Old Champs and Young Bucks

In his foreword to the 1993 edition of THE BEST AMERICAN SPORTS WRITING (Editor: Frank Deford; Series Editor: Glenn Stout (Houghton Mifflin Co. $22.95; 464 pp.) Stout recalls that when Babe Ruth once inexplicably suffered a prolonged slump, his woes were blamed on a stupendous consumption of hot dogs. As it turns out, the true culprit may have been too much alcohol--and a healthy dose of venereal disease.

Today’s sportswriters wouldn’t let the Babe get off so easily. The days of Boys Club Journalism are over. Just as Washington reporters no longer ignore the philandering of politicians, sportswriters now call ‘em as they see ‘em, perhaps inspired by the voyeurism of our tabloid culture, perhaps by a jealous distaste for today’s self-absorbed jock millionaires.

Indeed, the best stories in SPORTS WRITING are the ones that get under our skin. E. M. Swift offers an unstinting look at the troubled life of figure skater Tonya Harding; Michael Bamberger shows golf star John Daley spinning out of control in the vortex of instant celebritydom and Cory Johnson chronicles the downfall of skateboard idol Mark (Gator) Anthony, who raped and strangled his girlfriend, burying her naked in the California desert.

It’s not just the star athletes who command our attention: Rick Reilly spins a tale about racist hazing among military cadets at the Citadel while Mark Kram offers a chilling examination of the warrior code of violence in pro football. The collection’s most riveting piece, by Scott Raab, is a bare- knuckled portrait of Cleveland State University basketball coach Kevin Mackey, undone by his--and college athletics’--unquenchable thirst for winning.

Cornered by a pair of cops and a TV news camera crew after an all-night binge at a crack house, Mackey is arrested in the company of a junkie hooker who turns out to be his longtime mistress, much to the surprise of his wife and three kids. Fired and sentenced to rehab, Mackey surfaces as head coach of the Fayetteville Flyers, a woeful team in the equally woeful Global Basketball Association.

There’s no easy moralizing here, not from Raab, who is as ruthlessly candid about Mackey as about himself--he’s a recovering addict too. Describing their first meeting, Raab gives you an instant grasp of the hustler wizardry that once made Mackey a rising star: “The voice is all cracked Boston blacktop and broken glass, with an ‘ah-ah-ah’ stutter he uses like a dribble as he darts from sentence to sentence. Asking Mackey a question is like passing the ball to a shooter with no conscience. Once he’s got his hands on a thought, you’ll never see it again.”

It speaks volumes about baseball’s faded glory that of the 25 pieces in SPORTS WRITING none are about major-league ballplayers. In fact, most of today’s baseball writing wallows in nostalgia. The sport’s two most popular literary subjects are Mickey Mantle and Ted Williams--both long retired. When David Halberstam recently set his sights on the sport, he trained his weighty byline on the 1949 pennant race.

Perhaps the most intriguing new baseball book is Michael Gershman’s DIAMONDS: The Evolution of the Ballpark (Houghton Mifflin Co. $39.95; 259 pp.), which focuses not on the game’s artists, but its architecture. Overflowing with rarely-seen vintage photos and etchings, “Diamonds” reminds us of how much baseball came of age with urban America.

Most early ballparks were hastily constructed out of wood. After a few years, they either fell apart or burned down (in 1894, four National League parks were partially destroyed by fire). Detroit’s turn-of-the century Bennett Park was built so fast that its owners simply dumped top-soil over a layer of cobblestones, which often lay bare, giving infielders a never-ending array of bad hops.

It was always a hustler’s game. In the 1890s, Baltimore groundskeepers mixed soap shavings into the pitching mound so opposing hurlers would lose their grip on the ball after rubbing their hands in the dirt. Half a century later, Chicago White Sox general manager Frank Lane installed new fences in Comiskey Park, cutting the foul-line dimensions by 20 feet. But the night before the slugging New York Yankees came to town, the fences mysteriously vanished.

The ballplayers looked different in those days. Lumpier and less-defined, their doughy bodies were a perfect fit for their baggy uniforms. Sooner or later, they had their picture taken by Ozzie Sweet, who’s collected his portfolio of stars in the deliciously kitschy LEGENDS OF THE FIELD (text by Steve Wulf, Viking Studio Books: $40; 270 pp.). All your favorite childhood idols are here, from Sandy Koufax on the mound, his arms dangling at his ankles, to a young Pete Rose, a half-sneer on his face, black mischief in his eyes.

Sweet’s photos are so stylized that they look as if they were taken on a movie set. Shot in gauzy soft-focus, Cleveland Indians slugger Al Rosen bears an uncanny resemblance to a brown-eyed Paul Newman. Posed kneeling on the ground, hands over their bat handles, or floating high in the air, as if parachuting down toward the camera, the players look like cheesecake models, primed for a pin-up calendar. (In a way they were, since many of these photos ended up on the walls of baseball-crazy boys’ bedrooms.)

With photographer Howard L. Bingham behind the camera, Muhammad Ali never looks like a pin-up MUHAMMAD ALI: A Thirty-Year Journey; Simon & Schuster: $32.50. He’s always on the move, joking and jiving, playfully sparring with everybody from Elvis to Don Knotts. A friend for 30 years, Bingham had the unique opportunity to chronicle Ali’s progress from boyish contender to pop-culture icon to aging ex-champ. Informal, artfully composed and sometimes heartbreakingly honest, these photos capture Ali’s amazingly electric presence.

Whether he’s playing pool with Jackie Gleason, mugging with the Beatles, eating ice cream with Elijah Muhammad or waving a baseball bat at Wilt Chamberlain, he immediately grabs your eye. Even Malcolm X couldn’t resist taking his picture as they sat together at a Miami lunch counter.

As Ali grows older, he seems more contemplative, his face puffy, his eyes dim. His smile is gone, as are all the ring men and sycophants who slunk away once the money stopped flowing.

Maybe one day a gifted sportswriter will capture the fullness of Ali’s tumultuous journey, paying homage to his epic battles both inside and outside the ring. Until then, Bingham’s work gives us much to ponder, especially the photos of Ali with his boxing elders, Joe Louis and Sugar Ray Robinson. In both pictures, Ali has his arms around the old champs, holding them against his chest. It’s as if he knew he would need someone there to hold him someday.