For Irving, no apology but a suspension

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Yes, that was a rabbi on ESPN’s NBA Today. You might say he was acting as a point guard, trying to keep things under control. Not on court, in society.

Trying to do what ESPN tells us sport often does: brings together people from different places, with different viewpoints. Enables us to share the joy.

Except now, we’re sharing disappointment. Not over the results of a particular game. We get over losses in time. This is different. This is about an observation from basketball star Kyrie Irving that is as worrisome as it is unacceptable.

Irving went on the internet and endorsed a propaganda film from a book by the same name, “Hebrews to Negroes,” loaded with antisemitic assertions.

Irving insists he doesn’t dislike the Jews or any religious group, but he refused to apologize for the internet post — which, of course, was taken down Wednesday by his team, the Brooklyn Nets, who are based in one of the country’s predominantly Jewish areas.

“I don’t hate anyone,” Irving said.

In suspending Irving, the Nets — already a dysfunctional mess — called him “unfit to be associated with the team.”

What Mike Wilbon from ESPN’s Pardon the Interruption called Irving was dangerous.

Last season, because he refused to be vaccinated against Covid, Irving was not cleared to play in New York, the Nets’ home state, or California. 

Irving supposedly said the Holocaust never took place, but he denies the assertion, and Thursday before he was suspended, offered a confusing open-ended remark.

“Some of the criticism of the Jewish faith and the community,” said Irving, “for sure, some of the points made there, that were unfortunate.”

Everything with which Irving has been in involved of late seems unfortunate.

Asked if he believes or agrees with the false idea that the Holocaust never happened, Irving answered “those falsehoods are unfortunate.”

So is this entire situation. Fans at a Nets game Monday night wore T-shirts with the slogan, “Fight Antisemitism.”

In West Los Angeles, Eraz Sherman, rabbi at Temple Sinai,

cringed and readied for his own fight. Many NBA players work out in the temple’s gym not too far from the UCLA campus.

“It makes me scared,” he told NBA Today of the film and the Irving internet posting. “One of the kids who belongs to the synagogue loves wearing his Kyrie Irving shoes. Now he wants to throw them away.”

Someone wondered what the rabbi might tell Irving, given the chance in a conversation,

“I would point out this is a multi-faith world, not inter-faith,” said Sherman. “We have to stay together, not tearing everything apart.”

Irving, apparently believing money is a substitute for an apology, will donate $500,000 to promote antisemitism.

“l didn’t want to cause any harm,” Irving said to reporters.

But he caused great harm, for himself and others involved in this awful event.

A courageous stand by women’s tennis

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You know the line about putting your money where your mouth is. When the words stop and the action begins. When it gets down to courage instead of talk.

The leaders of women’s tennis displayed that courage. Stood up for one of their own — and other women who never have picked up a racquet.

Announced they were suspending all tournaments in China, including Hong Kong, because of the disappearance from public life of former Grand Slam and Olympic doubles champion Peng Shuai.

The suspension will cost the Women’s Tennis Association hundreds of millions of dollars. It comes only two months before the Winter Olympics are to be held in China.

Yet after numerous requests to contact Peng had been ignored, the WTA, to its credit, did what the NBA or International Olympic Committee either could not or would not do.

It made an individual more important than a barrelful of dollars.

Two years ago Daryl Morey, then general manager of the Houston Rockets and now president of the Philadelphia 76ers, tweeted support of those marching against the Communist repression in Hong Kong.

The Chinese government responded angrily, threatening to end NBA telecasts in China, which earn the league millions. The NBA apologized. Never again would someone involved with the league mention anything about democracy.

The situation with Peng Shuai is different literally but virtually the same, an authoritarian government reminding the world of its power.

The WTA tried unsuccessfully to speak directly to Peng after her accusations in social media. Finally, in a move that surprised some, it came on strong.

Peng had been seen on iPhone screens — including a video conference with the president of the IOC, Thomas Bach — but not in person.

Bring her forth, said Steve Simon, chief executive of the WTA. Or else. The “or else” proved to be huge.

“I very much regret it has come to this point,” Simon said in a statement Wednesday. “The tennis community in China and Hong Kong are full of great people with whom we have worked for many years. They should be proud of their achievements, hospitality and success.

“However, unless China takes the steps we have asked for we cannot put our players and staff at risk by holding events in China. China’s leaders have left the WTA no choice.”

The suspicion is that China’s leaders didn’t really care when it comes down to protecting their interests.

Over the years, we’ve heard how sport helps develop relationships with other counties. But you better play by their rules if you want to have a chance in the game.

The story reads like one of those “me too” situations, except in China it seems less an issue of helping the victim than protecting the guilty.

In a free society, it would be tabloid stuff, scandalous. But as you have concluded, China is not a free society. 

Peng, 35, accused Zhang Gaol, 75, a former vice premier of China, of sexually assaulting her at his home three years ago. She also said she had an on-and-off consensual relationship with him. Then she disappeared.

When people in tennis wanted to know her whereabouts and her condition, China’s state-owned broadcast network came up with a story that Peng claimed she didn’t make the accusations.

“Hello, everyone, this is Peng Shuai,” the voice said, adding there had been no sexual assault. “I’m not missing, nor am I unsafe. I’ve been resting at home, and everything is fine. Thank you for caring about me.”

Skeptical? So too were Steve Simon and most everybody in tennis. Simon said he wants a full, fair and transparent investigation into Peng Shuai’s claims, “without censorship.”

Whether or not Peng Shuai is missing, for sure women’s tournaments in China will be.

A special vision of 9/11

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It was one of those classic East Coast thunderstorms, full of sound, fury and buckets of rain.

Even before the pilot announced the delay, it was obvious we would be stuck for a long while on the tarmac at JFK airport in New York.

My plans would have to change. Who could guess within hours the world was about to change? 

It was Monday evening, Sept. 10, 2001. A day earlier, I had covered the men’s final of the U.S. Open tennis championships at Flushing Meadows, only a few miles from where our jet sat while the downpour continued.

Lleyton Hewitt, an Australian barely out of his teens, had crushed Pete Sampras. In the women’s final Saturday, then-dominant Venus Williams, 21, defeated younger sister Serena, still a few days from her 20th birthday.

A great Open, but now I was headed to another continent, Europe, for a few days of vacation in Italy followed by another sport, golf, the Ryder Cup at the Belfry in England. It all seemed so neat, so organized.

But the flight, to London’s Heathrow, was late. The flight to Florence, Italy, departed from another airport, Gatwick, to which I had to bus some 45 miles. It now was around noon in Britain. The next flight to Italy wouldn’t leave for hours.

The crowd in the waiting lounge moved toward one of the TV sets at the bar.

Jet-lagged and clueless, I asked someone what was happening. ”Oh,” he said unemotionally, “a plane hit a building in New York.”

What? I pushed through everyone to get a better look at a TV screen, a bit rude by British standards, dropping an occasional “Sorry,” just to show Americans had some manners.

The enormity of the disaster was becoming a reality. Flights throughout the U.S. had been halted. In Europe, some still were operating, My wife, a travel agent, had been in Rome and was aboard a train to Florence, unaware of the attacks.

This was 20 years ago, a lifetime technologically, before everyone from Katmandu to Kentucky had an iPhone. But there were cell phones, or as the Brits call them, mobile phones.

I had rented one for my wife in case of an emergency, never imagining the emergency would be an attack on the United States. I went to a pay phone in the terminal and connected to my wife as the train rolled.

The Ryder Cup, which used to be played in odd years, was postponed. Last autumn it was postponed again because of the Covid-19 outbreak, returning to the odd-year schedule, it will be held again in a couple weeks at Whistling Straits, north of Milwaukee.

A few times when I’ve been in New York for the Open, I’ve made a sobering visit to ground zero. There is a memorial fountain and the tattered, scorched remnant of an American flag pulled from the flames.

I made it to Italy the night of the attack on one of the last planes still permitted to fly, then on CNN watched as did millions of others all the news reports, depressed and frightened.

The next morning my wife and I shared a breakfast table in a plaza with an English couple, who expressed their condolences and asked whether America would respond.

Two decades later, there only are partial answers. I’m just grateful that on the afternoon of Sept. 10, 2001, I had the opportunity for one last look at the twin towers. The vision will stay forever.

Rafer Johnson: Literally a champ, essentially a leader

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By Art Spander

“Now the young world has grown old; gone are the silver and gold.” Lyrics from a song recorded by Frank Sinatra, among others. About the passing of time. About memories.

I thought of the words when I heard that Rafer Johnson had died at 86. Maybe because he was a man of both silver — if only once — and gold.

Also, because we were classmates at UCLA. He was a friend, as was his younger brother Jimmy, no less an athletic star, who became a Pro Football Hall of Famer as a defensive back with the 49ers.

Rafer, such a distinctive name. Such an unpretentious person.

A champion literally, with that narrow victory over C.K. Yang — another UCLA student — in the decathlon at the 1960 Rome Olympics.

A leader essentially, who would be elected student body president and in time be known for his global support of human rights.

The Johnsons were from Kingsburg, some 25 miles from Fresno. As was Monte Clark, who went to USC, played in the NFL and in 1976 was 49ers coach.

Sports were a way of life in the San Joaquin Valley, the sons of farmers and oil workers winning games and fame. Bob Mathias, a two-time Olympic decathlon champion, was from Tulare; Frank Gifford, the football great, was from Bakersfield.

No television, no internet. Kids played. And studied.

College campuses were quiet. As did others at UCLA, Rafer went to class. Unlike most others, he went on to sporting greatness.

Not as a forward on a middling Bruin basketball team in 1959 — Denny Crum, who would go on to coach Louisville to two NCAA championships, was a teammate — but as a sprinter and long jumper. 

Track and field was prominent in the days before the Giants and Dodgers moved to California. Johnson did have that silver from the 1956 Melbourne Olympics and was involved in school activities.

Still, he never big-timed anyone, particularly a sports writer from the school newspaper, the Daily Bruin. You’d see him around campus in what was the unofficial attire of the era, a white shirt with a sweater draped over his shoulders. He was humble. He was purposeful.

The passing of others is a reminder of our own mortality. We exist in our own fantasies, cushioned against reality. When in 2016 the death of Arnold Palmer was announced, a well-known golfer who idolized Palmer told me, “I thought he would never die.”

It’s been a tragic few months for sports. We've lost Tom Seaver — another from the Central Valley — Joe Morgan, Paul Hornung, Bob Gibson, Diego Maradona. Now Rafer Johnson.

I last talked to him four or five years ago. It was at halftime of a UCLA basketball game at Pauley Pavilion, just a couple of alums discussing the state of the team and the state of the world.

NCAA championship banners, won after both of us had graduated, hung from the beams. Rafer didn’t have anything to do with those, although he played for John Wooden decades earlier.

Rafer’s contributions to the school and society are of a different type.

He was at the Ambassador Hotel in L.A. in June 1968 when Robert Kennedy was shot, and he leaped in to help capture the assassin, Sirhan Sirhan.

He was chosen to carry the torch into the stadium and climb the steps to the rim of the Coliseum, lighting the permanent torch to start the 1984 L.A. Olympics.

UCLA would have sports heroes such as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bill Walton, Troy Aikman and Evelyn Ashford.

But there has never been anyone like Rafer Johnson.

Giants: No runs in two games, but maybe a barrier crossed

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By Art Spander
For Maven Sports

No runs for the Giants, but maybe progress for society. Two games without anyone from San Francisco crossing the plate. One brief series in which young athletes may have crossed a barrier.

Read the full story here.

Copyright 2020, The Maven

Basketball stopped — to make us aware the shooting must stop

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By Art Spander
For Maven Sports

The NBA stopped. But only to make us aware that the killing must stop. If we weren’t aware already.

Black men keep getting shot — this time in Kenosha, Wis. — and other black men again did what they could to peacefully show their outrage and fear.

Read the full story here.

Copyright 2020 The Maven

Harry Edwards on sports: ‘The normal will never be again’

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By Art Spander
For Maven Sports

He is the man to credit. Or blame. For Tommie Smith and John Carlos and their black-gloved salute. For Colin Kaepernick coming to his knees. For the willingness of African-American athletes over the past half century to let us know a system’s imperfections.

Read the full story here.

Copyright 2020, The Maven

No sports? Herm Edwards has a way to fill the void

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By Art Spander

So we’re back to Herm Edwards again. And in these uncomfortable times, when there are far too many questions and virtually no answers, why not?

It was Herm who famously told us when he coached the New York Jets that the idea is to win the game. Still true, although now rather than football or baseball it’s the game of life.

Two months ago, when the world was normal and people shot baskets or took batting practice or worked on their bunker shots, Edwards, coach at Arizona State, spoke to the San Francisco Giants during spring training on the values of common purpose.

“Individuals,” he told them, “but also part of a group with a shared goal.”

Thursday morning, Edwards said on ”Good Morning America” that he hoped his athletes — and thus in effect the rest of us — would use this period without workouts or games for reflection.

Which, since we’re sheltered and presumably bored — and perhaps somewhat claustrophobic and, because of the headlines, depressed — makes sense.

“All of a sudden this thing has come upon us,” said Edwards, “and how we are going to react going forward is very important. But you know what? We live in a noisy world. It’s very quiet now. We gotta reflect on our lives.”

Edwards, who grew up in Monterey, will be 66 in a week. He wants to get back to work, certainly, wants the sports world to be what it was, yet he’s a realist.

The PGA Tour has a plan to return. The NFL has announced contingencies for a schedule that would start in September. But what happens to the college game remains a mystery.

When will students be able to return to campus — if they’re able to return? And if the classrooms and dorms are empty, is it proper to have stadiums full? If authorities give clearance.

Already the mayor of Los Angeles, Eric Garcetti, said, depending on the spread of the coronavirus, large gatherings — as in crowds of spectators — may continue to be prohibited until 2021.

What does that mean for the Rams and Chargers and their $5 billion stadium, which is set to open? What does that mean for the Lakers and Clippers? For USC and UCLA? For the Anaheim Ducks and L.A. Kings?

For the Rose Bowl Game and parade, if the ruling still is in effect? For the Dodgers and Angels? And for the opponents, the Giants, A’s, 49ers, Warriors, Sharks, Cal and Stanford, when scheduled down there?

You’re aware of the schemes of major league baseball, to play all the games in Arizona or divide them between Arizona and Florida, each team staying only in one approved hotel and playing in ballparks without fans.

The PGA Tour has taken that last step. Tournaments are to resume in June. But without people other than the golfers, caddies and officials. Eerie but acceptable, one concedes, even if a $5 million event wouldn’t seem much different than four guys out on a Saturday morning at the club.

Yes, we’re anxious to have our sports return, but at what cost? Baseball without fans? Golf tournaments without galleries? If that is the situation, what sort of option do we have?

The word surreal has been used with frequency and, I suppose, with accuracy. Who would have imagined the havoc the virus would create, the medical emergencies, the deaths? Who would believe in the two months since Herm Edwards addressed the Giants how life and sports have changed for the worse?

We’re facing that most fearsome of enemies, the great unknown.

"That's what you think about as a coach — the unexpected, and what are you gonna do?" Edwards said. "Well, we got to find a way to be on the same page and listen to the game plan of the doctors. That's the game plan; it's not our personal game plan.

"We can't be a selfish player now, as citizens. We have to all be on the same team and respect each other. I think that's very important."

Even more important than scoring a touchdown, which one presumes will take place — before fans — in the not-too-distant future.

Harry Edwards: ‘NFL owners own the franchise, they don’t own the players’

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By Art Spander

So there are people in the NFL hierarchy who confuse praying with protesting. But of course. In the modern world, it’s perception that counts, instead of actuality.

Get off your knees, guys, or Papa John’s sales will never rebound.

The league deals with the actual game, banning certain tactics on kicks, wedge blocking or running starts by the kicking team, with the idea of improving safety.

Then it turns to political football, trying to placate the demands of a one-time wannabe NFL owner named Donald Trump

Trump is president of the United States. He wishes he were commissioner of the NFL, which on Sundays from September to February may be a more important position, if not a more enviable one.

Yes, the commish, Roger Goodell, earns something around $40 million a year, but many of his employers are deeper-pocketed, short-sighted individuals more worried about first downs than the First Amendment.

That particular item states that Congress will make no law prohibiting free speech or press or the right of people to assemble peaceably. Presumably that includes those in uniform on the sidelines.

But because Trump contends that certain maneuvers, such as kneeling during the National Anthem, displease him, and because the owners are his wealthy pals, the league recently voted that players either must stand during the anthem or stay hidden, in the locker room.

Not very intelligent, says our old friend Harry Edwards, the Cal professor emeritus in sociology who helped lead the revolt of the black athlete in the 1960s.

“Some of the owners, including Jerry Jones (of the Cowboys), are confused,” said Edwards. “They own the franchise. They don’t own the players.”

And the players, in a league that is mostly African-American, have taken it upon themselves to use their status to call attention to what they feel are injustices against blacks in America.   

Colin Kaepernick, then with the 49ers, took a stand by not standing for the Star Spangled Banner. Other players followed, Trump screamed and the owners caved, in a typically incongruous manner.

Either you stand or you stay out of sight.  

“We want to honor the flag,” Edwards said, speaking for the protestors. “We just want to show we’re better than the 147 black men being shot down.”

Edwards doesn’t blame Goodell, who he says is more observer — ever try to tell a billionaire anything? — than director. Some in charge are wiser than others. When Bill Walsh coached the 49ers to their championships, he brought in Edwards to ease problems, racial or otherwise, between players and management.

Edwards looks at the NBA as a league far ahead of the NFL. “The Warriors,” he said, “that’s the way to run a team.”

The Warriors, certainly, made it clear after winning the 2017 NBA title that they didn’t want to go to the White House and meet Trump. Now it’s the Philadelphia Eagles, as Super Bowl champions, who made it clear that they similarly did not feel comfortable visiting with the president.

Trump then withdrew the invitation.

“They disagree with their President,” said Trump of his dis-invite to the Eagles, “because he insists they proudly stand for the national anthem.”

After that, Trump added a tweet: “Honoring America, no escaping to Locker Rooms.” 

Interestingly, no Eagles player last season went to his knees during the anthem. And receiver Torrey Smith, denying that the Philly players wouldn’t show at the White House, tweeted: “So many lies. Here are the facts. No one refused to go simply because Trump insists folks stand for the anthem.”

The players, he said, countering a misconception, are not anti-military. They are just opposed to those who restrict their rights and ignore law enforcement brutality.

“The league handled the issues very poorly,” said Edwards. “To players, little things matter where the differences among teams is so slim. One player stays in the locker room, another doesn’t — that could split a team.

“Athletes now have a bigger stage than ever.”

And more to say from that stage.

Kareem: ‘America has to start talking’

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By Art Spander

LOS ANGELES — He was called The Big Fellow. A description both accurate and incomplete. We learned there was so much more to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar than just his physical presence, as imposing as it was.

Beyond the 7-foot-2 basketball player was the student. And the author. And perhaps most important of all in a time of sporting strife, sideline anthem sit-downs, spectator disenchantment, the thinker.   

Abdul-Jabbar was honored the other night, presented the Roy Firestone Award by Westcoast Sports Associates, a group of young professionals who with proceeds from their annual dinner — this was the 22nd — fund athletic activities for underprivileged kids.

Firestone, the longtime TV sports interviewer, was the original recipient, in 1996, and is now the event’s host.

The idea is to recognize a sports figure who has been involved in charitable work. The list includes Jim Brown, Arnold Palmer, Joe Montana, Hank Aaron and Steve Young. That Abdul-Jabbar, so private for so long, was willing to accept surprised some.

Maybe at 70 he has mellowed a bit. Maybe he realizes with his reputation beyond the basketball court, winner a year ago of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, there come obligations, a sky hook version of noblesse oblige.  

The way it works with the award is that a well-prepared Firestone and the honoree sit facing each other center stage, Firestone probing, the subject responding.

“We promised not to get into politics,” said Firestone as the program concluded, “but beside the obvious, what can we do as a people to come together — not just taking a knee like Colin Kaepernick — come together again as a country?”

Abdul-Jabbar never hesitated. “People say what this is all about,” he said. “It’s all about talking to your fellow Americans, no matter what they look like, or their ethnic background or religious background, their socioeconomic background. Talk, and we can discuss the problems we have to solve. But until we start talking to each other, nothing’s going to happen.

“This is the greatest country in the world. We can solve any problems.”

The all-time NBA scoring champion, a six-time MVP, a man who was among the leaders of the black boycott of the American team in the 1968 Olympics, sounding very much like a politician — and drawing an ovation from an audience ready to head home.

The years pass quickly. In the mind’s eye it is 1971, and Kareem still was being called Lew Alcindor, although “Jabbar” (no Abdul) was on the back of his jersey with Milwaukee.

That was some Bucks team, ’70-’71, Oscar Robertson, Bob Dandridge, Lucius Allen and of course Kareem, who was in his second season. It would play — and beat, four games to one — the San Francisco Warriors in the second round of playoffs on the way to the championship.

Because a flower show was being held at Milwaukee Arena, the Bucks' home games that playoff were at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. I was the Warriors beat man for the San Francisco Chronicle then, and on an off-day I interviewed Kareem, who was grudgingly cooperative.

“He’s naturally shy,” Firestone told me some 45 years later. Having seen photos of Kareem, who then was Lew, in elementary school, a head taller than any of his classmates, I understood. He hoped to blend in — to do the impossible and be like everyone else.

Now he is proud to stand tall, literally and metaphorically. The insults — his coach at Power Memorial High in New York called him the “N” word to motivate him — and the slights no longer matter. As his college coach, John Wooden, told him, forgive.

“At a certain point, Coach Wooden got through to me,” said Abdul-Jabbar, whose latest book of the six he has written, Coach Wooden and Me, released in June, deals with the relationship between an old coach and a younger athlete.

They ended up having more in common than either would have imagined. Maybe that also is true for all of society.

S.F. Examiner: In uncertain times, Steve Kerr finds pride in NBA’s inclusiveness

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By Art Spander
San Francisco Examiner

The question was terribly appropriate for Steve Kerr, a man of the world as much as the basketball court.

On this Saturday evening of contradictions — the Warriors honoring one group of immigrants to America, the Chinese, wearing jerseys with Mandarin letters, while the nation had been ordered to ban other groups of immigrants — Kerr was asked if he had any thoughts on President Trump’s decisions.

Read the full story here.

©2017 The San Francisco Examiner

S.F. Examiner: Timing is curious, but Kap’s actions nothing new in NorCal

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By Art Spander
San Francisco Examiner

NEW YORK — A quarterback is in the hot seat because he refuses to relinquish his own seat when the national anthem is played. The Bay Area reacts — and overreacts. The sky is falling. At the least, jerseys are burning.

But back here, in New York, where the U.S. Open tennis championships have started and the only items involving a signal caller have to do with the Jets’ Geno Smith — “Bird brained QB boo-birds,” was the Daily News headline — they barely notice.

Read the full story here.

©2016 The San Francisco Examiner

S.F. Examiner: Amidst global turmoil, sports trudge forward in Europe

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By Art Spander
San Francisco Examiner

PARIS — Unable to find Giants or Athletics results in L’Equipe, the historic French sports daily, one goes to the Internet and ESPN and gets not, say, the Red Sox but so help me Qarabag FK, an Azerbaijani soccer team. Yikes.

Not until I open the Examiner website do I discover the Giants have been in a free fall that began in San Diego, of all places, and continued at Fenway Park. The A’s unfortunately have been in a free fall since April.

Read the full story here.

©2016 The San Francisco Examiner

Newsday (N.Y.): France’s Clement Sordet writes ‘Pray for Nice’ on hat at British Open

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By Art Spander
Special to Newsday

TROON, Scotland — Clement Sordet said he tried not to think about it. But that was impossible for the French golf pro and for virtually everyone else.

Sordet finished his second round at the British Open on Friday and then spoke about the tragedy in Nice, where a truck rammed into a celebrating crowd during a Bastille Day fireworks display Thursday night along a seaside boulevard. Officials said 84 people were killed and 202 were injured.

Read the full story here.

Copyright © 2016 Newsday. All rights reserved.

Newsday (N.Y.): Serena Williams expresses concern over racial tension

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By Art Spander
Special to Newsday

WIMBLEDON, England -- It didn't take long for the British media to ask Wimbledon champion Serena Williams about the growing racial tension across the pond.

"I feel anyone in my color in particular is of concern," said Williams, when asked about the police shootings of African-Americans in Louisiana and Minnesota last week.

Read the full story here.

Copyright 2016 Newsday. All rights reserved.

The day the music died

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By Art Spander

The radio in my TR4, a British sports car, couldn’t always be heard clearly over the noisy four-cylinder engine, but I sensed from the gravity of the announcer’s voice that something was wrong. I pulled over to the curb and turned up the volume.

“ . . . The president has been taken to Parkland Hospital in Dallas,” was the somber message. “We are awaiting word on his condition . . . ”

Fifty years ago, Nov. 22, 1963. America’s age of innocence was at an end. Camelot had fallen.

It was the weekend of the college traditionals, and the next day I would be covering the USC-UCLA game for the Santa Monica Evening Outlook, a publication no longer in existence. I was driving to the office, three blocks from the Pacific.

I stopped. So did America.

John F. Kennedy, the 35th president, had been assassinated. And nothing would ever be the same.

In the half century that followed, other leaders would fall, the World Trade Center would be brought down with a massive loss of life, one horror after another. This was the beginning.

They still argue about the killing of JFK, still posit conspiracy theories, still insist it was more than a single shooter, still point out that everything we’ve been told and seen has either been fabricated or whitewashed. The New York Times the other day had a story and photo of the blood-spattered pink suit worn by Jackie Kennedy as she sat with her dying husband.

Fifty years ago the scenes were of the Texas School Book Depository, of Dealey Plaza, of a country in mourning and sport in a muddle.

The nation didn’t want to play. It needed to weep.

The Outlook was a p.m., a pure afternoon paper. The advance story for a Saturday afternoon game was Friday. The first edition was on the streets. I changed a few words, and the revision made it for the late editions. Then we waited.

The Big Six, as the conference of Cal, Stanford, USC, UCLA, Washington and Washington State was known, announced postponements. As did the Big Ten. As did the American Football League, which was three years from a merger with the NFL.

But not Oklahoma or Nebraska. Or any games of the NFL.

At first, it seemed as if USC-UCLA would be held, if without card stunts — remember card stunts? — or bands or any type of normal celebration. Just football.

But John McKay, then the Trojans' coach, was opposed. “I can’t believe you’d play a football game," he said, “where there was only half the enthusiasm.”

We didn’t. For a week.

I composed a story that only a few hours earlier never could have been imagined, about a game that was so important now so unimportant. Then I went on the streets, a reporter, and interviewed people whose disbelief was no greater than mine.

Color television was only for the wealthy in the early 1960s. Most of us sat, numbed, watching the repetitive images in black and white, the widow helped on to Air Force One, the caisson rolling down Pennsylvania Avenue, the world leaders from Charles de Gaulle to Haile Selassie in the procession, 3-year-old John Kennedy Jr. saluting as the coffin moved past.

Pete Rozelle was the NFL commissioner and was unsure of staying the course, allowing the usual Sunday grouping of games to be played 48 hours later, or deferring to reality.

Rozelle, who died in 1996, and Pierre Salinger, Kennedy’s press secretary, had been classmates at the University of San Francisco. They talked. Although it was more complex than that, Salinger persuaded Rozelle that to play games as scheduled would provide a sense of normalcy and perhaps relief to a country desperate for both.

The teams played. Rozelle rued his decision. “It’s the one thing I would change,” he later said of his 30 years as commissioner. “If I could do it again, we wouldn’t play.”

The games were not televised. They were reported. And criticized. Pete Rozelle, more for his suspensions of Paul Hornung and Alex Karras, would be selected Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year.

The following Friday, Nov. 29, in a repeat of sorts, I created another advance story for the game, rescheduled for the next day, Saturday, Nov. 30, suggesting a 40-6 USC victory — hey, those were the Trojans of “Student Body Right” — but the final score was 26-6.

What do I remember about the game? Virtually nothing. It was anticlimactic. We had been through a torturous few days that for our generation would stay forever. As Don McLean’s song of the early 1970s would remind us, it was the day the music died.

RealClearSports: Augusta Makes The Inevitable Decision

in , ,

By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com

At its core, golf is one of the clearest and fairest of sports. Each swing counts a stroke. No umpire is needed as in baseball, no referee as in football.

The problem wasn't the game but rather the surroundings, the bigotry, the exclusion at certain courses because of race or religion. Or, as at Augusta National, gender.

Read the full story here.

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