Jordan Hits Out of Bounds

OK, Miss K, would you mind taking a letter to Michael Jordan? Yeah, that Michael Jordan. Just address it “Chicago.” Tell them if they can’t find him, try 10 feet in the air. He’ll be up there soaring around someplace. Ready?

Dear Mr. Jordan,

This is your pen pal, J. Murray. You remember the last time I dropped you an open letter, I tried to warn you about those guys on the first tee who would lure you into a game. Guys you would think were a 10-handicap, but who could shoot just about any number they wanted.

I knew all about those guys because I grew up (in golf) around Riviera and Western Avenue, where I used to see them in action--Smiley Quick, Three-Iron Gates, Teddy Rhodes. I warned you never to play with a guy who promised to play left-handed just to even things. Because he would be left-handed. I warned you that you can’t slam-dunk a putt.

Well, you paid no attention to me, so I’ll try again.

I don’t care what you lost at golf, Michael. White-collar crime doesn’t interest me. It’s not one of my indignations.

But, it has come to my attention that your troubles winning $10,000 Nassaus on the greens at San Diego or double-downs on the tables of Atlantic City have led you to institute a reign of silence toward the press.

Bad idea, Michael. First of all, it’s not our fault if you can’t putt or if you stand on 15.

Second of all, we’re kind of the reason you can afford all those big bets, the reason you can be out playing high-stakes golf in the first place.

Sport is big business in this country because of the press, Michael. It’s the reason you make $4 million a year for bouncing a ball up a hardwood court. It’s the reason you’re so recognizable that every shoe and soft-drink manufacturer in the country wants to link you with his product.

You see, sports wasn’t always a mania in this country. They used to play baseball in the public park and pass the hat and collect enough to pay for the uniforms.

Then, the press took it over. We ink-stained wretches began to glorify what you did, make it sound like a playground of the gods. Guys like Ring Lardner in baseball, Damon Runyon in boxing, O.B. Keeler in golf took what had been a recreational activity and made it as revenue-producing as oil or railroads. I’ll bet the term World Series came out of a press box typewriter some place.

P.T. Barnum must have looked on in envy over the free editorial space this new form of show business grabbed.

Grantland Rice did for football what these other guys did for their sports. Outlined against a blue-gray October sky was big dollars. The Four Horsemen were Gate, Concessions, Parking and Radio Rights.

You ever stop to think what an imaginative turn of phrase meant to your racket, Michael? What do the games owe to the guys who thought up “the Galloping Ghost,” “the Sultan of Swat,” “the Manassa Mauler,” “Stan the Man,” “Mr. Clutch,” “Murderers’ Row,” “the Gas House Gang,” “the Iron Horse?”

How about the guy who thought up “Air Jordan?” Cut him in on the shoe contract, did you?

Basketball was late getting in on this good thing. I’ll tell you why: The old-line sportswriters didn’t consider it sport. They called it “Whistleball” or “Foul Ball” and, with few exceptions, looked down on it. It was something you went to for the dance afterward.

Let me give you an example. Back in the ‘60s when he was electrifying audiences (small) with behind-the-back dribbles, pinpoint passes and some of the finest ballhandling the sport has seen, Bob Cousy once complained to this reporter that basketball could not get its share of the sports page publicity because baseball hogged the space.

“We are bucking a 75-year bin of anecdotal lore that baseball has,” he mourned. “When a Wally Pipp dies, the papers are full of ‘and that reminds me of the Iron Horse . . . ‘ and they go into their Lou Gehrig stories. Basketball is playing catch-up.”

Well, basketball has caught up. You’re proof of that. In Cousy’s time, the top salary in the game was around $19,000.

But, there’s a joker in the deck. With money, comes fame. The thorn in the rose. God evens up.

It’s kind of like the deal between Faust and the devil. You have sold your soul, you pay the price. There’s an implicit contract. With money comes fame. With fame, out goes privacy.

Happens to everybody who seeks what the poet called the “bitch goddess” of success. Spinoza could have told you. Back in 1670, he wrote: “Fame has this great drawback, that if we pursue it we must direct our lives in such a way as to please the fancy of men, avoiding what they dislike and seeking what is pleasing to them.”

Sometimes its cost is catastrophic. Lindbergh flew the Atlantic. He became the greatest hero America had ever had. And the payoff was, an out-of-work ex-German machine-gunner kidnaped and killed his child. A terrible price to pay for fame.

The bottom line is that you don’t fly the Atlantic alone or hit 60 home runs--or become an airline above the basketball floor--if you want to go through life unnoticed.

Anyone who is famous aches to be anonymous. Anyone anonymous aches to be famous.

You can’t just take the money and run. You belong to the ages--and the masses, now. There was room for only one Garbo. There’s no going back. You bought into the system. You owe it to the game to participate in the hype. Because you’re the beneficiary of generations of that hype. If you didn’t want it, you should have become an insurance salesman. You can’t give the money back. So give something else back. You’re smart enough to understand the quid pro quo.

You get all the perks--a suite on the road, a limousine waiting for you at the airport, first-class travel. I remember this business when NBA teams went coach, slept two to a room, got $14 a day in meal money and tried to get in my cab at the airport so I’d pick up the fares.

The media’s not your enemy. The media’s your ally. Who made Air Jordan a household term? You inspired it. They took it from there. That’s the way the business works. That’s how you sell tickets, shoes, colas, dinners at your restaurant. That’s how you go in later life from “the Yankee Clipper” to “Mr. Coffee.”

You are, quite clearly, the best there is at what you do--maybe the best there ever was.

But, what good is it being the best there is if nobody knows about it? Just remember, even the Lord wanted the Bible.