Memories Are Few for This O.J. Reporter

Many years from now, there may come a time when little Scotty III will turn to me for help on a history project.

“What did you do in The O.J. Case, granddaddy?”

I’ll smile and get misty thinking of the times I asked my father about his memories of Pearl Harbor and Okinawa, and of his brief visit to Nagasaki, where he was exposed to radiation. Perhaps the passage of time will have caused me to romanticize my own role in what will then be known as The Trial of the Last Century. Maybe I’ll describe how I was sitting right there next to the Goldman family, or how I tracked down Mark Fuhrman in Idaho for reaction, or how I turned down big bucks to ghostwrite “I Was O.J.’s Bag Man: The Robert Kardashian Story.” Maybe by then I’ll believe my own lies.

The truth is less dramatic. What did I do in The O.J. Case? Not much. Wrote some columns, that’s all. Bemoaned and satirized the hype of it all. Expressed outrage over Fuhrman. And on O.J. Day, the truth is I wasn’t anywhere near the courtroom. I was in Universal City collecting reaction for a column that ran the day after.

But that’s not all I did on Oct. 3, 1995. I also went to a baseball game.

*

The point, I’ll tell my grandson, is that life went on, albeit in O.J.’s shadow. When Brien, a pal since elementary school, had called the night before to offer me a ticket to the first game of the Dodgers-Reds playoff, he expressed concern that the Simpson verdict, to be announced the next morning, might “mess up the game.” We both remembered that after a jury in Simi Valley announced its surprising verdict 3 1/2 years ago, Dodger games were indeed called on account of riot.

I used to scoff at the fear that O.J. might inspire a riot. Patiently, I would explain the obvious: First, it’s going to be a hung jury. Second, Simpson is not Rodney King, a commoner beaten with police batons. O.J. was this smiling millionaire jock who faced a mountain of evidence that he murdered his ex-wife and a man who happened upon the scene.

It was only lately--after the Fuhrman audiotapes became public and then the former detective invoked the Fifth Amendment--that I worried. To Fuhrman, Simpson wasn’t just a you-know-what. He was a super-you-know-what. Now it was easier to understand why black folks might doubt the evidence and root for O.J.

Then came the deliberations, if that’s the word. So much for a hung jury. Police were put on alert. A couple of friends, also white, speculated that an acquittal could trigger a riot of celebration. After a big football game, party animals have been known to tip over police cars.

Finally, the verdict was read, inspiring jeers, cheers and tears--but no riot. No fire this time.

So baseball was on. Final score: Reds 7, Dodgers 2. But it was nice to see Brien, and it was nice that coincidence had brought two other old friends to town. Peter Schmuck--yes, that’s really his name--is a sportswriter back East. Peter Hecht, a news reporter for the Sacramento Bee, was down to work the O.J. story.

Back in college, the three of us had taken a road trip from Cal State Fullerton to the Deep South, where my kin dubbed them “Pete and Re-Pete.” We still remember the moment in Monroe, La., that a cousin I’d never met before, nor have seen since, cavalierly described how he was driving his car and struck a black child who had darted into a street. “Yeah, I got me a you-know-what,” he said, only he didn’t say you-know-what. My cousin could be lighthearted because the child wasn’t seriously hurt. “They got hard heads,” he joked. His sense of humor left these three white boys in uncomfortable silence.

I headed toward the press box, looking for Schmuck. The crowd nearby roared with laughter. Down below, an Asian man had donned a robe and was doing a Dancing Ito. A few feet away, a group of raucous young men stood and let loose with a chant: “GUILTY! GUILTY! GUILTY!. . .”

They were white guys, as you may have surmised. Frat boys, I figured. The cheer seemed more a joke than a genuine expression of outrage. The chant didn’t last long. Plenty of people may have agreed with the sentiment, but that’s not why you go to a ballgame.

*

Unfortunately, Brien couldn’t join me and the two Petes for our postgame, post-verdict reunion. Hecht talked about how his day outside the courthouse and in Brentwood reminded him of when he worked in Dallas and watched fans of the Texas Longhorns and Oklahoma Sooners taunt each other in the street. “Only this time,” he said, “it was about race.”

O.J. had been a childhood hero of mine. During one football season some 25 years ago, I wore the number 32 with pride. But on the day the banner headline shouted “Simpson Not Guilty,” these former fans agreed that it was very hard to think of him as innocent.

With melancholy I wound up watching David Letterman speculate about how O.J. might update his answering machine: “I’m not home right now, but I’m not in jail.”

Then Letterman got a bit serious, saying that whether or not you agree with the verdict, we’re all probably glad the trial’s over. That got a lot of applause, even if the trial, in the larger sense, has no end in sight. Then I downed some cold medicine and went to bed.

And that, I’ll tell little Scotty, pretty much sums up what I did in The O.J. Case.

Scott Harris’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays.