SPECIAL REPORT: CRIME & SPORTS ’95 : Making Front-Page News, but in More Parts of the Paper

I remember spending months following America’s most famous murder trial, hearing repeated reference made to “former football great” O.J. Simpson or “football idol” O.J. Simpson and wondering why this case wasn’t being reported on the sports page. It had crossed over into so many athletes’ lives.

Former football player Roosevelt Grier was one of the few with O.J.’s ear, in visits behind bars. Former football player Al Cowlings drove the defendant’s car. Current football player Marcus Allen’s name and relationship with the Simpsons got dragged into the case, much to his chagrin.

Former gold-medalist decathlete Bruce Jenner was an acquaintance of Nicole Simpson’s, as was his wife. The wife of former baseball player Steve Garvey gave sworn testimony. Former football player Bob Chandler was a friend of Simpson’s who stood by him, at the house in Brentwood, until cancer caused his own death before the verdict was read.

Throughout the trial, there were glimpses into the world of sport that Simpson inhabited. There were the gloves O.J. wore while wielding a microphone in his job as a television commentator, one frigid day. There was the quarterback from Kansas City who was observed and overheard, on camera, asking Simpson who that woman by his side was, then becoming flustered by O.J.’s reply: “She’s my wife.”

Things got to the point that when a professional golf tournament of distinction was played at a country club to which Simpson belonged as a member, the case’s shadow fell across even the clubhouse where he changed his shoes. The accused’s connection with the sports world was a strong one.

The man who spoke with Simpson on the flight to Chicago, the night of the murders, was Howard Bingham, a photographer best known for his relationship of long standing with boxer Muhammad Ali. One of the men who represented Simpson in court, Robert Shapiro, was himself an amateur boxer who might be found sparring at Mickey Rourke’s gym, or seen seated at ringside in Las Vegas.

I was glad, generally, that the Simpson case rarely made its way to the sports pages of American newspapers or sportscasts of television news. Many times, however, I was at a loss to understand why.

Mike Tyson’s rape trial did. Tonya Harding’s assault plot did. Pete Rose’s tax evasion did. Bruce McNall’s fraud case did. Darryl Henley’s drug rap did. Day by day, the arrests, indictments or scandals of celebrated sport figures became headline news, right there alongside the baseball standings and the hockey scores. Jurisprudence became a daily department, like the horse-racing results.

Crime’s link to athletics was hardly uncommon, polite society having long since been exposed to a baseball team being paid to lose the World Series on purpose, many a prizefighter taking a dive, basketball players shaving points, even a jockey who electrically prodded a horse to run faster.

But the sentiment of Chief Justice Earl Warren, that he began his day with the sports page for the good news before turning to the front page for the bad, became less and less relevant with the passing years. Simply too many public figures, primarily known for their association with sport, became involved in one kind of shame or another. Domestic violence alone seemed to be an area in which athletes became acquainted with the inside of a cell.

Too often, though, as we gradually discovered during the Simpson trial, was that such abuse was overlooked or not fully investigated. Our newspapers were at fault here also in neglecting to report such outrages. The public humiliation alone of one’s being arrested can be enough, in some instances, to deter the offender from ever acting in such a manner again.

Domestic abuse was at the heart of the Simpson case from the beginning. Had the man no previous history of abuse, no record of 911 emergency calls from his spouse, no previous conviction, then the motive of jealousy would not have been so much a part of the prosecution’s case. Stories of the defendant defying police, driving right past them like a halfback breaking tackles, sent shivers down the spines of any women who had similar experiences and wondered who else, if not the cops, they could call.

As we watch O.J. Simpson play golf on the TV highlights, a free man, you know something and so does he. Namely, that either this is the most wrongfully accused man of the ages, incarcerated and vilified unjustly, to whom the world owes every apology, or this is evil personified, venal, lost-soul evil.

How often I wish that no crime could ever be reported on a sports page, nothing struck other than a baseball, nothing stolen other than a base. The real world can be a mystifying place, alas, where athletes, figuratively and perhaps even literally, still feel they can get away with murder.