Courtroom Victory Helps Moses Take Big Hurdle in Stride

When the advertising executives on Madison Avenue consider which celebrities to use in product endorsements, the first thing they usually do is consult the authorities.

They want to know what you think.

If a celebrity has a positive public image, there obviously is a better chance that he or she will land a lucrative endorsement contract than one who is not well thought of, or, worse, not thought of at all.

There are exceptions. Among athletes, John McEnroe probably gets more bad press than anyone else. Still, he is so busy appearing in commercials that he never has time to read it. In his case, Madison Avenue has been able to turn a negative image into an advantage.

In most cases, however, advertisers prefer to be represented by celebrities who not only have credibility but are also popular.

If Arnold Palmer uses a certain product to keep his tractor from becoming scrap metal, you might buy the product even if you don’t have a tractor.

Other sports personalities sought by advertisers because of their good names include O.J. Simpson, Chris Evert Lloyd, Roger Staubach, Sugar Ray Leonard and Jack Nicklaus. The advertisers like Mary Lou Retton because she is cute.

Until the early morning hours of Jan. 13, Edwin Moses would have been included on that list.

Before then, when Moses made news, it was always for a positive reason.

He was winning in his specialty, the 400-meter intermediate hurdles; or he was speaking up for his fellow track and field athletes, or speaking out against performance-enhancing drugs in sports, or appearing at a United Way function.

Advertisers liked him because of the kind of news he made.

As a result, he lived better than most of the people in his sport. By his own account, he earned more than $450,000 in 1983 and hoped to double it in 1984. Much of the money came from endorsement contracts.

On Jan. 13, Moses made news again. Driving his Mercedes-Benz with OLYMPYN license plates, he was arrested on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood and charged with soliciting a prostitute.

Police also found marijuana in his glove compartment, but he was not charged because it was such a small amount.

Now, advertisers are not sure what you think when you hear Moses’ name.

Do you think of the two gold medals he has won and all of the good works he has done? Or do you think of the hookers on Sunset Boulevard?

Moses, who insisted all along that he was innocent, was judged not guilty by a jury of his peers nine days ago in a Los Angeles city courtroom.

Even so, he came here last week, to the nation’s media capital and appealed to a higher court--the court of public opinion.

He was here to provide television commentary for the national indoor track and field championships Friday night at Madison Square Garden.

When he accepted the assignment several weeks ago, before his arrest, a press conference was arranged by one of the meet’s sponsors. After the trial, Moses decided to go through with it.

After the press conference, he went to a luncheon. He was seated at a table with representatives of the major New York newspapers, the Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, the Pittsburgh Press and both major news services.

He also appeared on the “CBS Morning News” and “The Today Show.”

“The verdict was not really vindication,” he said. “The allegations in my case, or for any person in the public eye, are as bad as a guilty verdict. As far as my reputation is concerned, there is a higher standard for me than there might be for someone else.”

Proving innocence in a courtroom, he said, is not always enough.

Thus, he brought his case to the people.

“I haven’t changed,” he said during his press conference. “I’m still the same guy.”

During the press conference and other interviews last week, Moses said he would not talk about the specifics of his arrest because those are recorded in court documents.

He did say, however, that he is not bitter about the experience. The first week after the arrest was the most stressful, he said. He had no appetite, and lost seven or eight pounds, he said.

Even though he has become a public figure in recent years, Moses still guards the privacy he has left. He tends to keep his feelings to himself.

Asked if he was depressed following the arrest, he said, “I was concerned.”

Asked if he was angry, he thought for a moment and decided that he had been. “I must have been angry,” he said. “I was angry that it happened to me, angry that I was singled out by the police.”

He pointed out that none of the names of the other men arrested in the vice sweep that weekend had been released to the press, although it’s possible that the names were available and the press wasn’t interested. Moses makes a large amount of money for his celebrity, but he has discovered that he must also pay a price.

“Did you punch holes in walls to vent your anger?” he was asked.

“I tried to convert it into positive energy,” he said. “I started training well, better than at this time last year. I can’t relieve my anger by taking it out on some inanimate object.”

Now that the trial is behind him, he said he has no hard feelings toward the police or the city attorney, who tried to persuade the jury that Moses was guilty.

“He won’t be my dinner guest,” Moses said. “But, on the other hand, he was only doing his job. I’m sure he did the best he could.”

Moses laughed.

“I’m positive of that.”

The experience did not steal his sense of humor. “More people know me than ever before, although I’m not sure this is the way I want to be known,” said the man who not so long ago complained of his lack of public recognition.

He also said he considered the not-guilty verdict as his 110th straight victory. Having won 109 straight on the track, he begins his 1985 season in April in Trinidad. Told that if he loses a race this year, for the first time since 1977, people might claim it was a result of his recent trial and tribulations, he said, “Good, then I have an excuse already.”

Ultimately, however, the point he wanted to make was a serious one.

“Even though it was an embarrassing situation for myself, my family and my friends, I had no recourse but to go to trial,” he said. “It probably would have been a lot easier to make an admission of guilt--even though I didn’t do anything--pay a minor fine, which really isn’t anything, and walk away from it. But I never even considered that.

“We have a great responsibility as athletes and even more so as Olympians. I chose to stand up to my responsibility in this case. If you’re innocent, you have to stand up and say that.

“I have the greatest respect for the law. There are a lot of young people growing up today who have a negative feeling toward law enforcement. But the thing they have to learn to understand is that while we have a system to enforce the laws, we also have a system to protect the innocent. That’s the moral of this story.”

So far, the response to Moses’ comments has been positive.

He has a cousin who works for Newsday, a Long Island newspaper. Moses said his cousin told him that whereas the media have a reputation for creating heroes and then tearing them down when they are most vulnerable, he was amazed that Moses has been treated so favorably in the press.

Whether the news reached Madison Avenue and the advertising executives begin calling again, only time will tell.

Moses’ existing contracts have not been affected, but negotiations that were under way when he was arrested remain on hold.

Moses returned home to Laguna Hills Saturday, his business here concluded.

If Moses were only a product to be packaged and sold, that would be the end of the story. But this was more than a business trip for him. He took his wife, Myrella, to the theater twice.

“We’ve been coming to New York together for the last four or five years, and I don’t ever remember going to the theater with her,” Moses said one morning last week while having breakfast with a reporter.

During the conversation, he said that he would like to recover his potential for endorsement contracts, that he would like to continue his winning streak, that he would like to remain a champion of athletes’ causes.

The one thing he said he definitely is going to do is improve the quality of his private life, beginning with his marriage. He is 29; Myrella is 24. They have been married since 1981.

“The most important thing I’ve learned from this is that everything you’ve worked for can be destroyed in less than 10 seconds,” Moses said. “No one is invincible. Anything can happen at any time. It could have been a lot worse. I was arrested, but I’m still alive.”

It has been documented that Moses and Myrella had an argument on the Thursday night before he was arrested. They did not speak again until he called from the police station after his arrest early that Sunday morning.

“I’m Edwin’s wife; I trust him,” Myrella said after the press conference last week. “I never believed he did anything wrong. He called me; I said, ‘I’m coming.’ I got in the car and went.

“Maybe this was a blessing in disguise. We’ve shared so many things, but they were always good things--the Olympics, the world championships, all the victories, the honors. This was our first real crisis. But we went through it together. We’ve never been stronger.”

Moses later agreed that the relationship has been strengthened.

“A lot of marriages can be destroyed by something like this, but we weathered it out,” he said. “It was very difficult for us at first because the situation was so stressful, but she believed in me from the beginning.

“For a long time, we hadn’t had the opportunity to be so close. Starting in 1983, I was getting ready for the world championships and then the Olympics in 1984. I was trying to keep everything going on the track as well as on a business level. At the same time, we were living out of a suitcase 60 or 70% of the time.

“We traveled all over the world together, but we were usually so tired that we didn’t have a chance to go out and do things together.

“It took something like this to make us stop and see where we were. We used to have plenty of time for each other and for gardening and for my flying. But the plants died, and my pilot’s license expired.

“I’m not saying we haven’t enjoyed the things that came our way, but it’s time that things were simpler.”