One of
my more pleasant writing assignments came about 20 years ago when an
acquaintance at Lyons & Buford Press in New York told me his firm was
publishing an American paperback edition of Roger Bannister’s book “The
Four-Minute Mile”, and asked me if I’d do an introduction.
I accepted quickly even after he’d apologized
in advance for the pay he was offering for my 1,500 words—low three figures I
now recall. The clincher was that I’d also receive an autographed copy from the
author. Truth to tell, I might have done
it just for that.
I’d long admired Bannister, not
just for his signal athletic achievement but for the manner in which he
accomplished it and for what he did afterward. No single-(or simple-) minded jock, he was a
medical student engaged in serious study when he broke the magical mile mark in
1954. When he retired from sport later that year, after defeating his archrival
John Landy at the Commonwealth Games in a mile that’s still worth replaying, he
embarked on a career as a neurologist that included research accomplishments as
well as private practice. A lecture hall
at his medical school is named for him, something he’s said he ranked ahead of
his running honors.
Sir Roger’s example came to mind many times as
I watched the just-concluded Olympic Games. As one after another of the young
winners exulted in their glories, I kept wondering what they might do for encores,
and not on the playing fields. F. Scott
Fitzgerald wrote that there are no second acts in American lives, and while the
line qualifies mainly as a cute misstatement it’s usually all too true when it
comes to athletes. Worse, I have the feeling
that I care more about that than do most of the people immediately involved.
Many things have changed since
Roger Bannister’s day, and for many years thereafter. Until about 30 years ago participation in
high-level sports still was considered to be an interlude between youth and adulthood,
with practitioners routinely pursuing off-season education or jobs that turned
into livelihoods once their playing days were done. If you frequented Chicago’s
LaSalle Street during the 1980s you might have bumped into Terry Brennan, Glenn
Beckert or George Seals, ex-jocks plying their new trades in the financial
canyon. Old athletes were all over the area, turning a buck on their names (like
the putative restauranteurs Mike Ditka, Michael Jordan and Jim McMahon) if not
their labors. Ex-Bear Bill Osmanski had
a long dental career in the area, ex-Cub pitcher Rich Nye was a veterinarian
and Ken Holtzman ran an insurance brokerage. The list went on.
Today, of course, so much money is
available even in Olympic sports that receive scant attention at other times that
any necessity to earn a living post-sports is negated for some. Michael Phelps,
the swimming hero, is retiring at age 27 with a reported $40 million in the
bank from endorsements and with additional contracts in hand worth that much or
more. All he needs now are some tax tips
from Mitt Romney and a stockbroker who’ll
explain to him the principles of risk and reward and how they apply to
everyone, including him. The cautionary tale is necessary because many (most?)
jocks possess the combination of ignorance and arrogance that make them easy
marks for financial predators. It’s a jungle out there.
But there’s more to life than money, and if the prospect of retirement
at 27 isn’t daunting to Phelps, it should be.
The actuarial tables say that he has at least 50 more years on Earth,
and he’ll have to fill them somehow. I
remember being in Las Vegas some years ago, a few days in advance of a fight I
was covering, and leaving my hotel at mid-morning on my reporting rounds. The
place had a tennis complex and as I left I saw Sugar Ray Leonard, newly retired
from the ring and there to make appearances, on the court smacking shots
against a ball machine. Five or six hours later I returned to find him still at
it. The guy is seriously bored, I told myself, and a few months later wasn’t
surprised to learn that he’d reneged on his retirement, preferring the rigors
of his brutal sport to idleness. A swimming pool has to look very good compared
with that.
It’s better to fill the hours in
interesting ways, and that’s where education comes in. Last week I chuckled at
an Al Michaels TV interview with the American gymnastics darlings Gabby
Douglas, who’s 16 years old, and Aly Raisman, 18. When Michaels asked them about their future
plans, both cheerfully said they’d be taking their circus on the road in the
coming months and sticking with their sport thereafter. Better answers would have been high school
for Gabby and college for Aly. Athletically
speaking, maturity won’t be their friend, but it could be intellectually if
they play their cards right. Their
parents should clue them in on that.
Gabby and Aly—and Michael, too— can
find good examples aplenty if they choose to broaden their horizons. Seb Coe,
the man in charge of the London Olympics, was a gold-medal-winning
middle-distance runner in the 1980 and ’84 Games and later a member of the British
Parliament. Jim Scherr, a freestyle wrestler for the U.S. at Seoul in 1988,
spent 10 years as chief executive officer of the U.S. Olympic Committee.
Dot Richardson, a star softballer
in 1996 and 2000, is an orthopedic surgeon. Figure skater Peggy Fleming ran a
winery and paints landscapes. Magic Johnson is involved in numerous profitable
and worthwhile enterprises. Boxer George
Foreman got behind a wonderful grill. Bruce Jenner, the 1976 decathlon
champion, became a Kardashian.
OK, skip that last one.
Required reading for every
Olympian—and for other jocks as well—should be the Irwin Shaw short story, “The
80-Yard Run.” It’s about a man who looks back in middle age to realize that his
proudest achievement was a football play he made in college. It’s a sad story,
but that’s the point. Forewarned is forearmed.
