Rage Isn’t Limited to Enemies

Do not go gentle into that good night ,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day ;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

--Dylan Thomas

Dylan Thomas, meet Howard Cosell.

We all know who Howard Cosell was. The most famous broadcaster of his day. The man who made “Monday Night Football.” A friend of mine.

Howard disappeared from the airwaves a few years ago. He went from being a star to a spectator. He went from studio limousines to city taxicabs, went from being “Howard!” to “Who?”

Lots of people can take this. Howard isn’t one of them.

He wasn’t washed up. He had a memory like a steel trap. He could tell you Ralph Kercheval’s number without hesitation. He could probably tell you the numbers of the entire 1953 New York Giant lineups, baseball and football.

He had this high-pitched New York accent that was a cross between Canarsie and Chappequa, and they said the public would find it irritating, abrasive, offensive. Instead they found it appealing. They loved it. He was a phenomenon that baffled even network nabobs. “Monday Night Football” became a tribal ritual. Cosell was the high priest.

Howard has written a book in retirement. It’s called “What’s Wrong With Sports” (Simon & Schuster).

It’s pretty clear what’s wrong with sports: Howard Cosell isn’t in them anymore.

Some have called the book, and the man, bitter.

I would beg to disagree. Vindictive would be the adjective I would choose.

Howard appears to have spared his old employers, ABC, much of his invective. But the NFL enjoys no such amnesty.

You get the feeling, along about page 60, that the NFL started the Johnstown Flood, shot Lincoln, sank the Titanic, took hostages and probably is responsible for the savings-and-loan mess.

What you suspect is, rightly or wrongly, Howard blames the NFL for his enforced retirement from the NFL telecast booth, and he loses no opportunity to afflict the league for it.

One of his first acts on leaving the league telecasts was to appear as an expert witness for the fledgling USFL, which sued the NFL because it couldn’t attract any customers.

Despite the best efforts of Howard--and another renegade ex-member of the Establishment, Al Davis--the USFL won a judgment of $1 (with treble damages, it came to $3). It had sought $1.32 billion in its lawsuit. which meant a shortfall of $1,319,999,997.

Not to worry. Howard is not concerned with a paltry billion dollars. The case, as he sees it, was one in which the NFL “became a duly adjudicated illegal monopoly.”

You get the feeling they would rather have had the money. Moreover, Howard, a lawyer, notes on page 192 that, as far back as 1957, the Supreme Court of the land, in a case involving a player named Bill Radovich, ruled that the NFL was in violation of the antitrust laws and thus a monopoly in restraint of trade. Howard cites cases involving players Joe Kapp, Cullen Bryant, John Mackey --”a big antitrust victory,” he writes--and, in all, six such cases lost by the NFL.

The NFL gets to be found a monopoly every other eclipse of the moon, it would seem.

Even Howard’s pals may want it explained how the NFL got to be a “duly adjudicated monopoly” only after Howard left their broadcast booths. Few of us remember that creeping into any of Howard’s pregame or game commentaries in the heyday of “Monday Night Football.”

Howard’s villains are highly selective, anyway. For instance, Bart Giamatti, who was commissioner of baseball when he died, is one of Howard’s heroes.

Ergo, Pete Rose is Jack the Ripper. Howard even states, unequivocally, that “Pete Rose was a factor in the (untimely) death of Bart Giamatti.”

Of course, Bart Giamatti was a factor in the untimely death of Pete Rose’s career. But Howard is not only sure Pete Rose should be kept out of the Hall of Fame, he is not too sure Rose should be walking the streets. Rose is one of the major things wrong with sports.

In the Pete Rose investigation, the whole case was painstakingly compiled by lawyer John Dowd. He is thus a Cosell hero. On page 123, that is. However, 100 pages down the line, Dowd turns his investigative attention to George Steinbrenner.

Dowd loses his stripes. Steinbrenner is a friend of Howard’s and has been for years. Howard carefully coats his advocacy with disclaimers--”Some may say I am biased because of my relationship with Steinbrenner. Nonsense! I owe George nothing. I have disagreed with him on many occasions.”

Dowd becomes a “hot shot” investigator (instead of a scholarly barrister) in his pursuit of Steinbrenner. In an extraordinary paragraph, Cosell notes the verbiage coming out of Dowd’s investigation “smacks of the philosophy of a certain senator named Joe who came out of Wisconsin (McCarthy).”

Concludes Cosell: “I am deeply troubled by the manner in which Dowd went after Steinbrenner.”

Like a lot of people in this world, Howard would like to pick the targets. The NFL, Pete Rose? Yay! My pal George? Wait a minute!

Dave Winfield is the real culprit here, says Howard, who depicts the former Yankee outfielder as, among other things, a “sleaze,” and, in a curious paragraph, goes out of his way to point out that the gambler in the Steinbrenner-Winfield case, one Howard Spira, won $150,000 on the 1981 World Series.

Writes Howard ominously: “That’s the Series in which Winfield couldn’t buy a base hit. His pathetic .045 batting average in that Series was considered the primary reason the Yankees lost to the Dodgers, four games to two.”

Howard also identifies Winfield, in the Spira case, as “a legitimate loan shark.”

There’s nothing personal, though, Howard notes cheerily.

Howard writes: “Let me be clear about Winfield. I hold no personal animosity toward the man. I wish him well.”

And he confides: “Pete Rose and I always had a great relationship. I’ve known him for so many years. . . . And I have always cared about Pete Rose.”

Then, in another paragraph, he writes: “The man was a great baseball player. . . . But his racing to first on walks was a showboat move, false hustle that helped earn him the nickname Charlie Hustle, a bona fide hotdog.”

Well, as I say, I am a friend of Howard’s. I hope that’s not a dangerous thing to be.