COMMENTARY : His Life Finally Had Become Good Again

John Lloyd stood at the top of the steps outside St. Dominic’s Church in Oyster Bay and watched as the casket slowly came through the double doors. There were several pallbearers now, more than when the casket had been brought to the church two hours before. Three of them were Bjorn Borg, John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors.

There was a time, back in 1979, when they were ranked No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 in the world in tennis. No. 4 was a gifted child of New York City named Vitas Gerulaitis. Now Borg, Connors and McEnroe carried Gerulaitis’ casket out of St. Dominic’s and into the gray morning.

“You should have seen Vitas last week in Seattle,” John Lloyd said quietly, then looked away and broke into a small smile. “You should have heard him.”

Connors has a circuit for players over 35. Borg is with him and Lloyd and some other stars from the 1970s and ‘80s. Gerulaitis was on that tour too. And perhaps the last big laughs, the last great cheers from a tennis career filled with both, came last week in Seattle for him. There was this doubles match, and even with Borg and Connors in it, the show belonged to Gerulaitis.

“After the first set, I said to Jimmy, ‘The other three of us might as well not even be here.’ ” Lloyd said. “ ‘This is Vitas’ room.’ And Jimmy said, ‘Aren’t they all?’ ”

The last room the other day was a church with a high ceiling in Oyster Bay on Long Island. They had come from tennis and television and New York City nights to mourn Gerulaitis.

When he was in his prime as a player, when he was such a good man and a very bad boy, he resisted sleep as much as anyone ever could, because he was always afraid he would miss something.

He resisted sleep all his life and then died because he took a nap last Saturday afternoon in a friend’s pool house, into which carbon monoxide was being pumped from a broken heater.

Gerulaitis died quietly in the night at 40 during a time when his life finally felt like morning again.

“My boy had plans again,” his mother, Aldona, had said at the wake. “My boy had plans.”

Gerulaitis had battled cocaine for so long. But in the last couple of years, he had come back from that and put his life back together and found a new career in television. Had found all of the old light. All the energy he had once poured into tennis and parties and the sheer breakneck rush of his life he now poured into golf and charity work everywhere. His mother was right. He had plans again. He had prospects.

He was born in Brooklyn, grew up in Queens and even attended Columbia University for a while. He came from public tennis courts all over the city and Long Island, and the Port Washington Tennis Academy. He owned a mansion in Kings Point once.

“I remember this big blond streak,” Mary Carillo said, remembering the first time she saw Gerulaitis when they were both teen-agers at the Port Washington Tennis Academy. “He was the most dazzling thing I’d ever seen.”

Carillo, from ESPN and CBS, made the church laugh with stories about Gerulaitis, because he was still in the room and that meant you had to laugh. She told of a pajama party he threw in some Pittsburgh hotel on his 21st birthday.

Then Jimmy Connors was up there after Carillo, telling about a time when some fan in Huntsville, Ala., mistook Gerulaitis for Borg, even with Borg in the same elevator. Gerulaitis signed Borg’s name and when Connors asked him why later, Gerulaitis smiled.

“Always give them something to make them happy,” Gerulaitis said.

Connors, who is as tough as there ever was in tennis, finished his eulogy this way: “He was my friend and I loved him and I’m going to miss him.” Then Connors cried. Because you also had to cry in Gerulaitis’ room at St. Dominic’s.

Connors knew how far Gerulaitis had come back. Connors had always been a good friend, even in very bad times. Now Connors could see that the magic with people that Gerulaitis had taken out of New York and all over the tennis map was back. Maybe the fans came to see Connors and Borg. Once they were in the house, they fell for Gerulaitis. They always had.

When the applause came, when he won another audience over with all the one-liners, he was young again. He loved all the charity work with all of his great heart. He had flown a red-eye flight from Seattle to get to East Hampton on Saturday afternoon and do a clinic at an event run by Jack Whitaker and his wife, former tennis star Nancy Chaffee Whitaker. The size of the audience never seemed to matter to Gerulaitis. It was an audience. He would cast his spell again.

He said he was tired when his clinic was over, and wanted to go take a nap. He hugged Nancy Whitaker and said goodby. And that was the last anybody saw of him until he was found dead.

So there was a different goodby at St. Dominic’s. Finally, after hymns had been sung, after Carillo had quoted the last marvelous lines from Camelot and Ruta Gerulaitis had read a simple prayer for her brother, there were Connors and Borg and McEnroe moving into the center aisle.

And suddenly it was 1977 again, when Borg and Connors and McEnroe and Gerulaitis were the Wimbledon semifinalists. The Borg-Gerulaitis match was won by Borg, 8-6, in the fifth set. Afterward, Gerulaitis was full of one-liners and sass, and filled that interview room with as much fun as it could ever know.

Finally some old Brit in the back said, “Vitas, you’re pretty chipper for somebody who lost the match.”

Gerulaitis, 23 that day and sure he would live forever, shrugged. “This was my winning press conference,” he said. “I hated to waste all this good material.”

The other day was about a different kind of waste. Those in St. Dominic’s stood at the end and the organ music came up and a parishioner sang again, in a clear and haunting voice. There was a slight pause, as if neither Borg, nor Connors, nor McEnroe could believe he was here.

Then the three top players in the world once picked up No. 4, and started down the aisle, all laughter gone now from the church and the morning, only memories of laughter left behind, and memories of a short, full life.