruises from yesterday’s drill. One speedy young black from a small southern college had on his right arm a lump bigger than a good-sized lemon; morning and afternoon the trainer applied special protective gear to absorb shocks which might land in its vicinity. Finally I asked what the lump was.
‘Calcium deposit,’ the lineman said.
‘How come?’
‘Gettin’ hit day after day when I slam into the other guy.’
I moved the huge hard mass and could see him wince. ‘What’ll you do about it?’
‘At the end of the season, get it cut out.’
‘And in the meantime?’
‘Live with it. What else?’
When I speak of the new athlete. I am afraid that many of the old clichés about sportsmanship have to be discarded. I was raised on that sentimental but moving stanza from Sir Henry Newbolt’s ‘Vitaï Lampada.’ It tells of the fledgling cricketer at a boys’ school in England who goes to bat at the end of a crucial game, exhorted by his team captain to do his absolute best to score the runs that will give his side victory:
THERE’S a breathless hush in the Close to-night—
Ten to make and the match to win—
A bumping pitch and a blinding light,
An hour to play and the last man in.
And it’s not for the sake of a ribboned coat,
Or the selfish hope of a season’s fame,
But his Captain’s hand on his shoulder smote—
‘Play up! play up! and play the game!’
A disturbing group of studies shows that ‘varsity lettermen and subsidized athletes score lower on sportsmanship measurements than do non-participants.’ This is important, because if the ideals I learned from Newbolt and others are valuable, and I think they are, then it is the non-athlete who best upholds them and it is the athlete who knows that sentimental talk about sportsmanship is for the birds. Vince Lombardi’s dictate about winning is a much more relevant precept than Newbolt’s command to play the game.
We are back to the question of sport and character. Thomas Tutko has summarized the arguments in an article which has received both condemnation and support: ‘Sport: If You Want to Build Character, Try Something Else.’ And if players and coaches and owners persist in signing contracts and then breaking them whenever a slightly better offer comes along, sports are going to get such a dirty reputation that honest people who consider themselves bound by their word will find them distasteful and shun them.
I am beguiled by some of the nonsense that surrounds the athlete, and I am surprised that he emerges as reasonably sane as he does. Take, for one ridiculous example, this business of all-Ame
But today the process of naming an all-American team has degenerated into sheer burlesque and if any young man has enough talent to slip on a uniform, he stands a good chance of becoming an all-American something or other. I have noted this progression:
• At the beginning of every season the athletic department of each school identifies the player its publicity department is going to back for that year’s all-American. (Big universities sometimes nominate two or three.) A publicity brochure is then printed up, often in four colors, proclaiming ‘Tech State’s all-American!’ I have as I write a handful of these announcements and I have followed the results of six or seven of them through the season. Never, but never, is the local press allowed to refer to the nominee as anything but ‘Tech State’s all-American,’ even though no outside agency has yet confirmed this august title. Since some 695 colleges and universities play football, it is obvious that before the season begins we already have nearly one thousand self-proclaimed all-Americans.
• At the end of the season, if even one newspaper or radio station or magazine or television station names a man to its all-American team, he is forever confirmed. Since a modern all-American football team consists of at least twenty-six players instead of the pristine eleven, it is quite possible that as many as four or five hundred men will be designated and will spend the rest of their lives in their hometowns as all-Americans, even though the origin of the title may have been only the local East Cup Cake Bugle.
• If even two papers, of whatever size, name the young man, he becomes the ‘Consensus All-American’ invariably spelled concensus.
• If more than two nominate him, he becomes ‘Everybody’s All-American.’
• And the other day I saw a real winner referred to as an ‘all-American all-American.’ I judge there are about three hundred of these each year. On the opening pages of this chapter I referred to Chuck Bednarik as an ‘all-American all-Everything’ because the mere phrase all-American was so depreciated as to be meaningless.
This nonsense has been carried to its apex by an enterprising firm that publishes a yearly book, with photographs, of ‘our high school all-Americans.’ To gain entry the young athlete simply sends in his picture and fifteen dollars; then he appears with some four or five hundred other stellar athletes of all-American fame. The lid was blown off this scheme by a newspaper which as a gag submitted the name of a cheerleader, who was promptly designated an all-American fullback. When the paper queried the publishers, they replied, ‘Who’s being hurt?’ I had exactly that feeling when I looked at the most recent publicity brochure to reach my desk: ‘John Jones, Our all-American!’ The fine print disclosed that John had indeed been nominated, by one press association, as one of ninety honorable mentions!
Murray Kempton, in a long review of seven different books on sports, headed his cynical witty comment with the eye-catching title ‘Jock-Sniffing,’ referring to those men and women who, like me, have always respected athletes and enjoyed being in their presence. One glorious summer I toured in the wake of Domingo Ortega through the bullrings of Spain, and thirty-five years later wrote about Spain as a consequence of what I saw that year. I did the same with a remarkable troupe of bullfighters in Mexico. I attended all the sumo fights of Taiho that I could, and through two heartbreaking years I sat weekly in Fenway Park as the Red Sox with Ted Williams tried vainly to outlast the New York Yankees with Joe DiMaggio.
I have taken sports seriously, and those who play them, too. I was fortunate to have worked with one of America’s premier publishers, Bennett Cerf, who was an admirable man to whom I still feel indebted. It always bothered him as to why we could not be better friends, because he knew I respected him. He raised the subject several times, and I finally had to tell him, ‘I could never feel really close to anyone who rooted for the Yankees.’ As a sportsman, he understood. For me, any year was a success if the Yankees lost, and I have been somewhat frustrated in recent seasons when the Yankees finished really low in the standings. I like it better when they remain in contention through August and collapse in late September. It lends a nice touch to autumn.
I would never admit that I was only a jock-sniffer, for I could handle myself reasonably well in whatever sport I tried, but I do confess that I have enjoyed talking with athletes. The most impressive I’ve seen in recent years is Ken Dryden, goalie for the Montreal Canadiens. Tall, above average in looks, unusually intelligent and street-smart, he could represent the prototype of the new athlete, the Bill Bradleys, the John Havliceks, the O. J. Simpsons. I interrupted a Canadien practice to ask if he could drop by my hotel for a short interview; then I got lost in the underground maze which is the pride of Montreal, and was shamefully late. I supposed that Dryden would have been long since gone, but there he was, seated on the floor outside my door, reading a law book.
‘The maze,’ I said apologetically.
‘Few unravel it.’ He laughed, and we went down to the bar, where we both had ginger ale.
He saw life clearly and knew that hockey was merely a gate-opener, a thrilling adventure for the early years. He’d even had the guts to drop out for a whole year to complete his law degree and ultimately he would shift to some productive activity like law or politics or business management. He must have an I.Q. of more than 180, and his superlative athletic competence has been proved many times over, for he is one of the best goalies in the business and has led his team to a championship.
There are many young men and women around today like Ken Dryden and Billy Vessels and Robin Roberts—to name three examples from three radically different sports—and we can hope that there will be a constant supply forthcoming. I wish that the ‘small dark wiry persons’ who write about athletes so disparagingly would just once build their fiction around a character like Ken Dryden.
And yet, being a writer myself, if I were to attempt a novel on this theme, even though I know what I would do about the commendable athletes who survive, I would base it on Jimmy Foxx. The drama of his life was so compelling and its denouement so tragic that I would not be able to avoid it.
James Emory Foxx was born on a farm near Sudlersville on the eastern shore of Maryland in 1907. Since this was the same year in which I was born, I followed his meteoric career with special interest, comparing my drab accomplishments with his resplendent ones. When I started work on this chapter, one of the first things I did was make a wintry pilgrimage to Sudlersville, a small crossroads country town.
I went to the bank and asked the vice-president, ‘Is there anyone around here who remembers Jimmy Foxx?’ and he replied, ‘We all do. But the barber over there knew him best.’
Fortunately, the barber turned out to be a Ring Lardner type. His shop stood next to the house, now torn down, in which Jimmy had lived during his years of fame. ‘Since you’re interested,’ he said, ‘I’ll give you a real Jimmy Foxx haircut,’ and as he did he shared his many recollections.
‘He was a big boy, huge square face, square shoulders, square arms. At fourteen he was knockin’ balls right out of our little field, and Home Run Frank Baker managin’ the Easton team in the Eastern Shore League heard of him and he come up to watch this boy slam homers and Frank said, “He’ll hit more’n I ever did.”
‘Jimmy musta been fifteen or maybe sixteen when he started playin’ for Easton, and down there he hit the ball so far the whole eastern shore was talkin’ about him. When Jimmy was eighteen Baker told Connie Mack, because you see, Easton was a farm club for the A’s which made Foxx legally their property already. Any rate, at eighteen this big country boy with the mighty shoulders was a big leaguer and he picked up right where he left off at Easton.’
I told the barber I remembered those first years. I was still in high school when this amazing natural athlete hit the big
‘But he was always a drinker,’ the barber told me as he clipped away. ‘And he wasted his money somethin’ shameful. I saw in the paper where he earned maybe $250,000 and held on to practically none. A party? An automobile ride to the next town for some pool-shooting? A little hell-raisin’ for any purpose? You could always count on Jimmy in the good years when he had the money.’
At thirty-eight the good years ended and I lost track of Foxx. I heard vaguely that he was in California, then in Florida, then mixed up in some land deal somewhere. He returned to my consciousness one night in 1956 in a peculiar way. Barney Berlinger, now president of a company making precision gears, told me after dinner, ‘Strangest thing happened today. I was out on the street near our shop and who do I see but Jimmy Foxx! Same old square face and happy smile, but very much overweight, very much the bum, his eyes barely able to focus. He recognized me and said, “Remember me, Barney? The good times we used to have?”
‘Did I remember? As a boy Jimmy had been not only a good baseball player but a great track star too. In spite of his bulk he could run like a deer. Held the Maryland title for the hundred-yard dash and the two-twenty. Just after he signed his first big contract with the A’s he picked me up one day to go down to the eastern shore for a meet. We drove at eighty miles an hour in his convertible and he kept firing a .45 revolver at telephone poles. Lew Krause was in a second car, an old one, trying to keep up with us but falling farther behind, so Jimmy pulled over and waited for him to catch up. Then we drove together into the center of Dover, and Jimmy went into the showroom of a Studebaker dealer and bought a new car right off the floor. Flashing a big roll of bills, he paid the man on the spot and told Krause, “Now maybe you can keep up,” and we roared south, with him firing his .45 at the telephone poles.