IS IT LIKE OLD TIMES? : Bill Rodgers Isn’t Faster, but He’s Doing Better

Some of us are wondering what Bill Rodgers will have to do to grow up in the eyes of America. A decade after winning the Boston Marathon and the New York City Marathon, Rodgers is sometimes thought of as this skinny, young, blithe spirit with shaggy, blond hair.

It is a misconception (or it would be if more people believed it) that Rodgers is still writing term papers and cutting class. What is the name of the little liberal arts college he attends? After all these years he’s still Boston Billy. Still with the impish smile.

No more. Here are some grown-up things that recently happened in Bill Rodgers’ life:

--Divorce.

--Re-marriage.

--His wife had a baby.

--A $3.5-million debt and the loss of his company.

--The celebration of his 40th birthday.

Rodgers has had little trouble accepting his mantle as a “veteran marathoner.” He’s earned that and he’s proud of it. But geezer, ancient and over-the-hill are slightly more offensive terms.

The question is how will Rodgers do in his new role, as a “masters runner,” a 40-and-over competitor. It is the running world’s designation for the out-to-pasture set; its presentation of the lovely gold-plated pen in a velvet case. Thank you for your years of service, you are now a master and please drop in anytime.

The fact is, Bill Rodgers has turned 40. Sunday, he will run the masters division of the Los Angeles Marathon. It is a shock. When did this happen? Who knew?

Rodgers emerged at Boston in 1975. More correctly, Rodgers, running in a hand-stenciled T-shirt, exploded at Boston. He won the race in 2 hours 9 minutes 55 seconds. It was the fifth-fastest marathon in history. Even so, Rodgers stopped four times during the race, once to tie his shoe and three times to drink water.

In the early years, what Rodgers didn’t know about running was an impressive amount. The fact that he didn’t know any better may have allowed him to push himself into a place where an experienced runner would have been afraid to go. At Boston in 1979, in rain, wind and 42-degree temperature, Rodgers ran a 2:09:27. That works out to a 4:56 per-mile average. “Yikes!” is what the big-time marathoners were saying about this kid. With this talent, where will he take the marathon?

The intriguing question about Rodgers is how he even got there in the first place. If ever there was an unlikely hero, Rodgers was it. The reluctant jock. Rodgers the intellectual and Rodgers the radical almost didn’t make it to the victory stand at four Boston and four New York Marathons. Even his small body appears implausibly frail to carry him more than 26 miles at such a punishing pace.

In the beginning, Rodgers was not a runner. But he had these qualities: He was a pusher and he was intense. At 15, when he took up the sport, Rodgers was more into reading books than box scores. He was different.

Rodgers is now seen as somewhat quixotic, but as a tyke his associates were convinced that his brain was leaking.

Charlie Rodgers, Bill’s older brother and teammate on their high school cross-country team, tells this story: “When the coach would send us out on the road for a two-mile run, three quarters of the team would drop off at my girlfriend’s house for a Pepsi. Bill would keep running. We all thought he was a little strange.”

Rigid adherence to rules would certainly have made Rodgers suspect to some teen-agers. Normalcy soon overtook him and he quit running. There was further evidence of Rodgers’ reform when he sent his parents into spasms with his relatively harmless youthful scrapes with the law.

By the time Rodgers got to college, he smoked and drank. Sometimes rather a lot. Yet, amid this youthful excess at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., Rodgers would find running for the second time in his life. It was to be an odd and fateful meeting.

Amby Burfoot, winner of the 1968 Boston Marathon and devotee of extravagant mileage, became Rodgers’ roommate.

Burfoot and Rodgers began to run together, or, rather, Burfoot would take his usual 15-mile run and Rodgers would run as far as he could. Had there been a girlfriend’s house where he could have stopped for a soft drink, Rodgers would have done it.

Almost as abruptly as Rodgers began to run again, he stopped. The Vietnam War was escalating. Students who were Rodgers’ age were being drafted. In his senior year, Rodgers joined the anti-war movement and applied for conscientious-objector status.

He was approved. Rodgers was assigned alternative service as an aide at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston, pulling in $71 a week. He wheeled bodies to the morgue and felt a little dead himself. He hadn’t run in three years, and he had a pack-a-day habit. He ate junk food.

To Rodgers, there was one way to live, and make that a double gin, please. He and his girlfriend, Ellen, who would become his first wife, were living in a dump off his $71 a week and food stamps.

Then someone stole his motorcycle. For the third time, Rodgers was back to running. He began to run to and from work. Then before work. And after work.

And especially when there was no more work. Rodgers was fired for trying to organize a hospital workers union.

“The funny thing was, I don’t think they even wanted the stupid thing, it was just me,” Rodgers said with a rueful smile.

A bright sun filters in from the Rodgers’ gracious patio onto the Rodgers’ dining-room table in the Rodgers’ comfortable winter home in north Phoenix. Rodgers is watching Elise, his 2-year-old daughter, make an impressive mess of her lunch.

Rodgers is relaxed and happy. He and his second wife, Gail, live here two months of the year to escape the harsh Boston winters. He has been on the phone lining up races for himself and rival/associate Frank Shorter. He’s talking about a masters circuit, complete with corporate sponsorship. Things are working out.

The transition from the world-class marathon world to the weak and cash-poor masters circuit has been eased with the presence of Shorter, who arrived in the masters’ division ahead of Rodgers. Theirs is a long-standing rivalry, which will lend itself nicely to the show they hope to barnstorm through the country.

“It’s like the beginning of the running boom,” Rodgers said. “Masters running is where the running boom was 10 years ago.”

It has been a boom for Rodgers, coming on the heels of some memorable busts.

Divorce was one.

Bill Rodgers & Co. was another.

In 1978, with a $300,000 loan from the Bank of Boston, Rodgers launched his own line of athletic wear. Business, like running, was booming. The company borrowed more to finance needed expansion. The debt increased to $3.5 million by 1984.

The bank moved to foreclose. Last April, bank officers seized his company headquarters and its inventory. Rodgers was forced to sell his large home, which was on the market for $1.8 million, to the Bank of Boston. Rodgers said the bank did not get a bargain.

Surely, this has been grown-up stuff. It’s not his first experience with that. Rodgers has been one of the sport’s radicals. He boycotted his beloved Boston in 1984 and 1985 in protest over the race organizers’ adamant stand against awarding prize money.

It was not the popular stand for Boston Billy to take.

It was the hospital all over again, with Rodgers arguing the case of the worker. It is a blue-collar job, he told everyone, emphasis on job . “Runners are like everyone else, with bills to pay,” he said.

Rodgers also carried on a long and loud dispute with New York Marathon race director Fred Lebow over appearance money and prize money. Rodgers took his case to the media every chance he got. When a newspaper published a story reporting Rodgers had asked for an appearance fee to run a race, he got hate mail.

Rodgers has often taken on The Athletics Congress, the boss in the sport. In defiance of a TAC order, Rodgers and other runners competed in the Cascade Runoff in 1981, a race that offered prize money of $10,000. TAC told Rodgers that according to Rule 53, Rodgers would lose his amateur standing if he ran.

Rodgers shot back, “Rule 53 is an asinine rule. I guess people who enforce asinine rules must be . . .”

He ran, but didn’t accept prize money, adding that he makes more in under-the-table payments than prize money. TAC suspended eight other runners but cleared Rodgers.

Rodgers is no longer the boy radical, but he may become the adult rabble-rouser. Maybe. His life now is steady and full.

“The biggest change in my life is Elise and Gail and I,” he said, absently smoothing a stray hair on his daughter’s forehead. “You become more mellow. When you’re 25-30 years old, you may be married but you think ‘running.’ It really has an impact. It’s a powerful drug. You can see that. I’m older and I’ve gone through things. There are more important things for me. It changes your life in a positive way.”

Will the public accept the new Bill Rodgers, the mature family man and not the driven runner?

“I hope so,” he said. “I hope people see me as a masters runner now. There used to be a lot of myths surrounding women’s running, that women were not capable of running long distances. We know those are not true. It’s the same for masters. Carlos Lopes wins a gold medal in the marathon when he’s 37. That changes people’s ideas.

“I love to run. There are some runners who feel differently. There are some people who say, ‘If I win an Olympic medal, I’ll quit.’ I’m not like that. I love to run regardless of the money, or the medals.”

He has some of one and none of the other, and an older, wiser, Bill Rodgers seems content with that.