When Rich and Famous Athletes Want to Be Alone

Today’s superstar athlete is starved for solitude. In a body, the New York Mets just want to be left alone. Both the Chicago Bulls and New York Knicks readily paid league fines last week rather than speak to their chroniclers.

Charles Barkley of Phoenix, in the course of a shoe advertisement, holds sway against role modeling as opposed to sole modeling. Michael Jordan actually has a commercial out now lamenting all of the commercials he has out now. If he weren’t on TV “every other second,” he ponders like Hamlet at the free-throw line -- if he were “just a basketball player” -- could we imagine it? Sigh.

With still a round to go in the endless hooping, Jordan has turned off the press because of its unreasonable curiosity regarding his past golfing liaisons with murdered bailbondsmen, convicted cocaine dealers and other assorted members of the gentry.

What’s the continuing news value in further waves of canceled six-figure checks? All right, he’s a rotten golfer. Why did the media pay even the slightest attention to a small-time San Diego gambler who, in a rancid book he published himself, claims to have birdied Jordan out of $1.25 million over a 10-day period two years ago?

Jordan called the figure “preposterous” but waved no lawyers around the way he did a week earlier when The New York Times made a big deal out of a little family day-trip to an Atlantic City casino. In this litigious society, book-length libels (complete with photographs and photostats) ought to be easily answered.

If the answer were, “It’s true. So what? Leave me alone,” a great portion of the press would be satisfied and relieved. Jordan thanked that segment in a written statement splintering his silence before the deciding victory over the Knicks. He praised the good press, the friendly press, what in politics has come to be known as “the alternate press,” and imagined they shared in his embarrassment.

As a matter of fact, they did. As David Gergen and Peter Vecsey can tell you, there have always been Indians who fight for the settlers against the Indians.

“I feel sorry for Michael Jordan,” observed Greg Norman, a somewhat more proficient golfer, who is himself prone to paper cuts. Norman also has some heritage of gambling, harkening back to his $28-a-week assistant-pro days in the early ‘70s. “There were times I was playing when I couldn’t afford to lose,” he said. “I remember once I was down $800 with three holes to go and I probably had $400 or $500 in the bank. I was scared.”

Norman is not the ultimate golfer, as Jordan is the ultimate basketball player, but Norman was supposed to be. Perhaps at the prodding of Jack Nicklaus, whose vanity extended to hand-picking his successor, the press proclaimed Norman prematurely and then blamed him for their miscalculation. While he is a lavish earner on and off the course, Norman has achieved the age of 38 with only one major bottle cap (the 1986 British Open).

Wearing his Eli Lapp hat, but looking a little silly without the buckboard, the Australian shark hunter has become infamous for brain locks and near-misses, for hitting an iron off the last tee at Augusta and a wood off the last tee at Troon when the reverse would have won both tournaments, for always being the party of the second part when Larry Mize, Bob Tway or Robert Gamez hole their final shots. Just last week, Norman finished second again by a stroke to Fulton Allem at the Colonial in Texas.

“I didn’t give it away,” Norman said darkly at this week’s stop, Nicklaus’s Memorial Tournament. “Contrary to what I’ve read and heard -- people said I gave it away -- I did not. Fulty got it up and down all day Sunday. He played great.”

Rising the next morning to read what he imagined would be a semi-rave if not a testimonial, Norman found himself panned again as if he were the perpetrator of “Sliver.”

“I was so devastated you can’t believe it,” he said. “I played so good. I didn’t make a single mistake coming in. I tried to drive the bunker at 12 and just didn’t get a downshoot from the wind. That was my only bogey. At 18, I hit a perfect drive, a good second and made a great putt. Fulty had to wiggle in a little one to win.”

Jordan’s family, friends and friendly biographers say he is addicted to competition, not gambling. They don’t mean to compare him to Pete Rose, who was addicted to winning. Norman wonders if, the way people can be curious-acting because of a deprivation of sunlight, Jordan isn’t suffering strangely from a shortage of solitude.

“The next full moon after the Masters,” Norman said, “I walk off for a few weeks to go fishing in Mexico or someplace. The fish bite better when there’s no light on the water. I go diving, night diving. I turn all the lights off. It’s quite spectacular down there.

“You should never dive alone, but sometimes I do dive alone, and I’ve had some close calls. But the solitude is worth the risk. To cook my own meals, to do my own dishes, not to touch soil for a while, not to be touched for a while ... “ Not to be cheered or booed or built up or knocked down.

Can you imagine it?