Life Certainly Appears on Track for Joyners

Remember the time, Al Joyner said to his sister Jackie Joyner-Kersee, when that guy was shot in front of our house? He got shot seven times, and Mom wouldn’t let you look?

The South End of East St. Louis, Ill., was a nasty place to grow up. Al called it “a death trap.” And my, but are they relieved to be out of there. They lived across the street from a liquor store and down the block from a pool hall. Remember the time, Jackie said to Al, when Daddy caught me in the pool room with you and threw me out because he said pool wasn’t ladylike?

You were just getting the hang of it, too, Al said. And how about the time, Al asked joyfully, we raced, and you beat me?

They were kids then. Al hadn’t yet taken up the triple jump. Jackie hadn’t even heard the word, heptathlon. All she knew about running was that she was fast.

“Al told all his friends, ‘She can’t beat me.’ ” Jackie recalled.

“See,” Al explained, “people in the neighborhood always said she’s going to be the next Wilma Rudolph. I was the older brother, but she was the first one in the family to bring a trophy home. My friends teased me about it.”

“So we lined up,” Jackie said.

“And I was really trying to whup her.”

“I beat him because he was making too much noise,” she said, winking at her brother. “But afterward I felt bad when I realized how tough it was on a guy to get beat by a girl. My father told me later, ‘You’re not supposed to beat him. Even if you can, don’t do it.’ ” Jackie looked at Al, giggled in embarrassment, and buried her head in his shoulder.

It’s hard to imagine a sister and brother being closer. Jackie laughs as chatty, mischievous Al tells how he broke her nosy habit of picking up the phone when he was talking to a girlfriend: by threatening to cut off her dolls’ hair. Al laughs as sweet, trusting Jackie tells why she learned to tell time one particular day in the second grade: They normally got up at 6 a.m., after their mother left for work as a nurse’s aide. But one day Al woke her at 2, tricking her into getting dressed for school. She didn’t suspect a joke because it was always dark at 6, anyway. When their father, a part-time signalman on the railroad, told her it was only 2, Jackie knew the time had come to learn to read a clock.

Sitting side by side in a Manhattan coffee shop two days before the Mobil-Gran Prix Indoor Track and Field Championships at Madison Square Garden, they seem as warm as the roasted chestnuts being sold on Seventh Avenue. Each is the other’s biggest fan and confidante. They live together in a house in Los Angeles with Jackie’s husband, Bob Kersee, who happens to be their coach, as well.

Under one roof! Here’s Kersee, whose athletes won 10 track medals in the 1984 Olympics -- more than Great Britain. Here’s Al, 27, the gold medalist in the triple jump. And here’s Jackie, 25, world record holder in the heptathlon -- not to mention America’s best female long jumper and second best hurdler -- just voted the 1986 Sullivan Award as best amateur athlete in the United States. What a house that must be.

“I call it Fort Leningrad,” Al said, snickering. “I’m living with Mr. Warden and Mrs. Warden.” It figures Al would say that. Discipline was the one thing he and Jackie didn’t have in common. Jackie had focus and discipline enough for three people. Al didn’t have any.

“I was on a bad road,” Al said. “I was 14 and hanging around with older kids, bad kids. I was probably headed for the penitentiary.”

Jackie looked over at her brother, clucking her tongue like a mother hen. “The company he kept was not good for him. I’m so glad he came to see that.”

Most of his pals then, he said, “are either dead or in jail by now.” Take your pick: murder, robbery, drugs. “We used to throw rocks at the white people’s cars on the highway, try to break their windows,” Al said. “My mother sent me places just to keep me away from the gang. One day, she sent me to my cousin’s house. That day, the guys were throwing rocks and the cops came. I was lucky I wasn’t there. I saw if I didn’t change, I’d break my mother’s heart. Jackie became my inspiration. I was 14 and she was 12. But she was so good at sports, and everyone loved her so, I tried to model myself after her.”

Because Jackie ran track, Al tried track, but didn’t like it. “They wanted to make me a miler, but I didn’t want to run that far,” Al said. “People said they saw something in me, but I thought it was just a line to keep me out of trouble.” He didn’t try to triple jump until his senior year in high school, and promptly quit the event after he failed to reach the pit in his first meet and was taunted by his teammates on the bus ride home. Just one month after giving it another chance, he was the state’s third-best triple jumper.

Meanwhile, Jackie was excelling in track and basketball. Track was her first love, the Olympics her goal. (“I saw them on TV in 1976, and I said, ‘Ooooh, I want to be on TV, running.’ ”) But she was a good enough basketball player to go to UCLA on a scholarship, become a starter, and once hold Cheryl Miller to 14 points. As you may have guessed, Al and Jackie did square off at one-on-one. Once. Now it can be told that Al muscled and banged and bumped his sister unmercifully, and still only won by one bucket. “I’ll never play her again. She can go to her left. She’s better than I am,” Al admitted. “I don’t long jump, because she’s better than me there, too.”

We leave the mutually admiring Joyners with this story. In 1984, they had the rare fortune to compete in the Olympic finals on the same day in the same stadium. Jackie was throwing the javelin when Al leaped 56 feet 7 1/2 inches to win the gold, a true surprise considering Al was rated third best on the U.S. team, distantly behind Mike Conley and Willie Banks. A few minutes later, Jackie would win silver, not gold, in the pentathlon, something of a disappointment. “When I walked over to her, she was crying,” Al said. “I thought she was crying because she lost. I said, ‘That’s all right, Jackie, you’ll win in ’88.’ She looked into my eyes and said, ‘I’m not crying because I lost. I’m crying because I’m so happy for you. I’m crying because you fooled them all.’ ”