The High Cost of Fame : Once Raider Anthony Smith Got a Big Contract and Star Status, He Learned That Everyone Was Suddenly His New Best Friend

After a lifetime of climbing, he sits on top of the hill.

But he sits alone.

After a lifetime of dreaming, he has realized his fantasies.

But with them have come nightmares.

At 27, Anthony Smith has become the leader of the Raiders’ defensive line and the owner of a new, three-story home high on a Playa del Rey hill, the city spread out before him.

He has gone from poverty to wealth, from obscurity to fame.

Last winter, he signed a four-year, $7.6-million contract with the Raiders. This summer, with the retirement of Howie Long and the release of Greg Townsend, Smith, who has 36 sacks in three seasons as a situational player, will finally get the starting job he has wanted since becoming a first-round draft choice of the Raiders in 1990.

This should be the happiest time of his life.

So why is this man so disillusioned, so confused, so angry?

It’s not that Smith is ungrateful. He knows how far he has come from his home in a North Carolina ghetto. He’s not looking for sympathy.

A wife, a couple of kids, a few genuine friends and a chance to give back to society would suffice. Those would appear to be the most attainable of goals at this stage in his life. But they have proved to be the hardest.

Smith has found, as have so many others before him, that happiness does not naturally follow wealth and success, that roses come with thorns.

He has found plenty of friends of both sexes, but few, Smith believes, are sincere. Too many are interested only in his fame and fortune.

“The way I’ve seen people react to me, Anthony Smith the Raider, has been sickening,” he said.

Only too happy to share in the riches that have come his way, he has been too generous, too trusting, naive enough to serve as an easy mark for the city slickers.

“I’ve run into women who love the nice cars and the nice salary,” Smith said. “That’s what they’re all about. They weren’t about the real Anthony Smith. If a woman could love me as much for what I don’t have as what I do have, I’ve found a good woman. But I have not found that. I have not met that creature yet. And right now, I’m not even looking. Right now, I don’t even want a family. I’m not bitter toward family life. I’m bitter toward the people who have changed my attitude about good fortune.”

Because of his celebrity status, Smith has found no shortage of outstretched arms. But too many come with palms up.

“It’s cruel,” he said. “It’s the only thing about my life I despise. This is not something that I just dislike. I have grown to despise it. Someone’s desire to trick me or cheat me out of what I have, that makes me sick. After a while, I feel like saying, ‘Just take the damn money and leave me alone.’ ”

Smith includes in that category everybody from those who have offered to do work on his new house to others who have simply come looking for a handout.

“I really need a friend in my life now,” he said. “Someone to care about me. It’s tough to find, either male or female.

“I wish sometimes that I could just go back to being the old me when nobody cared if I walked or breathed.

“When I got my first (big) paycheck, I started helping people out. Everybody came around and got their loans, everybody got their down payments on their houses, everybody got their cars. And do you know, not one, not one individual has paid me back for anything. My immediate family has asked for nothing. But friends of the family, other people I’ve known, have taken $450,000. That’s money that I just gave away that I won’t get back. That’s my lesson, a $450,000 lesson.”

There was one old friend who really hurt Smith.

“It was a guy I grew up with in my hometown (of Elizabeth City) in North Carolina,” said Smith, declining to identify him. “I’ve known him for 25 years. I brought him home and he stole money from me. He was strung out on drugs.”

Smith feels if his career, precarious as it is for a man who risks serious injury on every play, should end tomorrow, the ringing at his doorbell would stop.

“(The freeloaders) would then tell me, ‘You are stupid for doing what you did,’ ” he said. “Yet, as long as I’m able to give, they are willing to receive. And that’s wrong.”

The one person Smith knows he can count on, for both friendship and guidance, is David (Deacon) Jones, the Hall of Fame defensive lineman (1961-74) and long-time Ram star recently voted to the NFL’s all-time team. Jones, now an analyst on Ram broadcasts, serves as a mentor to Smith for his life both on and off the field.

Having been through some of the same problems himself, Jones shakes his head knowingly at the problems in Smith’s personal life.

“L.A. is a tough town to play in,” Jones said. “It’s a tough town to do anything in. This town will swallow you alive. The same people who were coming around when I was playing, to see what they could get, are coming around (other players) now. Only now, because of the big money involved, they’re bringing their whole family with them.

“(Smith) is a nice young man. So nice, I wonder if he really is a defensive end.”

Even his charity work, in which he takes even more pride than he does in his accomplishments on the playing field, Smith has been burned. His kindness and concern are well known throughout South Central L.A., where he is a familiar figure, helping youngsters cope with the stress of daily life. He has devoted himself to aiding kids who remind him of his formative years. But when he has brought some of them home with him, he has later discovered, on occasion, that they have robbed him .

“After games, I’ve seen kids on corners and I’ve taken them home,” Smith said. “I’ve taken them to the Raider dinners and tried to make them part of my life, only to have them steal from me, take from me.”

But in these instances, Smith is not bitter.

“I don’t blame them,” he said. “Because those kids are saying to themselves, ‘Well, this is my one time here. I got to get what I can.’ ”

Still, Smith has learned another lesson. “You can’t allow people in your house,” he said. “I don’t do that anymore.”

Jones thinks Smith has adopted the right policy.

“You’ve got to separate the game and your work from your life,” Jones said. “You can’t be all things to all people. You can’t feel sorry for everyone’s problems. There were poor people long before Anthony Smith came around, and there will be poor people long after he is gone. It didn’t start with him. If you were to help 999,000 poor people, how many would still be left? You’ve got to live your own life.

“You don’t take anybody home with you. How many are you going to take? It’s just going to frustrate you. You work in volume. You work with programs.

“But your home has got to be your sanctuary. That’s where you go to refresh yourself. Then, you go out and help the neighborhood. You want to help kids? Fine, but there has to be a method to the madness. You’ve got to find a happy medium or you’ll go stark raving mad.”

Even when he has followed Jones’ advice and worked in the neighborhood, Smith has not been able to avoid being hurt--not because of what any of the kids have done to him, but because of what has been done to them.

“I give my life to these kids,” Smith said, “only to find out a month later, two months later, that they are dead. So many drive-by shootings. I can look at 200 some-odd obituaries from the seven or eight programs I’ve dealt with. Take your pick. All of those kids are special to me.”

He said he gets to the point where he hesitates before getting emotionally involved.

“I’m afraid I’m going to lose them,” Smith explained. “I felt at one time like I was bad luck to the kids.”

But despite all the frustrations and heartbreak, Smith isn’t about to create a moat around his castle and give up on mankind.

“Not at all,” he said. “What I want to do is help people who want to help themselves. If someone comes to me needing financial help, the first thing I want to know is whether they can pay it back or not. If they can’t pay it back, I’m not going to worry about it. I’ll just give it to them. If they are able to pay it back, that’s when I’m going to break out a contract.

“Any organization needing a dollar? If they write me, they’ve got a dollar. I’ve given to an Amish organization, to a Catholic, Hispanic and Jewish. I went when I was the only black guy in there. People say I shouldn’t feel my place is there. My place is anywhere I can bring a smile.

“I’ve grown more this year than I have at any other time in my life. This city can chew you up in a minute. But as much bad as this place has, there’s more good. There’s Little Leagues, basketball leagues and football leagues. There’s schools that are taking the initiative to teach kids how to think as opposed to what to think.

“There is a lot going on that is positive.”