Irwin Shaw - Short Stories - Five Decades

Many of the replies I received to my telegrams to the players I had rescued from lifelong obscurity were embarrassing in their expression of gratitude. One letter from a player who had probably majored in English literature contained a quotation from the works of Thomas Gray:

Full many a gem of purest ray serene

The dark unfathom ’d caves of

ocean bear:

Full many a flower is born to blush

unseen ,

And waste its sweetness on the

desert air .

“Dear Mr. Romanovici,” the scholar-athlete wrote, “I guarantee I will not blush unseen. Thanks to you.”

I welcomed him among the chosen in a letter written in my own hand.

Naturally, my activities did not go long unnoticed. Howls of pain rose from the owners of the established clubs, suits were filed in the courts—to no avail—the newspapers, those guardians of the public welfare, poured abuse on my head, as I had expected. One eminent syndicated sports columnist, who also was in much demand as a commentator for special events such as the Olympics and championship prize fights, reached a new low in competitive prose by writing, “The gypsy has raided the henhouse.” He was a peculiarly distasteful man, but I hired him at twice his yearly income to serve as chief commentator at the games of the new league. His attitude suffered a not surprising sea change in his new position and the authority of his famous voice made instant stars out of a good many of the players in my employ.

I refused to compete head on with the National Football League. Our games were played on Wednesday and Friday evenings, when the viewing public had recovered from the weekend satiety with the sport. At first, I refused all advertising sponsors, contenting myself with a modest announcement before the start of play at each half that the spectacle was being presented (tax-free for me) on behalf of one or another of my national companies. Because of this, I did away with the endless time outs and tasteless promotions of beer, razor blades, laxatives and armpit protection that made the viewer pay a high negative emotional price for his pleasure. This simple improvement met such a huge response with the public that before the first season was half over, I was besieged with offers from advertisers for the same minimum, low-key and now demonstrably effective exposure.

Another innovation that met with instant acclaim was the elimination of the singing of The Star-Spangled Banner before the start of each game. I had never seen the connection between watching an exercise in professional brutality and patriotism and the polls I had taken among the spectators on the spot and the television audience in their homes confirmed my belief that the usual roar that arose as the anthem came to its last notes was not a demonstration of allegiance to the nation but a sign of relief that the game was finally going to begin.

Indulging myself in a long-standing prejudice, I forbade the marching and foolish tootling of high school bands between halves. If my clients liked parades and martial music, they could join the Army. Instead, I picked rock combinations at random, merely by placing small advertisements in the specialized journals devoted to what has always seemed to me to be mindless noisemaking, but which I recognized as a part of our current culture, and had the groups that flocked to my office perform when the athletes were off the field. The change was greeted with screams of joy, especially among the younger element, as the pathetically underpaid musicians in outlandish costumes who answered my invitation blared away under the lights in the autumn evenings.

I even went so far as to improve the quality of the frankfurters and rolls to be hawked in the stands and the high percentage of sales per spectator was satisfactory evidence to me that the national palate had not been permanently ruined by the years of munching on plaster-of-Paris rolls and the sweepings of the abattoirs of America.

With all this, the experiment would have been a failure if the play itself had not been up to standard. By constant exposure, the public had become a body of sophisticated critics and they responded gratifyingly to the reckless ferocity shown by the athletes who had nothing to lose and everything to gain by giving their utmost efforts at every moment of the game. Professional football has been compared all too often to the gladiatorial combats of Rome, but here, at last, the simile almost achieved the status of actual fact rather than remaining another example of rhetoric born in the feverish minds of bemused journalists.

In short, in the first season, the Players’ League, as I named it, turned out to be a huge success, but I made no claims and carefully refrained from issuing any challenges to the older league.

But the next year, when one of the less successful teams in the new confederation happened to be conducting pre-season practice in the same area in which one of the N.F.L. teams was preparing for the upcoming campaign, I innocently suggested to the owner of the club, who was a friend of mine and owed me a favor, that it might be useful to stage an informal scrimmage between the two teams. With no spectators or newspapermen present, of course. My friend did not leap at the opportunity and was not encouraged by the reactions of the other owners when the idea was presented to them. I reminded him, gently, of the favor he owed me, which was no less than keeping him out of Federal prison for at least three years, and he consented, with the worst grace possible.

The scrimmage was duly held, with ambulances coming and going. No scores were kept and no official word was vouchsafed to the newspapers, but the rumors were delightful. Two weeks later, my friend called me to say, bitterly, that it would have been better for him if he had spent the three years in prison.

Confident now of the future (wrongly, as it developed), I suggested no further relations between the leagues and through the season allowed the sportswriters to do their work. By December, the clamor for the meeting between the two champions was irresistible. I pretended to be loath to risk my inexperienced young men against the triumphant veterans of the N.F.L., and the clamor swelled into an uproar. There was even a speech on the subject on the floor of the Senate in which the doctrine of free enterprise was invoked and fair competition under the democratic rules of the game was mentioned. My hesitation paid off in my dealings with the N.F.L. and was reflected in certain concessions that were finally included in the contract, chiefly concerned with the percentages assigned to the two parties involved. But try as I would, I could not persuade the opposing lawyers to agree to the sale of the improved frankfurters and rolls I preferred. I am not a stubborn man and at the end gave in gracefully on this point.

We were lucky, or so it seemed at the time, that the race in our league was undecided until the last Sunday in December, which kept the attention of the public, especially the bettors among them, riveted to our games, while the championship in the N.F.L. had become a foregone conclusion early in October, with the Dallas team monotonously running up lopsided scores against all opposition and finishing the season undefeated, with the absurd combined total of 620 points gained to 34 points scored against them. At their own Super Bowl, they won 56 to 17 and there were empty seats in the stands.

By a happy coincidence (for me), Montpelier was the victor in our league and grimly went about its preparations for the test ahead of it.

The Sunday of the big game dawned clear and balmy. The Las Vegas line indicated a Dallas victory by 24 points. I had avoided Texas almost successfully during my career and was not prepared for the delirium, inflamed by drink, with which the natives of the Panhandle celebrated, well in advance, the massacre of the invaders from the North. One would have thought that Davy Crockett, smiling and in perfect health, had strode forth from the Alamo on Saturday evening.