He Played Game but Needs a Trump Card

It is an hour of national sorrow. Donald J. Trump, noted sports entrepreneur, is tapping out.

At least, it appears he is tapping out, proof of which is he has payments to make and isn’t making them, causing banks to get nervous.

When banks get nervous, they don’t break your kneecaps. But they have ways of dealing with those who don’t pay off, and indications are that unless Trump raises cash faster than you can say Henry Tillman, or even see Henry Tillman, Donald is in deep material.

Last sighted on the big-time sporting scene, Trump was promoting a heavyweight championship fight in Atlantic City that lasted 91 seconds.

Introduction of his friends and relatives at ringside lasted 42 minutes.

People awaiting the match between Mike Tyson and Michael Spinks sat there dazed while, one by one, this interminable procession of Trump guests was presented.

The list included his sister, his brother, his father and his wife. And, of course, it included Donald.

Overlooked, the family chauffeur no doubt was ticked, especially considering that even George Steinbrenner was introduced.

From the tender association with Tyson that followed, Trump emerged as adviser to Mike, who would sail on the 282-foot yacht Donald purchased from a Saudi arms dealer.

The bathrooms are marble, the tubs sunken. The yacht also features a discotheque and 296 telephones, offering the banks ample lines on which to inform Donald they are calling the loans.

What happened to the warm friendship with Tyson, which was supposed to lead to Trump’s promoting future title fights, isn’t known.

But then it isn’t known, either, what happened to the relationship between Trump and Doug Flutie.

It was Donald, you will recall, who signed Doug to a multimillion-dollar contract in front of the fountain at Trump Plaza in New York.

At the time, Trump operated the New York Generals of the United States Football League. He rejected a franchise in the National Football League, he said, because he found the NFL “too boring.”

The public was demanding the thrills that would come from the USFL and Flutie.

Donald next offered New York a solution to its stadium problem. He proposed to build a new one that would be an all-condo affair, meaning each customer would own his seat for life, or until he chose to sell.

Every football fan, you know, wants to invest in stadium real estate, especially those occupying the Dawg Pound in Cleveland.

But Trump always thought big. You realized this when he billed the Tyson-Spinks match as “The Biggest Fight in History.”

In their resting places, Dempsey and Tunney took rotisserie turns.

One is pained intensely watching comrades fall in the hierarchy of sports. For instance, there is Nelson Bunker Hunt, former giant of racing, winner in his time of the English Derby. And what happens to poor Nelson? No doubt because of a memory lapse, he forgets to pay banks money he owes them. What he does, instead, is take a bankruptcy, leaving the banks holding the receptacle. They do not speak of him today as one speaks of his vicar.

And then there is the mishap befalling the other Nelson--Nelson Skalbania, the man who first signed the Great Gretzky to an NHL contract. Skalbania owned hockey teams in Edmonton and Atlanta (later Calgary). He owned a minor league baseball team in Vancouver and a football team in Montreal, where he enlisted George Allen as general manager.

When the banks came looking for Nelson, they discovered he had departed for Hong Kong, having learned in Canadian football to run in an open field.

So we would see the end in sports of two Nelsons--Hunt and Skalbania--but the Nelson Monument still stands at Trafalgar.

The man billing himself as “the Self-Made Billionaire,” William Oldenburg, erstwhile owner of the Los Angeles Express, has a problem more serious with the banks.

He lifted money from them that he shouldn’t have. Result: The Self-Made Billionaire could soon be isolated from society.

The former owner of the San Diego Padres, Arnholt Smith, voted “Mr. San Diego,” did time for a misunderstanding with a bank. He owned it, but appeared to use depositors’ money for things not beneficial to the depositors.

Philadelphia has proved an unlucky football ownership. Owner Jerry Wolman crashed in the real estate business, selling the Eagles to Leonard Tose, whose shortage of funds proved equally acute.

A distinguished bon vivant, Leonard went through life spreading joy, remembered in Atlantic City as one who dropped $100 chips on the trays of cocktail waitresses.

Forced to sell the Eagles, Tose remains loved by anyone who has ever served a drink.

The massive fortune of the late Clint Murchison vanished, and he was required by the banks to sell the Dallas Cowboys.

But it is hoped we haven’t seen the last of Donald Trump, whose contribution to sports has been so immense. When a man promotes “The Biggest Fight in History,” you aren’t anxious to see him done in by the gods of credit.