Or maybe write my lead first, and then deliver the sermon. In any case, there was no time to lose. The thing was about a third of the way up my spine now, and still having at good speed. I jerked on a pair of L.L. Bean walking shorts and ran out on the balcony to a nearby ice machine.
Back in the room I filled a glass full of ice and Wild Turkey, then began flipping through the pages of A Demon’s Nightmare for some kind of spiritual springboard to get the sermon moving. I had already decided—about midway in the ice run—that I had adequate time to address the sleeping crowd and also crank out a lead before that goddamn blood-sucking slug reached the base of my brain—or, even worse, if a sharp dose of Wild Turkey happened to slow the thing down long enough to rob me of my final excuse for missing the game entirely, like last year....
What? Did my tongue slip there? My fingers? Or did I just get a fine professional hint from my old buddy, Mr. Natural?
Indeed. When the going gets tough, the tough get going. John Mitchell said that—shortly before he quit his job and left Washington at ninety miles an hour in a chauffeur-driven limousine.
I have never felt close to John Mitchell, but on that rotten morning in Houston, I came as close as I ever will; because he was, after all, a pro ... and so, alas, was I. Or at least I had a fistful of press badges that said I was.
And it was this bedrock sense of professionalism, I think, that quickly solved my problem ... which, until that moment when I recalled the foul spectre of Mitchell, had seemed to require a frantic decision between either delivering my sermon or writing my lead, in the place of an impossibly short time.
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.
Who said that?
I suspect it was somebody from the Columbia Journalism Review, but I have no proof ... and it makes no difference anyway. There is a bond, among pros, that needs no definition. Or at least it didn’t on that Sunday morning in Houston, for reasons that require no further discussion at this point in time ... because it suddenly occurred to me that I had already written the lead for this year’s Super Bowl game; I wrote it last year in Los Angeles, and a quick rip through my fat manila folder of clips labeled “Football ’73” turned it up as if by magic.
I jerked it out of the file, and retyped it on a fresh page slugged: “Super Bowl/Houston ’74.” The only change necessary was the substitution of “Minnesota Vikings” for “Washington Redskins.” Except for that, the lead seemed just as adequate for the game that would begin in about six hours as it was for the one that I missed in Los Angeles in January of ’73.
“The precision-jackhammer attack of the Miami Dolphins stomped the balls off the Minnesota Vikings today by stomping and hammering with one precise jack-thrust after another up the middle, mixed with pinpoint-precision passes into the flat and numerous hammer-jack stops around both ends . . .”
The jangling of the telephone caused me to interrupt my work. I jerked it off the hook, saying nothing to whoever was on the other end, and began flashing the hotel operator. When she finally cut in, I spoke very calmly. “Look,” I said, “I’m a very friendly person and a minister of the gospel, to boot—but I thought I left instructions down there to put no calls—No calls, goddamn it!—through to this room, and especially not now in the middle of this orgy ... I’ve been here eight days and nobody’s called me yet. Why in hell would they start now? ... What? Well, I simply can’t accept that kind of flimsy reasoning, operator. Do you believe in hell? Are you ready to speak with Saint Peter? ... Wait a minute now, calm down ... I want to be sure you understand one thing before I get back to my business; I have some people here who need help . . . But I want you to know that God is Holy! He will not allow sin in his presence! The Bible says: ‘There is none righteous. No, not one ... For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.’ That’s from the book of Romans, young lady . . .”
The silence at the other end of the line was beginning to make me nervous. But I could feel the sap rising, so I decided to continue my sermon from the balcony ... and I suddenly realized that somebody was beating on my door. Jesus God, I thought, it’s the manager; they’ve come for me at last.
But it was a TV reporter from Pittsburgh, raving drunk and demanding to take a shower. I jerked him into the room. “Nevermind the goddamn shower,” I said. “Do you realize what I have on my spine?” He stared at me, unable to speak. “A giant leech,” I said. “It’s been there for eight days, getting fatter and fatter with blood.”
He nodded slowly as I led him over to the phone. “I hate leeches,” he muttered.
“That’s the least of our problems,” I said. “Room service won’t send any beer up until noon, and all the bars are closed ... I have this Wild Turkey, but I think it’s too heavy for the situation we’re in.”
“You’re right,” he said. “I got work to do. The goddamn game’s about to start. I need a shower.”
“Me too,” I said. “But I have some work to do first, so you’ll have to make the call.”
“Call?” He slumped into a chair in front of the window, staring out at the thick gray mist that had hung on the town for eight days—except now, as Super Sunday dawned, it was thicker and wetter than ever.
I gave him the phone: “Call the manager,” I said. “Tell him you’re Howard Cosell and you’re visiting up here with a minister in 2003; we’re having a private prayer breakfast and we need two-fifths of his best red wine, with a box of saltine crackers.”
He nodded unhappily. “Hell, I came here for a shower. Who needs the wine?”
“It’s important,” I said. “You make the call while I go outside and get started.”
He shrugged and dialed “O” while I hurried out to the balcony, clearing my throat for an opening run at James 2:19:
“Beware!” I shouted. “For the devils also believe, and tremble!”
I waited for a moment, but there was no reply from the lobby, twenty floors down—so I tried Ephesians 6:12, which seemed more appropriate:
“For we wrestle not,” I screamed, “against flesh and blood—but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world—and, yes—against spiritual wickedness in high places!”
Still there was no response except the booming echoes of my own voice ... but the thing on my spine was moving with new vigor now, and I sensed there was not much time. All movement in the lobby had ceased. They were all standing still down there—maybe twenty or thirty people . . . but were they listening? Could they hear?
I couldn’t be sure. The acoustics of these massive lobbies are not predictable. I knew, for instance, that a person sitting in a room on the eleventh floor, with the door open, could hear—with unnerving clarity—the sound of a cocktail glass shattering on the floor of the lobby. It was also true that almost every word of Gregg Allman’s “Multi-Colored Lady” played at top volume on a dual-speaker Sony TC-126 in an open-door room on the twentieth floor could be heard in the NFL pressroom on the hotel mezzanine ... but it was hard to be sure of the timbre and carrying power of my own voice in this cavern; it sounded, to me, like the deep screaming of a bull elk in the rut ... but there was no way to know, for sure, if I was really getting through.
“Discipline!” I bellowed. “Remember Vince Lombardi!” I paused to let that one sink in—waiting for applause, but none came. “Remember George Metesky!” I shouted. “He had discipline!”
Nobody down in the lobby seemed to catch that one, although I sensed the first stirrings of action on the balconies just below me. It was almost time for the Free Breakfast in the Imperial Ballroom downstairs, and some of the early rising sportswriters seemed to be up and about. Somewhere behind me a phone was ringing, but I paid no attention. It was time, I felt, to bring it all together ... my voice was giving out, but despite the occasional dead spots and bursts of high-pitched wavering, I grasped the railing of the balcony and got braced for some flat-out raving:
“Revelations, Twenty-fifteen!” I screamed. “Say Hallel
ujah! Yes! Say Hallelujah!”
People were definitely responding now. I could hear their voices, full of excitement—but the acoustics of the place made it impossible to get a good fix on the cries that were bounding back and forth across the lobby. Were they saying “Hallelujah”?
“Four more years!” I shouted. “My friend General Haig has told us that the Forces of Darkness are now in control of the Nation—and they will rule for four more years!” I paused to sip my drink, then I hit it again: “And Al Davis has told us that whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire!”
I reached around behind me with my free hand, slapping at a spot between my shoulder blades to slow the thing down.
“How many of you will be cast into the lake of fire in the next four years? How many will survive? I have spoken with General Haig, and—”
At this point I was seized by both arms and jerked backward, spilling my drink and interrupting the climax of my sermon. “You crazy bastard!” a voice screamed. “Look what you’ve done! The manager just called. Get back in the room and lock the fucking door! He’s going to bust us!”
It was the TV man from Pittsburgh, trying to drag me back from my pulpit. I slipped out of his grasp and returned to the balcony. “This is Super Sunday!” I screamed. “I want every one of you worthless bastards down in the lobby in ten minutes so we can praise God and sing the national anthem!”
At this point I noticed the TV man sprinting down the hall toward the elevators, and the sight of him running caused something to snap in my brain. “There he goes!” I shouted. “He’s headed for the lobby! Watch out! It’s Al Davis. He has a knife!”
I could see people moving on all the balconies now, and also down in the lobby. Then, just before I ducked back in my room, I saw one of the glass-walled elevators starting down, with a single figure inside it ... he was the most visible man in the building; a trapped and crazy animal descending slowly—in full view of everybody from the busboys in the ground-floor coffee shop to Jimmy the Greek on the balcony above me—to certain captivity by that ugly crowd at the bottom.
I watched for a moment, then hung the Do Not Disturb sign on my doorknob and double-locked the door. That elevator, I knew, would be empty when it got to the lobby. There were at least five floors, on the way down, where he could jump out and bang on a friendly door for safe refuge ... and the crowd in the lobby had not seen him clearly enough, through the tinted-glass wall of the elevator, to recognize him later on.
And there was not much time for vengeance, anyway, on the odd chance that anyone cared.
It had been a dull week, even by sportswriters’ standards, and now the day of the Big Game was finally on us. Just one more free breakfast, one more ride, and by nightfall the thing would be over.
The first media bus was scheduled to leave the hotel for the stadium at ten thirty, four hours before kickoff, so I figured that gave me some time to relax and act human. I filled the bathtub with hot water, plugged the tape recorder with both speakers into a socket right next to the tub, and spent the next two hours in a steam-stupor, listening to Rosalie Sorrels and Doug Sahm, chewing idly on a small slice of Mr. Natural, and reading the Cocaine Papers of Sigmund Freud.
Around noon I went downstairs to the Imperial Ballroom to read the morning papers over the limp dregs of the NFL’s free breakfast, then I stopped at the free bar for a few Bloody Marys before wandering outside to catch the last bus for the stadium—the CBS special—complete with more Bloody Marys, screwdrivers, and a roving wagon-meister who seemed to have everything under control.
On the bus to the stadium, I made a few more bets on Miami. At that point I was picking up everything I could get, regardless of the points. It had been a long and jangled night, but the two things that needed to be done before game time—my sermon and my lead—were already done, and the rest of the day looked easy: just try to keep out of trouble and stay straight enough to collect on all my bets.
The consensus among the 1,600 or so sportswriters in town favored Miami by almost two to one ... but there are only a handful of sportswriters in this country with enough sense to pour piss out of their own boots, and by Saturday night there was an obvious drift among the few “smart” ones to Minnesota, with a seven-point cushion. Paul Zimmerman of the New York Post, author of A Thinking Man’s Guide to Pro Football and the sportswriting fraternity’s scaled-down answer to the Washington Post’s political guru David Broder, had organized his traditional pressroom betting pool—where any sportswriter who felt up to it could put $1 in the pot and predict the final score (in writing, on the pressroom bulletin board, for all the world to see) . . . and whoever came closest would pick up $1,000 or so dollars.
Or at least that was the theory. But in reality there were only about four hundred writers willing to risk a public prediction on the outcome of a game that—even to an amateur like me—was so obvious that I took every bet I could get against the Vikings, regardless of the spread. As late as 10:30 on Sunday morning, I was calling bookies on both coasts, doubling and tripling my bets with every point I could get from five to seven—and by 2:35 on Sunday afternoon, five minutes after the kickoff, I knew I was home free.
Moments later, when the Dolphins drove the length of the field for another touchdown, I began collecting money. The final outcome was painfully clear less than halfway through the first quarter—and shortly after that, Sport magazine editor Dick Schaap reached over my shoulder in the press section and dropped two bills—a five and a twenty—in my lap.
I smiled back at him. “Jesus,” I said. “Are you giving up already? This game is far from over, my man. Your people are only twenty-one points down, and we still have a whole half to go.”
He shook his head sadly.
“You’re not counting on a second-half rally?” I asked, pocketing his money.
He stared at me, saying nothing ... then he rolled his eyes up toward the soupy mist above the stadium where the Goodyear Blimp was hovering, almost invisible in the fog.
In the increasingly rigid tradition of Super Bowl games, this one was never in doubt. The Dolphins took the opening kickoff and stomped the Viking defense like they were a gang of sick junkies. The “Purple People Eaters”—Minnesota’s fabled “front four”—ate nothing but crow on that long afternoon in Houston. It was one of the dullest and most predictable football games I’ve ever had to sit through, on TV or anywhere else. My final score prediction in Zimmerman’s pool had been Miami, 27–10—3 points high, on both sides, from the final score of 24–7. It was not close enough, apparently, to win the sportswriters’ pool—but it was close enough to beat most of the bookies, wizards, and experts.
There is a definite, perverse kind of pleasure in beating the “smart money”—in sports, politics, or anything else—and the formula for doing it seems dangerously simple: take the highest odds you can get against the conventional wisdom—but never bet against your own instinct or the prevailing karma.
Moments after the game, standing in the sawdust-floored circus tent where the players were being led in, one by one, for mass interviews with the sporting press, I was approached by Larry Merchant, author of a recently published book called The National Football Lottery, a shrewd layman’s analysis about how to beat the bookies by betting on pro football games. I was just finishing a long talk with Dolphins owner Joe Robbie about the relationship between national politics, pro football, and the cruel fate of our mutual friend George McGovern, when Merchant tapped me on the shoulder with one hand and handed me a $50 bill with the other. He said nothing at all. I had given him Minnesota with six and a half. The final spread was seventeen.
I smiled and stuck the bill in my wallet. Joe Robbie seemed not to notice. Gambling on the outcome of games is strictly verboten among owners, players, coaches, and all other employees of the National Football League, and being seen in public in the presence of an obvious gambling transaction makes these people very uncomfortable. The only thing worse than
being seen with a known gambler is finding yourself in the white-light glare of a network TV camera in the company of an infamous drug abuser ... and here was the owner of the winning Super Bowl team, moments after accepting the Lombardi Trophy in front of three hundred cameras, talking with obvious enthusiasm—about the likelihood of President Nixon’s impeachment—to a person long-since identified by the NFL security watchdogs as both a gambler and a drug freak.
I half expected Robbie to jerk his coat over his head and sprint for the tent exit, but he never even blinked. He kept right on talking about the McGovern campaign, then shook my hand again and invited me out to the Dolphin victory party that night at the Marriott Motor Hotel. “Come on out and celebrate with us,” he said. “It should be a nice party.”
“Why not?” I said. Behind me I could hear George Kimball, bellowing in the throes of a long-delayed acid frenzy ... and as I turned to deal with Kimball I remembered that Joe Robbie was originally a politician—a candidate for Congress, among other things, on the left-wing Farmer-Labor ticket in Minnesota—and there was something about him that suggested a sense of politics or at least political sensitivity that you rarely encounter among men who own and run professional football teams. Both Robbie and his coach, Don Shula, seem far more relaxed and given to quick flashes of humor than the kind of militaristic, puritanical jocks and PR men you normally have to deal with on the business/power levels of the NFL. This was just as obvious—especially with Shula—before the game, as well as after it.
In stark contrast to Shula, Viking coach Bud Grant spent most of Super Week acting like a Marine Corps drill sergeant with a terminal case of the piles. Grant’s public behavior in Houston called up ominous memories of Redskin coach George Allen’s frantic pre-game bitching last year in Los Angeles.