This Ace Cowboy Says ‘Mite’

What would you have to say is the roughest, meanest orneriest all-time lineup you can think of?

The 1940 Chicago Bears--the Monsters of the Midway? The Lombardi Packers? The Lyle Alzado-John Matuszak Raiders? The Philadelphia Flyers’ Broad Street Bullies? Hate to have to fight Fritzie Zivic and all those thumbs in your eye, would you?

Well, put them all together and I’ve got a cast of characters up here that would make them look like altar boys. This bunch could make the crew of a pirate ship jump overboard. They could empty out Central Park at midnight, make the Gestapo hide under the bed.

Look, Dick Butkus was not someone you wanted to meet on a line of scrimmage--or in a dark alley. But he didn’t have horns. William (the Refrigerator) Perry is big. But he doesn’t weigh 2,000 pounds. Lawrence Taylor hits hard. But he doesn’t try to kick you to death. Bo Jackson is hard to bring down. But he’s only got two legs and you don’t have to truss him and tie him in 10 seconds for the tackle to count. Eric Dickerson is tough to catch from behind. But you don’t need a horse to do it.

I wouldn’t like to have to defend against Larry Bird under a basket. But you’re not going to get your neck broke.

The outfit I’m talking about makes the Super Bowl game look like a prom. Or high tea.

It’s well known that some institutions cut academic corners to recruit their athletic squads. But how would you like to go up against an outfit that not only can’t read or write, it can’t even talk? How’d you like to face a backfield that goes 4 tons on the hoof? Where there are no unnecessary roughness penalties, no offsides? Where holding is not only all right, so is kicking and butting and gouging? Where the officials have to hide in a rubber barrel?

Not since the Christians and the lions has there been an athletic contest quite like the rodeo. Wild animals versus unarmed men.

Americans are squeamish. They won’t let a man fight a bull with a sword, but it’s all right if the man has nothing but a 10-gallon hat and a pair of spurs. The bull doesn’t die in this corrida. You can’t always say that of the men. The bull gets the ears in this contest.

Of course, you couldn’t exactly call rodeo cowboys wimps. These are not your average 9-to-5 commuter car-pool suburbanites. In fact, they’re not terribly different from the Cayuses they ride--independent, short-tempered, somewhat violent. Can’t stand neckties, fences, or to be told what to do.

Like the animals they get on, they’re throwbacks. Born 100 years too late. They’re right out of the pages of Louis L’Amour. They belong back in the days of the O.K. Corral, the Chisholm Trail, the great cattle drives, Geronimo and all of that. When there was no law west of the Pecos and no God west of the Brazos. Where the cities were named Tombstone and Deadwood and the saloons were named Last Chance and a man’s horse was his castle and his gun his best friend.

These were things cowboys did--rassled steers, roped and tied and branded calves, broke broncs. They didn’t really have to ride bulls. They just did that for laughs. It was something to do between hangings.

These are the last of the “High Noon” characters. An arena full of Gary Coopers. The modern versions of Wyatt Earp.

They don’t just round up any collection of calves and bulls and broncs for this bunch to ride or rope. They get the biggest roundup of animal sociopaths they can find. If they were human, they’d be Jack the Ripper. They once had a bull they named Himmler.

They comb the countryside to find these homicidal types. It’s like getting a team off a post office wall. You know how some coaches will wait outside a poolroom or a dance hall and, when they find a guy cut and bleeding by the roadside, they go in and find the winner and offer him a scholarship? That’s what stock contractors in a rodeo do. They find a cowboy on crutches or in traction or with both arms in a sling and a his neck in a brace and they try to find the 4-footed psycho who put him there.

You would think the man to beat up here this week at the National Finals Rodeo, at the Thomas & Mack Arena, would be some sunburned Billy the Kid type with the burr of west Texas in his talk, a chaw of tobacco in his cheek, a hat with a hole in it and a prairie squint in his eyes.

Would you believe instead Crocodile Dundee?

Dave Appleton was brought up 8,000 miles from the lone prairies where the deer and the antelope used to roam. Kangaroos roamed the range in his native land.

But he wasn’t too far in personality and temperament from the wild young bunkhouse types of the old American West. He arrived in the United States 8 years ago with $30 Australian in his pocket, a riding glove in his straw suitcase and a dream in his heart.

The only difference was, he didn’t hanker to rob stagecoaches or be the quickest draw in the territory, he just wanted to be the best bronc rider in the world. His idol was not Wild Bill Hickok, it was Larry Mahan.

Dave Appleton had been riding rodeo in his native Australia but there, cowboys don’t believe in roping steers. They just throw them down by the tail.

“It’s easy,” assures Dave. “Once you get the hang of it.”

This audacious Aussie is second in the all-around cowboy standings as the national finals get under way. This green-card resident alien has won $77,482 so far this year and $550,191 lifetime on horseback.

We’re used to Aussies beating us on the tennis courts and golf courses but who ever thought they would start to out-ride or out-rope us?

Geronimo would hang his head. Buffalo Bill would go gunning. John Ford would have to do “How the West Was Lost” if our world champion cowboy is a guy who says “mite” instead of “pards” and the John Wayne part would have to go to Paul Hogan.