Also a football star

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Maybe the best summation of Jim Brown, on the occasion of his death this week at 87, came from Brown himself during a brief 2010 interview.

“I am a born activist,” he said then. “I have an opinion about most things.” He was sitting in a make-up chair that day, preparing to offer his judgements on a number of topics on the cable show CenterStage, which featured mostly reverential sessions with sports stars and other celebrities.

Of course Brown was a football wizard, still considered—now almost six decades after the end of his professional career with the Cleveland Browns—among the sport’s handful of greatest performers. He was a movie star, the first Black action hero on the silver screen. He was an outspoken advocate for civil rights, founder of programs to support Black businesses and ex-convicts attempting to restart their lives. But, too, he was arrested a half-dozen times for assault charges against women, including his second wife.

He was an intimidating presence, 6-foot-2 and 230 pounds during his playing days, and acknowledged having issues with anger management. Of the Martin Luther King Jr./Mahatma Gandi philosophy of non-violent resistance, he told Esquire magazine in 2008, “I don’t know what they’re talking about. Spit on me and I’ll knock you out. I ain’t going to sing and march, man. But I’m fair.”

He never hesitated to speak his mind, regularly challenging expectations. At 29, at the peak of his football powers, having just led the NFL in rushing for an eighth time in his ninth season, Brown abruptly retired to go into movies full time. “People asked me, ‘Why would you want to quit?’ I said, ‘I make more money [as an actor], have Raquel Welch as a leading lady. I don’t get hit. They call me Mr. Brown.’”

He was born off the southern coast of Georgia on St. Simons Island, which at the time was an all-Black region with a slave-trade history but later was transformed into a resort community. He father abandoned the family six weeks after Brown’s birth and his mother relocated to the New York City suburbs to work as a domestic, leaving young Jim with a grandmother until he moved north to Manhasset, Long Island, at 8.

He excelled in football, track, basketball and especially lacrosse in high school and “pitched a couple of no-hitters,” he said, “but I wasn’t good at baseball.” Reports that the Yankees offered him $150,000 were “an exaggeration,” he said, “but I did get a letter from [Yankees manager] Casey Stengel.”

He always claimed that he experienced “no racism” during school and a Manhasset attorney named Ken Molloy organized fund-raisers in the local community to pay for Brown’s first year at Syracuse University, where he competed in basketball, track and lacrosse but was the only Black on the freshman football team and wasn’t offered an athletic scholarship until he demonstrated an ability to make the varsity.

That accomplished, he once scored 43 points in a single game (via touchdowns and placekicking) against Colgate.

“Sports,” Brown said during that 2010 chat, “always make people react a certain way. People are impressed by athletes. Overly so. I get a lot of things coming my way because I’m an athlete, and sometimes it isn’t fair.”

But it was his football ability that removed so many complications. He found less racism in football than in lacrosse, which he always said was his better sport. Paul Brown, his first coach with the Browns, “didn’t like my attitude of independence,” he said, “but he loved the way I played.”

A decade after Brown retired, in October 1975, when I was covering the New York Giants’ preparations to face the Buffalo Bills and Buffalo’s superstar running back O.J. Simpson, Giants coaches compared their challenge to what every NFL team had known about defending Jim Brown.

“When I was with Detroit,” then Giants assistant Floyd Peters said, “every time we’d play the Browns we’d try everything to stop Jimmy. He’d still get his 125 yards. Same thing when I went to Philadelphia.…Our linebacker would go stand right next to him; the old joke about going with the guy when he goes to the peanut stand.

“Once, we thought we’d figured him out,” Peters said. “Studied him on film and began to notice that on every play, he’d cut back after he went through the hole. So one of our dumb tackles made sure he was ready for the cutback, and sure enough, here came Jimmy. The tackle gets him down, and his eyes get great big and he yells—for everyone to hear, including Jimmy—‘Hey, he DOES cut back!’ On the next play Jimmy went right past the guy, all the way for a touchdown.”

Likewise, Brown lulled opponents into believing they were wearing him down by dragging himself weakly off the ground following each tackle, trudging slowly back to the huddle. Only to materialize—faster and stronger—on the next play.

“For mercurial speed, airy nimbleness and explosive violence in one package of undistilled evil,” celebrated sports columnist Red Smith once wrote, “there is no other like Mr. Brown.”

There now are 12 men who have surpassed Brown’s 1963 NFL single-season rushing record of 1,862 yards. But all of their careers bled into the league’s expansion from 14 to 16 games per season (Brown had four seasons with 12 games, five with 14). And none have matched Brown’s one-season mark of 6.4 yards per carry.

That’s one definition of activism.

What are the odds?

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A math problem: If a thoroughbred racehorse weighs roughly 1,500 pounds, is supported by ankles the size of a homo sapien’s and runs at speeds approaching 45 miles per hour while carrying a human on his back who weighs up to 126 pounds, how long would it take for that horse to break a leg?

Extra credit: If that steed has been administered a drug to mask pain from some previous discomfort, a common practice in the sport, to what extent would that increase the likelihood of serious injury? Could it be calculated that racing on a dirt track, as opposed to grass, further shortens the animal’s life expectancy?

As a lesson on reacting professionally to unexpected distress at an otherwise entertaining event, I show my Hofstra University sportswriting students the 1949 New York Sun newspaper column “Death of a Racehorse.”

“They were going into the turn, and now Air Lift was starting to go,” W.C. Heinz wrote that July day, “when suddenly he slowed, a horse stopping, and below in the stands you could hear a sudden cry, as the rest left him, still trying to run but limping, his jockey—Dave Gorman—half falling, half sliding off.

“‘He broke a leg!’ somebody, holding binoculars to his eyes, shouted at the press box. ‘He broke a leg!’”

Heinz so effectively informed his readers—setting the scene, portraying the various characters’ reactions, describing the predictable result of putting the horse out of his misery—that Ernest Hemingway called the piece “a classic of American literature.”

“Gilman had the halter and Catlett had the gun, shaped like a bell with the handle at the top,” Heinz wrote. “The bell he placed, the crowd silent, on the colt’s forehead, just between the eyes. The colt stood still, and then Catlett, with the hammer in his other hand, struck the handle of the bell. There was a short, sharp sound and the colt toppled onto his left side, his eyes staring, his legs straight out, the free legs quivering.”

They don’t shoot horses at the racetrack any more. But then as now, if a horse breaks a leg, recovery from surgery is virtually impossible. Horses are heavy animals who spend most of their time on their feet, even sleeping, and the lack of movement during potential healing only leads to infection and pain. The only change these days, compared to what H.C. Heinz chronicled 74 years ago, is that thoroughbreds who suffer broken legs in action are put down by a veterinarian’s lethal injection, right there trackside, after an ambulance arrives and a large screen is placed around the proceedings.

And here comes the 2023 Preakness, the second leg of the Triple Crown series, after seven horses died during Kentucky Derby week, two of them on race day, and the Derby’s morning-line favorite, Forte, was scratched hours before post time after veterinarians declared him unfit to run.

Those dark acts recalled 2008—coincidentally, the year that W.C. Heinz died of natural causes at 93—when a filly named Eight Belles, steps after finishing second in the Derby, broke down and was humanely destroyed. Two weeks later, when Big Brown added the Preakness title to his Derby win, the worst fears of casual horse racing fans—and, indeed, the racing industry—were not realized as all 12 thoroughbreds got safely through the event.

Just two years earlier, Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro had shattered his leg in 27 places during the Preakness and, despite surgery and massive efforts to rehabilitate him, was euthanized eight months later.

About that math problem, then: Horseracing experts acknowledge that what makes thoroughbreds so formidable is what makes them so flimsy. Engineered to run fast on spindly little legs by the breeding process, they have been described as a genetic mistake—running too fast with a frame that is too large on legs far too small.

According to The Jockey Club’s Equine Injury Database, between 700 and 800 racehorses are injured and die every year, averaging just under two breakdowns per 1,000 starts. That fact flies under the radar for most people—that is, those of the non-wagering persuasion—who tend to believe that a horse is just a horse. Except during the Triple Crown season, when far more of the public pay attention to the sport.

The Triple Crown format itself has been called into question for three high-stakes races within five weeks even though horse trainers admit that at least 30 days between competitions is preferable. Then again, the sport’s insiders argue that the “tradition” of two weeks between the Derby and Preakness and three between the Preakness and Belmont Stakes is a great part of the charm, separating mere racehorses from super horses—and ought to be maintained as a lifeblood for the sport’s popularity. (Nobody has asked the horses what they think.)

I don’t (as the saying goes) have a horse in this race. But W.C. Heinz summed up some unavoidable feelings, both inside and outside the sport, with his sentence following a description of Air Lift’s euthanization in that 1949 column:

“‘Aw —-‘ someone said.”

But thanks for asking…

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(This appeared in Newsday’s Act2 section)

Deflecting robocalls is simple enough, if aggravating and time consuming. (My wife likes to mess with the callers, telling those who claim to have great life insurance offers that she isn’t interested because she’s 100 years old, or shutting down home insurance pitches by declaring she lives in her car.) But now the scammers have invaded my dinky little website, flooding the comments page with overtures to find magical success in business and health without my extending any effort whatsoever.

“Make money in your sleep with these INCREDIBLE A.I. Bots,” one promised. “Artificial Intelligence is taking over and helping ordinary people make money in their sleep. Literally!”

And: “Are you tired of the dull, straightforward approach to SEO? Fear not! ChatGPT has got you covered with these hilarious prompts that will have you laughing your way to the top of the SERPs.”

Ha. Ha.

There is this one fellow (“Hi, Eric here” — I assume he’s a real person and, if true, he’s a tireless so-and-so) who makes contact two, three, four times a day, telling me what a terrific website I have but how I need to take advantage of his masterful skills (and A.I. tools) to get more attention.

Others are less personal, addressing me as “dear business owner [who is] working hard on your business … but can use technology to help you supplement and, over time, even replace your income. ChatGPT and AI are here.”

Yeah, yeah.

My website isn’t a business at all, merely a bit of self-indulgent entertainment mulling such heavy topics as sports, hobbies and life experiences. But here comes another: “Having a hard time coming up with all the social media content for your business? If I told you that you can eliminate the stress today would you beleive [sic] me?”

Well, no, if you can’t spell “believe.”

I have been told that my business doesn’t have a proper Google map citation. I have been informed that somebody named Glynn “has revealed how he makes 30k a month” and “now YOU can ‘clone’ his exact online business … and it’s powered by A-I.”

I have been provided unsolicited advice in Spanish: “Resena sobre la importancia de sin Seguro conductor cobertura …” — something about the importance of auto insurance, says Google Translate — etc., etc. Also in what could be Serbian, Bulgarian or Russian; it’s written in the Cyrillic alphabet.

Da.

No reason to translate them because there hardly is time to get through the endless stream of the ones in English — often fractured English — that “guarantee the production of blog articles, social media posts, GoogleAd copy, FacebookAd copy, LinkedIn sales pitches, all your promotional materials, all your emails and so so so much more.”

Which comes, by the way, with “no strings attached.”

And how did this one get in here? “Hi there! I understand that you are looking for ways to improve your posture and contribute to a healthy lifestyle … Looking for a healthy and effective way to shed those extra pounds?”

There’s also the flattery angle. “I do not even know how I ended up here, but I thought this post was great,” a recent message started, purporting to comment on my treatise on England’s King Charles or global warming or unwise wagers at the horse track. “I don’t know who you are but certainly you are going to be a famous blogger if you are not already.”

As dubious as that sounded, at least it wasn’t threatening.

“We have hacked your website johnjeansonne.com and extracted your databases,” an ominous new item warned, which “would be detrimental to your personal image …. Now you can put a stop to this by paying a $3000 fee (0.11 BTC) in bitcoin to the following address [provided with a link]….We will be notified of payment which we will then delete the information we have obtained. You have 72 hours to do so….”

Eric? Is that you?

Boston runs on

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Anyone who has witnessed the Boston Marathon even once knows what it means to that city as a rite of spring and affirmation of life. What may seem a foolhardy endeavor, running more than 26 miles for no apparent reason (since less than one percent of the participants are professional athletes with a reasonable expectation of winning prize money), in fact is a feel-good statement applied to Boston runners and spectators alike for more than 100 years.

A decade ago, the bombings at the finish line of Boston’s race devastated more than 100 lives, and has impacted race organizers’ and participants’ safety awareness ever since. But the two-way affection that exists between runners and spectators is hard-wired into Marathon Day. And that not only has been preserved but enhanced, as will be evident again on this significant anniversary of the 2013 attack.

A musician named Sal Nastasi, who was the fastest Long Island finisher at that disrupted 2013 event, spoke days afterwards of “giving high-fives [to spectators] the whole way until I was too tired to stretch my arm out. You can’t do that to A-Rod at a Yankee game. That’s the coolest thing about a marathon.”

There is no sports event, apart from the major big-city marathons, in which rank amateurs partake in the same competition on the same playing field as the world’s elite, and Boston has been doing it since 1897, longer than any other such race.

Some non-running citizens have been known to grumble about how the marathon causes traffic snafus and other temporary inconveniences every Patriots Day in Boston, but just as many have called the event a physical muse, motivating them to take up a jogging regimen and, sometimes, the commitment to try a future marathon.

This was my experience in 1973, when I covered the first of 14 or 15 Bostons for Newsday and met Johnny Kelley. He was 65 at the time, running his 42nd of what eventually would be a record 61 Bostons—the kind of streak that can’t help but serve as a dare to onlookers.

Kelley had won the Boston Marathon in 1935 and 1945 and continued running the entire distance until 1992, when he was 84. He became such a celebrity, waving to the cheering crowds along the route with a white handkerchief, that race officials encouraged him to jump into the race for its last seven miles until he was 86. (He died in 2004, at 97.)

He didn’t recommend marathoning for everyone, “but for those who are in shape and can run the thing,” he said, “I think it’s the greatest race in the world. I hope it goes on forever.”

Boston’s race has grown exponentially in the last 50 years, with more than 25 times the number of runners this year than in 1973. It could be argued that the enormous crowds—and the carefree, festival atmosphere—are what made it more attractive for evil terrorist theatrics. A soft target.

But you can’t have Patriots Day, the third Monday of April celebrating the first battles of the American Revolution, without crowds filling the village of Hopkinton and kids dangling from trees to get a better view of the marathon start; without the college women at Wellesley shrieking encouragement to passing runners halfway through the race; without lawns filled with beer-drinkers and kids with water hoses to cool passing runners at Heartbreak Hill, on the doorstep of Boston College 22 miles into the run; without the great crowds forming a corridor of noise for hours and hours as the runners reach the Boylston Street finish line.

No one will likely forget how two bombs shattered that finish-line scene 10 years ago. But the spirit of Johnny Kelley will live on. It’s the coolest thing about the Boston Marathon.

Another puckish poll

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(Stan Isaacs)

It is now 10 years since star Newsday columnist Stan Isaacs died at 83, much too long to go without his annual Isaacs Ratings of Esoteric Distinction. Included in Isaacs’ lengthy and distinguished career as a serious journalist was an awareness of when to find a giggle, and that’s where IRED came in, a whimsical ranking of decidedly inconspicuous topics—“an appraisal of areas that are generally ignored by raters,” he proclaimed—such as bowling pins, Fred Astaire’s dancing partners, TV remote buttons, “People Who Are Neither on the Way Up or Down.”

Each April, something to fit “fools’ day,” Isaacs would publish his self-described “loving spoof of the Ring Magazine boxing ratings…a rush to respond to the unrecognized need for evaluation of quantities like the Bridges Across the River Seine.” He would commence with a grading of the best chocolate ice creams, then move on to such matters as evaluating “Things That Aren’t as Good as They Used to Be.”

A keen observer with a twinkle in his eye, Isaacs declared that there was “no category too arcane” to grade. Bryan Curtis of the website Grantland’s noted shortly after Isaacs’ death that he had been “a fierce opponent of whatever he was ‘supposed’ to be writing, an insurrectionist with a smile.”

To me and, I suspect, to veteran Newsday readers, he was a journalism hero. And so, herewith, a feeble attempt at resurrecting IRED with 2023 topics:

Balloons: 1, Animal; 2, Latex; 3, Weather; 4, Mylar; 5, Hot Air; 6, Chinese Spy.

Climates: 1, Tropical; 2, Dry; 3, Temperate; 4, Continental; 5, Polar; 6, Change.

George Santos claims (actual and otherwise): 1, Baruch College volleyball star; 2, Baruch College student; 3, Goldman Sachs superstar; 4, Jew-ish; 5, Broadway producer of “Spiderman” musical; 6, Super Bowl champion; 7, four-time Olympic taekwondo gold medalist; 8, CPA, DDS, MBA; 9, local dog catcher; 10, U.S. Congressman.

Persona non grata: 1, Russia; 2, George Santos; 3, Harry and Meghan.

Elvis impersonators outside of Las Vegas: 1, Austin Butler.

Bunnies and rabbits: 1, Easter; 2, Velveteen; 3, Pat The; 4, Br’er; 5, Energizer; 6. White; 7. Bad.

Not ready for prime-time spectator sports: 1, Quidditch; 2, Hot-dog eating; 3, Korfball (ask your Dutch friends); 4, Pickleball.

Technological breakthroughs: 1, Light bulb; 2, Telephone; 3, Internal combustion engine; 3, Internet; 4, iPhones; 6, chips (not potato); 7, A-I (TBD).

Artificial Intelligence: 1, Alexa; 2, Siri; 3, ChatGPT; 4, Bard; 5, Something called Flippy (if you’re hungry for fried food).

Baseball rules (old and new): 1, Infield fly; 2, Ground; 3, Pitch clock; 4, Pizza-box bases; 5, Universal DH; 6, Three strikes you’re out.

Fashion plate eligible for a Mr. Blackwell list: 1, LSU women’s basketball coach Kim Mulkey.

Comedy: 1, Sketch; 2, Stand-up; 3, Dark; 4, Topical; 5, Slapstick; 6, Endless, non-stop “news” of the New York Jets obtaining quarterback Aaron Rodgers.

Roadside signage too regularly ignored: 1, Speed limit 55; 2, Speed limit 20; No turn on red; 3, No U-turn; 4, No Parking; 5, Slow; 6, Stop.

Longest days: 1, First day of summer; 2, When daylight savings time ends (changed clocks add an hour to total 25); 3, Any day in a doctor’s office waiting room.

Major comebacks: 1, NASA shooting for the Moon after 50 years; 2, Inflation.

U.S. Presidents arrested: 1, Ulysses S. Grant (speeding in his horse-drawn carriage); 2, Donald Trump (34 counts).

Whatever happened to… 1, Snow; 2, Reading stuff in newspapers and books (as opposed to iPhones); 3, Facemask mandates.

Bulbs: 1, Halogen; 2, Fluorescent; 3, Incandescent; 4, LED; 5, dim.

The old college try: 1, NCAA women’s tournament runner-up Iowa; 2, NCAA men’s tournament runner-up San Diego State; 3, 30,000 runners in this year’s Boston Marathon (wherever they finish).

Channels: 1, PBS; 2, ABC; 3, CBS; 4, CNN; 5, ESPN; 6, Fox; 7, English.

Seeds on rocky ground

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Today’s discussion considers whether March college basketball might have just as much madness if the seeding of teams were eliminated entirely. Might some results—such as Fairleigh Dickenson lowering the boom on Purdue or Princeton ambushing Arizona in the first round this year—have been just as compelling without the numbers in front of their names?

Fairleigh Dickenson came to the Dance as runner-up in the Northeast Conference, against the likes of Merrimack and Stonehill, while Purdue was the Big Ten champ. Those facts may have established FDU as the underdog and reinforced a pecking order in the sport, just as Ivy League Princeton was lower on the food chain than the Pac 12’s Arizona. But did the process of attaching seeds to the combatants—essentially guesswork performed by an NCAA tournament selection committee—add any suspense?

This annual hoops ruckus is based on unexpected outcomes, and it could be said that Fairleigh Dickenson (a No. 16 against a No. 1) and Princeton (a No. 15 vs. a No. 2) certainly met the challenge of reaping what the selection committee had sowed. The 2023 tournament has demonstrated, over and over, that the old power conference/mid-major gap, which figures mightily into seeding, is closing.

Florida Atlantic, tagged with a No. 9, is in the Final Four after knocking off No. 4 Tennessee and No. 3 Kansas State. More to the point, Florida Atlantic, the Conference USA champion, this season has won 35 games (against three losses), the most of any men’s team in the country.

The other Final Four participants are Connecticut (No. 4), Miami (No. 5) and San Diego State (No. 5), after the farthest any of the four No. 1 seeds progressed was the third round (both Alabama and Houston). No No. 2 or 3 seed got past the fourth round.

According to the fivethirtyeight.com site, which deals in polls and probabilities regarding everything from Joe Biden’s popularity to who might win racing’s Triple Crown, the pre-tournament likelihood of a San Diego State-Florida Atlantic semifinal was a mere 0.05 percent. The chance of a UConn-Miami semi was 0.3 percent. Fivethirtyeight—its stated mission statement is to “use data and evidence to advance public knowledge, adding certainty where we can and uncertainty where we must”—now gives UConn the best chance (43 percent) of winning the title. Hmm. Another nod to the highest seed remaining.

It’s all a big stab in the dark.

Way back in 2012, then-Georgetown coach John Thompson III declared that “you are foolish if you go into the tournament and look at the numbers (seeds) behind the name and assume that, just because of that number, one team is significantly better than the other.” These days, with the infamous “transfer portal” that makes players free agents, traditional powerhouse schools no longer call all the shots.

More and more, carrying a low seed has become something of a talent camouflage. Much easier for a Fairleigh Dickenson to pooh-pooh Purdue.

The tournament debuted in 1939 with eight teams and not until 1979, with 40 participants, did the NCAA seed teams. But even after such attempts at predictive outcomes, in the 44 years since then, one of the four No. 1 regional seeds has won the title just 24 times. That’s 176 No. 1 seeds over that span, with a championship success rate of just over 7 percent.

A modest proposal: Skip the seeding. Put the 68 tournament teams in a hat and execute a blind draw to fill the brackets. Stop reinforcing the fallacy of a never-changing hoops hierarchy. Encourage all comers to consider themselves an equal part of this basketball propulsion lab. Dare all the teams to respect everybody, fear nobody.

True madness, no?

Do this. Do that.

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(This appeared in Newsday’s Act2 section)

Need directions? Not the GPS, geographical type. No. This kind of thing:

“Shave immediately after showering or gently rub shave area with warm water for 30 seconds. Massage an almond-sized dollop [of the product] onto wet skin until a light lather forms. Add water as needed.”

Maybe it is the circumstance of being semiretired, with extra time on my hands, that has made me notice the abundance of guidance offered on various merchandise and gizmos, much of it gratuitous. Been shaving for roughly 60 years, and it never occurred to seek that sort of instruction.

I am a male person, and therefore fully aware of the cliché that men don’t ask directions; that, if we are lost, asking for directions is like admitting defeat. But sweeping generalizations — in general — are not absolute truths. Besides, is it really necessary to read on the bottle of windshield washer fluid, “Pour directly into car’s windshield washer reservoir”?

Here’s one for liquid hand soap: “Pump into hands, wet as needed. Lather vigorously for at least 30 seconds. Wash skin, rinse thoroughly and dry.”

Pretty obvious, no? And how about pill bottles that order, “Take one tablet by mouth daily.” By mouth? What would be the other options?

And how about the detail on putting laundry stain remover to use? “1, turn to ON. 2, cover the stain with [the product] and rub in. To refill, unscrew cap and pour liquid into bottle.”

That certainly is specific. As opposed this kind of thing: “Apply as needed.” Or: “Season to taste.”

Should we suspect that, in many cases, the manufacturer is endeavoring to avert future accusations of policy error or wrongdoing (and possibly legal action) by deflecting responsibility in advance? Something between due diligence and plausible deniability?

Given our litigious culture, posting alerts of potential danger might be understandable. “Keep out of reach of children and pets.” And: “Avoid breathing vapors” on a can of fire extinguisher. On a container of paint stripper: “Wear chemical-resistant gloves and chemical splash goggles.”

The more mature among us can remember, in the days when too many people smoked cigarettes and a popular advertising giveaway was the matchbook, there was the thoroughly predictable alert, “Close cover before striking.”

In terms of words-to-the-wise warnings, my favorite is the sly paragraph on the first page of Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn”: “Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. By order of the author, per G.G., Chief of Ordinance.”

So. Here I will admit I did not read any of the 358 pages in my car owner’s manual until I had to figure out how to input the correct tire pressure into the car’s computer, or how to set the clock to daylight saving time. (Took a while to zero in on the right pages of the manual.) The car came with an additional 30-page booklet of tips about the “infotainment” system and the phone interface. I just pushed various buttons until things worked out.

So, yes, I’m a guy. And the maker of my hair shampoo understands. On the bottle, under “Directions,” is: “It is presumed you don’t need directions to use this product.”

I leave you with this: Shake well.

Press box apartheid

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In 1977, Sports Illustrated reporter Melissa Ludtke was being told that the only real sportswriters were men, and those men were not to bring a “girlfriend” or “secretary” into the inner sanctum of baseball clubhouses. That was 35 years after the Katherine Hepburn-Spencer Tracy movie “Woman of the Year” appeared, in which Tracy (playing a sportswriter) brought the highly-educated, well-traveled political affairs columnist (Hepburn) into Yankee Stadium’s pressbox and was emphatically reminded it was no place for “ladies.”

“Indeed, change takes longer than we ever imagine it will,” Ludtke emailed after I noted the persistence of such beliefs. “As I found out, it is easier to change the law than it is to change attitudes.”

This was just after Ludtke spoke via Zoom to my Hofstra University sportswriting class about events surrounding the 1978 court order that at last permitted female reporters access to major league baseball players in their team bunkers. At the time, Ludtke was a fully-credentialled baseball writer alongside fellow journalists covering the Yankees—all of them male—but barred from joining the men for pre- and post-game interviews in the team’s lockerroom.

She was exiled to a tunnel outside the Yanks’ clubhouse, at the mercy of a male official who would attempt to fetch players for Ludtke to obtain a quote or two. And in the case of the Yankees’ 1977 World Series-clinching victory, Ludtke waited an hour and 45 minutes in that tunnel, among a raucous crowd of fans and hangers-on, before Reggie Jackson, whose three home runs were the story of the night, appeared.

“Melissa,” Jackson brusquely informed her, “I’ve said all I have to say tonight” [to the men who had quizzed him inside]. I’m going downtown.” And he left.

“What Commissioner [Bowie] Kuhn was saying to me basically was, ‘We’re going to give you separate accommodations and we’ll call it equal, because you’re going to have access to the players. It’s just not going to be in the lockerroom with the men,’” Ludtke said.

So Time, Inc., Sports Illustrated’s parent company, sued. And the federal court judge who ruled in the case, Constance Baker Motley of the Southern District of New York, applied the same reasoning that went into the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education decision: That separate cannot be equal.

So Ludtke (and all women sportswriters) won. Technically. Motley “did not say that I was allowed in lockerrooms,” Ludtke said. “The decision about where interviews took place was not a decision a federal judge could make because baseball was a private business.

“The only thing she could say was: ‘Whatever your media policy is, it needs to be non-discriminatory between men and women.’” So if Kuhn continued to require that interviews take place within the clubhouse, then Ludtke and other women also could be in that space.

All of this will be in Ludtke’s book, “Locker Room Talk,” to be released next year. As well as her reminder that, while she won in the court of law, “I lost big time in the court of public opinion.”

There were television skits and newspaper cartoons implying that female sports reporters were looking for more than quotes from male athletes. That they were using their feminine wiles to elicit information from the ballplayers, or were looking for dates. In a sense, Ludtke went from Dante’s first circle of hell, limbo, to the ninth circle, treachery.

“This was about equal rights. Equal access,” she said. “But there was always that notion that this was about nudity and sex.”

All these years later, there is a growing number of women in sports journalism, in press boxes and lockerrooms, doing their jobs, though still decidedly in the minority. But, too: In 1999, the Library of Congress selected that 1942 film, “Woman of the Year,” for preservation in the National Film Registry based on it being “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.” Which might mean that the no-ladies-in-the-press-box conviction is not especially dated.

Arthur Ashe

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I had not yet heard of Barack Obama at the time, and certainly had not considered the kind of leap forward in American race relations that could lead to voting a black man into the White House. But in late August of 1992, during a lengthy interview with Arthur Ashe, it suddenly didn’t seem the least bit unreasonable when Ashe said, “I really want to be president. I think I can be a good president.”

Here in Black History Month, and now 30 years since Ashe’s death at 49 from complications of AIDS, is an ideal time to be reminded that Arthur Ashe is not just a stadium in New York City. Not just some departed tennis pioneer.

Ashe called himself a “political nut.” He was the rare athletic champion who actually connected with the real world. He was an activist against South African apartheid, a public face in the fight against HIV (which he had contracted through a blood transfusion after a second heart attack), an advocate for children’s education, a published historian.

When he found research material on past black athletes frustratingly lacking, he spent six years finishing his own three-volume work, “A Hard Road to Glory.” He was disappointed to learn that three-time Olympic track and field champion Jackie Joyner-Kersee had never heard of Alice Coachman, the first black woman to win Olympic gold (in the 1948 high jump). He called a dismissive quote by baseball’s Vince Coleman (“I don’t know nothing about no Jackie Robinson”) “one of the saddest things I’ve ever heard.”

Ashe was a worldly, well-educated black man of enormous calm and grace who shattered stereotypes: An athlete with a sense of history, a jock interested in schooling, an elite sportsman who played in horn-rimmed glasses. He was a black star in what had been (and mostly remains) a white man’s sport—winner of three of tennis’ four Grand Slam tournaments.

And to celebrated sportswriter Frank Deford, who knew Ashe well, Ashe had offered a glimpse of the 2008 presidential campaign, in that Obama “reminds me more of Arthur Ashe than anyone in his own business,” Deford wrote.

After his death on Feb. 6, 1993, Ashe’s coffin was put on public view in the state capitol building in Richmond, Va.—Ashe’s hometown, but also the capital of the Confederacy and the heart of the not-so-long-ago segregated South. A local Baptist preacher named Larry Nobles was among some 5,500 people who paid their respects over four hours, marveling at the setting (Robert E. Lee’s father originally had lived on the site). “This is history, isn’t it?” Nobles asked then. “Look at this. This is history.”

In the crowd that day was LaVerne Buckner, who said she sat in front of Ashe in sophomore history class at segregated Maggie Walker High School more than 30 years before. “I was talking with friends before,” she said, “and we mentioned that Stonewall Jackson and Lee must be rumbling in their graves today.”

At Ashe’s funeral the next day, then-New York mayor David Dinkins called Ashe a “freedom fighter” and “one of the most decent human beings I have ever known. Let me say it as plainly as I can: Arthur Ashe was just plain better than most of us.”

The story was told about Ashe’s younger brother once sarcastically asking him, “If the world breaks down, are you going to fix it with a tennis racket?” Followed by testimonials that, in effect, Ashe did.

There now is a statue of Ashe in Richmond, at one end of Monument Avenue—which also had sculptures of Confederate president Jefferson Davis and Confederate general Robert E. Lee—depicting Ashe with books in one hand and a tennis racket in the other, and surrounded by children. Symbolically fixing the world through a new generation.

“He said he did not wish to be remembered just as a tennis player,” then-Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown told mourners at the funeral, “and I’m sure that we all will honor that wish. But I will surely remember his victory in the U.S. Open [in 1968—the first year of open tennis], and I surely will remember his victory at Wimbledon [in 1975]. He was a beautiful black man in beautiful white clothes, playing a beautiful white game. And winning.”

Jesse Jackson called Ashe “a moment in the conscience of mankind.” A champion, Jackson said, “when he wins, rides on the people’s shoulders. But a hero lifts the people. When Arthur won, we were on his shoulders.”

Ashe had been introduced to tennis when he was 5 years old, as the result of his father being named caretaker of the second-largest tennis club in Richmond, a job that came with a house located on the club’s grounds. Tutored by Lynchburg physician Walter Johnson, who had aided Althea Gibson’s entry into the national championships at Forest Hills—the forerunner to the U.S. Open—Ashe earned a tennis scholarship to UCLA, graduated with a business degree, learned 16 variations of the backhand stroke and became the first tennis pro to earn over $100,000. He looked out for his colleagues, founding the ATP, the players’ union for the men’s tour, at a tumultuous time when major tournaments were moving past an amateur model.

“Athletes,” he noted during that 1992 interview, “are focused on the here and now. Most of our premier athletes are between 18 and 34 years old. In that range, you’re at your best in a physical and emotional sense. You think you’re immortal. We all think of ourselves as invincible, indestructible.”

Yet he always was thinking beyond the game. Being able to sit down with national and global shakers and movers and decision-makers, he said, was “one of the joys of being a professional tennis player for 10 years.” When Nelson Mandela was released from his South African prison after 27 years, the first person he asked to visit was Ashe.

At a New York City memorial two days after Ashe’s funeral, tennis champ Billie Jean King said, “Arthur had the cutest, tiniest, sweetest ears I’ve ever seen on a human being. I used to ask him, ‘How do your glasses ever stay on those sweet little ears?’ But those tiny ears listened to so much. Because it didn’t matter to Arthur what gender you were, or what race, or what country you came from….”

Former basketball pro Bill Bradley who, like Ashe, was a world-class athlete who wanted to do more with his life than just be an athlete, declared at the memorial service that Ashe “made a difference. Arthur, you will be remembered.”

If he is not, it would be one of the saddest things a soul could hear. I, too, think he could have been a good president.

Beyond Jackie Robinson

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Faster than you can say “Jackie Robinson,” the first sports topic always cited during Black History Month is that Brooklyn Dodger Hall of Famer breaking baseball’s color line in 1947.

Naturally. At the time, baseball’s prominence in American society was uncontested—the NBA had been formed only the previous year; the NFL was small peanuts; only college football had any sort of national awareness—so Robinson’s breakthrough represented a vast public advance in civil rights.

But an evening listening to one of Evan Weiner’s wide-ranging excavations of historic nuggets regarding Black sports history adds crucial layers to the subject.  Weiner—who describes his career as “radio, a lot of radio, some TV, some pundit work”—lays out the numbskullery and scullduggery in the story of segregated sports.

Such as the dumb “belief”—based on ignorance—by Los Angeles Dodgers general manager Al Campanis, in 1987, that Blacks “may not have some of the necessities to be, let’s say, a field manager or perhaps a general manager.” (Campanis was summarily fired.) And the 1950s NFL edict that its teams could have “up to four Negro players [but] none could be quarterbacks, centers or middle linebackers”—theoretically “cerebral” positions.

Then there was the thoroughly undisguised racism that for years prevented the few Black players on white professional teams from service at whites-only restaurants and hotels. And the kind of double-dealing of George Preston Marshall, who owned the NFL’s Washington Redskins from 1932 to 1969 while barring all Blacks from his team and his Washington baseball counterpart, Clark Griffith, refusing to sign Blacks even as he profited from renting out his D.C. ballpark for Negro League games.

Weiner covered all this and provided other relevant tidbits during a recent 90-minute presentation beamed on Zoom to my Hofstra University sports journalism students—one of countless talks Weiner gives on radio, TV documentaries, libraries and others public forums. He also produces books and podcasts on varied human affairs from rock-n-roll, censorship and World War II.

Here’s one detail I hadn’t realized before Weiner’s talk: When Cleveland Rams owner Dan Reeves maneuvered the transfer of his team to Los Angeles in 1946, making the NFL the first professional coast-to-coast sports entertainment industry, a pre-condition to play at the publicly funded Los Angeles Coliseum was that the team be integrated.

Reeves therefore signed Kenny Washington and Woody Strode, two former UCLA football teammates of Jackie Robinson—the year before Robinson became baseball’s first Black player. In Cleveland, meanwhile, the new franchise in an upstart league, the Browns of the All-American Football Conference, also signed two Black players for the 1946 season, Bill Willis and Marion Motley.

Weiner noted how Baltimore manager John McGraw in 1901 had attempted—unsuccessfully—to sneak a light-skinned Black infielder, Charlie Grant, into the newly formed American League by identifying Grant as a Cherokee Indian named “Tokohama.” Chicago White Sox owner Charles Comiskey objected and McGraw left Grant off his roster. And the so-called “Gentleman’s agreement,” in which baseball owners conspired not to offer contracts to Blacks, prevailed for almost a half-century.

Then there were tales from Weiner of resistance. By Lakers star Elgin Baylor who, in 1959, refused to play an NBA exhibition game in Charleston, W.Va., after Black players couldn’t get equal accommodations with their white teammates. (That led to a league rule against playing in states with such practices.)

And the refusal of Walter Beach, a Boston Patriots defensive back, to stay by himself in segregated living conditions during the team’s 1961 exhibition game in New Orleans. And the Black players joining Hall of Fame center Bill Russell of the Celtics in boycotting a game in Lexington, Ky., after being declined restaurant service in that city. And Black members of the Oakland Raiders protesting segregated seating at their scheduled Mobile, Ala., exhibition game against the Jets, forcing the game to be moved to Oakland.

Weiner’s interactions with key figures spiced his talk, particularly first-person recollections from the late Wally Triplett, who had been Penn State’s first Black player and in 1949 was the first Black drafted by an NFL team (the Detroit Lions). Triplett, Weiner reported, had befriended Jackie Robinson early in Robinson’s career and served as Robinson’s chauffeur, confidant and card-playing buddy, making a point of bringing Robinson to Triplett’s mother’s house for a home-cooked meal whenever the Dodgers were in town to play the Phillies.

One of Triplett’s former Penn State teammates, a fellow named Joe Tepsic, had been a Dodger rookie in 1946, when he played only 15 games and was hitless in five at-bats. The story was that the struggling Tepsic’s Dodgers’ mates wanted Tepsic demoted to the minors and replaced by a veteran pinch-hitter.

Jackie Robinson that season was spending his first season under Dodger contract with their top minor-league team in Montreal, “and while there was no indication that Brooklyn would have brought up Robinson if Tepsic had gone down to the minors,” Weiner said, “Triplett, who was a close friend of Tepsic, believed that Dodger manager Leo Durocher wanted that to happen.”

It didn’t. Until the next season. How’s that for a Black History Month morsel?