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 A tale of three centuries
Posted: Wednesday May 26, 1999 11:43 AM
In my business, you get a lot of calls and letters -- some nice, some calling you a jackass, some just unusual. Several years ago, for example, I received a book from Nancy Gold of Pennsylvania. Last fall I got a phone call from Alan Hilburg of Virginia. These two people are not connected in any way, but what their coincidental contact has produced for me -- at this millennium time -- is sort of a nice sweep, not only through the 20th century, but even back into the 19th and ahead into the 21st. Alan Hilburg identified himself as a friend of Bill Russell. We use the expression "team player." Well, very simply -- and indisputably -- Russell was the greatest team player of all time, any sport, able to make better everyone he played with. Unfortunately, in a sports world full of mind-numbing statistics and show-off highlights, that kind of intrinsic value cannot be measured, so we don't even hear Russell's name mentioned in all the flowery tributes to the superior athletes of this century. But as Tommy Heinsohn, Russell's teammate on the Boston Celtics, told me: "All I know is, Russ won two championships in college, 50-some straight games, he won the Olympics, and then he comes to Boston and wins 11 championships in 13 years -- and they name a blankety-blank tunnel after Ted Williams ." But then, not unlike Williams, Russell could be outspoken. Russell and Jim Brown, the preeminent running back, were the real heirs to Jackie Robinson. He had broken the color line. Russell and Brown broke comfortable color illusions. And Russell could be unyielding. When the Celtics hung his No. 6 from the Boston Garden rafters, Russell demanded that the ceremony be in private. Then, in the next few years, he grew, happily, even more reclusive. Unfortunately, his privacy was earned at the expense of his legacy. The memory of wondrous things past has such a short shelf life nowadays. Russell's friends had been trying to convince him to, in effect, come back out. With renewed visibility, he could remind the world of his past majesty. And Russell had begun to acquiesce. Now, would I agree to meet with him and write an article about him? Hello, would I agree to meet with Amelia Earheart? And so Russell and I hooked up again, drove from Seattle to San Francisco, laughing and reminiscing, and then, with a cover article in Sports Illustrated, I helped re-introduce him to a world that had too much forgotten him. Tonight, back in Boston, Bill Russell will be honored -- proceeds to the National Mentoring Partnership. And his uniform number will be hung back up -- this time, with all his admirers watching. For me, that rounds off the 20th century very nicely, thank you ... Now, about that book that Nancy Gold sent me in 1993. It was a copy of a little novel I'd written about the man with the most famous name in baseball -- Casey, of Casey At The Bat. She wanted me to autograph it as a Christmas present for some teenage player named Sean Casey. It's ironic. Even more than 110 years after Ernest Thayer created his fictional Casey, there's never been a real Casey who's made much of a mark in baseball. Well, as we move to the brink of a new century, the guy hitting .388, third best in all of baseball this spring of 1999, is -- yes -- that kid-nobody I signed a book for six years ago -- Sean Casey of the Cincinnati Reds. These commentaries, which appear each Wednesday on National Public Radio's Morning Edition, are posted weekly by CNN/SI.
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